Thank you Alex! For anyone wanting to stay up to date on news about Boeing, check out the link above and let us know if you have any questions.

Sounds like he accidentally revealed the truth.

Wow, classified speed of the f-15EX gets reported, and it didn't even come from a War Thunder forum this time.

Mach 2.9? Maybe. It really depends on how badly you want to piss off the maintenance crew.

Just imagine how advanced the NGAD is if this is how badass a fifty year old design is...

There is a former F15E bubba on KZfaq that mentioned that the F15C has a one time brake glass setting where the afterburner can push it to mach 2.8 but the motors would be absolutely trashed. It’s not difficult to think that the new motors can do 2.9 without breaking.

“How many missiles do you want to carry?” “Yes”

Prototype Pratt engines were doing 2.8 back in 1982. Leading edges of the wings began to melt.

Remember the line in Red Dawn from the F-15 pilot when asked how he got shot down "It was 5 on one, I got 4"

The precision of these new fly-by-wire systems is unreal.

He mixed up the engine designation. He said F-110-GE-229 He meant F-110-GE-129 there's a competing and largely equivalent engine competing for the contract which is the F-100-PW-229.

Mach 2.9, and it's only limited to that due to thermal limitations on the engine at that speed, not from a lack of thrust. And capable of pulling 12Gs, limited, in an emergency - loadout dependent. Can carry 12+ AIM-120s. "BuT iT'S aN aNcIeNt 1970s rElIc"

I thought the top speed of the Eagle II is classified. Thus, it likely is closer to or over Mach 3.

“dog fights are really considered to be a thing of the past.” Except for when they happen.

They are more powerful, yet slower? I doubt it. Even looking at the birds you can tell they are more aerodynamic.

My guess is that the EX has technology that is orders of magnitude more advanced than the SU57 or J20. I'd love to see someone do a scenario with the F15EX and B21 as missile trucks over the South China Sea for F35s.

F15's loaded up with 20 aim 260's 😂 'the widow maker'

F15 likely has the thrust and power to weight ratio for M2.9. Issue will be airframe heating and engine wear and tear. These will likely lead to VNE M2.5. The F111C was similarly placarded. Clean on a cold day it could really hump and had to be throttled back to keep under M2.5. I recall seeing M2.5 in a gentle climb at 50,000ft.

Hey Alex, I just want you to know that I'm mesmerized every time that you start talking. I love Sandboxx. You're an amazing narrator. You just have the ability to hold people's attention. You're amazing buddy.

That thing is gonna be a bad ass.

It's a missile mule. Basically an F--35 or the NGAD can sneak in, detect targets, relay that info back and the EX can lob that massive payload at them from outside the target's engagement range.

i would be interested in a separate video on the capabilities of modern IRST and how it works!

Go to ground.news/Sandboxx to get a balanced perspective on military developments around the world. Subscribe though my link for 40% off unlimited access for just $5/month.

As always great 👍 Job you did with this information video! Keep on it! Greetings from Austria 🇦🇹

Love your explanation of "semantic framing". It happens everywhere. I use it too.

you actually spent almost 20mins going through everything the eagle 2 can do. for the record my fav plane is the eagle, so seeing the eagle 2 so awesome is so enjoyable

Well if they fitted with the F-22s F119s or F-35 F-135, it would have likely done Mach 3 with ease but consider the amount of equipment the F-15EX carries externally Mach 3 while cool is not advisable

Your enthusiasm for this aircraft really comes through. Terrific work Alex.

Not everything needs to be 5th or 6th gen… having a crap ton of good missiles on board and a heck of a radar and sensor suit, is its own genre… I think this will be the backbone of the AF so the F35 doesn’t need to take on so many flight hours.. just my guess.

I like this guy's enthusiasm and passion for these amazing aircraft.

Awesome stuff Alex. Props to you and your team for 4 videos in 6 days!

Thanks for all the great videos. Enjoy them extremely

When I worked on F-15A/B models in my 318th FIS unit in the late 80s, they would often come back from alert flights to intercept bogies identified by NORAD with their mach meters pegged at M2.8. And these planes were loaded with 4 sparrows and 4 sidewinders.

