THE LAST GUNSLINGER

JUNE/JULY 2010 AIR & SPACE | 3938 | AIR & SPACE www.airspacemag.com

WHILE DRIVING THROUGH DOWNTOWN Mountain Home,

Idaho, on a gray February morning, I notice something troubling:

Mountain Home has no mountains. Later I learn why. In the 1880s,

the town was relocated. Its original site was an Overton trail stage-

coach stop called Rattlesnake Station. A post office, a farmhouse,

and a few clapboard structures were nestled in the foothills of

the Sawtooth Range, where snowy peaks soar above 10,000 feet.

The outpost served a gunslinging clientele of trappers, miners,

and explorers, and, true to the romance of the American west,

survival there required a will and an ability to fight. But in 1883,

the Oregon Short Line railroad laid tracks seven miles southeast,

on the Snake River Plateau. A more comfortable life beckoned,

so the town moved. And that’s when Mountain Home lost its soul.

THE LASTGUNSLINGERTHE F-15C IS THE ONLY DEDICATED DOGFIGHTER LEFT IN THE U.S. MILITARY FLEET. WHY ISN’T THE AIR FORCE REPLACING IT? BY MICHAEL BEHAR

Over its 35-year career, the F-15C (here

on a training mission over the Pacific

Ocean) remains the air combat champ,

with 104 victories and no losses.

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fly the legendary F-15Cs. “I have spentsix years working my tail off to get to thepoint where I am,” he says. “The jet is atwin-tail, twin-engine, combat-proven,air-dominant fighter. Being single-seatallows me to make and execute instantdecisions without coordinating with an-other crew member. In my experience,the speed at which the pilot can makeand execute decisions is often the key tosuccess in air-to-air combat.” Leestmaconcedes that the F-22 and F-35 are in-deed be-all, do-all workhorses, but com-plains that the pilots flying them rely toomuch on gadgetry and too little on grit.The Bros are a vanishing breed, bemoansanother Eagle pilot. And they warn thatmothballing F-15s while not pursuing afifth generation air superiority jet—onedesigned principally for dogfighting—is a mistake, a risk to America’s nation-al security.

The news is not all bad. Sweeping tech-nological upgrades since its inceptionhave rendered the F-15C a formidable21st century weapon, while additionaladd-ons in the near-term will prolong its

viability. What upsets the F-15C pilotsat Mountain Home is that in the inter-im the Air Force will begin curtailing theEagle’s mission as a dogfighter. If, bychance, the country goes to war whereair dominance is contested, the multi-role platforms will supposedly handledogfights just fine. But new recruits tothe multi-role programs won’t spend longhours flying dogfight scenarios. Sticktime is limited—operating an F-22 costs$50,800 an hour, compared to $31,800for an Eagle—and there are just too many

other systems, procedures, and missionsto master.

The fifth generation assumption is thatpilots will eliminate the enemy beforehaving to engage at close range. “At theend of the day, if you are dogfighting inan F-22, lots of mistakes happened in theprevious 80 miles,” says Stratton. But mis-takes do happen. Stratton also worriesthat those who fly the multi-roles aren’thardwired for air-to-air combat. Of hisF-15C Bros, he says, “We attract a certainportion of the population to the job, guys

who bring that controlled aggression andcunning and desire to never lose, no mat-ter what the odds are.”

LAST YEAR I WENT TO CUBA and fortwo weeks drove 1,100 miles around theisland. No doubt you’ve seen photos ofthe vintage 1957 Chevys there, those pre-Castro leftovers that roam the country-side in mint condition, engines purring,as if they’re fresh off the lot. I had a chanceto inspect one of these stalwart gems upclose. Its owner showed me how he hadretrofitted his with a diesel motor froma Mercedes-Benz, and installed air con-ditioning and a thumping audio system.Surely Chevy’s engineers never envi-sioned the kinds of modifications thathave kept this classic alive in Cuba for a


Its rebirth began in August 1943, whenthe U.S. Army Air Forces built an airfieldon the outskirts of town to train B-24 Lib-erator crews. Soon the base expanded,until it encompassed 134,000 acres. In1991, the F-15 Eagles arrived. Built by McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing), theF-15 made its first flight on July 27, 1972,and the C model remains the only fight-er in the U.S. arsenal designed exclusivelyfor air-to-air combat. Its pilots have re-stored to Mountain Home the sensibili-ty of the gunslinger, whose singular pur-suit leaves no safety net: It’s kill or bekilled.

