By Michael Sirak
The Air Force still doesn’t know what caused an F-15C Eagle fighter jet to break in half Nov. 2 shortly after takeoff on a mission inside the United States, but has already returned many of its F-15E Strike Eagle multirole fighters to flying status, the service’s top military officer said Friday.
“The report last night was that we got about 50 percent of the E-models back on line,” Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley said on the morning of Nov. 16. He said these aircraft included the Strike Eagles forward deployed at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, supporting coalition operations there (Defense Daily, Nov. 14).
However, the Air Force’s fleet of F-15A and F-15C fighter jets remain grounded as do the F-15Bs and F-15Ds, the two-seat trainer variants of these models as an investigation continues into the root cause of the mishap. And these Eagles may remain grounded for a while yet, the chief said, based on a correspondence with Air Combat Command (ACC) Commander Gen. John Corley, who oversees the Air Force’s fighter fleets.
“We still don’t know what happened,” Moseley said. “Bottom line, the airplane broke. We don’t know why. We have got engineers looking at it, simulations playing with it, metallurgists looking at it, design engineers.”
The Air Force has 668 F-15s in total, Moseley said. This includes 57 F-15As from the mid 1970s that are still flying, as well as about 380 F-15Cs/Ds and 224 newer F-15Es, he said. The F-15A/B entered service around 1975; the F-15C/D came around at the end of that same decade. E-models average about 15 years in age, the Air Force says.
The F-15C that went down Nov. 2 belonged to the Missouri Air National Guard and was built in 1980. It had about 6,200 flight hours on it, Moseley said. The pilot was able to eject, but sustained injuries.
Clearing the way for the return of the F-15Es to flying status came about after initial feedback from engineering analysis after the crash showed that the Strike Eagles are not susceptible to the same potential mechanical failure as the Eagles, ACC said Nov. 15.
Nonetheless, each of the Strike Eagles has to undergo a 13-hour safety inspection before returning to flying status. During the process, referred to as a time-compliance technical order, maintainers inspect the aircraft’s hydraulic system lines, the fuselage structure and structure-related panels, according to ACC.
The F-15E is a modified variant of the Eagle designed for carrying bombs and striking ground targets in addition to retaining the ability to dogfight.
“The E is a bomb-dropping airplane with a different structure,” Moseley said. “So we were able to get into the Es because they are newer and they are built different.”
Moseley said he categorically rejects accusations that he grounded the F-15s Nov. 3, the day after the crash, as a means of influencing the Congress to support the purchase of additional F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, the modern replacement to the F-15s. The Air Force’s current program of record is for 183 Raptors, although the service’s requirement has remained at 381 aircraft.
“I have actually been accused by some people of parking these airplanes to make that case,” he said. “And I have said, ‘No, I am in absolute disagreement with that statement.’
“When we had no idea what happened with this airplane, the unconscionable decision would be to fly them,” he continued. “Because what do you tell a spouse if you go back up and fly and something else happens? What do you tell the kids and what do you tell the mom and dad if you lose a pilot?”
Moseley said the Air Force still has some F-15As flying that he himself piloted as a captain 30 or so years ago.
“In fact, there is one of them out there that I delivered from the factory in 1977,” he said. “It is still out there.”
The trouble with such old planes, he said, is that “you don’t know what is going to break next.”
“In fact,” Moseley continued, referring to Corley’s correspondence, “he says we are in unchartered territory with this fleet and we are absent decent predictive or forensic tools. Because the things are so old.”