Air Force to Retain ‘Platinum’ F-15C/Ds Four More Years for Homeland Defense

The Air Force is planning to retain some F-15C/D Eagles, among its oldest fighters, to perform the homeland defense mission at least four more years, the service revealed in a “Long-Term Fighter Force Structure” report submitted to lawmakers earlier this year.

The last airframes of the venerable fighter would be extended from 2026 through 2030.

The report, mandated by Congress in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, requires the Air Force to state its long-term fighter needs and how it plans to achieve them. The document is dated August 2025 but was first reported by Inside Defense in October.

Charts included in the report show the Air Force plans to carry 42 F-15C/Ds as part of its combat-coded total aircraft inventory through 2028, and the last 21 through 2030, at which point the original Eagle will be thoroughly retired.

That stands in contrast to previous plans the Air Force outlined in recent budget requests to phase out the C/D inventory in fiscal 2026

A service official, asked about the extension, said “we expect full divestment of F-15C/Ds in FY2031 when they are replaced by the F-15EX. … Until that time, we plan to maintain the 21 most viable F-15C/Ds at Fresno,” home of the California Air National Guard’s 144th Fighter Wing.

Air Combat Command “is actively managing the fleet to ensure the most viable F-15C/Ds (referred to as Platinum Eagles) remain in service,” the official said.

According to the report, “divestment is nearly complete” of the F-15C/D fleet, but even as the service plans to field new F-15EX Eagle IIs with Active-duty and Air National Guard units in the next few years, “the ‘Platinum Eagle’ fleet remains viable to meet Airspace Control Authority requirements through 2030.”

The airspace control mission requires fighters to rapidly launch, intercept, and identify unidentified or hostile aircraft entering U.S. air defense identification zones, and shoot them down if they pose a threat.

A former Air Force pilot who flew such missions told Air & Space Forces Magazine they typically don’t require hard maneuvering, but “speed is critical” in getting to a point where they can launch missiles at hostile aircraft.

The F-15C/D fleet is being retired because more than 75 percent are in some way performance limited; either in how fast they are allowed to fly or in how much G-loading they can endure, all because of structural fatigue.

Originally, the Air Force intended to replace the fleet with F-22 in the late 2000s, but a truncated buy of Raptors compelled the Air Force to retain the F-15C/D for the air superiority mission. In recent years, the most-capable F-15C/Ds—those with active electronically scanned array radars and other modernized gear—have been withdrawn from RAF Lakenheath in the U.K. and Kadena Air Base in Japan, the two most forward-positioned F-15 units. The Lakenheath Eagles have been replaced by F-35s, and the Okinawa Eagles have been succeeded by a series of deployments of F-35s and F-16s. The plan is to permanently station F-15EXs there when they become available.

The former pilot said the remaining airworthy F-15s “should be able to handle the mission” and would only be called away from that job in case of “a really major national conflict.” In that case, “they may be best left in place.”

The annual report states the Air Force’s overall fighter requirement as 1,558 “Combat-Coded Total Aircraft Inventory,” a new term which the service said gives a better sense of how many fighters it really has. The old term was Primary Mission Aircraft Inventory, but the report explained that the previous term left out about 15 percent of the overall totals, which include aircraft in attrition reserve and backup inventory.

The Air Force has a legislative proposal on Capitol Hill to change the nomenclature and counting rules, a service official said.

The report says that cannibalization among F-15C/Ds is way up and sources for different parts are disappearing. The Air Force has touted F-15EX purchases as urgent because of the rapid pace at which F-15C/Ds have been removed from service.

The Air Force is retaining some of its F-15E Strike Eagles into the 2030s, it said in the report.