But after more than 30 years in service,the F-15 dogfighters are becoming an en-dangered species. To blame are the mul-ti-role, fifth generation Lockheed MartinF-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. By 2025,the ambidextrous multi-roles, along withunmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), willhave replaced all F-15Cs, a drawdownthat’s already under way. Some F-15Csare headed to the Air National Guard; oth-ers are being cannibalized for parts. Ahandful of pilots will get reassigned tothe F-22, but an unlucky few might endup holding the joystick controlling a UAV,or grounded at desk jobs.

For their part, Department of Defensewonks claim that America’s enemies re-side in caves, unreachable by aircraft.F-15C pilots see it differently. The threatof an airborne attack has diminished, theysay, precisely because the Eagle has main-tained air dominance over the battlefieldfor nearly four decades. “We are a victimof our own success,” says LieutenantColonel Mark McGeorge, who is chief offlying operations and training at Air Com-bat Command at Langley Air Force Basein Hampton, Virginia, and has 2,800 hoursin F-15s. “If we don’t maintain our ad-vantage of air superiority, then maybeour enemies will decide to challenge ouraircraft directly.”

“THERE ARE JUST NOT GOING to beenough airplanes anymore,” declares 42-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Jim Strat-ton. A Chicago native, Stratton is the com-mander of Mountain Home’s 390th FighterSquadron, one of four under the 366thFighter Wing. “We’re taking on more riskbecause some elements within the DODassume that air superiority is going to bea given.” Stratton has flown combat mis-

sions in Kosovo and Iraq. To his dismay,his entire squadron—21 F-15Cs and 13fighter pilots—will be disbanded bySeptember.

Now you’d think the Eagle top guns—the pilots refer to each other as “Bros”—would be hankering to get behind thestick of an F-22 (and eventually an F-35,due in 2016), with all its “Gucci” tech-nology, as 29-year-old Captain BenjaminLeestma puts it. But they’re not. “Thething is, [in multi-role fighters] there isso much information that you have toweed through to get to what you reallycare about,” says Leestma, MountainHome’s chief of weapons and tactics. Pi-lots like Leestma joined the Air Force to

F-15Cs require 11 hours of maintenance

(above) for every hour of flight. Mountain

Home’s F-15C pilots often train beside

F-15E Strike Eagles. “At the end of the

day,” says Lieutenant Colonel Jim

Stratton, “we’re all better off.”

The F-15C (left,

firing an AIM-7

Sparrow missile

during training)

scored 34 of

Desert Storm’s 37

air-to-air victories;

F-15Es (below,

being loaded with

weapons at

Mountain Home)

pounded Iraqi Scud

missile sites.

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Another prized advance is the JointHelmet Mounted Cuing System. “We justcall it The Helmet, with the emphasis onthe,” says Stratton. From his gear lockerin the ready room, Stratton offers me hishelmet to inspect. The visor is nearlyopaque, and the shell is embedded withmagnetic sensors that transmit real-timespatial data from a pilot’s head positionto receivers inside the cockpit. During adogfight, Stratton can cue and fireweapons at attacking aircraft, even dur-ing high-G maneuvers, simply by glanc-ing at his enemy. “I really don’t knowhow we did missions before we had thehelmet,”he admits.

Leestma, who has racked up more than900 F-15C hours, tells me about a recentradar makeover called Active Electroni-cally Scanned Array, or AESA. (As partof an Air Force F-15 program known asGolden Eagle, C-model airframes are un-dergoing stress tests, and those with theleast wear and tear will receive an AESA

system.) Conventional radars make sweepsthat show solid objects as pings or blipson a head-up display. With each radarpass, the process repeats. The problem isthat in a dynamic air-to-air situation, badthings can happen between cycles. “Bythe time the radar we have now does allits math, you might have something com-pletely different out there,” says Leestma.AESA is fluid and encompassing. It usesmultiple frequencies to continuouslyscan the skies, then stitches together areal-time radar image. Leestma explains,“It paints the picture of anything mov-ing out in front of you and constantly up-dates it.”

