Why is the F-15EX Eagle II Faster Than Both F-35 and F-22 Fighter Jets

The US Air Force has two of the most advanced fighter jets ever built. The F-22 Raptor. The F-35 Lightning II. Both are 5th generation stealth machines. Both cost hundreds of millions of dollars each. And yet, a 50-year-old design just beat them both in speed. Not by a little, by a lot. The F-15EX Eagle II hits Mach 2.5. The F-22 tops out at Mach 2.25. The F-35 can barely reach Mach 1.6. How does an older plane, built on a design from the 1970s, outrun both of America's most expensive and most advanced jets? The answer will change how you think about fighter jets forever. Here is what makes this even more interesting. The F-15EX is not just fast. It carries more weapons than the F-35 and F-22 combined. It just received a massive order expansion from the US Air Force. And some of the world's top defense analysts are now calling it one of the most valuable jets in the entire fleet. So stick with us, because by the end of this video, you are going to understand exactly why speed, firepower, and smart engineering still win the day. Welcome to Jet Insight. Setting the stage, why speed even matters. Before we get into the F-15EX, we need to talk about something basic. Why does speed matter in a fighter jet? In the early days of jet combat, speed was everything. Whoever got to the fight faster, climbed faster, and escaped faster, won. That was the whole game. Then something changed. When stealth technology came along, military thinkers started to believe that being invisible was more important than being fast. If the enemy cannot see you coming, does it even matter how fast you are flying? That idea drove the development of the F-22 and the F-35. Both jets were built around stealth as the number one priority. Speed was secondary. Payload was limited. Everything was shaped around not being detected. And for a while, that made perfect sense. But here is what no one talks about enough. Stealth costs speed. Every coating, every curve, every internal weapons bay that makes a jet harder to detect also makes it harder to fly fast. The F-35 is one of the most sophisticated aircraft ever built. But its top speed of Mach 1.6 is slower than jets that were flying in the 1970s. That is not a flaw in the design. That is a tradeoff. A very intentional one. The question is, is that tradeoff always worth it? The US Air Force looked at that question, and their answer led directly to the F-15EX. Drop a comment below. Let us know what you think is more important in modern combat. Speed or stealth? Where the F-15 came from? A fighter born to dominate. To understand why the F-15EX is so fast, you have to go back to where it all started. The year was 1972. The original F-15 Eagle took its first flight, and from day one, it was built with one goal in mind. Air superiority. Not bombing runs. Not stealth. Not electronic warfare. Just one mission. Own the sky. McDonnell Douglas designed the F-15 around the most powerful engines available at the time, combined with an airframe light enough to let those engines do their job. The result was a jet that could climb faster, turn harder, and fly higher than almost anything else in the air. The design worked. The F-15 has never lost an air-to-air engagement. Not once. In over 100 confirmed kills across multiple decades and multiple conflicts, no enemy aircraft has ever shot down an F-15 in a dogfight. That is not luck. That is engineering. But here is what really matters for our story today. That original F-15 airframe, the bones of that 1972 design, was built with so much structural strength that engineers realized something remarkable decades later. There was room to grow. The airframe could handle more weight, more technology, and more powerful engines without losing its core performance. That is an extremely rare quality in aircraft design. Before we dive deeper, please take a second to like this video and subscribe. Boeing took that airframe and asked a simple question, what happens if we take everything we have learned in 50 years of aviation and put it inside this proven design? The answer was the F-15EX Eagle II. What makes the F-15EX so fast, the real numbers? Here is where it gets really exciting. The F-15EX does not just beat the F-35 and F-22 in speed, it beats them by a wide margin. Let us put those numbers side by side. The F-35 Lightning II, Mach 1.6, that is roughly 1,200 mph. The F-22 Raptor, Mach 2.25, around 1,500 mph. The F-15EX Eagle II, Mach 2.5, almost 1,900 mph. Now, what makes those numbers possible? Two GE F-1, 10 GE 229 engines. Each one produces 29,500 pounds of thrust. Together, they push out nearly 60,000 pounds of combined thrust. That is more raw power than almost any other fighter flying today. The F-35 has one engine. Powerful, yes, but one engine. The F-22 has two engines, but they were tuned more for supercruise, meaning sustained supersonic flight without afterburners, than for outright top-end speed. The F-15EX was not designed to sneak up on anyone. It was designed to get there first, hit hard, and be gone before the enemy has time to react. And unlike the F-35, which has to carry its weapons inside the fuselage to protect its stealth profile, the F-15EX carries its weapons on the outside. That means it can carry a lot more of them. How many more? Up to 22 air-to-air missiles in a full loadout. The F-35 in stealth mode carries just 4-6. Even in its maximum configuration, it tops out at 16. The F-15EX does not just win on speed. It wins on firepower by a landslide. The stealth trade-off nobody talks about. Now here is the part that surprises most people. The F-22 and F-35 are slower than the F-15EX for a very specific reason. And it is not because Boeing or General Electric were better engineers than Lockheed Martin. It is because stealth and speed pull in opposite directions. Here is how that works. Stealth technology requires a very particular shape. The aircraft's body has to deflect radar waves rather than bounce them back. That means smooth, carefully curved surfaces, no sharp angles that face the wrong direction, and no weapons hanging off the wings where radar can bounce off them. Those design requirements create drag. Aerodynamic drag. The kind of drag that slows a jet down. The F-22 deals with this better than the F-35, which is why it is faster. But even the F-22 could not match the raw top speed of the F-15EX because the stealth shaping still