Its not the pilot, crew chief, or Air Forces fault if the older F-15 has a design flaw which comes out with age. The youngest F-15A is what mid late 80's the last was built 20-25 years old. The C came onlone late 80's some of those were remanufactured A's. Now the C was cleared and the E on is a diffrent bird structuraly it was designed for the air to ground role w/out loosing the air to air. You can't blame the ground crew they are trained to maintain within their "scope" or level of training given to them by the Airforce "there all robots" Jack Black. The crew are not trained as areonautical enginers, which possible, if the problem was known they would be able to monitor and take corrective measures to fix or Baind-Aid. Example: the F-111 wing carry through box over time from ACM begins to have micro cracks, the fix after so many hours the aicraft is pulled from front line service and the crews polish that structre till the cracks and sracthes are gone. So whos to blame, only the court can decide that, but I think you may see Boeing bite the sh_t sandwich and settle on a mistake that was made 35 years ago when the aircraft was being designed (remember this plane is old they didnt have the high tech computer models that could put this plane through 30 years of service). So next time you see a crew chief give him or her a hand shake and a thanks for keeping what they didn't design flying. Later be safe