Boeing's new F-15SE design, the Silent Eagle, which the company unveiled March 17 in St. Louis, is ostensibly being marketed to current foreign users of the F-15, such as Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and South Korea, which have expressed a desire for stealth capability. But it could also complicate the debate in the US over tacair modernization, which Pentagon officials supposedly were in the final stages of resolving as they worked through the Fiscal 2010 budget process, warns the Air Force Association's "Daily Report".
Boeing doesn't claim the F-15SE is the equal of the high-end F-22, but it does consider it as a marketing contender to the low-end F-35.If the F-15SE can really be nearly as stealthy as the F-35, as Boeing claims, then it might give ammo to those who want to slow or cut the F-35, which has been portrayed as a technologically necessary response to the unstealthiness of the fourth-generation F-15s and F-16s that make up the bulk of USAF fighter squadrons.
Source: AFA
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