Thursday, April 16, 2009

Looks good


Boeing has just unveiled the F-15SE Silent Eagle. It's an upgraded Strike Eagle with a smaller radar cross-section, internal weapons bays and AESA radar. Boeing has been pretty good with delivering Growlers and Super Hornets on time and on budget, so they'll probably do good with this too.

Still, $100 million projected unit cost? That's compared to $80 million (flyaway) for the JSF and $45 million for the Super Hornet. Even if JSF's cost goes up (in all liklihood it will), I can't see this as a very attractive buy. Especially since the Raptor itself is 'just' $135 million (flyaway), and purchases have been stopped.

Perhaps the USAF will take the option of upgrading their current fleet. I don't think the Strike Eagles are running into airframe problems yet, they're quite a bit newer than the A/Cs. Probably not though, stealth becomes kind of unnecessary after air dominance has been achieved by the frontline fighters, even the upgraded radar becomes not that useful when you can just augment an F-15 wing with an F-22 to track. Boeing is targeting the export market anyways.

On a semi-related note, I hope the JSF turns out to be all that they say it's going to be, otherwise Western air superiority is going to be in a lot of trouble.

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