This week, Boeing’s F-15EX fighter jet efficiently accomplished its first-ever test flight. It’d appear like the F-15 planes the Air Power has been flying for many years, however in loads of methods, it’s a extra fashionable fighter jet. It options fly-by-wire flight controls, an all-digital cockpit powered by an ADCP-II mission laptop, and most vital to the Air Power, a “digital spine” that may permit it to improve it with new applied sciences as wanted. Boeing will ship the primary two F-15EX planes to the Air Power by the tip of March.
The F-15EX will change the Air Power’s aging F-15C and D aircraft, lots of which have been in service for greater than 35 years. With a few of these planes turning into security dangers to their pilots, the Air Power wanted to both retrofit them or change them with new ones. The Protection Division thought-about shopping for extra F-35 jets, however with the whole price of that program anticipated to hit $1.5 trillion, it as a substitute selected the F-15EX because the extra budget-conscious possibility. The primary lot of eight plane will price $1.2 billion, with the whole run of 144 planes anticipated to price not more than $23 billion.