It’s time to bring back the world’s greatest fighter jet – from the 1990s

[rangerrebew]

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.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/it-s-time-to-bring-back-the-world-s-greatest-fighter-jet-from-the-1990s/ar-BB1mxHe7?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=6739973f982149d883c49c79781b4c1e&ei=39

[Timber Rattler]

Seems like common sense to me that the solution to the USAF and USN's aircraft woes is to keep procuring existing proven airframes but with updated avionics and other technologies, instead of contracting for wholly new untried aircraft that turn out to be grotesquely expensive duds, like the F-35.

But what do I know?

[DefiantMassRINO]

They'll seek to retire as many non-F35 platforms as soon as possible to drive "demand" for the Edsel of American Air Superiority fighters.