Korean Eagle’s Silent Incubation

Boeing will offer the advanced F-15 Silent Eagle to South Korea in the third phase of the ongoing F-X competition to replace the country’s remaining F-4 Phantoms. “Their request for proposal just came out on Jan. 30, and we are offering the Silent Eagle,” Brad Jones, Boeing’s F-15 systems combat director, told the Daily Report last week at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla. “The design is progressing and, yes, it will be ready” in time for the competition, added Jones, during his media briefing at the show. Korean Aircraft Industries is partnered with Boeing to design the aircraft’s conformal weapons bays, which are due to undergo one-fifth-scale wind-tunnel testing later this year, said Jones. With its low radar cross section, the Silent Eagle would be rapidly reconfigurable between air-to-air, air-to-ground, and radar-evading mission profiles, he said. Still in the design stage, Silent Eagle could be delivered by 2015 and be combat ready by 2016, stated Jones during his Feb. 23 briefing.