To: Moonman62
F-15s are based upon 40-year old technology designed to counter the MiG-25 (which turned out to be an interceptor and not an air superiority fighter), so there's no point in building news ones, which are really obsolete. Kinda like building new 1976 year Cadillacs, if you get my drift.
Ever since 9/11, the USAF has really been in an ever increasing budget fix, with funding being siphoned away for the Army and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. The service has lost over 40,000 personnel in recent years, and I'm sure that inspections, maintenance, and upgrades are being short-changed. The recent story at Minot about a serious breach in nuclear weapons handling and security no doubt has its origins in the budget and manpower crisis facing the USAF today.
But to get back to the F-15s A-D, their air frames are just wore out after 30 years of high G flying, and the entire fleet needs to be retired and replaced with F-22s. Pretty soon, I imagine, we'll be hearing similar airframe structural failures in F-16s, which entered service about 1979. Consequently, I don't think that the USAF generals are crying wolf this time around.
37 posted on
12/22/2007 7:11:50 AM PST by
Virginia Ridgerunner
(“We must not forget that there is a war on and our troops are in the thick of it!” --Duncan Hunter)
To: Virginia Ridgerunner; Moonman62
F-15s are based upon 40-year old technology designed to counter the MiG-25 (which turned out to be an interceptor and not an air superiority fighter), so there's no point in building news ones, which are really obsolete. Kinda like building new 1976 year Cadillacs, if you get my drift. The F-15K is hardly obsolete. Add the F-22 radar, F-22 engines, composites to lighten it and vectored thrust, and a new construction F-15 could be better than the SU-30 or the Eurofighter. That doesn't make it a replacement for the F-22, but it wouldn't be de facto obsolete, just because the original airframes are long in the tooth.
69 posted on
12/22/2007 9:05:41 AM PST by
SampleMan
(We are a free and industrious people. Socialist nannies do not become us.)
To: Virginia Ridgerunner
But to get back to the F-15s A-D, their air frames are just wore out
after 30 years of high G flying...
I had History Channel's "Dogfights" on in the background last
week; it was on F-15 action in Gulf War I.
IIRC, one pilot recalled doing a 12-G turn in his F-15 (C model,
I think).
That just sounds brutal. Even as a non-aviator, never-served civilian,
I'd guess you could stress a plane like that only so many times
until something snaps.
124 posted on
12/24/2007 4:13:14 PM PST by
VOA
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