Fighting Over Fighter Jets: Pentagon Plan to Buy F-15EX Sparks Controversy.

• Author: Mayfield, Mandy

A battle is brewing between the Pentagon, congressional purse-holders and two of the country's top defense contractors over President Donald Trump's controversial 2020 budget request calling for the Air Force to acquire a souped-up variant of the F-15 jet fighter.

The initiative to replace older Boeing-built F-15C/D Eagle aircraft with the new F-15 EX comes as the service is aiming to ramp up purchases of the Lockheed Martin-built fifth-generation F-35 joint strike fighter, which is expected to be the centerpiece of the future fleet. The request for the F-l 5EXs was not originally part of the service's plans, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson confirmed to reporters in early March.

"Our fiscal year [2020] budget proposal that we originally submitted [to the office of the secretary of defense] did not include fourth-generation aircraft," she said at the Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Florida.

When Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein was asked if the service wants to purchase the F-15EX, he replied: "We want to buy new aircraft."

However, the service's tune has since changed. In late March, after the president's budget was released, Wilson said the decision to ask for the Boeing platform would help the service meet its capacity and readiness goals through 2030.

"We think it was the right thing to do to keep that capacity high," Wilson said.

"We are seeing a decline in the number of fighters available," she added. Meanwhile, there is an "increase in the average age of those fighters, and if we look at the whole system and the whole capacity over the next 10 to 20 years, one of the airframes that is not going to make it is the F-l 5C."

The budget request calls for eight F-l 5EX aircraft for fiscal year 2020 and an additional 72 through 2024. The Pentagon plans to eventually buy a total of 144.

The request asks for $1.1 billion for the F-l5s. It also asks for $11.2 billion for 78 F-35 jets, only 48 of which would be used by the Air Force.

The proposal is creating a divide among members of Congress as they prepare to debate authorization and appropriations bills for the next fiscal year.

The congressional joint strike fighter caucus announced in April that a group of 103 lawmakers cosigned a letter calling on their colleagues to add 24 F-35s above the president's budget request. The add-on would make for a total of 102 procured in 2020.

"We strongly urge your continued support for the F-35 Lightning II program," the lawmakers wrote...