Boeing announced that its latest F15EX fighter jet has reached a critical moment, with deliveries about to increase from six to more than 10, surpassing double digits for the first time.
In the words ridiculed by netizens, this means that the number of F15EX fighters is about to exceed the number of China's 055 big drives, which is really a "milestone" moment for F15EX.
However, the U.S. Air Force may not be so happy, because they have already signed purchase orders for hundreds of F15EX fighter jets, each costing nearly $200 million.
Is the performance of the F15EX fighter worthy of the ** that surpasses the F35 and is comparable to the F22? Why should the US military be the culprit and buy such a Type 1 fighter?
Boeing renovates old planes
Speaking of the American F15 fighter, I believe many friends will be familiar with it, this is a very classic fourth-generation (new American standard, old American standard third-generation) fighter, and it is also the model with the largest number of enemy aircraft shot down among the active fighters of the US military.
Globally, the F15 series fighter jets have shot down hundreds of enemy aircraft, and so far only a few of them have been damaged.
After losing the bid for the JSF fighter project (the winner was Loma's F35 fighter), the F15 family is now Boeing's main product.
But this classic fighter was also not designed by Boeing, but by McDonnell Douglas, which has already been acquired by Boeing.
In order to get more orders, Boeing began to improve the F15 fighter jets and put them into the foreign trade market, one of which was the F15QA fighter for the Qatari Air Force.
On the basis of this model, Boeing has developed the F15EX fighter and is preparing to "export to domestic sales" to win orders from the US military.
The U.S. Air Force currently has more than 400 F15 series fighters, of which more than 200 F15C D are more than 30 years old, and some even more than 40 years old, so the U.S. military needs to replace these fighters.
Originally, the U.S. military wanted to replace it with F35A fighters, but considering that the F35A's high-speed interception capability was too poor, and Boeing lobbied through political power, the U.S. Air Force finally decided to purchase more than 100 F15EXs.
Why is it that Boeing's political tactics are in this, and not entirely in terms of performance? Because the unit price of the U.S. military's purchase of F15EX is actually close to 200 million US dollars, which is a very unreasonable **.
This ** is already higher than the F35A, and it is even more sky-high compared to the previous F15 series fighter model F15E. Being able to sign such a procurement contract can only be said to be Boeing's internal means in the US military.
But I'm afraid that even the U.S. military didn't expect that on the F15EX fighter, Boeing could do many ridiculous things.
The F15EX lives up to its name
The delivery of F15EX fighters has been delayed again and again, and according to the original plan, the F15EX that the US military now has will form one or two squadrons, and as a result, a few have been delivered so far.
Boeing said it wants to push the number of F15EXs delivered to the U.S. Air Force more than 10 this year, "if all goes well."
We don't need to compare anything else, just look at Boeing's counterpart, Loma of the United States, whose delivery speed has slowed down in the past two years, and last year delivered a total of about 100 F35 series fighters, of which sixty or seventy were F35A of the US Air Force.
Boeing's delivery speed is really a bit ugly.
The U.S. Air Force also has a headache for this, although the F15EX was blown into the sky by Boeing, praised as "a 'fifth-generation' fighter comparable to the F22 F35", but at best it is a deeply improved fourth-generation and a half-generation fighter.
Limited by the size, space and payload of the original design of the F15, its comprehensive combat capability is difficult to surpass that of China's J-16 fighter.
Its maximum range is still smaller than that of the J-16, and it needs to be mounted with two auxiliary fuel tanks to be flat, so Boeing does not mention the maximum range when it advertises, but uses half of the maximum range as the combat radius for publicity.
But in fact, the combat radius of the fighter should be a third of the maximum range, so that it is practical.
There are many more false claims like this, such as Boeing's claim that the F15EX has a bomb load of 13 tons.
However, this is actually a simple addition of the maximum load of each hardpoint, without considering the reduction in range and speed caused by the hanging bomb, which is also of no practical significance.
The U.S. military knows the performance of the F15EX fighter, don't look at Boeing's blowing of the F15EX as if it is better than the F35A except for stealth, but the U.S. military knows that the F15EX can only be used as an auxiliary, and the F35A is the main force.
The US fighter wing that plans to equip the F15EX is not a wing with relatively high combat readiness pressure.
However, the US National Guard does like the F15EX fighters, after all, they do not have much pressure on combat readiness, and they have to carry out more homeland air defense interception missions.
Compared to the "turtle speed" of the F35A, the high-speed performance of the F15EX is very practical for them.
Puzzling mistakes
What is even more incomprehensible is that the F15EX fighter jets that Boeing is now delivering to the US military have quality problems.
The U.S. military initially reported that the cockpit canopy of the F15EX fighter was faulty. After several months of investigation, the U.S. military and Boeing discovered that the screw hole on the top of the F15EX cockpit canopy was misplaced.
This is a fighter jet that is close to 200 million US dollars, how can such a problem arise?
After Boeing's investigation, it was discovered that the workers and technicians responsible for making the screw holes had made a mistake in converting the imperial unit to the metric unit, which led to the screw hole being in the wrong place.
It stands to reason that such an obvious mistake should have directly affected the subsequent assembly, but I don't know what happened, and the workers and technicians after that forced the canopy to install it with the wrong screw holes.
It's no wonder that the product made in this way doesn't go wrong.
The United States has reported that drug abuse is rampant in Boeing's factories, and many workers smoke **, cocaine, and then assemble airplanes in a trance.
This is just a problem reported by **, God knows what the actual production management situation of Boeing is now.
The U.S. Air Force has a lot of complaints about the F15EX, but firstly, the order has already been placed, and secondly, Boeing's political power is enough to deal with the impact of these problems.
For the US Air Force, these F15EX fighters are always better than those F15C D that have flown for thirty or forty years, so they can only pinch their noses and admit it. Project Sword