Likelihood...USAF To Remanu Early F-15 to Multirole/Air-To-Ground?

[heyjoe]

1) Fits what they're saying publicly, e.g. "we don't want to buy any more F-15s or F-16s" - a USAF general I can't remember the name of, quoted in, IIRC, JDW last week.

2) Agreed. I said "may" because I know nothing of the state of the airframes, so didn't want to debate the point. But I couldn't let ride his assertion that this supposed exhaustion of airframes was due to AESA radars which >90% of them don't have.

Agreed, USAF pretty marches to same sheet of music. Amazing how they do that, but they set the message and all sing the same tune or risk excommunication.

I don't but that assertion on AESA either as that was a unique outfit out of Elmendorf that had the best F-15Cs in existence AESA, AIM-9X. JHMCS, MIDS, etc. (can you say "Ted Stevens"?...as long as the Honorable Ted Stevens is representing his state in Congress, Alaska will always have some sweet hardware....no surprise second base to operate F-22 is....Elmendorf).

 

[ELP]

The nose wheel on an F-15C/D is notoriously weak. The: "not a pound for air to ground" in the original design is about right. What is funny is the strengthened nose gear on an E is barely adequate.

With the latest U.S. budget which slows down JSF production, one idea that has been around a bit will most likely go into the works. Most of our C/D fleet is thrashed from use. I'm currently at the depot where they are rebuilt and it is amazing how much refirb work they have to do for just periodic depot repair ( about an 80 plus day workflow for each jet). What will most likely happen with the C/D fleet is the "golden eagles", those C/Ds with the best maintenance history and the least flying hours, will be dramatically upgraded with a new radar and other systems. This radar may in fact be a different version carried by those famous 18 AESAs. Of course we are dead short of money so the trick is in the funding path. Under this idea F-15Es will also get AESA upgrades. The goal is to sustain some kind of F-15 force well beyond 2020 that has better avionics in it. Again that's the thinking. And it depends heavily on budgets lining up. Again it is driven by the idea of not having enough JSFs around by that time frame to fill mission needs.
Hard to guess as we have had other needed things axed. We needed E-10. That is on life support and really canceled by any other name. Because we tried to be clever and slow rate production the C-5 upgrades, with the rising cost of manpower and materials over years, that will blow out on budget costs by 15% and have to be reported to congress. We wanted to have an engine upgrade and wing upgrade for A-10. Similar story to C-5 on stretching out useful life. It hasn't blown out but was getting close so we could only afford the wing upgrade. The tanker debacle has been well publicized and no need to rehash that sad story. Stand-off jamming using a B-52 is needed. This program died once and is back but who knows how we will do with it. Yes.. this will support our high and mighty stealth aircraft which still need a credible stand-off jammer. (mostly to support jamming of the lower freq radar sets not so much the high freq ). BTW EA-6 and the upcoming Navy Growler are really just escort jammers and not stand off. USAF thinking is they want big stand off jamming.

Sorry for all the babbling but that gives you an idea of our serious USAF budget woes which are real considering the U.S. has to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan which eat up a large chunk of the budget.

So, a C/D upgraded for air to ground? I think if the golden eagles get a more modern AESA than the famous 18, that you would see it support air to ground with that sensor suite but not by carrying any kinetic air to ground weapons. Just my opinion.

This gives you a better idea than most of my babbling on where the USAF legacy airframe fleet will go.
http://www.afa.org/magazine/march2007/0307force.asp

 

[Tasman]

The nose wheel on an F-15C/D is notoriously weak. The: "not a pound for air to ground" in the original design is about right. What is funny is the strengthened nose gear on an E is barely adequate.

With the latest U.S. budget which slows down JSF production, one idea that has been around a bit will most likely go into the works. Most of our C/D fleet is thrashed from use. I'm currently at the depot where they are rebuilt and it is amazing how much refirb work they have to do for just periodic depot repair ( about an 80 plus day workflow for each jet). What will most likely happen with the C/D fleet is the "golden eagles", those C/Ds with the best maintenance history and the least flying hours, will be dramatically upgraded with a new radar and other systems. This radar may in fact be a different version carried by those famous 18 AESAs. Of course we are dead short of money so the trick is in the funding path. Under this idea F-15Es will also get AESA upgrades. The goal is to sustain some kind of F-15 force well beyond 2020 that has better avionics in it. Again that's the thinking. And it depends heavily on budgets lining up. Again it is driven by the idea of not having enough JSFs around by that time frame to fill mission needs.
Hard to guess as we have had other needed things axed. We needed E-10. That is on life support and really canceled by any other name. Because we tried to be clever and slow rate production the C-5 upgrades, with the rising cost of manpower and materials over years, that will blow out on budget costs by 15% and have to be reported to congress. We wanted to have an engine upgrade and wing upgrade for A-10. Similar story to C-5 on stretching out useful life. It hasn't blown out but was getting close so we could only afford the wing upgrade. The tanker debacle has been well publicized and no need to rehash that sad story. Stand-off jamming using a B-52 is needed. This program died once and is back but who knows how we will do with it. Yes.. this will support our high and mighty stealth aircraft which still need a credible stand-off jammer. (mostly to support jamming of the lower freq radar sets not so much the high freq ). BTW EA-6 and the upcoming Navy Growler are really just escort jammers and not stand off. USAF thinking is they want big stand off jamming.

Sorry for all the babbling but that gives you an idea of our serious USAF budget woes which are real considering the U.S. has to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan which eat up a large chunk of the budget.

So, a C/D upgraded for air to ground? I think if the golden eagles get a more modern AESA than the famous 18, that you would see it support air to ground with that sensor suite but not by carrying any kinetic air to ground weapons. Just my opinion.

This gives you a better idea than most of my babbling on where the USAF legacy airframe fleet will go.
http://www.afa.org/magazine/march2007/0307force.asp

This all sounds fairly depressing ELP. A few days ago I was re-reading an old book of mine called the US War Machine, published in 1978. Apart from the fact that the USAF was then substantially bigger, the thing that struck me was how many of the aircraft described then are still in service and likely to remain so for some time to come!

Thanks for the link. It also makes interesting but worrying reading.

Cheers