The engines that power fighter jets are no joke, but what powerplant acts as the beating heart of a F-15 and what kind of is it actually capable of?
The F-15 Eagle is a fourth-generation fighter that still has a relevant part to play in military strategies. This is even although fifth-generation fighters like the F-35 Lightning II and F-22 Raptor hogging much of the limelight. Despite being an old-timer (the first F-15A flight was in 1972), the current F-15EX version is still being produced at Boeing’s facility in St. Louis, Missouri. It says much about the original design of the plane that over fifty years since it first took to the air, it’s still very much a part of the USAF’s strategy.
Among fighter jets, the legendary F-15’s combat record is second to none. In over fifty years of service, it remains a fighter jet that has never been shot down in air-to-air combat and has dispatched a formidable 104 enemy aircraft. Originally built by McDonnell Douglas, the program is now run by Boeing. But these aren’t the only companies involved with the F-15. Pratt & Whitney was the company that supplied the engines for all the earlier variants of the plane. Two Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-100 turbofan engines with afterburners were used to power the initial variants, each engine produced 23,450 pounds of thrust.
For later variants, the planes were fitted with F100-PW-220 or 229 engines, which could produce 25,000 to 29,000 pounds of thrust each.
