Free Republic

When the F-15 was created, it was created to be a pure air-to-air fighter, with the philosophy of “not a pound for air-to-ground” guiding designers. So how did Israel end up turning their F-15s into deadly long-range multi-role strike aircraft well before the F-15E Strike Eagle became a reality? Here’s how. In Need Of A Game Changing Fighter Israel’s love affair with the F-15 began out of the need to procure a fighter that could trump the increasingly complex fighters that surrounding Arab states were amassing from Russian and French sources. Both the F-14 Tomcat and the F-15 Eagle were...

NASA could put F-16XL back in the air By John Croft NASA's Dryden Flight Research Centre is examining the feasibility of returning to flight one of two unique cranked-arrow wing F-16XLs kept in "flyable" storage for a decade. The agency hopes to award Lockheed Martin a contract to study the cost of upgrading and returning Ship #1, the single-seat F-16XL, to flying condition to help with research into sonic boom propagation and mitigation. Upgrading the aircraft - first flown in 1982 - to a standard similar to the US Air Force's Block 40 F-16s would make it easier to support....