ELPYeah its absolutely ridiculous America using its armed forces for what they were designed for, you know fighting people who want to harm America. :rolleyes: 😀
We are fighting people that want to harm America? Haven’t seen a lot of that for all of our effort of flushing $318 million per day down the toilet to occupy useless dirt.
ELPA plan was in place to rewing the E models ( again ) and they were also going to take part in the common cockpit upgrade ( fancy glass cockpit front end ). The H models will now be the only ones of the legacy C-130s getting a glass cockpit upgrade. The recent however on that of course is that the Boeing contract had to be stopped as the people involved in it were also involved in the tanker fiasco which got one person put in prison, some fired etc. Now that the J is available ( all of it’s ability to do legacy C-130 mission sets still not announced ) the J lobby says new airframes are better than any refirb effort. Through all this, it is hard for me to believe we had a shortage of C-130 assets ( even with some of the E model groundings ), when in 2004, a whistle blower announced all the fraud waste and abuse going on with the few C-130s in the Iraq theater being missused by having real world cargo missions bumped to ferry around non war effort contributing VIPs in theater for the day, or in one case, have a flag rank staff member come in from Air Training Command, and have his fini flight take up the use of an airframe for a whole day. So we have a shortage of C-130s for para training support…. yet the ones we have deployed off to a war theater aren’t even being utilized properly. ( And people wonder why we contract so many war support items out …( logistics of all flavors, intel, training, airlift, security in a war theater. where in this case… not all airlift needed…. requires a rear ramp aircraft… we shoot ourselves in each foot rather well. The right had will get their warfighter support one way or another by funding contract activity that in many ( not all ) cases should already be in place as a military function good-to-go…. and the other hand is using other colors of money war profiteering for no defense-need gain. ). We always need airlift, however, a case has to be made to prove you are using the current airframes in a responsible/useful manner. History can’t be changed now, but again, one can make the statement that it seems current worldwide C-130 users, weren’t consulted too much on what a new version of the C-130 would look like, otherwise we wouldn’t have had all of this incredible hassle:
*Numerous pieces of different ground support equipment kit. ( Leading to the famous RAF comment: “It only looks like a C-130”.
*An unwise use of something pretending to be a ( Comercial “Off-The-Shelf” …. “COTS” ) purchase….which in this case had a terrible plan for integrating mil spec C-130 equipment to suit the customer.
*Zero budget planning roadmap: “Here it is.. take this…. it’s new…. you’ll like it….” …. coming from a cabal that hand no understanding of how mil spec sustainment was going to be done once it was pushed on an organization that never asked for it in the first place.
*The fielding process of the Weather J was the poster child for everything wrong with this whole procurement insanity/mafia-gambino stunt. But there were other bad examples.
Where would we be? We would probably be rewinging Es a few years ago and putting glass cockpit kit into legacy aircraft as opposed to fielding a new airframe with still yet to be developed total C-130 capablity and no rewinging of Es and even yet to this date no glass cockpit effort being put in to legacy C-130s as we write all this. Including a sensible roadmap of what the next new build C-130 should look like, well along. Yes this is all water under the bridge. However I don’t agree that people should be patted on the back and think: Thank goodness we have the J model in it’s present form.
F-18E/F, C-130J, V-22, Stryker are all prime examples of how not to procure something. Each has their own bad story to tell about the nasty methods of procurement, fudging of requirements after the fact and other major bad behavior. Where the “oh they are just teething troubles
‘…, doesn’t wash. How would you use limited funds? Procure the proper way?… or let industry and certain bought and paid for congressmen create a rigged game thinking none of the rules apply to them?
ELPInteresting theory. Even more that at the time of having the J pushed on us, USAF had no plan to buy C-130s. It was not on ANY roadmap. USAF did not come out in 1999 and say: “We desperately need C-130s”. They were pushed on them by congress. And then USAF had to suddenly come up with funds to work it into the C-130 SPO which in effect is now managing two very different aircraft under the title of “C-130”. Had USAF actually started needing a C-130, they would have procured it properly. Not congress just buying the J off of the shelf and patting themselve on the back for going along with a criminal form of procurement. We have it now and it is in progress, so part of that is water under the bridge. However, how we got it was highly corrupt, and at the time USAF had better things to do with their very limited funds. NOT have this …. which the airframes were an initial funding freebee given to them by congress… given to them….. where the support and sustainment ….and all the tire patch fixes, USAF had to pick up the tab on. Real smart. History revisionism won’t change the stain on how we got this thing. If it was determined we needed new airframes, the proper process should have been used. This would mean proper R&D and testing to discover, at least, the major fk ups I mentioned.
