The U.S. Air Force equipped F-15E Strike Eagles in the Middle East with laser-guided rockets to counter drones in roughly one week, the head of the Air Force Test Center said Sept. 16 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.
Brig. Gen. Mark A. Massaro said that nine days after testing began in May 2025, the system—known as the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS)—was being installed on Strike Eagles in theater. “At the end of the first week, we had demonstrated, both in a developmental and an operational sense, that it was a usable capability, and we deployed that capability at the end of the first week,” Massaro said. Maintainers and testers deployed with the equipment to support the fielding.
The APKWS is a laser-guided kit added to Hydra-70 rockets, originally designed for air-to-ground use. The Air Force explored using the rockets in an air-to-air role in 2019, testing the system on the F-16, and for a few years the experiment was considered nothing more than a proof of concept. The system was rushed to F-16s in 2024 and prioritized for F-15Es in 2025, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.
The urgency came from the high cost of shooting down cheap drones with existing missiles. AIM-120 AMRAAMs cost roughly $1 million each, and AIM-9 Sidewinders cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the AIM-9X around $500,000. APKWS rockets cost tens of thousands of dollars.
During Iran’s mass drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13, 2024, F-15Es from the 335th and 494th Fighter Squadrons and F-16s from the 121st Fighter Squadron intercepted drones over Iraq, but many fighters exhausted their air-to-air missiles. Three F-15E crews unsuccessfully attempted to drop laser-guided JDAM bombs on drones.
Integration work for the F-15E began in mid-2025 at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., led by the 96th Test Wing’s Air Force Seek Eagle Office (AFSEO), which had earlier integrated the system on F-16s. Aircrew from the 40th Flight Test Squadron and the 85th and 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadrons flew test missions and conducted live-fire tests. The 53rd Wing and 96th Test Wing deployed to deliver equipment and training.
The Air Force has declined to identify the exact location where the system was first fielded, but officials confirmed it was in the Middle East, part of U.S. Central Command. In 2024, Air Forces Central began equipping F-16s with APKWS to shoot down drones, and a U.S. F-16 scored its first rocket kill of a drone that year.
Massaro called the initiative an example of the Air Force Test Center’s ability to “bridge between raw concept and decisive combat-credible power.”
Sources: Defence Blog · Defence Blog