One thing I don't understand is why doesn't any military put rockets on a couple hardpoints that stay fixed until spent in order to rapidly accelerate the plane or reduce takeoff? Seems like an easy modification that could be useful if you're going to get into an unexpected dogfight or to recover from an unrecoverable spin.

That's so cool. I worked with Capt Li at Wetstone. Great video as always.

The original f-15s, although not officially, we're known in Trials against efforts to travel in excess of about 1950 to 2000 miles per hour. Which puts them easily at Mach 3. Even the F4 on occasion when properly tuned could actually run them down and even stay with them for a bit. The f-111f model, was known, unofficially, to have a burst speed in excess of the numbers I just gave you. But it could not maintain it because you don't carry nearly enough fuel on the F model to run more than about 20 to 25 minutes at the outside. I'd also like to point out the overall power of the engine is not what the issue here and is not necessarily commensurate with overall speed. The place that the engine is most powerful might not be at its highest range but if it's powerful enough at a lower range it should be powerful enough to go at least as fast as the original F-15.

I smell classified documents

22 air to air missiles?! Jeez that means a single Eagle EX can kill every operational su57 russia has 5 times over, likely with ease.

Your videos keep getting better and more insightful. Amazing and Thank you.

Many people aren't aware that a jet engine needs to inhale subsonic airflow....so to go supersonic the inlet ducting must be able to slow the incoming air down and this becomes one of the limitations to the actual top speed. A fixed inlet duct can be designed to hit Mach 2'ish...but not much more which is what's limiting the Raptor along with the skin surface temperature limits. F-15's have a variable geometry inlet system able to feed the motors which also have enough power to go faster than the airframe can take without damage. It's entirely possible that if one chose to destroy his aircraft by seeing how fast it could go with no regard to durability....maybe the fellow's original statement might hold true, but would be of little use since the aircraft would be destroyed doing it. The SR-71 had a VERY complicated inlet ducting system able to diffuse the incoming air up to about Mach 3.4'ish and the ability to endure the heat such speeds create for an entire fuel load which is why it's still the fastest air breathing aircraft ever made. The Russians made aircraft that could sprint to nearly the same speeds...but it's like a runner sprinting as fast as he can for 50 yards to match a marathon runner who runs that same pace for 26 miles. Not quite the same thing.

Every Day is Christmas when there's a new KZfaq from Alex Hollings & Sandboxx!

Great stuff as always.

Great to see the Boeing Australia MQ-28 Ghostbat in there at 16:39 mate! 😉🇦🇺👍 I would love the RAAF to get them when the time comes to replace our F/A-18Fs. It would give us a strike capability we haven’t had since the retirement of our F-111s. There was talk in the public domain about B-21 being purchased, but that has gone quiet. To be honest, I think a larger number of the EX would give us far greater flexibility than the B-21 at a fraction of the cost when combined with our F-35As, E-7s and upcoming MQ-28s.

What you failed to mention is that while the airframe is still huge and not stealthy, the Eagle 2's radar cross section is 40% less than the F-15C. This quite the improvement considering that the aircraft is 4 feet longer and 7,000 pou ds heavier. The only thing that I see that could have been an even greater improvement would be for Boeing to have included the slanted tail fins from the Silent Eagle program which actually improved the maneuverability and cut the radar cross section of the aircraft by 20%. Add that to the better materials and the Eagle 2 could have been even more badass than it already is.

Love your right to the point information, pacing, and presentation. Excellent channel.

The top speed is irrelevant in combat. There is no way that the Eagle 2 would be able to maintain that speed for long anyway. I remember when they were testing the ASAT anti satellite missiles that the Eagle would take off and do a mid air refueling to get as much fuel on board as possible. When they went to fire the missiles they had to maintain a certain angle of climb and speed so the missiles could find the target and launch. This profile would empty the Eagle's fuel tanks in under 6 minutes and the aircraft would have to refuel again just to have enough fuel to land without crashing. The Eagle can burn through 2,000 gallons of jet fuel in 4 minutes at full afterburner. Most combat is done at much lower speeds because the airplane can maneuver and fight better at lower speeds. Besides, the 1489 mile per hour top speed is only really needed to get the hell out of the area after you have fired all of your missiles anyway. My cousin flies the F-15E and says that flying above mach 1 is very hard on the airplane and if you go too fast you will rip the external fuel tanks and missile pylons off of the aircraft damaging the wings and

I love it, what an awesome airframe, system, and capabilities. Thank you very much Alex

22 air to air missiles - we’re getting to the point where actual in-service aircraft can carry more onboard weapons than some starter Ace Combat aircraft 😂

Most Excellent Sir! PLEASE keep it up

Excellent, as always!