It isn’t until recently within the last year that Sen McCain ( of who I hate ) did something good and got some legislation put in to keep the Georgia and/or LM bought and paid for congressmen at bay, to where the J program has to follow something at least appearing to look like normal procurement rules. Don’t know if there were actual funds given to USAF for it’s budget, but now USAF has a plan in place to put the sustainment of this thing back into some kind of reality. Almost like finding something labeled “Found on Base” into the logistics sustainment system. :diablo: As it was before, we would still just buy these “off the shelf” as an inspired comercial airframe, and everone did their own thing ( depending on the mission requirement ) to tire patch mil spec stuff to it. Buy luck, things like the Commando Solo psy-ops birds went very well. Other mission sets ( like the weather Js ) a freakin nightmare that is just now seeing the light of day within the last 2 years.
So pretty hard to put a happy smiley face on that and come out years after the fact with: Oh but we need airframes. Now we need airframes but that is only partly because stupid stuff like this ate up funds for a normal procurement process. The common cockpit upgrade for legacy airframes being a completely unrelated event that is a separate albatross hanging around the USAF C-130 SPO due to no fault of their own.
ELPAlso to thank for a contribution to budget problems, are two unwise expeditionary wars that are sucking up lots of cash.
ELPWhich sounds nice. However we still have to see how it does in dirtier envions that the legacy C-130 thrives in. That will most likely involve various tire patch fixes that are an afterthought because whole batches of them were put into service without proper complete testing. You are probably right. However I would give that a few more years. And the thing, even with inflation, is a pricey airframe.
ELPYeah well. I like it very much when teamed with a real air superiority fighter. For a small force someone might think the cost of ownership of F-16s compared to the SH looks pretty good. Until you dump a few F-16s over the fleet life in said air force. There just went your cost savings on the F-16 purchase. Just on general flying safety ( mishaps per 100,000 hours be damned ) if you buy 24 F-16s and 24 SHs. I would lay down money that you will have more of those SHs still around after the end of 20-25 years.
SH with the AESA bling bling on it, should be awesome for all kinds of strike/CAS work. Highly recommended I would think.
Want to cut off and chase down a fast fighter? Better get something else. Want to break off and/or not engage another fighter when you are Winchester on ammo? Better get something else. :p
ELPHow would it not have just as good a take-off & landing performance?
Apparently Lockheed has been flat out lying if that’s the case……
It has excellent raw performance running off of a hard runway. Better cruise speed, better fuel economy, carry weight to a higher altituded etc. etc.
I have seen almost a dozen legacy C-130s do an assault landing into a garbage airfield with matting put down for it. High angle of attack approach and when the aircraft impacts ( pretty firm )… the wings cycle up and down like a bird a few times from the impact, Reverse thrust creating huge clouds of red fog, peanut husks kicked up into the air ( it was a peanut plantation )…. lots and lots of dirt. Swing around drop off troops and line up at the other end for an immediate take off. Lots of activity, dirt, minute FOD-by-any-other-name, in the air. Work for a bruiser of an airplane. Now, what I am curious after all this time, with af.mil always showing awesome photography of every major exercise and other things, why we haven’t seen an event like this captured on camera for all to see? That is the proof needed. Showing that a J can do all the legacy C-130 mission sets. I will wait with great interest for that day. One thing had me interested. I wonder if it is like a Hornet, that when it has a heavy landing on a carrier, it is taken below and all the avionics bays are checked to make sure everything is connected. I would think for the J, they would have to take some effort to harden it. Heck even a C-17 went into a combat environ and landed and took off from a gravel strip. :p
As for LM lieing. Well you can tell when someone in the military industrial complex is lieing. Their mouth is moving. Their job is to sell stuff. How that happens isn’t especially important as long as they have enough paid off congressmen to run interference for them.
