F-15 Eagle: A 104-0 Record, a Satellite Kill and the MiG-25 Panic

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The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle holds a 104 to 0 air-to-air combat record, and the episode traces it to a chain of accidents. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's push for one shared airframe produced the heavy F-111, which the Navy abandoned. In Vietnam, missile-armed F-4 Phantoms were dragged into close dogfights, and in April 1965 subsonic MiG-17s shot down two F-105 Thunderchiefs. John Boyd and the Fighter Mafia answered with energy maneuverability theory and a call for a light fighter with a 1:1 thrust-to-weight ratio. Then the 1967 debut of the Mach 2.8 MiG-25 Foxbat, whose huge wings were assumed to mean agility, pushed the Pentagon toward a big heavyweight fighter.

The MiG-25 turned out to be a heavy nickel steel interceptor, but McDonnell Douglas won the contract in 1969 and kept the 1:1 ratio anyway with twin Pratt & Whitney F100 engines. The jet flew in 1972 and entered service in 1976. Israel took it into combat first in 1979, and its pilots scored more than half of the 104 kills; in the 1991 Gulf War F-15s took 36 of 39 U.S. air-to-air kills. In 2007 a jet broke apart in flight and the fleet was grounded for metal fatigue. With the F-22 capped at 187 aircraft, the Air Force is now buying the new F-15EX Eagle II.

• Engineers removed the vibrating outer exhaust petals, accepting about 3 percent more drag for reliability.
• The APG-63 radar used Doppler filtering to give the F-15 a look-down, shoot-down capability.
• In 1985 Major Wilbert "Doug" Pearson zoomed to about 38,000 feet and fired a missile that destroyed an orbiting solar observatory satellite.
• An F-15E Strike Eagle in the Gulf War downed an airborne Iraqi Mi-24 helicopter with a laser-guided GBU-10 bomb.
• The Eagle II has fly-by-wire controls and an airframe rated for 20,000 hours, versus the original 4,000-hour design life.