Can a Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) MC-130J Commando II cargo aircraft land on water? Wave testing of modifications that flip the Air Drive Particular Operations Command’s (AFSOC) clandestine cargo airplanes into amphibious plane able to water takeoffs and landings is presently underway, based on a prime command official.
From an engineering standpoint, a C-130 airframe most likely isn’t the primary plane one would begin with when designing an amphibious airplane, admitted AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. James Slife whereas talking at an Air & House Forces Affiliation occasion Wednesday.
“However the C-130 is the ingredient that we’ve got within the cabinet,” Slife mentioned. “We’ve received a fairly compelling digital design that’s going to permit us to show any massive physique of water right into a touchdown zone the place we will insert and extract particular operation forces and tools and different issues that may trigger dilemmas for our adversaries.”
AFSOC will start integrating the modifications, often called MC-130J Commando II Amphibious Functionality (MAC), onto plane in 2023, Slife mentioned.
“It will likely be a field-installable modification package,” Slife added. “It received’t be each airplane, it received’t be on a regular basis. It will likely be a functionality that’s out there to the fleet.”
AFSOC depends on the MC-130J to insert and extract commandos, in addition to for resupply missions and refueling its helicopters and tilt-rotor plane.
The plans, nonetheless, is not going to embrace amphibious modifications for gunships due to points involving weight and heart of gravity, Slife mentioned.
Like a rising variety of packages, MAC is the results of a digital design course of. Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), for instance, turned to digital improvement to expedite improvement of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber.
“We’ve received a one hundred pc digital design,” he mentioned. “We began out with a variety of digital designs. We ran by a sequence of testing to determine, will we need to do a catamaran, a pontoon, a hull aplique on the underside of the plane. We went by all of the iterations of that. We settled on a design that gives one of the best tradeoff of drag, weight, sea state efficiency.”
Whereas Slife didn’t elaborate on what the design included, he did say the modifications wouldn’t flip the MC-130 right into a straight floatplane.
“It should have the flexibility to land each on land or water,” he mentioned.
To this point, the amphibious modification functionality has carried out because the digital design predicted, he added.
AFSOC is on observe to have a fleet of 57 MC-130Js by 2025.
The C-130, constructed at Lockheed Martin’s manufacturing unit in Marietta, Georgia, holds the report for the longest steady manufacturing run of any navy plane, in accordance to the producer. The Hercules first flew in 1954.
