The U.S. Air Force is planning to return its F-15E Strike Eagles from RAF Lakenheath in England and consolidate its fleet stateside. Currently, the F-15Es in the United Kingdom are the only permanently forward-deployed examples of the aircraft, which remain the service’s first choice for a wide variety of critical missions around the globe.
Confirmation of the plan to bring the two squadrons of F-15Es back from Lakenheath was provided yesterday by Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin. This came during a hearing on the posture of the Department of the Air Force in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2026, held by the Senate Committee on Armed Services.
Sen. Theodore P. Budd of North Carolina asked Allvin about the plans for the Lakenheath Strike Eagles, in relation to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in the same state. This base is currently home to F-15E frontline and training squadrons under the 4th Fighter Wing.
“One thing that stuck out to me was the arrival of the F-35s at Lakenheath Air Base, and that once they are up and running, two Strike Eagle units will be returning stateside,” Budd said. “Has a decision been made on where those aircraft will end up?”
Allvin responded that a final decision on the relocation was still to be made, but confirmed that the two F-15E squadrons would be coming back to the United States. A timeline for the move was not provided.
Allvin noted that the Lakenheath F-15Es are equipped with the significantly more powerful F100-PW-229 turbofans, in contrast to those at Seymour Johnson, which use the older Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-220 engines.
Of the 218 F-15Es in the Air Force inventory, 119 are powered by the Dash 220 turbofan engines that produce some 23,500 pounds of thrust each. The other 99 have the F100-PW-229s, each of which is rated at 29,000 pounds of thrust.
Allvin further observed that Seymour Johnson “will be critical to the F-15E and F-15EX community as far as the training unit and the operational unit for the E, so that certainly is an attractive landing spot right now.”
The Air Force boss agreed with Budd’s assessment that an influx of younger and more capable F-15E airframes to Seymour Johnson would be a good way of ensuring the futures of both the combat and training missions at the base. This would become even more relevant if the Air Force follows through with its aspiration to retire the F100-PW-220-powered jets, which it had previously planned to do by the end of Fiscal Year 2028.
Regardless of where the Lakenheath F-15Es end up, it’s significant that the Air Force is planning to remove these jets from England.
Currently, Lakenheath is home to the 492nd and 494th Fighter Squadrons flying the F-15E. These squadrons each have a primary aircraft assigned (PAA) complement of 26 aircraft, although this is subject to some fluctuation. Under the 48th Fighter Wing, these operate alongside the 493rd and 495th Fighter Squadrons flying the F-35A, the first of the Air Force’s stealth jets to be based in Europe.
As well as being fitted with the -229 engines, Lakenheath’s F-15Es have been at the front of the queue to receive a sophisticated new radar warning and electronic warfare suite, the AN/ALQ-250 Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System, or EPAWSS, which you can read more about here.
EPAWSS is part of a rolling program of upgrades for the F-15E in recent years. Other work has included adding the Raytheon AN/APG-82 AESA radar, which is also integrated into the electronic warfare system as it is a highly capable electronic attack weapon in its own right. Certain niche capabilities have also been added to the jets, such as the AN/ASQ-236 Dragon’s Eye radar pod that you can read about in this previous feature. New weapons and weapon configurations have also appeared, adding to the F-15E’s versatility.
Overall, however, there is still uncertainty about what the Air Force’s Strike Eagle fleet might look like in the future.
This time last year, TWZ reported on the effort of members of Congress to block Air Force plans to send more than half of its F-15E fleet to the boneyard in the coming years. The Air Force argues that it needs to retire its older F-15Es to help free up resources for its future modernization plans, but lawmakers have been concerned about dwindling numbers of available tactical aircraft if this were to happen.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024, an annual defense policy bill, blocked the Air Force from retiring more than 68 F-15Es before the end of Fiscal Year 2029.
Just last month, the F-15E was mentioned in proposed legislation put forward by Republican leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. The proposed spending plan includes $127.46 million “to prevent the retirement of F-15E aircraft,” with the exception of “individual F-15E aircraft that the Secretary of the Air Force determines, on a case by case basis, to be no longer mission capable and uneconomical to repair because of aircraft accidents, mishaps, or excessive material degradation and non-airworthiness status of certain aircraft.”
In the meantime, the F-15E remains a highly prized asset, selected for a variety of high-profile operational missions, a fact underlined in April 2024 when the aircraft shot down more than 70 Iranian drones heading for Israel. Moreover, the Lakenheath F-15E fleet, in particular, has been something of an on-call force for operations throughout Europe and the Middle East. High-profile activities have included everything from long-range strikes in Libya to supporting constant operations in Syria.
TWZ has reached out to the 48th Fighter Wing for more details about its future plans, although the most likely option would appear to be the replacement of the F-15Es with additional F-35As. However, it’s unclear if these would be fielded in the form of a like-for-like replacement in both squadrons, to maintain the current four-squadron structure.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the plans to relocate F-15Es from England are also dependent on being able to deliver and sustain combat-capable F-35As over the next decade, something that Senator Budd referred to yesterday.
As we have reported in the past, there have been some significant problems in realizing this goal.
Due to problems with the aircraft’s critical Tech Refresh 3 software, or TR-3, production deliveries of the F-35 were suspended for around a year. In July 2024, it was confirmed that deliveries of the stealth fighters would resume “in the near future,” clearing a backlog of jets sitting in storage, although the TR-3 would still only be installed in what’s described as a “truncated” form. This raises questions about when the F-35 will actually be able to make full use of the long-awaited Block 4 improvements that this software underpins.
Concerns with getting fully capable F-35As online and in sufficient numbers have, in the past, seen Congress oppose Air Force plans to retire combat aircraft, and the relocation of F-15Es from Lakenheath to the United States could still face resistance.
Nevertheless, the F-35A is now firmly embedded at Lakenheath, where it seems they will be provided with forward-deployed B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bombs. Earlier this year, we reported on new evidence of construction work on protective shelters at the base, pointing to the fact that the United States is poised to bring nuclear bombs back to the United Kingdom after nearly two decades.
When combined with the stealthy F-35A, the B61-12 is increasingly being viewed as a strategic weapons-delivery system, as well as being a tactical strike asset, and would be a significant advance over the F-15E in the same role.
The F-35As could possibly be paired with Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) in the coming years, although at this stage, these drones are not set to be a direct replacement for crewed aircraft, especially not the two-seat F-15E.
The F-15EX could be another option to replace F-15Es at Lakenheath, and an argument could be made that the combination of F-35A and F-15EX would be the optimum way of ensuring dominance in air superiority and air-to-ground, and meeting the demand of high-tempo deployments. While planned F-15EX numbers have fluctuated, the Air Force most recently said it wants to buy 98 F-15EX aircraft.
A fleet of 98 F-15EX aircraft is just about sufficient for five operational squadrons of 18 aircraft, plus a handful of training and test aircraft. Air National Guard units in California, Louisiana, Michigan, and Oregon are all slated to get the F-15EX. With plans to field the F-15EX with the active-duty Air Force at Kadena Air Base in Japan, current numbers wouldn’t support their fielding at Lakenheath, too.
While the future shape of the U.S. Air Force’s F-15E fleet is still to be determined, and with the service clearly still working out where it should be based, it seems that it’s now very much set on removing its Strike Eagles from Lakenheath.
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