The Air Force transformed a public freeway into a runway over the weekend, landing various tanker, cargo, and special operations aircraft on the road, including the service’s first-ever touchdown of an AC-130J Ghostrider on a U.S. roadway.
Pilots at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., are testing out a new cockpit layout for the C-130H transport plane that will replace its analog gauges with glass multifunction displays and a range of digital upgrades.
Air Force maintainers examining the propellers on C-130H planes used electric arc etching pens to inscribe serial numbers once inspections were complete—and in doing so, likely caused the damage that has forced a grounding of the fleet. That’s the conclusion Air Mobility Command has reached ...
If Secretary Frank Kendall and other Air Force leaders get their way, the service will be retiring older aircraft in the near future as it looks to modernize. Specifically, legacy systems such as the A-10, KC-135, F-16, and C-130H are all primed for the chopping ...
High temperatures and drought across the West are sparking an almost unprecedented operations tempo for Air Force firefighting C-130s and aircrews. C-130s from three Air National Guard wings and an Air Force Reserve wing are flying missions with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System, supporting the ...
The Air Force faces an uphill fight with its plans to cut five units worth of C-130s, largely from the Guard and Reserve. The service, however, says the tactical airlift fleet can afford to absorb some risk and that there could be future lift possibilities ...
A third specially equipped Air Force C-130 joined firefighting efforts in California this week as flames burn in five large fires in northern California. The Modular Airborne Firefighting System-equipped C-130H from the Nevada Air National Guard’s 152nd Airlift Wing began operating out of the former ...
The Air Force is looking beyond the venerable C-130 for tactical airlift missions, saying the airplane no longer meets its needs for a future of dispersed operating locations, which may not have a runway, service leaders told members of the House Armed Services seapower and ...
The Air Force is asking to retire 201 airplanes and buy 91 new ones in its fiscal 2022 budget request, representing a net decrease of 110 airplanes. The fighter fleet would drop by 77 aircraft, and the RQ-4 Global Hawk fleet would be cut by ...
More than 90 citizen-Airmen from the Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Airlift Wing returned from a four-month Middle East deployment on Nov. 18, according to a wing release. The wing’s aircrews completed nearly 5,000 combat sorties, moving 15,000 people and over 10,000 tons of supplies ...
More than 110 Airmen from the Missouri Air National Guard's 139th Airlift Wing recently returned from a deployment to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. The troops, members of the 139th Operations and Maintenance Groups, as well as two of the wing's C-130s, were ...
A C-130H crew landed too quickly, causing the aircraft to oscillate and then overrun the runway before crashing into a concrete barrier in June at Camp Taji, Iraq, destroying the Hercules, according to an Air Force investigation. The C-130H, tail number 94-6706, assigned to the ...