As a base brat, I always dreamed of flying an F-15 as my mighty steed.

If we ever do end up in a war we are going to find that renewing these platforms instead of retiring them is a huge advantage

One thing I noticed in the ordering but that has not been covered widely is that it appears the Air Force is not buying CFTs for the EX meaning they are missing 10 weapon stations and lacking the range increase. Do you know anything about this? Any idea why this choice was made or if my information is inaccurate?

love this channel . . . Alex is the best.

Thanks!

🏆🤗💙😎🙏 Thank you for sharing

Back in the mid 70s most of us knew that when the V-MAX switch was activated the Eagle F-15A could probably get up to very close to if not over MACH3. The problem was it would be a one time flight until the F-100s burned themselves up. I STAND BY THE ORIGINAL CLAIMS. Eagle Keeper from 1976 thru 1992

Thank you Alex, once again great job.

The greatest pity is that the F-15EX can't utilise the European Meteor! Being able to do so would add a whole new dimension of capability, until the Aim260 eventually arrives at some undetermined future date. Thanks for a really informative video, clearing up some misconceptions I previously had. Cheers Alex!

Very enlightening..... Thank you Alex.

Regarding missions that do NOT need stealth ... show of force missions. Sometimes you want to fly out and BE SEEN so the opponent reconsiders any hostile intent. Of course, these days a lot of potential opponents assume we would never actually pull the trigger - but that is politics and diplomacy... it should never be a technical issue.

Sounds like the ACE COMBAT games in real life. I love it

I expect it is faster then what they are disclosing

Excellent analysis as usual! I suspect that onboard jammers like on the Gripen may make stealth a mute issues!

Thanks, awesome presentation. Boeing should hire you.

I am an ex-grunt. Loved this video! Semper Fi from an ex Semper gumby. Much love from Australia.

Another exciting informative report Alex. We need this new F15E version.

I hope we're making a whole lot more of those along with those underwing/fuselage ornaments.

AWESOME video Boxx. As always. I can rest easier at night now knowing what I know. You teach well. Cheers and FLYSAFE my friend.

Thanks Alex for really making me miss working on the eagle.

I really like and enjoy watching your videos. You are a true professional.

How far have we come? The B-17 Flying Fortress could carry 8,000 pounds of bombs. This FIGHTER can carry close to 30,000 pounds of ordnance. This fighter actually carries more than the B-29 Superfortress as well. Weird. Plus the bombs can be precision guided, they don't need to carpet large swathes of ground to get the target. One drop one destroyed target, most of the time. It's kinda terrifying how good we've become in destroying each other.

What're the odds that it can do Mack 2.9, but that got classified immediately after he announced it?

F-15EX and F-22A are my two favorite modern day fighters. They look sleek and packs the meanest punch

The F-16N (Navy's adversary model) would accelerate to M2.0 in level flight, at 30,000 feet very nicely! But it was very slick, with no stores.

You do a great job, you really do. You make everything understandable, even a ground-pounding Ranger. Thanks and keep it up!

What I’m wondering is how much speed and skin heating the airframe can take.

Love the deep analysis provided! I've been watching on tik tok for a while and finally decided to check out your KZfaq. Phenomenal work Alex!

Speed doesn't increase exponentially with power. Airframe geometry is just as influential to speed as power is.

Awesome presentation Alex! Everyone who designed, built, flew, and maintained this aircraft gets my salute and appreciation! Who knew the USA would produce another aircraft that may last a century or more and still be operating in front line service!🦅

Excellent viode! You put in the work!