THE ECONOMY IS QUASHING spendymilitary ventures, and fifth generationfighters are already suffering the wrathof the red pen. With every F-22 costingas much as $227 million, according tothe Rand Project Air Force analytical team,President Obama ordered production

halted at 187 jets and slashed further fund-ing. The ongoing F-35 development pro-gram, a relative bargain at $155 millionper airplane, is already over budget andbehind schedule, causing Congression-al colic. Cutbacks to its $300 billion-plusprogram are virtually certain. That’s justfine with F-15C pilots, who believe theirdogfighters are plenty capable of de-fending America’s turf for the foresee-able future. “The F-15C is still our front-line air superiority fighter,” says MajorJohn Boehm, a veteran F-15C pilot andprogram element monitor at Langley,whose job entails setting future hardwareand software requirements for the Eaglefleet. “It was overbuilt in a good way, de-signed with enough extra margins to al-low us to have all the options we havetoday for upgrading. Some call it theworld’s greatest fighter based on its provenlegacy. It has a kill ratio of 104-0.”

In a dogfight where an F-15C mightface off against a Russian Sukhoi Su-27or China’s Shenyang J-11, both fourthgeneration fighters, or even the mightyfifth generation F-22, Eagle pilots are con-fident they’d triumph. In fact, two pilotstold me that if an F-22 uses its thrust vec-toring to do a post-stall maneuver dur-ing a dogfight, there is a specific movethat they can execute to win. This clas-sified tactic is the F-15C pilot’s ace in thehole. Stratton acknowledges the tactic,but cautions that in air-to-air combat, noone move will always solve a particularproblem. “Rather, it is much more like-ly that the F-15 pilot was able to fly hisaircraft to its maximum potential [while]the F-22 pilot made a maneuver error.While the machine is important, and theF-22 enjoys a maneuvering envelope ad-vantage over almost every aircraft, theman in the cockpit tilts the balance be-tween success and failure. A pilot that isflying his F-15C to its maximum poten-tial is a very tough adversary to defeat.”

A number of features make the F-15Can ideal dogfighter. With a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1:1, it is one ofthe few fighters with that power advan-tage, so it can accelerate during a verti-cal climb. And the large lifting surface ofthe fuselage enables the Eagle to keep fly-

half-century. But its sturdy frame, mod-ular architecture, and generous enginecompartment left ample room for mod-ernization. The story of the ’57 Chevy isthe story of the F-15 Eagle.

Stratton walks me out to the Moun-tain Home flightline, where an icy windscours the tarmac. F-15Cs are aligned likesentries, their wing pylons laden withair-to-air missiles. Maintenance crewsscurry from airplane to airplane, check-ing and rechecking avionics, engine specs, hydraulics, control surfaces, andweapons systems.

We approach Stratton’s F-15C wherea fresh-faced kid has just finished hand-polishing the landing gear assembly. Hesees us coming,jumps to his feet,and acknowledgesStratton, his com-manding officer. Ifollow Stratton upan aluminum tech-nician’s ladder. Heslides into the cock-pit while I stand onthe ladder’s toprung. “Don’t touchanything,” he warns.“You could arm theweapons system.”

The dials andknobs are decrepit;nearly every painted surface is scuffedand chipped. The control stick looks likeit might have been dragged behind a trac-tor for 60 miles. And I’m pretty sure thatthe tattered pilot’s seat came from theVW bus of a group of Deadheads, short-ly after the ’77 spring tour. To discoverwhere the magic happens, I have to peekbeneath the forlorn facade. Integratedinto both the interior and the exteriorfuselage are several large compartmentsand caches. They once housed hefty pneu-matic controls and bloated radar andweapons components that pre-dated themicrocomputer revolution. But as tech-nology shrank, the F-15’s flight systemsgot smaller and lighter, leaving room tocram in new innovations. Instead of lan-guishing as decades passed, the Eagle gotmore agile and lethal.

By the 1980s, McDonnell Douglas en-gineers had gained enough space in theforward fuselage to add a second seat forthe F-15E model, a potent air-to-ground

strike fighter. It boasts under-wing fueltanks to extend its range, a digital flightcontrol system, low-altitude “tree-top”navigation, infrared night vision, and col-or cockpit displays. During OperationDesert Storm, F-15Es pounded Iraqi Scudmissile sites, obliterated Saddam Hus-sein’s feeble air force, and rained clusterbombs on his Republican Guard troops.

