The U.S. Air Force is sharply expanding its F-15EX buy, lifting the planned fleet from 129 aircraft to 267 as it looks to strengthen its fighter force while keeping pace with a faster-moving threat picture. The service now has about 25 F-15EX aircraft in inventory, and it wants 24 more airframes in FY27 at a cost of $3 billion.
The shift emerged during a Pentagon press briefing in late April 2026, when officials said the Air Force expects its overall budget to rise about 25 percent to $267.7 billion. The service also plans to increase procurement by about 30 percent and research and development by 27 percent, underscoring how much of the new money is aimed at rebuilding air power rather than simply maintaining it.
The F-15EX is an enhanced version of a long-running fighter, built to stay competitive, lethal and cost-effective as the Air Force continues to pivot toward fifth-generation aircraft such as the F-35. It can carry a substantial payload and is viewed as useful for deterrence and reassurance in the Indo-Pacific, where military planners have been watching China’s air buildup with growing concern.
That regional competition gives the buy a sharper edge today. The Air Force wants to purchase a total of 72 new fighters each year, including F-35A aircraft, but Boeing has been delivering around a dozen updated F-15s annually in recent years. At that pace, the EX program is likely to run into the 2030s, even as the service tries to reverse a long-term trend of a fighter fleet that has grown older and smaller.
The contrast with China is hard to miss. The Chengdu J-20 is expected to reach a fleet size of more than 1,000 aircraft by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, backed by five production lines and a reported pace of one aircraft every eight days, which the article says amounts to roughly 30 to 100 aircraft a year. Against that backdrop, the U.S. decision to nearly double the F-15EX plan is less about nostalgia for an older jet than about buying time, capacity and numbers.
That is the tension in the Air Force’s latest spending plan: it is betting on a mix of stealth aircraft, upgraded legacy fighters and higher procurement rates to steady a force that has been under pressure for years. The question now is not whether the service wants more aircraft. It does. The question is whether the budget and production base can deliver them fast enough to matter.
