You must have heard of Boeing's F15EX fighter, yes, the controversial one. Don't look at Boeing's boasting of a "fifth-generation" fighter on par with the F22 and F35, but in fact it is a difficult joke.
First, let's talk about delivery schedules. Do you think Boeing will deliver these fighters on a large scale as planned? False? The reality is that the speed of their deliveries is as slow as a turtle's crawl, far behind expectations. By comparison, Boeing's rival Loma delivered about 100 F35 family fighters last year, including sixty or seventy U.S. Air Force F35As. It seems that Boeing still has a big gap to catch up in this regard!
Next, let's take a look at the performance and price of this thing. Boeing says how powerful the fighter is, how large the bomb load, and how far the combat radius is, but in reality, the price is frighteningly high, close to $200 million a plane, and the performance is not satisfactory. There was also a serious quality problem with the cockpit canopy of the fighter, which was said to be caused by a worker who made a mistake in converting the imperial unit to the metric unit, and as a result, the screw hole was misplaced. You say that such a fighter, is it worth spending so much money?
Then, let's talk about the attitude of the US military. Although the US military is not satisfied with this fighter, believing that it is only a deeply improved model of the F15 series of fighters, it cannot meet the needs of today's warfare. But due to political factors and contractual constraints, they had to accept this fact. After all, even if there is a problem with this F15EX, it is still better than those F15C/D fighters that have been flying for thirty or forty years!
Finally, let's look to the future. Although the F15EX is currently facing many challenges and controversies, Boeing is still expected to make it one of the most important fighter jets in the U.S. military through continuous improvement and optimization. After all, these are the questions that plague Boeing, and perhaps they are what motivate them to keep improving.
In general, although Boeing's F15EX fighter is controversial, we cannot completely deny the significance of its existence. Perhaps it is through challenges and problems that we can better understand ourselves and find better solutions. Let's wait and see how the F15EX performs in the future.