Marines' new KC-130J beings VX-1 op eval
NAVAIR News Release
Press Release Number: EPX200310151
Release Date: 10/15/2003
By BILL SWANSON NAS Patuxent River Public Affairs Department
PATUXENT RIVER NAVAL AIR STATION, MD-Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 1 and its guest contingent of nearly three dozen Marines from MCAS Cherry Point, N.C., have begun the three-month-long operational test evaluation of the Marines' new KC-130J Hercules tanker and medium-sized transport aircraft.
According to VX-1's Marine Maj. Rick Uribe, the KC-130J operational test director, the two brand new KC-130Js currently assigned to VX-1 will undergo some 270 flight hours in a three-phase program that will operationally test the aircraft's basic and air refueling capabilities under the full range of missions and capabilities assigned to the KC-130J. These are divided into five general areas: aerial refueling of fixed-wing as well as rotary aircraft; rapid ground refueling of aircraft, ground vehicles and fuel dumps; aerial delivery of equipment and Marines; low-level operations; and what are called "temporary landing zone operations," which basically means operating on and from non-standard runways and airfields, and known in the military shorthand as "dirt" landings and operations.
These tests will all be conducted under a variety of conditions, both with and without the relatively new night-vision goggle systems aviators have been using for several years, as well as in several climatic conditions including very cold weather, Uribe said. For these reasons the testing program will be done in several locations.
Recently, Uribe, a native of Hacienda Heights, Calif., who has been in the Marines for 14 years, and the other 38 members of his team flew the two KC-130Js to NAF El Centro, Calif., for several weeks of testing of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft aerial refueling as well as rapid ground refueling systems.
For the second phase, the group will be augmented by an additional 20 Marines from Camp Pendleton, Calif. The unit will reposition the "Hercs" to Castle Air Force Base, Calif., where they will test the aircraft's aerial delivery of equipment and people, "dirt" temporary landing zone operations, and low-level work. Finally, the detachment will return to NAS Patuxent River in mid-November for the third and final phase of the test program, which will cover long-range navigation issues as well as cold-weather operations. Because the weather here is unlikely to be cold enough for test purposes, the two Hercs will be flying to stations and bases in Keflavik, Iceland, and in Europe, as needed, Uribe said.
Uribe and another Marine KC-130J pilot, Maj. Rob Winston, are permanently assigned to VX-1; the other 37 members of the team recently arrived here from Cherry Point. They include five more pilots, seven air crew, 22 maintainers and three civilian analysts. The group has temporarily "commandeered" VX-1's Line Shack (newly renovated by the Pioneers, and their "pride and joy") as its office.
Uribe summarized the operational test program his group is conducting as the full range of capabilities a KC-130J is expected to perform when it is deployed to a standard Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable). An MEU(SOC) normally will have two such KC-130Js attached to it, he said.
Although there are often half a dozen or more C-130s stationed at Pax River at any given time, the two KC-130J models now headquartered at VX-1 have side numbers 381 and 382, and are fairly distinctive. First, they are virtually brand new, having come off the Lockheed Martin assembly line in 2003, and they look it, inside and out. The only thing missing is the "new car smell."
The planes feature the new "all-glass cockpits" with the clean, Honeywell-designed instruments panels and displays that eliminate dozens of dials, switches and gauges, and replace them with half a dozen computer monitors and displays. In addition, they have the latest heads-up displays for the pilots, each of which displays the core of flight information - airspeed, altitude, heading, pitch-and-roll, and so on. Uribe said a pilot can take off, fly and land the new KC-130J using the HUD without ever having to take his eyes off the view out the front window.
Each plane has been upgraded to include four Allison AE2100D3 engines, the same kind of engines that power the Marines' V-22 Osprey. While this feature isn't apparent by sight, the propellers are: Each plane has the new state-of-the-art six-bladed, curved, composite propellers made by Dowty Propellers of Gloucester, England. Between the new engines and the new propellers, the Hercs have about 30 percent more thrust than the venerable legacy aircraft (the C-130 first flew 49 years ago, and has lasted more than twice its predicted service life).
When configured in its tanker mode, the KC-130J can carry about 57,500 pounds (8,455 gallons) of offload capacity fuel in wing tanks and external tanks, as well as an additional 24,392 pounds (3,600 gallons) in a specially configured, removable internal fuselage tank. This fuel can be transferred at a rate of about 300 gallons per minute, and at a significantly higher airspeed than legacy models.
The only "old" things on the entire aircraft are the air refueling pods themselves. Over the past several years, Pax River and Lockheed Martin have been testing and evaluating a new "state-of-the-art" aerial refueling pod system as recently as last year, but after several years of on-again, off-again work, Lockheed withdrew the new pod system because it was unable to solve various glitches and problems with the new system. The KC-130Js went back to the older fuel pods, though Lockheed and the Navy were able to quickly upgrade the pods' software to bring it into line with the rest of the KC-130J's avionics and engineering.
Over the next decade the Marine Corps is scheduled to receive a total of 51 of the new KC-130J models to replace its legacy KC-130F/R models, some of which have been in operation since the 1960s.
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