I have mixed feelings on the F-15, and think it might have turned out better if it'd been a lighter fighter, as per Col. John Boyd's specification. I think the F-4 Phantom II was a more impressive engineering achievement.
The F-4 was an impressive engineering achievement only in the sense that it was far overpowered to make up for it being under-winged. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the F-4 and "Happy Phantom" is my daughter's Stack Exchange handle. It is an amazing airplane. But it was as much dumb luck as it was engineering. And none of that is relevant to the role of the F-15 in the United States Air Force, and other air forces around the world.
The F-15 is not the F-35, which is meant to take the light-fighter and air superiority and ground attack and even recon roles. I do not think that a single plane can effectively take on all those roles. Even if the F-4 did!
I see the F-4 Phantom II as much more impressive for a number of reasons, including the facts that it was the first airplane with the capability to perform a self-directed intercept, as well as being extremely versatile (serving with the Navy, Air Force, and Marines), and served much longer than most of its contemporaries.
What a ridiculous metric. All aircraft have non-combat losses; that's the nature of flying a high performance aircraft.
There were almost 1k F-15s built (excluding the Strike Eagle models) for the USAF. Not exactly "small numbers." And the F-15 didn't necessitate the LWFC, that was a budget decision to help protect other aircraft manufacturers.
The F-15 is arguably the second most important fighter the USAF has ever had (the P-51 or P-47 can fight over first). And Boyd has been wrong about many aircraft designs. His fan club hates the way the F-16 turned out, but it too has been incredibly successful by any metric applied.
F-15 have been lost in combat but not air-to-air combat.
I'm a big fan of Boyd, but ... the fact that it's a successful weapons platform -maybe the most successful US fighter of all time, seems good enough for me. Sure the Eagle cost a lot; many successful US aircraft were gold plated -the P-38 Lightning, the SR-71, the F-14. The F-15 is not beloved of Boyd acolytes for its gold plated nature, but it certainly fulfilled the energy and maneuverability criteria.
The F-4 was a successful plane in terms of M-D sales, but I'm not sure it was a good plane. It appeared to be, "hook a bunch of decent turbojets up to a shitty 50s airframe (aka the F3H) and stick a big radar in the nose and a guy in the back seat to guide missiles with the radar." Its success seemed due to lack of better US made alternatives more than anything else; though both Vaught and North American had offerings which could have beat it had they been funded (who knows what skulduggery was involved in killing off those programs). American 2nd and 3rd gen fighters were mostly shit, and F-4's were routinely shot down by 1st gen jet fighters and primitive SAMs in Vietnam. Seemed like the Saab and Dassault 3rd gen offerings were nicer in most ways, and IMO the XF-108 or even a souped up F-106 would have beat the pants off it.
So it's curious that someone who takes Boyd's fighter prescriptions seriously is a Phantom enthusiast, but perhaps there's a reason for that. The part about the Phantom being a more impressive engineering achievement strikes me as somewhat crazy, to be honest, and I don't know what to say about it.
Can you go into who Boyd was, what was so important about the "specifications", and how the F-15 would have been better by following them (or is worse because didn't)?