Warbird Information Exchange

$138 million each in 2007 $ ,likely to escalate. Muultiply $138 mil by 200 and you are talking a fair peice of money. Its likely to be a Merry Christmas for Lockheed, etc.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

What's China Doing While We're Otherwise Occupied?
Fri, 05 Oct '07

General: They've Been Building "An Almost Impenetrable Air Defense System"
While the US military, the government and media have been focused on our warfighting efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, China has been quietly building an air defense that one top general says can't be penetrated by anything but our most advanced new fighters.

Worse, Lt. General Bruce Wright, who commands about 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan, says the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are putting a heavy drain on manpower and equipment needed to meet "contingencies" in East Asia.

As the US has been otherwise distracted, Wright tells the Associated Press that the Chinese have bolstered their air defense capabilities with the latest Russian-made Sukhoi SU-27 "Flankers" and homegrown F-10s (right), a rough equivalent in performance to the American stalwart F-16. ANN has been tracking development of the F-10 since 2002.

"Are we in trouble? It depends on the scenario," Wright said Thursday, quoted by Military.Com. "But you have to be concerned about the small number of our forces and the age of our forces."

For instance, he says, the average USAF F-15 is about 24 years old. And of course, the KC-135, vital to any long range mission, is older than most of the people who fly it.

"Our planes are much older than the planes they would be matched against," said Wright. "For the first time in history, we are seeing another nation, in this case China, with newer fighters than we have. We know that they continue to invest at a level that is unprecedented. We need to be watchful of Chinese military capabilities."

FMI: www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/index.html

Why not make improved f-15s?

Seriously, the Nasa Test Mule F-15s seem like viable production models, and between retrofitting old planes and making new ones you would have something better than the F-22(by all accounts). The F-15 still has greater range, payload, and mission flexiblilty than the F-22A(which is due for a partial systems refresh anyway...), and the F-15 still is in the same class of equals as the Su-27. Frankly, I think China's F-10 is huey, so there.

All accounts? I'm not an ultra-hardcore, but I keep an eye out for F-22 news and I've yet to come across any claims that updated F-15s were better than F-22s. If you've got some links, I wouldn't mind looking at them. If you're looking for debate, how about posting this on FenceCheck? I'm sure you'd get a rise out of the F-22 fanboys over there.

No matter how you upgrade them, the F-15 will always be a real pig when it comes to LO technology. Couple that with the fact that most of the airframes are reaching design life limits and it isn't that practical to look at them for that much upgrading. By the time you zero out the lifelimited stuff, design, integrate and test all the new technology, you will have spent a tremendous amount of money on it, and then you have all the costs to pull the remaining tooling out of storage and bring it up to the latest standards and designing and build all the new tools it will require. In the end, you have an airframe that can't carry internally, the tools that the F/A-22 does and begin to even get close to it's performance levels.

Big retrofits never come out within the budget limitations the bean counters predict...

USAF Suspends Some F-15 Operations
Mon, 05 Nov '07

Suspension 'A Precautionary Measure'
The Air Force suspended non-mission critical F-15 flight operations on Nov. 3 following the crash of a Missouri Air National Guard F-15C aircraft Nov. 2. The cause of that accident is still under investigation, however, preliminary findings indicate that a possible structural failure of the aircraft may have occurred. The suspension of flight operations is a precautionary measure.



The Air Force will ensure mission requirements are met for worldwide operations normally accomplished by the F-15. Current F-15 flying locations include bases in the continental United States, Alaska, England, Hawaii, Japan and the Middle East. There are more than 700 F-15s in the Air Force inventory. The F-15 reached initial operational capability for the Air Force in September 1975.

While the F-15 continues to serve its country well, the Air Force is replacing its aging F-15 fighters with its fifth generation of air superiority, the F-22 Raptor. The F-22 is the world's most advanced fighter aircraft combining stealth, supercruise, maneverability and integrated avionics to provide unmatched warfighting capabilities in both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions.



The F-15 Eagle is an all-weather, extremely maneuverable, tactical fighter designed to permit the Air Force to gain and maintain air supremacy over the battlefield. The F-15C, D and E models were deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1991 in support of Operation Desert Storm where they proved their superior combat capability. F-15C fighters accounted for 34 of the 37 Air Force air-to-air victories. The F-15E's were operated mainly at night, hunting SCUD missile launchers and artillery sites using the LANTIRN system.



They have since been deployed for air expeditionary force deployments and Operations Southern Watch -- the no-fly zone in Southern Iraq, Provide Comfort in Turkey, Allied Force in Bosnia, Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraqi Freedom in Iraq.

FMI: www.af.mil