Just spotted two F-15e's

[Chris Sykes]

Looks like the F-15e has been given the all clear to fly!

[SkippyBing]

Yeah I think it happened around the end of last week, I think I read about it in Flight however there was no information on whether or not the problem was a one off.

[Chris Trott]

According to the AF Times article I read, they think they've centralized the location of stress and have put in place an inspection & repair regime for all of the aircraft prior to returning them to flight. Fortunately, the F-15Es proved immune to the particular issue as the area in question was beefed up as part of the structure strengthening when they redesigned the airplane to be able to carry all that extra payload and "live" at low level as the original mission called for. They're still doing some more work to make sure they've got it beat, but it looks like it was simply a problem with repeated stress on a point that wasn't originally identified as a problem area. My guess is that with all the changes/addition of electronics over the years, the stress on the area in question was increased and there wasn't really any way to identify it until it broke. Now that they've identified it, they can repair and mitigate any further damage until they can begin retiring the fleet as the F-22As come online. The F-15E however should be fine for quite a few more years according to an F-15E pilot I chatted with who's based with the 48th at Lakenheath.