limits how efficiently it cuts through the air at maximum thrust. The F-15EX has none of those limitations. Its airframe was never designed around stealth. It was designed purely around performance, lift, thrust, and speed. Without the stealth trade-off, the engines can do exactly what they were built to do. Push that aircraft as fast as physics will allow. Mach 2.5. Roughly two times the speed of a rifle bullet traveling through air. That is not an older jet falling behind. That is a proven design operating at its absolute peak. And here is the next thing that will surprise you because this is where the F-15EX story gets even bigger. The brain behind the brawn. Technology that changed everything. Speed without intelligence is just a fast machine going nowhere useful. What turned the F-15EX from a fast airplane into a next-generation combat platform is what Boeing put inside it. The jet is equipped with the Advanced Display Core Processor 2, also known as the ADCP2. This computer runs at 87 billion operations per second. To put that in perspective, that is faster processing power than what most fighter jets were flying with just 10 years ago. That computer ties together radar systems, weapons systems, targeting systems, and electronic warfare tools, all in real time. The pilot gets a complete picture of the battlespace without having to flip between different screens or systems. The cockpit itself is built around wide-area displays that are easy to read even under high g-force stress. The controls follow modern fly-by-wire systems, meaning the aircraft responds to pilot input with extreme precision. And then there is the survivability system, the EPOS, Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System. This electronic warfare package detects radar locks, missile launches, and jamming signals, then automatically responds to protect the aircraft. It is one of the most advanced self-protection systems ever installed on a fighter jet. So yes, the F-15EX does not have stealth coding, but it has something else. It knows when it is being targeted, and it knows to fight back electronically. That changes the conversation completely. This is not just a fast plane. This is a flying supercomputer, with engines that could chase down almost anything in the sky. How the Air Force is using the F-15EX right now. Here is what makes all of this more than just impressive numbers on paper. The U.S. Air Force is putting real money behind the F-15EX. Real commitment. Real expansion. The original plan called for 98 aircraft. That number has now been pushed to 150 jets. The Air Force is accelerating the program, speeding up deliveries, and getting these aircraft into the hands of combat pilots as fast as possible. As of late 2025, F-15EX aircraft are operational at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, one of the premier testing and operational hubs in the entire Air Force. The 40th Flight Test Squadron and the 53rd Wing are running these jets through some of the most demanding test programs in the service. And the Portland Air National Guard Base has already received its first deliveries. The Guard, made up of citizen soldiers and airmen who serve their country part time while living full-time in their communities, is now flying one of the most capable jets in history. That is a tribute to the professionalism and dedication of the men and women who serve in the U.S. Air Force. Whether active duty or guard, these are some of the finest aviators in the world. And they now have a machine that matches their skill. The F-15EX is also being looked at for something completely new, electronic warfare. In 2024, the Air Force began exploring using the Eagle II as an electronic attack platform, similar to the EA-18G Grawler used by the Navy. Equipping the F-15EX with next-generation jammer pods could turn it into a platform that suppresses enemy radar and air defense systems, clearing the path for stealth jets like the F-22 and F-35 to move in undetected. Speed. Firepower. Electronic warfare. All in one aircraft. How the F-15EX works with, not against, stealth jets. Here is something most people get wrong about the F-15EX. It is not competing with the F-22 and F-35. It is working alongside them. Think of it like a football team. The F-35 is the quarterback, precise and smart. The F-22 is the linebacker, fast and powerful. The F-15EX is the wide receiver, blazing downfield before the defense even turns around. The stealth jets go in first. Invisible. Hitting targets no other aircraft can reach. Then the F-15EX follows, carrying the heavy weapons, the long-range missiles, sustaining the fight longer than either stealth jet can alone. Three aircraft. One unstoppable team. The future. Hypersonic weapons. And what comes next. The F-15EX was not just built for today. It was built for what is coming next. The airframe is being prepared to carry hypersonic weapons. Missiles that travel at Mach 5 or faster. No other current fighter has the structural capacity to handle those kinds of weapons the way the F-15EX does. Its payload capacity of up to 29,000 pounds gives it room that smaller, lighter jets simply do not have. The US military has always done this, taken proven platforms and made them better over time. The B-52 has been flying since the 1950s. The M1 Abrams has been rolling since 1980. The F-15EX carries that same legacy forward, built right from the start, still relevant decades later. Putting it all together, the final answer. So, why is the F-15EX Eagle too faster than both the F-35 and the F-22? Because it never had to choose between speed and stealth. It chose speed every time. The F-22 and F-35 trade raw performance for invisibility. That is a smart trade for their missions. But the F-15EX was built on a different foundation. Pure air superiority, maximum thrust, and no aerodynamic compromises. Twin engines pushing 60,000 pounds of combined thrust. A clean airframe built for performance. The result is Mach 2.5, a number neither stealth jet can match. Newer does not always mean faster. Sometimes, a proven design pushed to its absolute best is still the one leading the pack. That is American engineering. That is what the US Air Force flies. That is why the F-15EX Eagle too outpaces both the F-35 and F-22. And why it still matters. If you enjoyed this, hit that like button and subscribe to Jet Insight. It keeps content like this coming your way. We will see you in the next one.