On September 3, the U.S. Air Force announced that its F-15E Strike Eagle fighters have conducted various live-fire tests with 70 mm guided rockets designed to neutralize enemy drones, with the tests carried out by the 96th Test Wing and the 53rd Wing at Eglin Air Force Base (Florida). In particular, these are AGR-20F Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II rockets, to which a laser guidance system has been integrated, also enabling them to strike ground and maritime targets, as observed in the evaluations.
Referring to these matters, the commander of the 96th Test Wing, Brigadier General Mark Massaro, stated: “Our highest priority was to field this new capability as quickly and safely as possible. The Eglin team’s test complex made a tremendous effort of discovery and innovative thinking to achieve it. The project’s success was made possible by an integrated team, which facilitated communication and collaboration to move forward to completion and deliver it to the warfighter in record time.”
According to the institution’s reports, the tests in question were part of a preliminary stage before the deployment of the aircraft and their rockets in the area of responsibility of a geographic combatant command with active combat scenarios, with the aim of joining F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters in drone interception and shootdown missions. In light of this scenario, and considering a series of recent precedents related to operations against Houthi rebels in the Middle East, it is clear that the reference was to CENTCOM, where F-15E aircraft had already been observed deployed.
Furthermore, the U.S. Air Force detailed that the integration of these guided rockets onto the F-15E involved a series of technical challenges that seemed to stall the project’s progress earlier in the year, given that no proven support existed that would allow the rockets to be mounted on the aircraft. Peculiarly, the institution’s engineers did not opt for the development of a new system to overcome this obstacle but instead used the old Triple Ejector Rack-9A and LAU-131 launchers from the 1970s, which had been stored in the National Air Power Depot in Arizona.
The matter was by no means minor, considering that faced with these difficulties General Massaro himself issued orders requesting that the base focus all its efforts on the project, arguing that it was an urgent necessity for upcoming deployments. This resulted, for example, in pilots and engineers carrying out live-fire tests with the rockets without having previously tested their integration with the aircraft in terms of airworthiness—one of the usual requirements when testing new equipment.
*Image credits: U.S. Air Force
You may also like: The second of the U.S. Air Force’s new B-21 Raider stealth bombers is expected to begin its test flights by the end of the year
