"Air Force F-15 Now Armed With New Weapons to..." Topic

…Fly into 2040s.

"The Air Force is arming the F-15 with new weapons to better prepare the decades-old fighter for modern combat challenges and near peer rivals – giving the jet an ability to fly into the 2040s and track and destroy enemy targets at further ranges under a wide range of combat conditions.

The Air Force plans to integrate improvements for the AIM-9X and Small Diameter Bomb II on the F-15 over the next several years," Capt. Emily Grabowski, Air Force spokeswoman, told Warrior Maven.

Air Force officials say the F-15 could be fully armed and operational with the SBD II as soon as this year…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I was an AFROTC cadet when it was in development (one of my brother cadet's father was project officer--so that should date me). An Aviation Week and Space Technology article at the time said the intent was to accommodate laser weapons. We're still waiting. You'd think by now new weapons would be plug and play: new gadget with standardized plugs for attaching the weapon to the aircraft, a software module that slips into existing software, especially since the Nintendo generation is now designing weapons and software. I know, I know, I'm over simplifying, especially after the LCS module fiasco.

Energy weapons need a bigger generator on the engines (if not installing an APU in the place of the existing ammo drum), which complicates matters a bit.

Now, if we were going to drop that 25mm from the Harrier in, that should be pretty close to plug and play.

UAI (which the entire F-15E fleet is fitted with) is getting close to that ideal, at least with air-to-ground munitions.