The removal of four words in the upcoming defense budget bill has rekindled a fierce debate over the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri submitted an amendment to the bill in September that will ease the funding process for the F-15EX. Boeing, the fighter jet’s manufacturer, has a plant in St. Louis that employs citizens of both states.
The defense bill authorizes the purchase of eight F-15EX fighters for approximately $1 billion. A draft of the bill would have provided the Air Force a small portion of the money upfront to purchase and test two of the fighters, according to Politico. The rest would have been doled out after four congressional committees approved an Air Force report detailing how it would test, evaluate, and acquire the aircraft, in addition to other particulars. The new language removed the requirement for approval from all four committees.
“It’s always concerning to see congressional oversight provisions weakened. Congress has a responsibility to make sure taxpayer dollars are being spent effectively,” Dan Grazier, a military fellow with the Project on Government Oversight, told the Washington Examiner. “So to see two senators take any steps to weaken their own ability to do the job the voters of their states elected them to do is troubling.”
Neither Durbin’s nor Blunt’s offices responded to the Washington Examiner‘s repeated requests for comment.
Boeing’s F-15EX is an updated version of the original F-15, a fighter that has been in service since 1976. It made its way into the defense budget due in no small part to the F-35’s exorbitant price tag. President Trump has been a vocal critic of the aircraft, suggesting in 2016 that the United States should buy older F-18 Super Hornets instead.
The F-15EX’s inclusion in the defense budget bill has jump-started a debate between policymakers and industry experts that is reminiscent of a sports rivalry. In one camp, you have F-35 defenders who say it is the future of the Air Force, criticizing the purchase of older aircraft as a waste of money. In the other are F-15EX supporters who see it as a necessary addition to a well-rounded fleet.
It’s a rivalry that had existed since 1996, when the Pentagon asked Boeing and Lockheed to produce prototypes for the Joint Strike Fighter program — an ambitious plan to create a “one-size-fits-all” fighter that could be used across several branches of the armed forces. The winner would receive a lucrative prize: providing 3,100 aircraft to a dozen countries through 2035. The program was expected to cost more than $1 trillion over its 60-year lifetime, but that figure will likely change as the cost of the F-35 drops to $78 million apiece in a newly signed deal with Lockheed.
Lockheed won the contest in 2001 when its X-35 model was selected over Boeing’s chunky-looking X-32. But beating out its competitor would be the first of many hurdles in the F-35 saga. Cost overruns and delays led then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to put the program on probation in 2011, giving manufacturers two years to fix the aircraft’s problems. Three years later, an F-35 burst into flames less than a month before it was supposed to make its debut at the United Kingdom’s Farnborough Airshow.
Today, it appears the toughest of the F-35’s hurdles are behind it. More than 400 planes have been delivered to the U.S. and other partners, and the price per aircraft has dropped significantly in the most recent shipments. It has also proved its combat capability for both the Air Force and Marine Corps.
Even some F-15EX supporters admit the F-35 is the future of airpower, but that doesn’t mean they believe it will stand alone.
Boeing markets the F-15EX as a “cost-effective, ready solution” to the Air Force’s fighter shortage. It sports several enhancements over the older models, but a new electronic warfare system aimed at improving the aircraft’s survivability against modern anti-aircraft systems is the major selling point. Boeing even claims its system is more advanced than the F-35’s. That said, the F-15EX doesn’t have the stealth capabilities of an F-35, which experts say could pose a significant problem when taking on advanced adversaries such as China and Russia.
“No matter what kind of improvements you put on the airplane, you can’t change its basic radar cross-section significantly enough to make it a viable element against the kind of advanced threats we’re going to be facing in the future,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a former F-15 pilot, told the Washington Examiner.
But supporters don’t see the F-15EX as an F-35 replacement. Instead, “The intent is to complement.”
“We always say that the F-15EX can do some things the F-35 can’t do, and the F-35 can do some things that the F-15EX can’t do,” a Boeing representative told the Washington Examiner.
George Landrith, president of the Frontiers for Freedom Institute, compared the inclusion of the F-15EX to a football team. The F-35 might be the “Tom Brady” of fighters, he explained, but you need other players such as the F-15EX to perform separate roles.
“It might be a bad idea to have a team made up of 55 Tom Bradys,” he told the Washington Examiner. “You have a variety of needs, and to build a single plane that meets all those needs is not possible.”
Perhaps the biggest strike against the F-15EX is that it only exists on paper. Boeing’s factories are producing F-15 models for foreign partners, but the EX itself has yet to be manufactured. The company insists the upgrade could be completed quickly once Congress greenlights the project.
In terms of cost, the two aircraft are comparable, with the F-15EX coming in at $80 million and the F-35A at $78 million per unit. But F-35 supporters say it will provide more value over time.
“In all likelihood, the F-35A will be significantly cheaper to acquire and operate over the course of its life, and it will offer the U.S. a competitive advantage in the highest of threat environments for the next 20 years,” J.V. Venable, a retired Air Force fighter pilot and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. “The F-15EX is a great jet for partner nations who can pick and choose what threat environments they operate in, but it is a bad investment for the United States.”
For its part, the Air Force seems content to purchase both in the coming year as it continues to keep as many fighters flying as possible. But the debate likely won’t be over until someone comes out a clear winner.
