F-35 High Angle of Attack Testing

Downed F-117 Stealth Fighter, Kosovo War

Photo courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists

It’s never a good thing to lose a state-of-the-art jet to enemy fire. But it’s even worse when that jet is a highly classified stealth aircraft – and the technology allegedly survives the crash. That’s what happened on March 27, 1999 when F-117 Stealth Fighter 82-0806 flown by Dale Zelko was shot down by a surface to air missile during the Kosovo War. The pilot was rescued, but the downed aircraft was reportedly inspected by Russian personnel before allegedly being used in the development of Russian and Chinese stealth planes. It has, however, been asserted that the then-20-year-old technology aboard the F-117 would not have proved much help to foreign governments looking to exploit U.S. technology. The jet’s canopy is currently displayed in Belgrade. Colonel Zoltán Dani, who commanded the missile brigade that downed the F-117, retired from military service in 2004 and now works as a baker in his native village Skorenovac.

USAF mulls options for replacement of Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle

On 11 December, the Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle marked the 26th anniversary of its first flight, but the venerable strike fighter will continue serving with the US Air Force well into the 2030s.

"There are no plans to replace the F-15E for the foreseeable future," the USAF says. "It is true that the F-15E, like all of our legacy aircraft, are accumulating more flight time than used to be typical, but given current fiscal realities, the AF [air force] fleet will continue to age well past the point at which they would have been replaced in pre-Desert Storm days."

As a result, the service is taking steps to keep the Strike Eagle "a viable, sustainable, and fully capable platform". The USAF will conduct a full-scale fatigue test to determine an updated service life for the jet, and to discover if the aircraft needs any structural modifications or repairs.


The service is also replacing the F-15E's Raytheon APG-70 radar with the new Raytheon APG-82(V)1 active electronically scanned array (AESA), "which will greatly enhance the F-15E's ability to detect and very accurately locate ground targets", the USAF says. Additionally, it is upgrading the jet's electronic countermeasures suite with the Eagle passive/active warning and survivability system (EPAWSS). "These actions all demonstrate the [air force's] intent to keep the F-15E a vital part of the inventory for quite some time to come," it says.

But with an average fleet age of about 21 years, and around 6,000hrs on each airframe, the USAF will eventually have to either replace the jet or forego its capability.

It is not surprising that the USAF does not have a plan in place to replace the F-15E, says Mark Gunzinger, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "They have a lot of things to address right now, for example, funding in this pretty ugly budget environment for their three top priorities, which remain the [Lockheed Martin] F-35, [Boeing KC-46] tanker, and the [Long Range Strike] bomber."