ELPAvionics- Awesome
Supply Chain Management/sustatinment -very good
General safety around and on the carrier – very very good
Method in which it was aquired – criminal
Raw airframe performance – bad
Recommend reading old posts on the topic. :p
ELPDon’t know the story now with all of the bread and butter legacy C-130 duties we take for granted and how the J can to that. I know it went to the Herk acadamy at Little Rock but have no clue on how all that went. Hopefully they will get everything in order someday. Too bad none of the core stuff was figured out in real testing, instead of all the lashup and get it out the door with the only thing initially making it appear mission ready was an appropriate paint job for the mission. As you may know the big deal here that goes back and forth like bad-mitten is whether to do another wing replacement on our E models. They have a plan all worked out for that but I think new J buys are going to squash that. Now H models are starting to show extra wear ( all the endless taskings since the end of the cold war )… so the convenient thing of the Boeing advanced cockpit upgrade being thrown into upheaval because of it being connected to people with the tanker fiasco, is that this leaves a bit of an opening for lobbyiests and congressmen from Georgia to keep pushing for C-130J buys. So it looks like eventually we will have to figure out all the ways to do legacy C-130 missions with the J’s. No choice over time? Don’t know. Of course also the thing with the small airlifter contract. Don’t know where we will get the funds for that. So we have a bunch of Es that are becoming unflyable, and Hs that are speeding up to a re-wing effort or something. This is just ONE of many things ( and I know you all are sick of hearing it ), that JSF takes money from. We have so many other airframe,equipment and people program roadmaps in some stage of upset right now. And these are the things that make us good. Not a new manned shooter airframe that …. the way we do strike warfare now, should be at the back of the line for getting money. We are now, as I speak, burning down the USAF to have JSF partly because of JSF cost over time but also the dumb expeditionary wars we are doing which by themselves burn up more than $319 million…… a day.
ELPWell as of 2003, I know some were used when a B-52 with M117s did a wrong offset bombing Godoria Range on the Horn of Africa and took out some Marines ( 1 killed ), and other people in a really bad range mishap. So I know that M117s were at least used by B-52s up till then.
The most tragic incident involving the inadvertent release of a live bomb from a Barksdale B-52 occurred in June 2003. A Barksdale-based B-52 and crew taking part in a training flight at the Godoria Range in the nation of Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, erroneously dropped nine 750-pound M117 unguided bombs on an observation post rather than the target. The blasts killed U.S. Marine Capt. Seth Michaud, a helicopter pilot, and injured eight other U.S. military personnel. In addition, two CH-53E helicopters were destroyed.
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060721/NEWS/60720002/0/NEWS03
ELPI think, with original planning, someone could have made a very successful, out of the box J model. However that didn’t happen. Now they are playing catch up with numerous fixes and mod’s. Where the customer does a lot of testing that should have been done already. We are really really in the era now where the industry and politico_paid_by industry tail, wags the warfighter dog.
ELPUp until recently or still may be in the inventory… still used with the B-52.
ELPIt’s a shame the HAWK doesn’t have a jet turbine on it. Then you could play B-52 with Hound Dog, like the 60’s and fire it up on hot@high airfields to help for better take off performance numbers. :diablo:
ELPThe J only looks like a C-130. Not much common with older C-130s. That is a problem.
Two: It was procured for us anyway using criminal methods. LM built it under the smoke and mirrors of a civil version….. even though there was NO market for it. This intern allowed it to be pulled through congress as an “off the self” buy. USAF NEVER asked for it. It was shoved down their throat by a corrupt congress and industry. Then once it was forced on USAF …. oh no! Guess what? None of the milspec stuff needed for it was properly proto-typed. Not to mention the C-130 SPO and the depot were screwed. Congress in it’s moronic wisdom… thinking it’s a C-130. Instead the logistics support had to be funded… a very DIFFERENT kind of support as it isn’t like a legacy C-130. The Weather Js were the biggest joke a few years back when they had weather J’s hatched. Been to the unit a few times. One side of the flight line is older weather C-130s that could actually do the mission, and the other were the Weather Js….. So you have this USAF Reserve wing with litterally two different kinds of aircraft where the J needs a whole different spares and ground support equipment setup. Real bright. The weather specific avionics and kit were thrown in and didn’t work. So for the longest time you had these airframes that couldn’t do the mission. The Js were also thrown into Guard units early on to lessen the stress on the active service, including some streched dash -30 J models.
Other things because the J wasn’t prototyped….. the fancy engines/and cool prop kicked up FOD into the intake on less than friendly runways that legacy C-130s had no problem with. There is a lot more, but that is a start. They are just NOW after all these years starting to get their head together with a proper way of sustaining this new airframe. A firing squad would be too good for the people that threw this on the USAF. The arrogance of man thinking your improvement for something that works well…. the legacy C-130s…. is so so dramatic. Good example of how the military industrial complex/congress, can screw up things bad. They are only interested in the next sale, not what is good for defense. If there was to be a J, USAF and other interested parties should have done it just like the Joint Strike Fighter. An international effort with lots of input from experienced users of what a new generation C-130 should look like. Including full prototyping and proper testing before putting it into the field.
ELPFrank W and Arthur have far more information on this topic than I do. :diablo:
I have no clue what an L model is.
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