F-15E Armed With Drone Killing Laser-Guided Rockets Appears In Middle East
With 42 rockets and eight missiles, an F-15E now has 50 air-to-air engagement opportunities, not including its gun.
Joseph Trevithick
Published May 30, 2025 4:19 PM EDT
152
We now have a picture showing a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle down-range in the Middle East with an air-to-air loadout that includes six seven-shot 70mm rocket pods, as well as four AIM-9X and four AIM-120 missiles.
We now have a picture showing a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle down-range in the Middle East with an air-to-air loadout that includes six seven-shot 70mm rocket pods, as well as four AIM-9X and four AIM-120 missiles. This comes a week after TWZ was the first to report on testing of the laser-guided 70mm Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets as a new armament option for the F-15E. As we noted at that time, the exact loadout we’re now seeing on a deployed Strike Eagle turns the jet into a counter-drone and cruise missile ‘weapons truck’ with a whopping 50 engagement opportunities, not counting the internal gun.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) posted the picture in question, seen at the top of this story, today on social media with a basic caption offering no additional context. TWZ had reached out to CENTCOM and the Air Force for more information.
There are indications that the image was taken at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, which has long been a known hub for U.S. F-15E operations in the region.
The image of the rocket-toting F-15E that had emerged last week via social media channels associated with The Merge military aviation podcast was taken at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, but it remains unclear when.
https://www.twz.com/air/f-15e-armed-with-drone-killing-laser-guided-rockets-appears-in-middle-east
