Just two years ago, the U.S. Air Force expected to buy 381 F-22 Raptors and bring more than 1,700 smaller F-35 Lightning fighters into service beginning around 2013.
With budget cuts, planning shifts and some big program delays, today the Air Force is getting just 187 F-22s and probably around 1,500 F-35s — these a couple years later than originally envisioned.
The changes mean the fighter fleet will start shrinking soon, as old and lightly-built F-16s retire by the hundreds. “That will mean there may be a shortage of tactical aircraft that can deliver air-to-ground weapons,” Lieutenant Colonel Michael Buck, commander of the 186th Fighter Squadron, an F-15C Eagle unit, told Combat Aircraft. To bolster the F-22s and F-35s in the ground-attack role, the air service is borrowing a page from the Navy, which in the late 1990s modified its F-14 fighters to drop bombs. F-15C fighters could be modified as attack planes.
The Air Force already had plans to fit new electronically-scanned radars, helmet sights, launch rails and other advanced gear to 178 of the youngest F-15Cs, which today average around 25 years old. A passive-seeking infrared sensor is also possible. These so-called “Golden Eagles” will fly alongside F-22s on air-superiority missions.
Now, to replace retiring F-16s, Golden Eagles might pick up interfaces, software and mods to their new wide-band radar-warning receiver to allow them to detect and attack ground targets. |