To detail the dozens of improvementssince the Eagle’s debut—communica-tions, navigation, propulsion, displaysand instruments, electronic warfare, sen-sors, and weapons targeting—woulddrown you in acronyms. The list of up-grades that stokes F-15C pilots, howev-er, is much shorter. Stratton has two fa-

vorites. The first is the Fighter Data Link,or “Fiddle.” In essence, Fiddle gathersflight data from other Fiddle-equippedaircraft and sews it into a single seamlessdisplay. In combination with other tech-nology, Fiddle also collects informationfrom airborne refueling tankers, E-3 air-borne warning and control systems, andforces on the ground or at sea, even sub-

marines. “It gives you a three-dimensionalpicture of the battlespace from a God’s-eye view,” says Stratton. “As a flight leadmanaging four airplanes and sometimesup to 14, I used to have to put what allthe guys were telling me in my ear intothis three-dimensional picture in myhead. Now that is all presented to megraphically on my Fiddle display.”


During a 2009 training exercise over

Montana, F-15Cs release flares and

execute evasive maneuvers.

F-15Es will remain

at Mountain Home

(above, refueling

over Iraq), but

F-15Cs will soon

transfer to Air

National Guard

units. Right: Colonel

John Bird, from

Mountain Home,

arrives at Nellis Air

Force Base,

Nevada, for a

training exercise.

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ing even with a lot of battle damage.The Eagle also blends a computerized

system with old-fashioned manual con-trols. Other fighters, particularly the F-22,are pure fly-by-wire. In the F-15C, say itspilots, a pilot can override his computerwarnings and go beyond the edge to getthat little bit of boost to survive. In theF-22, the computer system simply won’tallow that, as it thinks the airplane willbreak up in flight—not good when you’rein the midst of a dogfight and need to ex-ecute tactical maneuvers.

Major David Skalicky, leader of theF-22 Aerial Demonstration Team, and aformer F-15C pilot, disputes the F-15C pi-lots’ claim of an advantage. “The F-22 willaerodynamically out-perform and out-power the F-15 in every scenario,” saysSkalicky. “That isn’t to say that on ex-ceptionally rare occasions, F-22 pilotshaven’t lost to F-15 pilots in practice dog-fights due to poor maneuver selection.However, the credit for victory in thatscenario belongs to the F-15 pilot, not theairframe.”

THE MAJORITY OFactive-duty Eagle pi-lots flying today were born after the air-craft went into service. So to find out ifanyone expected the F-15 to remain aviable dogfighter for more than a quar-ter-century, I tracked down those whodesigned and built it. They gather everythree years for a reunion on the an-niversary of the F-15’s inaugural flight.Donn Byrnes, who flew F-86 Sabres andF-84 Thunderjets in the 1950s and laterspent six years on the Air Force side ofthe team designing and developing theSR-71 Blackbird, was the system pro-gram office project manager for the F-15airframe. He got involved with the Ea-gle program in 1969, coordinating withMcDonnell Douglas engineers duringthe early blueprint stages, and stayedthrough mid-1975.

The 78-year-old retired colonel is pant-ing when I reach him by telephone athis home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. “Sor-ry, I just hauled in a cord of firewood,”explains Byrnes, who wrote the book AirSuperiority Blue, a retelling of the Eagle’sbirth. I ask Byrnes what spawned the sud-den demand for an air superiority fight-er, something the Air Force hadn’t shownan interest in since it procured the P-51Mustang in 1940. “We had our tail feath-

ers burned off in Vietnam by the MiG-19,and if we went to war with Russia, wewould be in deep trouble,” he says. “Sowe wanted to put together a machinethat when fitted with a skillful pilot, whois aggressive and courageous, would havethe ability to turn and burn and kill what-ever he comes across.”

