Comments on: JSF Chief Slams Boeing on F-15

By: breese

breese — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:01:50 +0000

As an experience mechanic on th F-15, F-16, and F22 I can tell you that the F-15 has always been the better aircraft. The only way that the F-22 beats the F-15 is that is newer, ie. newer technology. It’s not really the
“Boeing” F-15, It’s the “McDonnell Douglas” F-15. Boeing bought ought McDonnell Douglas in the late 90’s. Our goverment and military screwed us tax payers by not buying the F-23. (Northrop/ McDonnell Douglas) It was a better airplane in every way, built buy two companies that new how to build fighters. The F-15 is superior to the F-35 in everyway. You can not beat the better payload capabilty, range, speed, manuverubility, or the reliability of 2 engines. Buying the f-35 is a dumb move just like trying to use the F-16 as cheap altenative to the F-15. The F16’s airframe and componets have been constantly upgraded with time which has only resulted in reduced performance and billions of wasted dollars. The same thing will happen with the F-35. Each time the F-15 has been upgraded resulted in a better performing aircraft. There is only so much you can do with a small, single engine platform before it becomes a flying brick.

By: Flyguy

Flyguy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:51:20 +0000

When the stealth capability becomes widely deployed around the world, countermeasures will be developed that will render it irrelevant. Its easier and cheaper to counter the capability than to create the capability. Its just a matter of time before some new widget is developed (or old school system is adapted like the Serbs in the 90s) to counter the stealth of the new airframes.

By: TankerPuke

TankerPuke — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:17:51 +0000

Interesting comments, but I think there are some fundamental misunderstandings here. At least as far as I understand things. First, the Silent Eagle has internal weapons carriage to lower its RCS, so no external stores bouncing beams back. Not sure what they have considered for engine intakes. Secondly, let’s be realistic here…the F-15SE is not a contender to take out Russia’s latest flying telephone poles. Rather, it offeres countries that can’t afford F-22s and F-35s with what they really need, a little stealth and a lot of flexibility…without development cost. Even the US doesn’t need all the Gee-Whiz of 5th gen fighters very much. After air superiority is established, why do you need stealth? The F-15SE seems like a great idea for the purpose it was intended. If only the F-22 and F-35 were still (or ever) as relevant as the F-15.

By: Charles Phillips, LtCol USAF Ret

Charles Phillips, LtCol USAF Ret — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:53:38 +0000

Findale, though an excellent writer, does not know much about aircraft! Glass cockpits do not have individual dials but they commonly present far more information to a pilot than the “dial and indicator” cockpit. Then you have the heads-up display and various voice frequencies about 20 assorted warning tones in your headset…

The advantage that the F-15E (especially the E model) has is that there are two guys in there to split the load. One guy could fly the plane while one guy stares at a target with binoculars.

In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in many conflicts — stealth is not needed. If we are discussing bombers — the “low stealth” B-52 is doing a lot of the lifting there. In some potential future conflicts stealth would come in handy but for many of them it would be just an unnecessary expense.

By: JSF MIKE

JSF MIKE — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:25:14 +0000

B-2 is a subsonic 4th Gen jet. F-35 and F-22 are supersonic 5th Gen jets. B-2 is not the stealthiest jet out there; the F-22 is. The F-15 is a 1960’s airframe design. It has a great combat record as does the F-16. Radars “see” the 15 and 16, but not the F-22 and F-35. That’s the difference in the Generations. In terms of RCS, the –15 is an elephant compared to the bumblebee F-22. As for saying the F-15 is very stealthy from the front is a gross misstatement. A radar beam bouncing around inside the inlet and bouncing off the engine disk makes a good return echo even with interior coatings. The radar bounces around the canopy and cockpit, even off the seat. Even a few degrees off of direct ahead aspect means the radar beams will find the vertical tails, missile outlines, etc. Yes, the “new” F-15 is better than the earlier versions, but in no way are they even close to the RCS of the Raptor or Lightening II.

