F-15 Eagle: History, Performance & Discussion

no not mythic, the F15

I’m sorry but I don’t follow. What about the F-15?

Anyone know the reasoning or justification the USAF had for not having countermeasures on the initial production F-15A? That seems like a massive disadvantage for apparently no reason.

At the time those countermeasures weren’t really a thing for US air superiority fighters. They were used for bombers or strike aircraft. The F-15 was expected to not be shot in the first place, being the first to engage the enemy and ending the fight before it even started. Should it be fired at, evasive maneuvers were seen as the way to go.

The age of flares for everything wasn’t really there yet, keep in mind it was almost 50 years from now.

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Yeah but the F-14 had countermeasures and they were being developed and got introduced at basically the same time. The F-16 was introduced only 2 years later.

Also the US, and most other nations, had countermeasures on their primary previous generation fighters back in the 60s so that logic doesn’t make that much sense.

The documents on the F-15 aren’t classified or restricted so its not a leak.
The ones on the F117 were declassified but it still has restrictions.

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I found this in another thread asking much the same question: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA495417.pdf
It alludes that early flares were primarily designed for bombers.
It also seems to suggest that they had difficulty igniting at the high altitudes the F-15 was supposed to operate at.
Also supposedly the earliest F-15s had nowhere to fit flares, and eventually chaff was placed in the speedbreaks so you had to use the speedbreaks to release the chaff: Air-Minded: Speedbrake Chaff

It doesn’t really answer your question probably because when this was identified as an issue it would’ve been embarrassing and rectified as quickly as possible.

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Yeah I found that article on the speedbrake chaff, honestly pretty funny. The pilots themselves were also confused why it didn’t have CM lmao.

It not having space to fit a CMS was my first guess. But they did retrofit it with one later with the MSIP2 conversion so that doesn’t make too much sense either, its still an A model.

Also per the report you leaked, it looks like they solved the issue if flares not working at high alt in the early 60’s.

"It had been observed that when flare compositions are required to function at
elevated altitudes and reduced pressure, performance drops off. Often the burning
rate decreases and the radiant intensity is reduced. These undesirable effects are a
major concern and many efforts were initiated to correct or at least minimize those
flare performance deficiencies. After all, fighters and bombers will use the infrared
decoy flares for self-protection at very high speeds and very high altitudes.
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About 1959, Mr. Knapp of Picatinny Arsenal was under contract to the Air Force to
develop an infrared flare that radiated in the 1.8µm to 2.8µm bandpass region. A
composition identified as SI-119 was reported to be unaffected by increasing
altitude up to 60,000 feet and above which it tapers off slightly. The constituents
are molybdenum trioxide, chromic oxide, and zirconium. The peak energy output in
watts and the efficiency in joules/gram or joules/cubic centimeter increased with
altitude although the burning rate was constant with altitude. Mr. Knapp reports that
in the first 12 seconds of combustion, the SI-119 composition is superior to Teflon®
compositions. Compositions consisting of manganese dioxide-zirconium and
molybdenum trioxide-barium nitrate-zirconium are reported to have very good
ignition and burning characteristics at both high and low altitudes.
As part of an MS thesis from US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey California,
in 1962, a student studied the pressure dependence of the solid-state reaction
between magnesium and Teflon®. He observed that at about 350 mm Hg ambient
atmospheric pressure, the percentage of completion of the reaction dropped off
exponentially to 12 mm Hg, the lowest pressure considered. He reported
decomposition of Teflon® at about 425 °C and melting of magnesium at 650 °C.
Steady state burning was observed at about 650 °C, the melting point of
magnesium.
During the early and mid 1960s, NOTS engineers continued to study flare
performance at high altitudes. They needed a method to obtain infrared output
performance data of flares under actual use conditions. They installed a modified
fuel tank under the fuselage of an A-4E aircraft and attached the flares to radial
arms extending from the front of the tank and attached a radiation detector to a rear
fin 14 feet from the flares. Associated electronics were mounted inside the tank.
Feasibility flights at 30,000 feet altitude and 0.8 Mach indicated that the radiometer
response was insufficient. They studied the discrepancy in the HARP facility. They
also brought additional instrumentation to the task to determine the cause of the
performance fall-off with altitude.
Functioning at very high altitude is a requirement of the magnesium-Teflon®
composition. To further understand its behavior, in 1961, Mr. Besser of NOTS
conducted studies for use of this composition for rocket grain igniters at 70,000 and
100,000 feet simulated altitude.
About 1961, Mr. F. Harshbarger and Mr. R. Herman of the General Dynamics Corp
(GD), San Diego, California tested six flare formulations in their altitude chamber.
US Flare Division of the Atlantic Research Corporation prepared the six test units.
The test units are an end burning grain, 2.5 cm in diameter by 20.3 cm long. The
grain weighs 150 grams and is made up of the NOTS Standard formula consisting
of 54% magnesium gran -16, 30% Teflon® #1 600µm particle size, and 16% Kel-F®
#10 wax. To that grain formulation two test units had lithium perchlorate and
anthracene added, one test unit had tetranitrocarbazole and Epon 864 an epoxy
resin added, and two test units had nitrocellulose and silicon dioxide added. These
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test units were tested in the General Dynamics altitude chamber, which is 6-feet in
diameter by 40 feet long and is capable of 92,000 foot simulated altitude. The thrust
of the work is to determine the effect of altitude on the spectral output of the flares.
A Perkin Elmer Model 108 rapid-scan spectrometer was used to obtain the spectra
in the 1µm to 2.5µm and 2.5µm to 5µm bandpass region. The temperature was
measured with a Leeds and Northrup optical pyrometer. At altitudes above 40,000
feet, the General Dynamics team reported the spectral radiance decreased as the
altitude increased and the brightness temperature decreased with increasing
altitude. The burning time generally increased with increasing altitude. "

