The commander of Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) has said that he would like to field F-15E Strike Eagle and F-15EX Eagle II combat aircraft to help the command meet its commitment to supporting the overall Air Force mission. AFRC commander Lt. Gen. John P. Healy was speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Warfare Symposium, where TWZ is in attendance. Headquartered at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, the AFRC is responsible for three numbered air forces, 34 flying wings, 10 flying groups, a space wing, a cyber wing, and an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance wing. It also has other subordinate units that help to accomplish its total-force missions. Healy was addressing how AFRC is grappling with how best to contribute to the Air Force’s 10-year fighter jet plan, which calls for purchasing more F-15EXs, F-35s, and F-47s, as it aims to have nearly 1,400 combat-coded tactical aircraft in service by 2030. The commander noted that the plan is not only “pretty ambitious” but also that, while it has been submitted to Congress, it is still very much a work in progress. Nevertheless, Healy said that, whatever happens, the Air Force’s future fighter plans will rely heavily on the AFRC. At the same time, this organization is facing upcoming combat aircraft retirements, including the A-10 attack jet, which the Air Force wants to withdraw entirely.

“As the commander of Air Force Reserve Command, I am keenly aware that some of my units are scheduled to divest without any plan of recapitalization,” Healy said. “Some could say I am loud and annoying when it comes to how we can ensure that we can maintain this fighting force,” he added, noting that in certain AFRC units, 100 percent of the airmen are combat veterans, and that he wants to ensure “that talent, that experience, doesn’t walk out the door during a normal, planned divestment.” Healy is hopeful that the historic practice of aircraft divestment without recapitalization, something he said has existed over the last 14 years, is now on the way out. “I think we’re finally at a point where we’re putting a stop to that,” Healy said. “We’re looking at maintaining our classic associations where we have them and recapping as the active duty can. For the remaining fighter units that we have that are divesting or scheduled for divestment, our full expectation is that we’re going to recap those with new weapons systems.” There’s no doubt that many of the AFRC’s planned divestments are badly needed, with upward of 80 percent of the command’s fleet now being considered “legacy.” Healy continued: “You know, it’s code for old. Some of these airplanes need to be divested, but we also need to ensure that we are proportionately, concurrently fielded with new equipment.”

That’s where the F-15E and F-15EX could come into play. “For every one of these A-10 units that are going away, I’m looking at if there’s a means by which we can get an F-15 unit behind it, whether it’s a Strike Eagle or an EX.” Meanwhile, Healy said he’s also “pressing hard” to ensure that ARFC units divesting from the F-16 will be backfilled with F-35 stealth jets. “We’ve got that combat capability,” Healy added. “We’ve got that combat experience. We need to leverage that.” The AFRC boss also made the financial case for continuing to re-equip his command’s squadrons with new (or, failing that, newer) equipment. According to the Air Force’s own factsheet, the AFRC provides around 14 percent of the total force within the service, while consuming only around four percent of the total manpower budget. “My job is to constantly remind the programmers and remind the chief and the secretary of the value proposition, the advantage of the Reserve, because at the end of the day, we’re providing a little bit more money that we can reinvest into other things as well.” Healy said that, when it comes to operating the F-16, an AFRC squadron does that “$12 million cheaper than the active duty can.” The savings on F-15 units would be even more compelling, Healy argued, with an AFRC Strike Eagle squadron working out as $28 million cheaper than the active-duty equivalent, or $24 million in the case of the F-15EX.

There remains a question, however, around just how feasible it might be for the ARFC to get the F-15E or F-15EX. For all their undoubted capabilities, these types are both in short supply and high demand. The Air Force’s planned F-15EX numbers have fluctuated repeatedly over the last few years. Under the Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal, the Air Force’s program of record is now set to grow from 98 to 129 aircraft, with the addition of at least one more squadron, which will be converting from the A-10. Originally, the Air Force had a minimum number of 144 F-15EX aircraft to replace the F-15C/D force. Some of the Eagle units have switched to other platforms since then, but units that fly A-10s, F-16s, and even F-15Es could end up getting F-15EX if the service chooses to go such a route. It seems quite possible that further growth of the program could occur, and that would seem to be a prerequisite if the ARFC is to get the Eagle II as well.

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Many of the savings that the AFRC makes are a result of the efficiencies that are baked into its ‘business’ practices. Of the 67,000 airmen that make up the command, 14,000 are full-timers. “Those full-timers are the ones that keep the lights on day-to-day,” Healy continued. Our business model is such that a typical unit will have 25 percent full-timers, and they run that unit for 28 days of the month. It’s only that one weekend a month that we’re at 100 percent — full strength. So those cost savings, right there, are what allow us to realize benefits. It adds up when we start putting it into big numbers like that.” Whether examples of the F-15E Strike Eagle or F-15EX Eagle II end up on Air Force Reserve Command ramps remains to be seen, but in Lt. Gen. John P. Healy, that component has a strong advocate for making that happen.

something very cursed about a commander talking about his unit in terms of “business models”. I’ll refer back to my earlier comment - “the US should just dissolve the Army [well, the Air Force in this case] and start letting people form up Landsknecht companies at this point, clearly they yearn for the Great Age of Mercenaries”

The US military has this very weird thing going on where they have National Guard and Reserve unit equivalents of basically every branch, except the “main” military is so depleted that basically any moderately-sized war inevitably ends up involving those units, which one would normally expect to only come into play in like a WW3 mass mobilization scenario.

This can end up really skewing people’s perception of how well equipped the US military actually is - for example, if you look at the ground branch’s Brigade Combat Teams, the Army has 14 infantry, 11 armored (tanks + Bradley IFVs) and 6 Stryker (wheeled APC) ones. Now, I’d say that for the most well-funded military in the world, having a mere 55% rate of mechanization is still pretty embarrassing (the Soviets were pretty much fully mechanized by the '70s, with the exception of the VDV, but that wasn’t a question of not being able to make enough APCs/IFVs for them, just that their nature as airborne forces made it pointless to outfit them with vehicles that they couldn’t actually bring into battle - and they’d eventually address that problem with the BMD series anyway), but the particular imperial nature of the US military does impose some constraints (it’s as if their whole military is the VDV, aside from a handful of units mostly permanently stationed in Europe, Korea, and CONUS itself, everything else has to be able to be rapidly redeployed across the world - which effectively prevents them from ever being proper mechanized units, as they’d simply never be able to bring their vehicles with them in practice).

However, when we consider the Army and National Guard together (the Reserve only has support units, so they’re not part of this), we get 34 infantry, 16 armored, and 8 Stryker BCTs - and the rate of mechanized units drops to 41%.

This can also be seen in individual equipment - Westerners love to jack themselves off about how much better equipped their infantrymen are compared to the Chinese and Russians, except in reality most NATO militaries are absolutely tiny (obviously equipping an army of like sub-10k guys with nice shit is one thing, extending that to 100s of thousands is another), and the one military that isn’t - the US - has a small “main” component and a whole bunch of National Guardsmen, who very much aren’t rocking the latest top-of-the-line gear (people genuinely believe the entire US military is going in with decked-out M4s, when there’s some units probably still fielding fucking stock M16A2s)