Top speed on aircraft like this are limited due to thermal effects as you need the acceleration more than the top speed and as such put in 'oversized' engines. It can likely do near mach3, but practically cannot achieve that for any length of time without damage. The SR71 for example had no established upper speed limit and had plenty of thrust margin available as it would cruise at max spec'd speed at around 50% thrust, but would melt the aircraft if pushed too fast. I suspect this is a similar situation.

If they changed the internal structure and support, it's questionable whether it's even an F15 anymore.

Wow! I'm convinced. Rightfully named the Eagle (all variants). Thanks.

As a die hard Tomcat fan, specifically the F14D with its AN-APG 71 radar and it's integrated IRST system, which for a time superceded the capabilities and performance of the Eagles radar systems, I am happy to see the F-15, now with its exclusive Tandem seating configuration prove all the so called experts wrong with respect to the RIO / WSO role being somehow redundant and unnecessary. So happens the technology FINALLY caught up to the brilliant designs both the F14 and F15 share... Unfortunately, America would sell the F14 to a country that would later become part of its "Axis of Evil". Which is why all F14's including the Super Tomcats would literally be shredded. Too bad the Shah chose the Tomcat... Or perhaps good thing he passed on the F15 😊

The EX should be able to hit Mach 3, with minimal loading. It would be really cool to see one done up as another minimalist demonstrator.

The idea that low observable aircraft will not get into a visual engagement is wildly stupid.

I really like where we are going with this program. Brand new planes don't always need developed every 15 years when you can devastatingly upgrade what is already flying

21:00 .. are those prescription glasses? I was denied my dream of becoming an Air Force pilot because I did not have 20-20 vision, corrective surgery wasn't available back then, and corrective glasses were not allowed. You could wear glasses / contact for commercial flight .. but not in the military. Has that changed? I mean for the lenses, as far as I know if you get lasik etc, you're good to go now.

Thank you for using different music in the intro!

Top tier music every video, & military aerospace reporting.

We thank you ALEX🇺🇸

More power yes but structural integrity of the frame is a limiting factor at that speed. Without titanium shielding metals for heat build-up it's unlikely any aircraft besides the Mig 31 and SR-71 can safely go faster than mac2.7

Nice input Alex. I really enjoy your channel..👉🏻👉🏻

So we almost had the F-15-S. Now we have the F-15-EX. The question now becomes, "when do they slap a stealth coating on this thing and give us the F-15-SEX?"

