The Air Force Has Now Ordered 120 F-15EX Fighters. Boeing Owed It 33 by April and Had Delivered 22 by September

A new $2.38 billion contract fills the order book while a Pentagon report shows the jets that were due in early 2026 now arriving as late as May 2027.

The US Air Force now has 120 F-15EX Eagle II fighters under contract, after a $2.38 billion order for 22 more on Sept. 29, 2026. That is 120 sold, not 120 built.

Boeing’s latest published count is 22 delivered, announced in early September. In April, a Pentagon report put the tally at 18 delivered against a contractual requirement of 33.

We found no newer count as of Nov. 1, 2026. Boeing says more jets will follow through the end of the year.

A 15-Week Strike, and What the Pentagon Says Came After It

The source for the gap is the Pentagon’s own program paperwork, the F-15EX Modernized Selected Acquisition Report, dated April 21, 2026. It says the International Association of Machinists strike at Boeing St. Louis, from Aug. 4 to Nov. 17, 2025, stalled the production line.

Deliveries to the Oregon Air National Guard resumed that December, Stars and Stripes reported. The damage did not end there.

The report calls the schedule slip “a direct consequence” of the strike, “compounded by the prime contractor’s subsequent failure to meet production recovery goals.” It describes the Lot 3 delays as “unrecoverable.”

It also lists a second problem: parts. Shortage risks for Lot 2 and later include Elbit cockpit displays and heads-up displays, GE F110 engines and Collins cartridge- and propellant-actuated devices.

Orders, meanwhile, ran on a different clock. Reconciliation money that went unspent by Oct. 1 faced an 8.3 percent cut, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported, so the Lot 7 deal landed two days before the deadline.

120 Sold, 22 Handed Over: The F-15EX Count

The 120 stacks up across seven lots: 8 in Lot 1, 12 in Lot 2, 12 in Lot 3, 24 in Lot 4, 24 in Lot 5, 18 in Lot 6 and 22 in Lot 7. Air & Space Forces estimates Lot 7 at about $108 million a jet, without the GE engines the Air Force buys separately.

The count rose from 18 on April 14 to 22 in early September, or four jets in about five months. Boeing’s post on the 22nd jet is the newest tally we could find, and Boeing is working toward two aircraft a month.

Jet No. 22 is also the first of Lot 3, which Boeing was contractually required to finish in early 2026. The report projects only six of those 12 by the end of 2026, which by our math would put the running total near 27.

Its schedule table forecasts the last Lot 3 jet for May 2027. By our count, starting at No. 22, that jet is No. 33, more than a year after the 33 were due.

In fairness to Boeing, the report’s fielding plan expected a fleet of 22 by the end of fiscal 2026, and Boeing’s count reached that. The same plan then needs 39 by the end of fiscal 2027 and 59 a year later.

Simple arithmetic shows the scale of what is left. On the September count, 98 aircraft on contract remain undelivered. At two jets a month, a rate Boeing is still working toward, that is 49 months.

The milestone that formally slipped is full operational capability, tied to the delivery of jet No. 44. Against a July 2027 threshold, the report forecasts January 2028 in one section and February 2028 in another.

Kadena Has Been Waiting for Its Eagles Since Spring

The delay has a physical address. Kadena Air Base on Okinawa is due 36 F-15EXs to replace 48 older F-15C/D Eagles, and the first were once expected between March and June 2026.

Instead, the base runs on rotations. In late October, F-15Cs from the 122nd Expeditionary Fighter Squadron joined F-22s from the 525th at Kadena, still waiting on its permanent jets.

Published arrival dates differ, so here is who says what. The report says overseas jets must ferry in groups of two to four, pushing first fielding to at least the first quarter of fiscal 2027, or October to December 2026.

An Air Force spokesperson told Janes in September the first jet would deploy by the end of 2026. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink has said 2027, with the full complement in 2028, according to Air & Space Forces.

Air Force photo captions say arrivals begin in fiscal 2027, a window running from Oct. 1, 2026, to Sept. 30, 2027, which covers both first-arrival dates. No exact day has been published that we could find.

The first Kadena jet, EX-22, left St. Louis on Aug. 28 for final preparations at Portland Air National Guard Base in Oregon. Air & Space Forces’ Oct. 28 report still had it due to fly on to Okinawa after that work.

The Plan Is for 268 Jets, and Congress Has the Final Say

The order book is meant to grow far past 120. Breaking Defense reported in April that the plan had jumped from 129 jets to 267, the figure most outlets use.

The Pentagon report says 268: two developmental aircraft and 266 production jets. We found no explanation for the one-jet gap, so we use the report’s number.

Of those, 148 sit in the fiscal 2027 budget request through fiscal 2031. They are a request, not a sale.

The stretch carries its own warning. Extending production into Lots 9 to 12 “forces a major technical refresh,” the report says, replacing the radar, mission computer, electronic warfare suite and engines, and as of April it had no approved cost estimate for the larger buy.

The engine question is already live: in August, the Air Force asked the market for alternatives to the F110 that powers the F-15EX. That request committed no money.

Congress controls the rest. The House-passed defense bill would authorize multiyear F-15EX contracts, but it needed Senate action, and we found no final bill as of Nov. 1. Payments for later years would still depend on appropriations.

Under the stopgap Congress passed in September, running to Dec. 11, Air & Space Forces reported the program starts fiscal 2027 with $115 million against a $2.65 billion request.

The F-15EX ranks seventh on our list of the best fighter jets in the world, and the report says the program is meeting its technical performance thresholds. The trouble is the factory, so the number that matters is the next one Boeing publishes: how many jets it has actually handed over.