New and improved Hercules aircraft arrives in Afghanistan

[SpArK]

New and improved Hercules aircraft arrives in Afghanistan

A C-130 Hercules prepares for early morning takeoff from Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.​

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — Faster, stronger and smarter, Canada’s newest Hercules aircraft has arrived for combat duty in southern Afghanistan.

“We call it the super-Hercules,” Maj. Brad Wintrup, flight commander of Task Force CANUCK, based at Kandahar Airfield, said Sunday morning, hours after the arrival of a new C-130J.

Ordered by the Harper government three years ago from Lockheed Martin Corp. at a cost of $1.4 billion, Canada began receiving the first C-130Js last summer, under budget and ahead of schedule. The last of 17 stretched versions is expected by the end of 2012.

From the outside at least — other than its swept-back, six-blade propellers — the J model doesn’t look much different from its Hercules cousins the Canadian Forces have been flying for the past 50 years. But Wintrup said the new series flies farther, faster and higher and can carry more while burning less fuel.

Its fully digital cockpit, complete with head’s-up pilot display, looks more like that of a fighter jet, and the new avionics and computerization means the Herc’s minimum crew complement will be reduced from five to three, with the flight engineer and navigator replaced by electronic boxes.

Even the remaining two pilots up front and the loadmaster are less hands-on with the switches and now have more of a monitoring role, said Maj. Wintrup. “The computers do everything,” he said.

With its four Rolls-Royce engines and larger, improved propellers, it can also take off from a shorter strip, which can be made of anything from grass or gravel to hard-packed sand. Its high engines and propellers, tougher landing gear and rubberized “belly tape” enable it to land on relatively punishing terrain.

“It’s designed to take a lot of abuse,” said Maj. Wintrup, who has been a military pilot for 20 years.

A number of coalition countries here already fly the J model, which is used for “tactical uplift,” delivering troops, vehicles, ammunition and other supplies to locations across Afghanistan.


Maj. Wintrup said the Hercules is “ideally suited” for airdrops of both supplies and troops, including special forces.



“It flies beautifully and is very forgiving,” he said. “From a pilot’s point of view, it’s like a giant Cessna,” he added.

A second C-130J will be in Kandahar by the spring, but the Afghan conflict was not the original intention of acquiring the new aircraft, said Lt.-Col. Henri Levasseur, deputy wing commander of the Joint Task Force Afghanistan Air Wing.

He said the Herc is used at home for such situations as evacuations during forest fires and search-and-rescue missions.

Some of the Canadian Forces’ Hercules have been flying since the 1960s, with airframes originally designed for 10,000 hours of flight still in service after 45,000 hours in the air. Those older craft are now being pulled out.

“These aircraft have been pushed way beyond their limits,” said Lt.-Col. Levasseur.

About 90% of the Canadian tactical air squadron’s flying time in Afghanistan is dedicated to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, with missions spread across the country.



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[mnd]

Funny how the Afghans have only AKs and control more territory than NATO.

 

[sohailbarki]

Funny how the Afghans have only AKs and control more territory than NATO.

Afghans have the will which NATO lacks.....