C-5 Upgrade Work Continues

The Air Force last week awarded Lockheed Martin $489.4 million towards the company’s Lot 6 work installing new engines and performance improvements on 52 of the service’s C-5 airlifters. Overall, the C-5 Reliability Enhancement and Re-Engining Program has a total estimated value of some $4.5 billion, Lockheed Martin spokesman Chad Gibson told the Daily Report. Already, the company has delivered eight of the newly upgraded airlifters, now in the new C-5M Super Galaxy configuration, to the Air Force, he said. In addition to the RERP updates, the C-5M standard features new cockpit avionics from a separate modernization initiative. The C-5M is “the only true strategic airlifter capable of offering the globe in one flight, unrefueled,” said Gibson. The company expects to deliver the next C-5M to the Air Force on Nov. 19, followed by another in December, he said. The RERP program is scheduled for completion is 2016. (Pentagon’s Oct. 31 list of major contracts) (See also Better Together.)