The Pentagon is deploying dozens of F-15Cs in Turkey, officially to fight the war against the Islamic State. The problem is that ISIS does not own any aircraft: this means that the real opponent will be Russia. It is clear that the role of American fighters, armed exclusively with air-to-air missiles, will be to escort the other planes engaged in raids in Syria.
Just in these hours, the Turkish base of Incirlik is carrying out the redeployment of fighters, officially to "guarantee the security of NATO allies". The F-15, armed with eight air-to-air missiles of different radius (but the dogfight was not considered obsolete?) Will strengthen the Turkish-Syrian border, intercepting the Damascus aircraft that, periodically, cross over into Ankara territory. But it is absolutely unlikely that such an air force has been risked only to intercept the battered Syrian aircraft. The F-15, almost certainly, will have the task of escorting the bombers committed against ISIS in the vicinity of the Syrian regime's forces and Russian warplanes.
The Air Force F-15 in Turkey will be the first pure "dogfighters" that the US will have in the Region. The Pentagon has redeployed several platforms such as F-22, F-16, A-10 and B-1: these also carry bombs and air-to-ground missiles. The F-15, on the other hand, only carry weapons for air-to-air combat. It should be noted that the F-15C have never been deployed in Afghanistan, nor in Iraq. The war in Syria is different.
The 12 last October the Russians deployed a Sukhoi Su-30 interceptor fighter force in Syria to escort all the aircraft engaged in the Arab Republic. It should be noted that the Russians, in the official statement, spoke of the interceptor fighter and not of its 'M' variant, which also carries out the task of precision fighter. From the Kremlin they reiterated the need to escort the bombers, but even then we wondered against which enemies. It seemed clear that the opponents would have been the coalition planes, certainly not the Islamic State which, as we know, at most owns commercial drones and a few helicopters (obviously stolen from loyalist troops).
Withdrawing the USS Theodore Roosevelt from the Persian Gulf, the United States no longer has the 65 fighter planes that until the end of last September participated in the raids in Syria and Iraq. The Russian interceptor fighters, until today, were rulers of the sky (although in fact there is no no-fly-zone). The arrival of the F-15 will once again change the Syrian scenario: their only goal is Russian fighters.
(photo: US Air Force)
