Awesome. If they want F-15's instead of F-35's cool. Just be done with it. Either buy a US plane or don't but stop playing these damn games. More at UPI...
For the Israelis, the advanced version of the F-15 Eagle has been seen as an alternative to the ill-starred F-35 for some time, both in terms of delivery schedule and cost.One last thing. If you think that you can buy a Silent Eagle for the same price as a legacy F-15K then someone in Israel is smoking crack.
Boeing unveiled the Silent Eagle in March, about the same time the Department of Defense announced the F-35 program's problems.
It will reportedly cost around $100 million per plane, which conforms with the ceiling the Israelis have put on acquiring a fifth-generation fighter.The new F-15 configuration reportedly includes a stealth capability but that's only effective in evading the radars carried by hostile aircraft but not by ground-based radar systems.
Other improvements include adapting the F-15's conformal fuel tanks to carry weapons inside the fuselage rather than externally, thus reducing the radar signature.
One of the functions tested during the F-15 Silent Eagle's weekend flight was opening and closing its left side conformal weapons bay that contained an AIM-120 air-to-air missile, which wasn't fired.
