The next great fighter, the F‑22 Raptor, is every bit as much a marvel today as the F‑15 was 25 years ago, and if we produced the F-22 in sufficient numbers we could move the goalposts out of reach again. Some foreign-built fighters can now match or best the F‑15 in aerial combat, and given the changing nature of the threats our country is facing and the dizzying costs of maintaining our advantage, America is choosing to give up some of the edge we’ve long enjoyed, rather than pay the price to preserve it. invaded Iraq in 2003, Saddam didn’t just ground his air force, he buried it. Of those who did fight the F-15, like the unfortunate pilot framed on Rodriguez’s wall, every last one was shot down. Many of Saddam Hussein’s MiGs fled into Iran when the U.S. In three decades of flying, no F‑15 has ever been shot down by an enemy plane-and that includes F‑15s flown by air forces other than America’s. In combat, its kill ratio over more than 30 years is 107 to zero. It is certainly the most successful fighter jet. The F‑15, the backbone of America’s air power for more than a quarter century, may just be the most successful weapon in history. Its mystique still attracts the most-ambitious young aviators, even if nowadays the greatest danger most of them face is simply flying the aircraft at supersonic speed.Īmerican pilots haven’t shot down many enemy jets in modern times, because few nations have dared rise to the challenge of trying to fight them. The word ace denotes singularity, the number one, he who stands alone at the top.
But within the world of military aviation there remains a hierarchy of cool, and fighter jocks still own the highest rung. It’s hard to call what happens in the sky over a battlefield today “single combat.” More than ever, an air war is a group effort involving skilled professionals and technological marvels, from the ground to Earth orbit. This says more, of course, about the nature of American air power than it does about the skills of our pilots. Rodriguez’s total was two shy of the threshold number for the honorific ace, yet his three made him the closest thing to an ace in the modern U.S. That number may seem paltry alongside the 26 enemy planes downed by Eddie Rickenbacker in World War I, or the 40 notched by Richard Bong in World War II, or the 34 by Francis Gabreski across World War II and Korea. When Rodriguez retired two years ago from the Air Force as a colonel, his three air-to-air kills (two over Iraq in 1991 and one over Kosovo) were the most of any American fighter pilot on active duty. It may have come to resemble a video game, but it is one with no reset button, no next level. These are strictly matter-of-fact men from a world where war is work, and life and death hang on a rapidly and precisely calibrated reality, an attitude captured by the flat caption mounted on the frame: This is an AIM-7 air-to-air missile shot from an F‑15 Eagle detonating on an Iraqi MiG‑29 Fulcrum during Operation Desert Storm.Ī snapshot from the doorstep of oblivion, the photo is a reminder that the game of single combat played by Rico and Mole, and by fighter pilots ever since the First World War, is the ultimate one. Pilots like Rodriguez don’t romanticize such exploits. It was the final splash of light on his retinas, probably arriving too late for his brain to process before being vaporized with the rest of his corporeal frame. This image recalls a kill registered by Rodriguez, who goes by Rico, and his wingman, Craig Underhill, known as Mole, during the Gulf War.Ī special-operations team combed the Iraqi MiG’s crash site, and this was one of the items salvaged, the last millisecond of incoming data from the doomed Iraqi pilot’s HUD, or head-up display.
Even when it happens, modern fighter pilots are rarely close enough to actually see the person they are shooting at.
Air-to-air combat has become exceedingly rare. It is a startling picture, memorializing a moment of air-to-air combat from January 19, 1991, over Iraq. A small F‑15 Eagle is visible in the distance, but larger and more immediate, filling the center of the shot, staring right at the viewer, is an incoming missile. It is a large framed picture, a panoramic cockpit view of open sky and desert. O ver Cesar Rodriguez’s desk hangs a macabre souvenir of his decades as a fighter pilot.
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