Os dois new F-15EX Eagle II fighters of the US Air Force are undergoing their first operational test missions. The flights were carried out between October 18th and 25th, together with F-15C Eagle and F-15E Strike Eagle fighters from Nellis Air Force Base, next to Las Vegas. 

“We never did full-scale, full-scale operational testing of the F-15EX because it has only been in the hands of the US Air Force for six months,” said Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Juhl, an F-15 tester at the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center (AFOTEC). “The fact that we are going so fast in operational testing is definitely due to the Air Force Chief of Staff's 'Accelerate change or lose it' mentality.”

Currently, the USAF has two F-15EX that were officially received by the institution in April of this year. The new aircraft will replace the F-15C/D, present in greater numbers in the Air Guards of the states. The platform is expected to join the F-35 Lightning II, F-16 Fighting Falcon and A-10 Thunderbolt II, along with a future sixth-generation fighter, the NGAD, as part of the Four Plus One Concept, which aims to optimize the Air Force fighter fleet. 

AFOTEC Detachment 6 led the initial operational test and evaluation of the F-15EX at Nellis, alongside units from Eglin Air Force Base, the Oregon Air Guard, Florida, and contractor teams. The plane has undergone a series of developmental tests to ensure it meets the required construction specifications and safety standards. It also conducted operational missions as part of the exercise northern edge in Alaska.

“The main focus here is to provide the initial push for operational testing and evaluation to really evaluate the platform from an end-to-end perspective with the addition of the robust threat environment that we have here at Nellis. That way, when we write our initial test reports, we are giving accurate insight to the Combat Air Force and Guard as to what the platform is capable of when it initially goes into the field,” said Colton Myers, F-15EX Operational Flight Program Combined Test Force Project Manager.

Maj. Kevin Hand, an F-15EX operations and experimental test pilot with the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Test Center, is among one of the pilots who has flown multiple day and night defensive and offensive counter air missions. DCA and OCA) while deployed at Nellis. "The big thing we're really trying to do is show the differences between the EX and C models."

“A big improvement of the EX is that it has a digital flight control system, so it is a fly-by-wire aircraft, compared to the traditional C-model, which is a standard hydro-mechanical aircraft that is fully pilot-controlled, compared to now a computer that controls the plane”, he said.

In addition to operational testing of the aircraft, the two-week event also involves testing the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWS), a new electronic warfare suite produced by BAE Systems. 

“The EPAWS system is the next generation advanced electronic attack as well as electronic protection system that EX and Strike Eagle are testing and developing and will hopefully use in the relatively near future”Hand said. “It will give us the ability to essentially get into some of these more advanced threats or aerial denial situations where we can now protect ourselves and jam electronic systems in our path.”

Lieutenant Colonel Juhl said Nellis is the best place to do operational testing because it offers the best air-to-air and ground-to-air training booth and provides the highest fidelity data on the backend to know if the systems worked. “A lot of times, we go there as a pilot and we think the plane works fine as it should, but behind the scenes, we looked into some of the instrumentation and it wasn't exactly what we remembered,” he said. “From time to time we need the instrumentation people to help us with what is really going on.”

“The Nellis training complex gives you the ability to not only have instant feedback on how the planes performed, but to extract the data so you can analyze it in very close detail to make sure that's what was happening, or even better, being able to find the issues we had and use that data to find the fixes and implement them as quickly as possible,” Hand added.

After testing at Nellis AFB, Myers said the planes will return to Eglin AFB for further developmental testing. “We have been doing development tests in the last few months leading up to this event, which has a more operational focus”, he said. 

“We will transition back to developmental testing for the remainder of this year and into next year as we continue to test the platform's additional capability to include the additional weapons stations and additional Operational Flight Program upgrades.”

Juhl stated that, after the next tests, the F-15EX should participate in exercises such as Red Flag, held at Nellis Base itself. “The more situations we can put on this plane, the better information we learn. That integration is probably the key thing in the Air Force, to be able to make many different types of fighters work together, to be a more formidable force.” said the aviator.