![]() “There are just not going to be enough airplanes anymore,” declares 42-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Jim Stratton. “If we don’t maintain our advantage of air superiority, then maybe our enemies will decide to challenge our aircraft directly.” ![]() “We are a victim of our own success,” says Lieutenant Colonel Mark McGeorge, who is chief of flying operations and training at Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, and has 2,800 hours in F-15s. The threat of an airborne attack has diminished, they say, precisely because the Eagle has maintained air dominance over the battlefield for nearly four decades. A handful of pilots will get reassigned to the F-22, but an unlucky few might end up holding the joystick controlling a UAV, or grounded at desk jobs.įor their part, Department of Defense wonks claim that America’s enemies reside in caves, unreachable by aircraft. Some F-15Cs are headed to the Air National Guard others are being cannibalized for parts. By 2025, the ambidextrous multi-roles, along with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), will have replaced all F-15Cs, a drawdown that’s already under way. To blame are the multi-role, fifth generation Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. Its pilots have restored to Mountain Home the sensibility of the gunslinger, whose singular pursuit leaves no safety net: It’s kill or be killed.īut after more than 30 years in service, the F-15 dogfighters are becoming an endangered species. arsenal designed exclusively for air-to-air combat. Built by McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing), the F-15 made its first flight on July 27, 1972, and the C model remains the only fighter in the U.S. Soon the base expanded, until it encompassed 134,000 acres. Army Air Forces built an airfield on the outskirts of town to train B-24 Liberator crews. Its rebirth began in August 1943, when the U.S. And that’s when Mountain Home lost its soul. A more comfortable life beckoned, so the town moved. But in 1883, the Oregon Short Line railroad laid tracks seven miles southeast, on the Snake River Plateau. The outpost served a gunslinging clientele of trappers, miners, and explorers, and, true to the romance of the American west, survival there required a will and an ability to fight. A post office, a farmhouse, and a few clapboard structures were nestled in the foothills of the Sawtooth Range, where snowy peaks soar above 10,000 feet. Its original site was an Overton trail stagecoach stop called Rattlesnake Station. While driving through downtown Mountain Home, Idaho, on a gray February morning, I notice something troubling: Mountain Home has no mountains.
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