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Home » Axe in Iraq (and Elsewhere) » Hercules’ Newest Labor

Hercules’ Newest Labor

The war in Iraq requires a lot of aer­ial refu­elling and mov­ing a lot of stuff between crappy lit­tle airstrips. No air­plane is bet­ter at both tasks than the ven­er­a­ble C-​​130.
Marine air_3.jpgAfter 40 years of build­ing first-​​generation Hercules for dozens of cus­tomers all over the world, in the mid-​​1990s, Lockheed Martin switched to the new J model, which was sup­posed to be faster, longer-​​ranged and capa­ble of car­ry­ing more cargo and fuel. But J cus­tomers have com­plained that new plane just isn’t as capa­ble or reli­able as the older mod­els. The Air Force took almost a decade get­ting its Js into bat­tle, and now the Marines are fol­low­ing suit. Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 252 has deployed its KC-​​130J tanker-​​transports to Al Asad air­base in Iraq’s Al Anbar province, the type’s first for­eign mis­sion in Marine Corps ser­vice, and the news is good.
The fighter pilots of Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332 rely on the KC-​​130s to extend their legs over west­ern Iraq. So far, 332 has no com­plaints. The refu­el­ers has been on time with the gas, which is more com­pli­cated than it sounds. Tanker crews have to be flex­i­ble and effi­cient to meet the fast-​​movers when and where they can — and in unpre­dictable weather.
Still, the C-​​130J was threat­ened with shut­down when the Defense Department went cost-​​cutting last December. Congress came to the res­cue, but the Pentagon’s clas­si­fied Mobility Study might try again to can­cel future buys. Meanwhile, the mar­ket for second-​​hand first-​​gen Hercules is white hot, and the Lockheed Martin facil­ity in Greenville, S.C. is work­ing full-​​time to recon­di­tion retired C-​​130s for resale to cus­tomers like Poland and Pakistan. Only time will tell if the J model wins the same loy­alty.
–David Axe

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January 30th, 2006 | Axe in Iraq (and Elsewhere) | 18105 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/01/30/hercules-newest-labor/Hercules%27+Newest+Labor2006-01-30+12%3A43%3A45murdoc You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. Byron says:
    January 30, 2006 at 7:02 pm

    Here we go again. We scrapped the C-​​123 tool­ing then des­per­ately wanted more in Vietnam but couldn’t get them — All we could get was newer, more expen­sive, “bet­ter” air­craft that just didn’t work as well.
    And then there are the 50+ year old front-​​line B-​​52s that sev­eral times were to be replaced by newer, more expen­sive, “bet­ter” air­craft.
    Now we are des­per­ately rebuild­ing A-​​10s and early model C-​​130s because the newer, more expen­sive, “bet­ter” air­craft just don’t work as well.
    Oh well, noth­ing new here…

    Reply
  2. Charles says:
    January 30, 2006 at 10:27 pm

    Same deal with the C-5’s, where the tool­ing was destroyed so some other air­craft could win con­tract. Perhaps what we should do is land C-​​17s and C-​​5s into rel­a­tively safe Kurd ter­ri­tory (and/​or Turkey) and ship things in through there instead of using Kuwait-​​Baghdad as our MSR. Might allow us to use the big air­craft closer to deliv­ery point rather than land­ing them in Kuwait and send­ing mate­r­ial over­land by truck through Indian Country.

    Reply
  3. David Axe says:
    January 31, 2006 at 2:35 am

    Charles,
    Sadly, there are only two small run­ways in Kurdistan — one in Erbil and another in Sulaymaniyah. All of the major run­ways in use in Iraq are ones inher­ited from the Iraqi Air Force, so any major change in the air lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion will require some seri­ous investment.

    Reply
  4. Charles says:
    January 31, 2006 at 11:04 pm

    More’s the pity. I fig­ure most of the Iraqi Airforce’s fields are designed for fight­ers, since I doubt they had many heavy bombers or strate­gic air­lift. Thus the biggest run­ways are going to be Baghdad International.
    You do know that C-​​130 and C-​​17 are sup­pos­edly rated for land­ing in aus­tere con­di­tions, and that the MC used the high­way sys­tem to land a C-​​130 dur­ing OIF I?

    Reply

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