The fact that we're going this fast in
operational test is definitely owing to
the chief of staff of the air force's
accelerate change or lose mentality. There are currently two F-15 x's in
existence. The air force accepted
delivery of them at eglin AFB Florida in
march and april 2021. The platform is anticipated to join the F-35 lightning II, f-16 fighting falcon
and a 10 thunderbolt 2 along with a
sixth generation fighter program is part
of the four plus one concept intended to
streamline the fleet.
At Nellis AFB, afo tec detachment 6 is
leading the initial operational test and
evaluation of the F-15ex with units from
eglin and Nellis AFBs, the oregon and
florida national guard and contractors. The plane has undergone a series of
developmental tests to ensure the
aircraft adheres to the required build
specifications and safety standards. It has also conducted operational
missions as part of exercise northern
edge in Alaska.
The main focus here is to provide the
initial push for operational tests and
evaluation to really evaluate the
platform from an end-to-end perspective
with the addition of a robust threat
environment that we have here at nellis. That way when we write our initial test
reports we're giving an accurate look to
the combat air force and the guard as to
what the platform is capable of when it
initially feels, said Colton meyers
operational flight program combined test
force F-15EX test project manager.
Major Kevin Hand an F-15ex experimental
and operations test pilot with the air
national guard air force reserve test
center is among a handful of pilots who
will fly multiple day and night missions
with defensive and offensive counter air
while at Nellis AFB. The big thing we're trying to take away
is really showing the differences
between the X and the C model, Hand said.
A big improvement the x has is that it's
a digital flight control system so it's
a fly-by-wire aircraft versus the
traditional C model which is a standard
hydro-mechanical aircraft completely
controlled by the pilot versus now a
computer controlling the airplane, he
said.
In addition to operationally testing the
aircraft the two-week event also
involves testing the aircraft's eagle
passive active warning survivability
system. The Epos system is the next gen advanced
electronic attacks as well as electronic
protect system that the X and strike
eagles are currently testing and
developing and hopefully fielding in the
relatively near future. Hand said, that's going to give us the ability to
essentially go into some of these more
advanced threats or aerial denial kind
of situations where we can now
self-protect and self-jam our way
through.
Joel said nellis afb is the best place
to do the operational testing because it
offers the best air to air in surface to
air training range and provides the
highest fidelity data on the back end to
be able to know whether the systems
worked. Often times we go out there as pilots
and we think that the airplane works as
well as it should. But behind the scenes
we dig into some of the instrumentation
and it wasn't exactly what we remembered. He said, every so often we need the
instrumentation folks to help us out
with what was really going on.
The Nellis range complex offers that
ability to be able to not only do an
instant feedback of how the airplanes
performed, but also pull back the data to
be able to analyze it in very close
detail to make sure that that's what was
happening or even better to be able to
find the problems that we had and use
that data to find the fixes and then
implement them as quickly as possible. Hand added, following the tests at nellis afb
myers said the planes will return to
eglin afb for more developmental tests.