Tag Archives: f-15e

Air Force May Mothball F-16s if A-10 Stays

The US Air Force will reportedly ship perfectly good F-16s to the desert — and potentially slow down the F-35 program — if it is forced to keep the A-10 beyond the date it wants it retired:

The House Armed Services Committee inserted $683 million into the 2016 defense bill to stop the Air Force from retiring the A-10 Warthog.

However, Air Force leaders said the service will have to mothball F-16s and delay the deployment of the F-35 in response to the move by the committee.

The HASC logic basically says the Air Force needs the A-10 right now, as Read more

F-15E Crashes in AOR, F-16 Crashes in Utah

The Air Force reported that an F-15E Strike Eagle crashed “in Southwest Asia” on a local training mission.  Both crew members were reported safe.  This is the second F-15E crash in the AOR since the March crash that killed pilot Capt Francis Imlay.

In Utah, the Air Force said an F-16 crashed, with the pilot successfully ejecting.

As is the norm, the crashes will be investigated by a board, and the results released some months from now.

The Fighter Pilot Elephant Walk

Five different fighter squadrons at Kunsan Air Base, Korea, recently loaded every available aircraft in its go-to-war configuration and then conducted an “elephant walk” — taxiing slowly down the runway in a mass formation and back to parking.

In theory, the elephant walk tests every part of a unit’s ability to go to war — including loading live weapons — except actually launching/flying.  It proves that, if called upon, a unit can generate (almost) every aircraft in its combat configuration on a specific timeline.  While it might seem odd to taxi around the field, even Read more

USAF Fighter Plane Reaches Significant Milestone

F-15E Strike Eagle #89-0487 recently achieved 10,000 flight hours, making it the first F-15 of any type to log that many hours.

It an interesting bit of trivia, 487 is the same F-15E that logged the only Strike Eagle air-to-air kill in Operation Desert Storm when it dropped a bomb on an airborne Iraqi helicopter. It also scored an air-to-air kill on a rogue Reaper in Afghanistan, fulfilling every fighter pilot’s dream…

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