The F-15EX should not be compared to the F-35A/B/C but to the B-1B, B-2A, B-52 or B-21. You can throw 24 JASSM on a Bone. But normally, it will be 16 with a rear bay fuel tank. Sixteen cruise missiles is 3-4 F-15EX, depending on how you load them. Wing tanks will cost you two missile stations. But if the F-15EX is in-theater, within 1,500nm, it becomes a defacto 'Regional Bomber' with twice a day service rates. If the B-1B has to come from Mildenhall, Diego Garcia or Guam, it's probably a three day bomber, assuming you can find fuel for it. If the Bone has to come from Dyess or Ellsworth, it's going to be two days _in the air_ on a 48hr mission rotation. Unlike fighters, which can operate from a 3-5,000ft civilian strip in places like North Field Tinian, the heavies have to have a 10,000ft runway with reinforced ramps and large scale underground fuel which is simply not available in a lot of places like SWAPR. They can be hit a lot easier, due to their basing mode predictor. Add to this the fragile MMH:FH and MTBF of the Bone and BUFF especially and you have a once per week airframe, best case. Not a good idea in a war apt to be dictated by high utilization rates and max tempo operations. AIM-260 is not a 'super duper ultra long range wowee VLRAAM'. It's a 500-600lb, 12ft long (fits inside F-22/F-35 weapons bays) missiles with a probable 8-10" diameter. i.e. It's an American PL-15 which, _in the honest version_ is capable of 145km. Put another way, it is a properly packaged, next-gen, AIM-7 Sparrow. While it may be dual staged and thus able to mass dump the expended aft section to adjust sectional profile and tail-wags-dot CG profile (think AIM-152 AAAM), without a ramjet/HFDR capability, it's not going over a hundred miles. More like 60. If the target chooses to close. At 100nm simple tac turns are going to wreck the kinematic setup as every forty to fifty degrees of offset is a natural crank which fighters will be doing because of the Stealth threat. Flying ASA in a 90 million dollar airframe is stupid, no matter how cheap it is to fly, when you could shift the F-15E to that role and buy 300+ F-15EX as your proper strike option, with the better avionics and defense penetration/suppression capability given to an active service unit, likely to be first respondered into a combat theater. The issue at that point is the USAF accelerating it's B-xx retirement plans to pay for upgrades on ONE, or at most two, B-21 and B-1B or B-52 types in a drastic neckdown. IMO, throwing money at the B-52 at this point is stupid. But the B-1B has multiple fatigue issues (skin panels which are rapidly becoming too think and are full of stress cracks) as well as some maintenance tasks (lifting out the wings with the nitrogen treatment dip to extract the bearing) that are simply beyond the present, highly restricted, industrial base. It's time to admit what we have done to retard our industrial base by having program after program never reach fruition until engineers refuse to do defense/aerospace because it is so lacking in rewards. While at the same time condensing through leveraged mergers all the diversity of innovation we once had. Purely for profit on some mega programs which come around once every 30-50 years. If you add to this the likely coming debt and dollar crises which will fall out from a defeat in Ukraine, you reach the inevitable conclusion that _our eyes are bigger than our wallets can afford_. We may get *ONE* NGAD as F/A-XX/F-X program. We will not get both. The flying pukes will insist that they have their day and say, as job security, despite what Ukraine has shown are the necessities of a rapidly fieldable expeditionary capability which can be used, sans pilots, by proxy allies. And the Chinese are already at 300 vs. 160 on the J-20 vs. F-22 fleet, so simply replacing the Raptor with another 250-300 or so NGAD is only going to bring us to parity with an industrial power that has the engineering talent, spare production capacity and deep-wallet ability to match us, probably inside 7 years. At that point, the J-20 will become their F-35 and the Sino NGAD will become the pacing overmatch threat on numbered air superiority. What good the F-15EX will be to anyone at that point is questionable, given there are no published figures showing what a retracted Luneberg Reflector on the J-20 does to reduce its natural RCS. The APG-82V1 is a 20-25KW radar which is pretty good but the Chinese have halted all exports of neodymium and gallium nitride as the two essential rare earths used in providing enhanced radar technology upgrades. Even if the NGAD is supported, with only 200 of them we will lose the attritional capacity fight on China's doorstep. And frankly the shift to CCA UCAVs would be a better coverage capability idea, just on the notion that an F-15EX, search-lighting the ether is easy for a genuine stealth to run the flanks on. But you know that collaborative combat aircraft will be sabotaged at every turn, even when they are blatantly superior (X-45A: 1,100nm radius with 2.3hr hold, carrying 2X MMTD) for the kinds of mission capability needed for large, open airspace, combat theaters. Like Southwest Asia. Like the South China Sea and Pacific Rim. If you go automated, you don't have to be fast to maximize hang time on the pointy end. If you go automated, you cam replace acquisitino costs with billable hours ops account for training costs. There is a third offset, for which a 90 million dollar strike asset is a viable alternative to a 250 million dollar, Gen-6, uber fighter. The issue then becomes whether we have the guts to take another Ukraine theater lesson and shift to primary GLCM/GLBM with, an emphasis upon survivability as buyable numbers in the capacity shot count and pennies per ton mile endurance of a sea-launch submarine or arsenal ship alternative to penetrating manned air at all. It's never an either/or solution. There are always combat mix and economic modifier variables worth mentioning. If we go into a major Depressionary Event, thanks to the stupidity of the 'ten percent for the big guy', Biden payola schemes, the ability to buy our warfighter restock, one FY at a time, with highly automated factories producing thousands of missiles (at 2-5 million each, in mass production) per year, could be the better choice than one-time purchases of a few hundred airframes and then whoring NGAD to the world like we foolishly did with JSF. Only to watch the technology base vanish into other nation's DIBs after they buy a paltry few F/A-XX as copyable baselines.

This is the best information podcast that exists. Thanks Alex

The Air Force turned down the GE F110-132 engines because of timing to get the planes into service. But the extra speed may have been with the newer engines

Why do the Inlet ducts move?

19:29 those are some amazing videos of the eagles dispensing hate all at the same time 😲👍