The End Is Nearing For The F-15, F-16, And F/A-18 Lines

An Air Force F-15 'Eagle' and F-16 'Falcon' fly in formation with a Navy F-14 'Tomcat' and F-A-18 'Hornet' over the Atlantic Ocean during exercise Cope Snapper 2002 at Naval Air Station (NAS) Key West. Cope Snapper is a multi-aircraft exercise that engages dissimilar air combat training with on fighter data link and joint operations with the Navy and Air Force. The members involved in Cope Snapper consist of the 159th Fighter Wing from Louisiana, the 169th AGS McEntire Air National Guard from South Carolina, and the Navy's F/A-18 “Hornet” and F-14 “Tomcat” fighter jets. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Shane A. Cuomo. Wikipedia

Marcus Weisgerber, Defense One: America’s Last Fighter Jet Makers Scramble to Keep Production Alive

The end is nearing for the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 lines unless more orders come in soon.

FORT WORTH, Texas — In the southwest corner of a mile-long assembly plant here, an F-16 fighter jet is slowly coming to life. That plane, being built for the Iraqi Air Force, is far more sophisticated than the first Falcon to come off this production line more than 40 years ago, but it soon could become one of the last.

To the northeast by 575 miles, a similar scene is playing out inside another manufacturing facility. Here it’s the F-15 Eagle and F/A-18 Super Hornet, two more 1970s relics that have been redesigned and modernized heavily over the decades.

Without more orders by the U.S. military or its allies, production of these three planes, which gave America supremacy of the skies for more than four decades, will halt by 2020.

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WNU Editor: There is also the push to finally end the A-10 .... Time to Retire the A-10 (Roman Pyatkov, On Strategy and War).