WASHINGTON \u2014 The Air Force general who oversees long-term strategy downplayed the potential retirement of its F-15C\/D Eagle fleet \u2014 an idea the service is considering but has not yet approved.
The Air Force has about 230 F-15C\/Ds, and all are owned by the Guard except for a couple squadrons at Kadena Air Base in Japan, and RAF Lakenheath in England, which are paid for by special funding designated for training and exercises with European allies. Should the service decide to retire the C and D models, it could give the Guard F-16s to accomplish the homeland defense mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We will use fourth-generation at home, we will use them abroad where we can, but when it comes to fighting in some of these congested air spaces, fourth-gen does not have much of a role five, 10 years from now, even with upgrades to them,” Harris said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who raised the topic of the F-15\u2019s retirement, told Air Force officials that she hoped any future decision would include input from the Air National Guard. She also questioned whether getting rid of the aircraft would be a good choice, given the service’s readiness problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Given its cost, I realize that we may not be able to procure the F-35 in the numbers the Air Force has planned until 2045, and I’m also not convinced the F-16 is fully capable of replacing the F-15 in meeting the air-to-air mission,” she said. “I just want to raise the point, because it seems to me that retiring hundreds of aircraft at a time when the Air Force is in need of additional capability may not make a lot of sense here.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Correction: The original version of this story misidentified\u00a0the number of bases with F-15C\/D aircraft assigned to the active duty Air Force. Both RAF Lakenheath and Kadena Air Base currently host F-15C\/D squadrons.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The F-15’s age and growing threat environment could influence its retirement date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":43071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":67,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[16,67],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3305],"class_list":["post-40133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-air-force"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"7VTUU3C375HDDOBNI5WLHNET5Q","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2017\/03\/29\/f-15-retirement-likely-not-a-possibility-until-2020s-air-force-officials-say\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n