Silent Eagle: Boeing’s plan to make the F-15 a ‘stealth’ fighter
Alex Hollings | January 20, 2022
Back in 2009, Boeing’s Silent Eagle aimed to make the world’s most prolific air superiority fighter into something more by injecting stealth into the F-15’s legendary DNA. The result may have been the most broadly capable F-15 the world had ever seen, delivered just in time to compete with what would become a foreign sales powerhouse, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The F-15SE Silent Eagle aimed to bridge the gap between fourth and fifth-generation fighters, incorporating elements of the stealth and situational awareness offered by the world’s most advanced tactical jets into an already legendary fighter airframe. With 58,000 pounds of thrust on tap, internal weapons carriage capabilities, a reduced radar signature, advanced avionics and the Strike Eagle’s multi-role pedigree, this fighter may have been the most capable 4th generation platform on the planet by the time it was rolled onto the flight lines of prospective buyers hailing from Canada to Japan and everywhere in between.
silent eagleBoeing F-15SE Silent Eagle (Boeing)
But the world was changing by the 2010s, and the skies above it were no exception. In an era of advanced and stealthy fighters fusing data on the fly and slipping past enemy radar arrays like James Bond and his trusty Walther PPK… the Silent Eagle was more like Robocop carrying a shotgun with a silencer. It was a mechanical powerhouse that could tiptoe through the sky and speak in hushed tones. But beneath the thin veneer of stealth, the F-15SE was still every bit the bruiser it started out as.
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/silent-eagle-boeings-plan-to-make-the-f-15-a-stealth-fighter/
