ST. LOUIS — For 47 years, the F-15 has been in production at what was once McDonnell Douglas and now Boeing. For the past five years a new advanced variant, the F-15EX, has been in flight testing in Palmdale, California.
The company, along with the U.S. Air Force, tested more than 15,000 test points to assure safety, quality and performance.
“I like to call it a 47-year development program, and everything that’s packaged inside the airplane is brand new,” said Matthew “Phat” Giese, Chief Boeing F-15 Test Pilot. “The Air Force has the benefit of that 47 years of development and that knowledge that we put into this platform.”
What makes the F-15EX so advanced is its digital fly-by-wire control system for greater maneuverability and angles of attack and the world’s fastest mission computer able to process 87-billion instructions per second.
“It has the fastest and most advanced core processor and mission computer of any fighter jet on the market today,” said Giese. “The core processor has to manage all of the different systems and capabilities of the platform so things like the radar, electronic warfare, and all of the other components that are on the aircraft have to communicate and be integrated together.”
The advanced aircraft also has expanded weapons carriage allowing it to carry up to 12 missiles and assorted air-to-ground munitions on a single plane. Able to fly up to two and a half times the speed of sound gives the airplane an advantage when launching its missiles.
As part of the National Defense Strategy, the U.S. Air Force must purchase an additional 24 combat aircraft per year. Boeing hopes that the new F-15EX will help be the cost-effective way of meeting that goal.
“The aircraft is undefeated in air to air combat,” said Giese. “Over 100 kills with zero losses over the life of this airplane and we see that continuing down the road with the F-15EX, you just can’t beat undefeated.”