The commander of US Central Command Air Forces, Lt. Gen. Gary North, said in a statement that he worries “about the health of our aging fleet,” but the continued grounding of the F-15 fleet would not diminish airpower support to operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The F-15E Strike Eagles in the theater are on ground alert. North said he expects the accident “investigation to get to the cause of the accident.” Unnamed officials have speculated that the F-15C that crashed last week came apart in flight.
Facing competition from fast-growing startups, Lockheed Martin is speeding up production of an “affordable, scalable” hypersonic glide body, dubbed the Next Generation Glide Body, the firm said in a June 24 release.