Downing the F-15 Eagle

Opinion Journal:

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The Air Force has since discovered significant stress fractures in at least eight other aircraft, and ordered that 442 of the older-model F-15s be grounded through at least January (though 224 of the newer-model F-15Es continue to fly). Those 442 Eagles, or about a fifth of the total number of fighters fielded by the Air Force, are mainly responsible for homeland defense. They're the ones that would have to be scrambled to intercept hijacked jetliners in the event of another 9/11. (Emphasis added.)

In an alternative universe, the F-15 problem would not be significant, because the Air Force would already be flying large numbers of its designated replacement, the F-22 Raptor. But the Raptor--a fifth-generation fighter that outclasses everything else in the sky--was deemed too costly and too much of a "relic" of the Cold War. The Air Force currently has orders for no more than 183 of the planes (with some Raptor squadrons already fully operational), though there is now talk of keeping the production line open for as many as 200 more. We think it's an investment worth making.

Before the F-15's problems became so glaring, it was plausible to argue that the plane was adequate to meet current defense needs until the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter--still in its testing phase--comes into service sometime in the next decade. But while the Air Force will surely engineer whatever patch the grounded Eagles need to make them airworthy again, it cannot patch the fact that it may be six months or longer before the fleet is back to full operational readiness. This is hardly trivial for a force already strained by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and threats that stretch from the Korean Peninsula to the Horn of Africa.

Nor is there any getting over the fact that the F-15 first flew in 1972--long before many of the current crop of pilots were born--and that the plane is now outclassed by its competitors in the export market. In 2005, a British Eurofighter reportedly defeated two F-15Es in a mock dogfight. Simulated dogfights have also shown that the F-15s are somewhat inferior to Russia's more modern Su-35s.

Some defense experts claim the era of air-to-air combat is over, but similar erroneous forecasts have been made before. It's also far from clear that the single-engine F-35 can be considered a genuine replacement for the twin-engine F-15 or an adequate substitute for the (also twin-engine) F-22. The F-35 is something of a hybrid plane, with at least one version of it having a Harrier jet's vertical take-off and landing capabilities, and is also destined for shipborne service. Its great virtue is that it's a cheaper plane, but its performance is in many ways compromised by the various roles it's meant to play. As a fighter, it cannot compete with the Raptor.

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You would not need an F-22 to knock down a passenger airline. You could probably knock it down with the now antique fighter flown by President Bush when he was in the Texas Air National Guard. Currently, the F-15's cap mission is being covered by the F-16 which is more than adequate for the job. But, the structural problems with the F-15 coincide with the Air force push for new planes and they may need them, particularly if we find ourself in a dog fight with Russian or Chinese jets in the future. But for protecting ourselves from hijacked airliners, not so much.