48 Eagles Gone: U.S. Air Force Wants to Shed Two Full F-15C/D Squadrons in 2022

The U.S. Air Force is planning too retire two full squadrons of F-15C/D heavyweight air superiority fighters, which are among the oldest in its inventory, in Fiscal Year 2022. The F-15 has been in service since 1976, and old Cold War era variants of the jet have remained active long after their planned retirement date due to issues with the replacement program, the F-22 Raptor, which led to 75% of Raptor orders being cancelled. With the F-22 program seeing orders to terminate production given less than four years after it entered service, and the fighter effectively failing to serve as a viable replacement to the F-15, the Air Force is now expected to replace its old Eagles with a newer version of the F-15 that is in production today - the F-15EX. While the F-15C/D has a formidable range and flight performance, only a portion of the fleet have been upgraded with modern sensors and avionics. Maintenance costs are also increasing for the ageing airframes which have increasingly suffered from metal fatigue. The aircraft are increasingly seen to be outmatched by rival fighters, including not only other heavyweights such as the Russian Su-30SM, but also advanced lightweight jets such as the Chinese J-10 which the U.S. Congress, among others, has warned could outperform the Eagles in the air. 

The U.S. Military has nine F-15C/D squadrons active, including three in the Air Force and six in the Air National Guard. Two of the Air Force squadrons are based in Japan, with a third based in Britain. Air National Guard squadrons are all based on American soil. The fact that Japan was the largest foreign client for the F-15, and deploys approximately 200 F-15J jets which were built under license and are closely based on the F-15C,  provides a high degree of interoperability between U.S. and Japanese units in the event of war. Japan is expected to replace much of its F-15 fleets with F-35 stealth fighters - a lighter and cheaper counterpart to the F-22 - with some American Eagle units potentially also being replaced by the lighter jets. The Air National Guard in particular has expressed a strong interest in the F-35, which is in production on a much larger scale than the F-15EX and could potentially be delivered more quickly. It is likely that F-15C/D jets in service will be replaced by F-35s, F-15EXs and possibly by upcoming F-X sixth generation fighters - depending on how many F-X jets the Air Force intends to purchase.