Byrnes agrees with most Eagle pilotsthat the F-15’s longevity is a direct resultof its singular mission. “We designed theF-15 to do what we wanted it to do, andnothing else.” Byrnes is a critic of themulti-role concept: “You don’t want tomake an airplane be the Swiss Army knifeof a fighter,” he says. “I’m absolutely notin love with the idea. The F-35 is the worstnightmare of hardware idiocy. It does ev-erything wrong. You need a long-legged

fighter, not a short, fat one.” Byrnes credits chief Air Force engineer

Frederick Rall, now deceased, for cham-pioning the F-15’s robust and redundantdesign. “His mantra was: The first failurecan’t kill you, and that the only failurewe could define that you could not re-cover from was the stick busting off inthe cockpit.” Consider the story of IsraeliF-15 pilot Zivi Nedivi, who during a train-ing exercise in 1983 hit and destroyed anA-4 Skyhawk. The collision sheared offall but two feet of Nedivi’s right wing. He

punched the afterburners to generate liftover the fuselage and managed to land.

The Air Force purchased its last F-15in 2001, and the 499 Eagles that remainin the fleet (C, D, and E models) are, onaverage, 20 years old. Meanwhile, for-eign sales, mainly to Singapore and SouthKorea, could keep manufacturing plantsat Boeing chugging along for at least an-other few years. “Given the end of theF-22 program, if force structure beginsto look really bad, the Air Force couldbuy a few more F-15s,” says RichardAboulafia, vice president of the TealGroup, a military consulting firm in Fair-fax, Virginia. “Every day the line staysopen, it keeps alive that chance.” A newprototype, the F-15 Silent Eagle, has astealthy, radar-absorbent coating. “Sin-gapore and South Korea are getting planesthat are extremely capable, with the lat-est systems and sensors,” says Aboulafia.

For a guy integral to the design of theworld’s greatest fighter jet, you’d thinkByrnes might be a bit wistful to see theF-15 destined for the boneyard. He’s not.In fact, he’s dismayed that the Air Forcenever acquired a fifth generation dog-fighter. “It’s the only fighter in moderntimes that has been in constant pro-duction for 35 years—who would havethought—and I think it’s because wedidn’t have our act together to buy an-

other one,” he says. “When you kick pi-lots out in the dark and say to them, ‘Gofind what that is and kill it,’ riding anold horse is not the way to succeed. Youare asking them to take an airplane guar-anteed for 4,000 flight hours with air-frames that already have about 6,000—way past their approved fatigue life—andthen rat race with them.”

Very few Eagle pilots think the F-22 orF-35 will eliminate the need for a dedi-cated air superiority fighter with a skilledpilot. If you’re a multi-role pilot, “intelhands you a target package, you fly theblack line, drop the bomb, and come back,”says Stratton. “Multi-roles can do differ-ent missions, but their primary mission—the reason we bought them—is to dropbombs. A guy that is going to go drop abomb has been given a discrete target.

There is no decision-making. In the F-15C,we’re told to protect a battlespace. It’s amuch more fluid environment.”

UAVs, such as Predator drones and theiroffspring, which undoubtedly will be moresophisticated, could take on dogfights inthe future. In fact, some experts predictthe F-35 will be the last manned fighterever built. This deeply troubles F-15C pi-lots, who know that once their Eagles arescrapped, they could get reassigned toUAV duty. Imagine training to race a For-mula One speedster, only to be told thatyou’ll be touring the track in a Prius. “I’dshoot myself,” says Leestma. “[Flying UAVs]is a totally different mindset. My skills arenot transferable. I am putting myself in aposition where my pink body is on theline. I’ve gotta kill a guy before he killsme…. Personally I don’t think there is a re-

placement for [a pilot who would] actu-ally make that decision to hit the picklebutton and shoot somebody.”

LISTENING TO LEESTMA, I can’t help re-calling what happened when the Ore-gon Short Line arrived in Idaho. Survivalno longer hinged on tenacity and resolve.The multi-role jets might herald the fu-ture of warfare, with their big bag oftricks to defend the skies. But in bothculture and cunning, the dogfighters arethe descendants of the gunslingers atRattlesnake Station, who never wentanywhere without their six-shooters,and at high noon, knew how to kill withterrifying precision.


F-15Cs of the 1st Fighter Wing, at Langley

Air Force Base, are readied for a training

exercise, below. With careful inspections

(exhaust nozzles, right) and Golden Eagle

upgrades, some F-15Cs will remain in

service through 2025.

The Air Force calls the F-22 an air

dominance fighter, but some pilots worry

that the airplane’s extensive computer

systems can lead aviators to become too

reliant upon its technology.

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THE LAST GUNSLINGER