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October 3, 2014
STARS AND STRIPES • S
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TA R S
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T R I P E S
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Friday, October 3, 2014
PACIFIC
35 years after landing in the Pacific for the first time, F-15 still proves to be ‘viable to the fight’ BY M ATTHEW M. BURKE
keep up with pretty much everything you can throw at it.”
Stars and Stripes
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Capt. Jonathan Mahan is the stereotypical fighter pilot: calm, confident, with a steely gaze and a sharp sense of humor. He has a cool nickname and a mustache so perfectly groomed that it would make “Top Gun” character Goose proud. However, being an F-15 pilot in the 67th Fighter Squadron’s Fighting Cocks — one of two storied squadrons stationed at Kadena Air Base, Japan — couldn’t be further from a cute cliché. Its members constantly train to keep their combat skills sharp in case they are called upon by their Japanese allies to defend the island nation or maintain air superiority in the Asia-Pacific. Monday marked the 35th anniversary of the tactical fighters’ arrival on Okinawa, and despite the aircraft’s age, upgrades have continued to make it one of the most reliable platforms in the U.S. air arsenal. “It’s the best at what it does,” Mahan said of the McDonnell Douglas Corp. fighter. “It can perform well with just about anything today. We’re training against stuff that’s being built right now.” For Mahan — dubbed “River” for his Texas hold ’em poker luck — being an F-15C Eagle fighter pilot is a dream come true. “It’s like an old muscle car,” Mahan said affectionately. “It handles pretty awesome. It can
Threats The Asia-Pacific is like a high-stakes game of poker, with allies like Japan and South Korea sitting at a table with potential adversaries like North Korea, China and Russia. There’s a lot at stake, so the Fighting Cocks and their comrades in the 44th Fighter Squadron are constantly training for combat. “I don’t think everyone realizes that here in Okinawa, we’re in everyone’s backyard,” Mahan said. Lt. Col. William Denham, the 67th Fighter Squadron commander, said the threats in the region are real. “I think if you look at
U.S. Air Force F-15 Eagles from the 67th Fighter Squadron fly a training mission on Sept. 25 over the Pacific Ocean outside Kadena Air Base, Japan. The F-15 celebrated 35 years at Kadena on Monday. STEPHANY RICHARDS/Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force
East Asia altogether and the potentials for conflict that you see in the news … there is a huge potential for conflict in this area, so the U.S. presence here with the Air Force and our joint partners makes a big difference in providing stability,” he said. “So there’s not one specific threat we’re concerned about; there’s a number of them.” The F-15’s age certainly hasn’t made it any less potent over the years. “We like to talk about our air-to-air combat record in the F-15 being 104-0, and that is a record that no other aircraft in history has ever had,” Denham said. “We have continued to upgrade it, so especially with our radar today and the modern weapons that we carry, it is still an
extremely lethal airplane.” The standard payload for the $29.9 million F-15C on a combat sortie is six AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles and two AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles, in addition to an internally mounted canon, according to Air Force fact sheets.
History The first F-15A flight came in July 1972, according to Air Force histories. Four years later, the first Eagle destined for a combat squadron was delivered. On Sept. 29, 1979, 18 F-15Cs from the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia arrived at Kadena for the 67th Fighter Squadron, whose history in combat stretches back to Guadalcanal, Korea and Vietnam. The base newspaper exclaimed, the “F-15 Eagle is landing.” Since then, the Eagle has proudly maintained air superiority in the Asia-Pacific, eventually giving way largely to Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-15 pilots, who currently fly the intercepts of foreign aircraft infringing on Japanese airspace. Now, the Kadena jets are what Mahan calls the “break glass in case of emergency” option. The Fighting Cocks work in close concert with the Japanese. Deployments have ranged from Singapore to the Mideast to Florida in recent years, Mahan said. SEE PAGE 6
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