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This isn’t quite right. You can see in technical documents that the spaces for the CM located forward of the wheel wells were allocated, even on the A/B models, with the intent to retrofit them later. This makes it more likely it was a cost savings/ introduction timeline thing to initially omit them.

Either way this is pretty irrelevant as countermeasures were fitted to A-models eventually which is all the information the devs need to give them to it in game

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Well yeah but I don’t see what that has to do with recent discussions either.

Also the F-117 manuals that were “leaked” can literally be found for sale on flight-manuals-online.com, these aren’t real leaks or even important enough to be blowing up.
That said I think we should all know by now to not even bother posting stuff on the WT forums anymore because people can’t help themselves but post clickbait.

/tangent over

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As you know very acutely, restricted is still not permissible for sharing especially when you’re employed by the DoD. Civilians won’t see any punishment, but gaijin gets flack for it and DoD personnel doing so can be reprimanded / held accountable.

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^
And also I wouldn’t know anything about being reprimanded, sorry to burst your bubble but nothing happened as a result.

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It was rushed to get a mass production interceptor out as fast as possible to counter Mig-25.
You can think of F-15A like a preproduction while F-15C is the finalized production.

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Gajin plan consider F-15A Baz I for Israel, F-15A & F-15C Pre-MSIP from USAF and F-15J Pre-MSIP from JASDF this quarter ?

Yeah im still thinking for the december update

  1. The rush to push the F-15 out was intense enough that they decided it wasnt necessary initially.
  2. The proliferation of CMs was relatively limited at the time, and as stated elsewhere the F-15 was built to shoot first.
  3. The group of penny pinching self righteous morons known as the “Fighter Mafia” who tampered with the development, they didnt see CMs as necessary.

The F-15 had the space for CMs and with the MSIP program they received them, which is enough for in game purposes. However I have heard rumors of a jury rigged AN/ALE-45, being mounted to the AIM-9 pylons, unfortunately no hard proof has surfaced.

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So there seems to be a lot of discussion lately about the F-15 being an AoA monster. We should put that to rest, people think that the cockpit units are true AoA. They are not. 30 units in the cockpit is only equivalent to about 18-19 degrees true AoA for example. Wing rock (un-commanded rolling moments when pulling AoA) begins to occur and becomes problematic at just 23 degrees true AoA. The F-15 seems to be worse in the one-circle department than the MiG-23MLD which can handle 33 degrees local (26-28 degrees true).

Overall, people think it will outperform what is currently in the tech tree, in reality it will be closer to the performance of the F-14 and seem like a side-grade to the F-16 if anything imo. (And truthfully, it will just be variety to pick between F-14/15/16). The only thing that could stand it apart is the AMRAAM, which the F-16C-50 will now already be able to carry.

That doesn’t factor in lift, you can compare the turn graphs to get an idea of the turn performance.

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I’m just talking about controllability at such AoA, where the MiG-23MLD would be the winner. If we look at sustained turns, climb rate, overall flight performance it’s obvious the F-15 would win that fight all day long. Just to compare it to something we have in the game, the MLD and MiG-29 should both be more controllable than the F-15 at AoA > 20 degrees. (Thus showing it’s not much of an AoA monster).

In fact, the FBW of the F-16 should allow carefree handling up to around 25 degrees AoA when the F-15 would be struggling with un-commanded rolling moments. Even the F-16 (properly modeled) would give the F-15 a real fight in the one circle.

Doesn’t appear to be the case:
Clean + ≈60% - NATO
Clean + ≈60% Fuel - 29G

F-15C - M0.2 - 14 Deg/s
F-16C - M0.2 - 10 Deg/s
MIG-29G - M0.2 - N/A

F-15C - M0.3 - 2.9G’s - 16.5 Deg/s
F-16C - M0.3 - 2.8G’s - 15.75 Deg/s
MIG-29G - M0.3 - 3.2G’s

F-15C - M0.4 - 4.2G’s 17.5 Deg/s
F-16C - M0.4 - 4.8G’s - 19.8 Deg/s
MIG-29G - M0.4 - 4.3G’s

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