The Air Force’s Hercules schoolhouse at Little Rock AFB, Ark., retired its final C-130E, aircraft 62-1855, in a ceremony at the base. “This airplane . . . has seen it all. Yet, as special as 1855 is, she is not unique for she actually represents the entire C-130 fleet old and new,” said Col. Mark Czelusta, Little Rock’s 314th Airlift Wing commander, during last week’s retirement ceremony. This C-130E served for 47 years. The oldest airframe competing earlier this year in the 2011 Airlift Rodeo at JB Lewis-McChord, Wash., the 314th AW’s flagship earned one of only two perfect inspection scores there. Before the aircraft departed for storage at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., on Sept. 20, the wing christened a newly delivered C-130J as its new flagship. The wing received its first E-model Hercules in 1964. Little Rock continues the training mission with C-130H and C-130J models. (Davis-Monthan report by 2Lt. Mallory Glass)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…