By: Findale

Findale — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:37:04 +0000

From the beginning, the F-15 was over-instrumented; about 300 dials and indicators to keep the pilot “in the cockpit”, when he should be “out of the cockpit” rubber necking for targets. The 5th gen aircraft (take your pick) supposedly all have so-called glass cockpits. Even the A-10 is being upgraded to this standard. The question becomes, is it cheaper to upgrade what we have or replace what we have? No amount of coating will give an F-15 a meaningful amount of stealth. Good grief, the frontal RCS of a B-1B is the size of a small bird! Problem is, radars, not to mention inrared detection systems, can look at you from many angles. Close in, electro-optical systems simply see you directly. One recalls that is how we lost an F-117 to Serbia, and that is arguably one of the stealthiest birds we had. The B-2 is still the stealthiest bird we have, pound for pound. Which gets to the question, is the long range bomber REALLY a dead concept. We can debate the relative merits of the various fighters until the cows come home, but short of ICBMs, nothing really reaches out and touches someone like a stealthy heavy!

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:41:57 +0000

Are you serious operation7th? The RCS of the F-35 is orders of magnitude less than any 4th gen fighter out there. That’s the biggest advantage it has over the S300/400 — it can get in closer for the kill without being detected. There isn’t a single 4th gen fighter, beefed up avionics or LO or whatever, that will be getting within 200m of an S400 battery without being tracked. Even the silent eagle is no comparison, especially since all those platforms have to carry external weapons. It of course goes without saying that the avionics on the F-35 are on another level as well. If it wasn’t a huge advantage over any 4th fighter, our allies wouldn’t be climbing all over themselves to get a piece.

By: pfcem

pfcem — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:24:56 +0000

For the clueless…

The F-15SE is intended for the export market, not for the USAF.

By: Troy

Troy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:43:34 +0000

There is still way more combloc weapons( From A-Z!) around the world with their weapons systems pointed towards us,it just dosn’t stop at Iraq and Afganistan…NK has been acting up there will be others that act upin the future…I’ll give the go-ahead and take an order of 400 Silent Eagles…the more tools in the toolbox the better.

what the heck …its all on paper… just print more money and dig the material out of the rock and keep everybody in a good job at the same time.

By: operation7thwave

operation7thwave — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:41:29 +0000

I really love reading how this miracle machine will do every thing but fix your coffee..and they are working on that lie too I bet. This is a classic example of how the Air farce, and its corporate led cronies are trying to push a piece of inbred mongrol trash down the Anerican tax payers throat, and a classic example of WHY legacy fighters, and the F22 are just as good and better than a unproven, untested, and unreliable piece of trash that one day may kill more pilots than it will save.

I have already written and gotten responses from my state senatorss about stopping funding for this uneeded system, and they agree with what I have written about. And I thin it is great news that they are not in support of the F35 lite trashII.

New models of the F15, the F16 with thrust vectoring nozzles, updated aviaonics, and beefed up airframes and new engines can out perform the F35, day, night, and even against the dreaded S300/400.

By: Bill W

Bill W — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:05:11 +0000

At the Conference Board in April of 2006, Jim McNeary’s speech was “Turning Ethics and Compliance Into A Competitive Advantage.” Is this guy walking the talk or what?

By: Charles Phillips, LtCol USAF Ret

Charles Phillips, LtCol USAF Ret — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:46:18 +0000

It looks like the AF (as always) wants total committment to the new airframe — they see the existing aircraft as threats. Why? The F-35 is far more expensive and will not be ready for several years. Those countries that need reliable air assets soon do not want to wait for an aircraft that may be available in a few years.
This is another in a long history of forcing countries to buy an expensive, over designed aircraft when what they need is available now. We should have sold a lot of F-20s instead of more F-16s — the F-20 was reliable, available, etc. But by making Singapore (for example) buy F-16s, that drove the cost of them down for the US Air Force. More examples of this are everywhere.
Hopefully many countries will continue to buy the F-15, that is the aircraft that the US Air Force needs today. It would fly for the next 20 years, would be operational as soon as it rolled off the assembly line. We have logistics and trained maintenance folks everywhere.

By: Sgt JFK

Sgt JFK — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:12:02 +0000

Boeing really needs some upper management changes and some new direction.

By: BS_Buster

BS_Buster — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:08:09 +0000

After the barrage of lie’s Boing spouted during their tanker tantrum DoD is obviously fed-up with Boing’s lack of integrity.

Today’s Non-Ethics Word: Boinginate
Pronunciation: \Bo-ing-i-nate\
Function: Verb
Etymology: North Western US & Boeing/Aeronovali/JADC Consortium
Date: 2008
Transitive verb
: to habitually lie, cheat, bribe or steal if you really, really want to win