I find it very difficult to believe that the F-15SE can come close to the F-35's head-on RCS. Considering the testing, retesting and designing that went into making the F-35's RCS what it is.
The F-15SE is not a stealth aircraft., not even close.
What about the canopy, ejection seat and pilot's sitting position, all extremely un-stealthy, and all integral to the F-15's original design and not changing in the SE configuration.
What about the F-15's air intake inlets? redesigned? No. Those things show up on radar like two big headlamps on a freight train.

This is a load of BS (Boeing Sales department).

You cannot retrofit a standard airframe with radar absorbing paint and suddenly declare, "Hey everybody, we've got a new "stealth aircraft"!"
The Russians tried that for years, their final solution?
More RA paint?
No!
The Pak-FA.

Hmmmm...sounds like they are going down the route of what BAe did to the F3 Tornado during the Gulf War part 1....A bit of RAM here...bit of iron ball paint there and a load of rubber tiles stuck down the intakes for good measure...apparently gave the F3 a head on RCS of a hawk!...barn door from the sides mind you but hey...maybe thats all it needed to get within the kill range..!

So maybe in the years since then the retrofit of "steath" abilitys has moved on??? Or the Boeing sales department are giving a dodgy pitch...!!!!

Well, to be fair, they didnt JUST paint it with RAM, they added inner weapons bays and a new ECM system. Plus, it's not supposed to be very effective in evading ground based radars, only other enemy aircraft.

I still dont believe it comes anywhere close to the F-35, though.

Enough revisions can be made to the F-15 airframe to reduce RCS considerably. Sure, it will probably not quite compare to the F-35, but, unlike the F-35, the F-15SE would actually not suck at everything.

The biggest selling point that has been made about the F-35 recently has been its avionics package - which is nothing any modern U.S. aircraft will not be capable of matching. Though in most cases, it's completely unnecessary. It's nice, sure, but when you're going from an arsenal based around mechanically scanned arrays and virtually no multi-role radar capacity - you don't need 25-centimeter resolution radar mapping to see a substantial marked improvement.

You can't really build a "do everything" aircraft. The F-15SE is, pretty much, an interceptor/strike aircraft that you can mount a bunch of different weapons to. It's not going to have the same loiter times as the A-10 and Super Bug - but it is going to be able to do more while it is there than the F-35. Not to mention it's actually a proven airframe. F-15s haven't really required stealth to do their missions, yet - and the SE doesn't look like it compromises much for what measures that have been taken to reduce RCS.

And you have to consider a lot of these countries that have partnered for the F-35 are considerably smaller than the U.S. - when it's in-your-face fighting, stealth matters little by comparison to payload and raw kinetic performance. The SE wins there, in my honest opinion.

Korea would probably benefit more from the SE, really. Much of the country is built in valleys on on the side of a damned mountain. If you've been to the Ozarks, you have a pretty good idea of what that entire nation is like - only it's on the ocean (and with similar weather, interestingly enough). Radar invisibility is as simple as keeping with the valleys. Last I checked, North Korea didn't really have much in the way of AWACS. China does - but the F-35 would not be my choice for trying to take down a target of that value - A 22, 23, 15, or 14 would be of the better choices disregarding Russian models.

Originally posted by Aim64C

You can't really build a "do everything" aircraft.

We are definitely getting there - take a look at the number of specialist role aircraft in World War 2, take another look at the same thing in the 1960s and take a look at those in service today.

The number of aircraft types have drastically fallen over the years, and the capabilities of aircraft have increased just as drastically.

While in World War 2 we had a 15 crew heavy bomber to deliver a particular payload over a particular target, and we had dozens of aircraft in the same mission against a single target, today we have one aircraft with a single crew member hitting multiple targets with better accuracy.

In World War 2 we had day fighters, night fighters, bad weather fighters, photo recon fighters, ground attack, dive bombers, bombers ranging from not much more than a 2 crew aircraft up to the biggest of the big.

Today we have multi role combat aircraft capable of air superiority and ground attack in the same mission.

In 50 years time, you can bet that there will be a capable, first world air force with one single type of offensive aircraft - and probably it will be much sooner than that!

Originally posted by RichardPrice

Originally posted by Aim64C

You can't really build a "do everything" aircraft.

We are definitely getting there - take a look at the number of specialist role aircraft in World War 2, take another look at the same thing in the 1960s and take a look at those in service today.

Irrelevant.

Physics dictates you cannot build a "do everything" aircraft.

You cannot, under any circumstances, make an aircraft with the payload, slow stall speed, and durability of an A-10, and make it an effective supersonic interceptor.

The only possible way to do that is to take the concept of variable geometry to the extremes - and then you're getting into an area where technology and cost start to become a real pain. A "do everything" aircraft may be possible, but not practical.

The number of aircraft types have drastically fallen over the years, and the capabilities of aircraft have increased just as drastically.

Not really. Fighters are still fighters. Tank busters are still tank busters. Interceptors are still interceptors, and bombers are still bombers.

Missiles allow us to blur some of the lines, but you can't turn a bomber into a fighter. You can't turn a tank buster into an interceptor. Not the way we do it today ("back in the day" - there was no such thing as an interceptor - it was a fighter, and fighters then were similar in aerodynamics and weapons to what we use today.)

While in World War 2 we had a 15 crew heavy bomber to deliver a particular payload over a particular target, and we had dozens of aircraft in the same mission against a single target, today we have one aircraft with a single crew member hitting multiple targets with better accuracy.

That doesn't mean you can take that B-1 and go beat-down a PAK-FA. Nor does it mean you can go blow up a base with an F-22. Sure - you can make some booms on the ground, but your per-sortie efficiency is through the floor.

In World War 2 we had day fighters, night fighters, bad weather fighters, photo recon fighters, ground attack, dive bombers, bombers ranging from not much more than a 2 crew aircraft up to the biggest of the big.

All we did was combine a lot of the very related roles into one. Cost-effective radars in aircraft made all fighters capable of being night-fighters. Nothing works in bad weather, really - so "bad weather fighter" is an oxy-moron. In either case - radar and infra-red technologies allowed most/all aircraft to take on that role. The aircraft didn't really have much difference in performance - it wasn't like technology suddenly gave single-engine fighters the payload of four-engine bombers.

Today we have multi role combat aircraft capable of air superiority and ground attack in the same mission.

It's not all it's cracked up to be. You can't be lugging a huge bomb around out on a pylon while you are trying to pull 8Gs to beat down a fighter. You can't do that while it's in a bay, either.

Sure, you can arm some aircraft with bombs, and some with missiles - but then why not build a BIG aircraft that can hold ten times the amount of ordnance, get three times the range, carry everything internally, and costs only five times the amount of the ten fighters you would need to match a single sortie?

Or, if you don't need that all in one platform, why not create a smaller bomber that can carry all that ordnance internally, get better range than the fighter-armed-with-bombs, and carry a larger payload (particularly important for heavier ordnance that other stuff might not have the hardpoints to handle).

And at an equivalent cost.

In 50 years time, you can bet that there will be a capable, first world air force with one single type of offensive aircraft - and probably it will be much sooner than that!

Then I would love to pick it apart with the PMC I plan to create later on in life. Because 'We' would build stuff right.