https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a30705691/f-15ex/?fbclid=IwAR0CDAtg1PB_JIoimR7xM4kJ2MsPOh8EJNSITEVt-4RQxrJanUCK1dNm2xA

After nearly twenty years, the U.S. Air Force is buying brand new Eagles to fly alongside the F-22 and F-35 fighters stealth fighters. Despite a lack of stealth there’s one thing the F-15 can do that the new fighters can’t: carry lots and lots of missiles. The new F-15EX will likely serve as a flying magazine for stealthy fighters, teaming up against adversaries to shoot them down in large numbers.

Comebacks are rare in the world of warplanes. The relentless pace of technological advancement, coupled with the slowness of government bureaucracy, generally means that a fighter jet is often obsolete as soon as it rolls off the production line. One fighter jet that has destroyed this conventional wisdom is the F-15 Eagle.

So if there's enemy interceptors, I'd assume the stealth fighters would peal off and use the F15's as bait?

The F-15's are there for protection.  Stealth is great, as long as they don't see you anyway.  

At least they learned with the 117's that the stealth planes still need to be able to go fast.

My money they'd all be riding new SE F-16's

Would be great for the NORAD mission.  Hate seeing them waste hours on Raptor airframes for that shit.

It's no worse than the thousands of hours we've put on our F-15E/F-16/A-10 flying circles in the skies over Iraq/Afghanistan over the last 3 decades.  Not a whole lot of hours are spent on NORAD missions anyway.  They can also get some valid experience/training with jets that are on alert.

Going with the General Electric F110-GE-129 engines to power these aircraft caught my eye, given the USAF's fleet of F-15C/D/Es are solely powered by P&W F100 variants.

Despite what it says in the Air Force Magazine article linked in the PM story, and other stories like this one in The National Interest, other than a couple test aircraft (and even this may no longer be the case), none of the US Air Force's F-15Es are powered by the GE F110, though the airframe was built to accommodate both types of engines.

Apparently, the choice to go with the F110 was one of cost and expediency, since the F-15EX is derived from the F-15QA-variant, and to certify the F100-PW-220/229 for the airframe would require additional flight test along with the accompanying time and cost.

Training, operations, and maintenance infrastructure is already largely in place for the engine for a good number of F-16s, as well as the B-1B's F101s (from which the F110 and B-2's F118 were derived). However, at a minimum, you will still need new engine support equipment for those units that transition from the F-15C/D to the F-15EX (not to mention for the new electronic bits...)

It will be interesting to see how these aircraft are integrated and utilized.

Seems strange that there would be a need for so much flight testing for the -229.  The F-15E already flies with the -229...these jets can't be all that different.  That said, both motors are great options.

Yeah we could easily just get a couple A319s and fill them to the brim with SDBs for that mission.

Or an A-29 style aircraft.   Or we could not have spent the last few decades wasting our resources in a quagmire that will end in no real change.