Posted on 06/21/2017 4:00:12 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
“C-130 rolling down the strip
Airborne ranger going to take a little trip.
Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door,
Jump right out and count to four.”
>>Special operators have been singing that song for half a century. What an airplane!<<
I’m in LOOOOOVE...!!
Does it have the 30 MM cannon like the A-10?
Still the best, most versatile theater transport in the world. It would be interesting if they deleted the Hellfires and integrated Tomahawk but I guess that would give some other countries verification issues.
It looks like that is an option!
"The icing on the cake though is the C-130J-SOF's ability to turn into an airborne death machine by strapping on a 30mm to its rear-paratrooper door..."
USAF says ‘AC-130J Ghostrider is set to be the most heavily-armed gunship in history, bristling with 30mm and 105mm cannons, AGM-176A Griffin missiles, and the ability to carry Hellfire missiles and GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs’.
Some aircraft are just perfect. The C-130, the C-47, Boeing 737, Bell Jet Ranger, Chinook, etc.
They came off the paper so well-designed that only minor changes keep them current.
Where I live we have orange barrels EVERYWHERE! I could use one of these to get myself airlifted into my drive way! :(
Is what we dreaded ever seeing on a P-3 back in the day. Missions were long enough - refueling us on station would have been a killer.
I could see it working usefully with F-35 and F-22 fighters, as a “missile truck”.
Load it up with long-range armament, have fighters way ahead of it designate targets, and the C-130 sends missiles out to the targets, while the C-130 hangs back out of range of enemy anti-air.
I’ve always loved the Hercules.
Nope, you would need to extensively modify the C-130 or any other aircraft to carry the seven-barrel Gatling that only the A-10 uses. The AC-130s of the USAF already have a smaller 30mm option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk44_Bushmaster_II
Maybe it’s a different cannon than the A-10 uses? I just wondered how you would get something that big mounted sideways in a C-130.
Seems more like a stripped down AC-130 to me...
And there won’t be any aerial resupplies with a 30mm cannon on the ramp...
My father worked on them 50 years ago, I work on parts for them today.
I call it “The traditional Waring family airplane”.
Ah, OK, thanks for the explanation.
This variety is a “bad mamma jamma”.
Semper Fi
With the addition of the Marine Corps’ ISR / Weapon Mission Kit, the KC-130J is able to serve as an over watch aircraft and can deliver ground support fire in the form of Hellfire or Griffin missiles, precision-guided bombs, and eventually 30mm cannon fire in a later upgrade. This capability, designated as “Harvest HAWK” (Hercules Airborne Weapons Kit), can be used in scenarios where precision is not a requisite, such as area denial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harvest_Hawk_KC-130J_with_Hellfire.jpg
You are correct. Some aircraft designs are as close to perfection as it gets, and you named the two best: C-47 (DC3) and C-130. I have flown on both, and, aside from the noise (especially on the C-130), the “honey buckets” on both, they are designed to fly, and fly, and keep on flying.
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