It’s time to bring back the world’s greatest fighter jet – from the 1990s
Story by David Axe • 6h
The Lockheed Martin F-22 is the US Air Force’s best fighter. The Lockheed Martin F-16 is its most numerous fighter. But its workhorse fighter – the type which balances capability and mass – is the Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle, the multi-role version of the classic air-superiority fighter. The Eagle was the best fighter in the world before the F-22 came along.
More than three decades after the first of the twin-engine, two-seat, supersonic F-15Es deployed for Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the Air Force’s 218-jet F-15E fleet is as busy as ever. When Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel last month, F-15Es flying from Qatar intervened, some of them firing nine or 10 air-to-air missiles each. Israel also used its own F-15s.
It makes sense that, when a crisis flares, the Air Force deploys F-15Es first. The 16-ton fighters fly farther than other American fighter types do, carry a wider array of munitions – and more of them – and are being upgraded with new radars and electronic jammers.
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