The Hercules earned its sea legs in November 1963 when a Marine KC-130F was flown to a first landing on the USS Forrestal (CVA-59) while the aircraft carrier was underway in the Atlantic. Lt. Jim Flatley and Lt. Cmdr. W. W. “Smokey” Stovall were at the controls and completed a series of twenty-one full-stop landings and takeoffs at increasingly higher weights. Successfully operating a large transport from the deck of a carrier was an amazing feat at the time. More amazingly perhaps, the very same aircraft (Navy Bureau number 149798) is still in operational service forty years later and was flown in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom.

Nearly half of the fleet of now-seventy KC-130s currently in the Marine inventory — and nearly three-fourths of the active duty fleet — are KC-130F models that were delivered in 1962. The Marines took delivery of an additional fourteen KC-130R models between 1975 and 1978. The Marine Reserve flies twenty-year-old KC-130Ts. The oldest of these Marine tankers, collectively called Battleherks, have been through four wars, and the service’s continuously high operations tempo has put considerable wear and tear on the entire Marine Corps fleet.

The service developed a requirement for seventy-nine replacement tankers in the mid-1990s. The first new-generation KC-130J was flown for the first time from the Lockheed Martin factory in Marietta, Georgia, in June 2000.

The KC-130J is an improvement over the legacy fleet. Using only wing and external tanks, the aircraft has a 57,500-pound (8,455 US gallon) fuel offload capability while being flown on a 500-nautical-mile radius mission, compared with 38,000 pounds (5,588 gallons) for the current KC-130Fs. The aircraft is also configured to accept a fuselage tank if necessary, which adds another 23,392 pounds (3,600 gallons) of available offload fuel to a mission.

Trials And Tribulations
Initial testing of the aircraft went well. “We tested airland, airdrop, flying qualities, separation of flares, and the differences in our version and the Air Force version,” said Maj. Thomas Kuhn, a KC-130J project officer and one of the test pilots at the Naval Air Warfare Center’s Aircraft Division at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. “That all pretty much went as expected, and we found that the KJ is a great airplane. But our primary mission is refueling, so we focused most of our testing on the aerial refueling system.”

A new microprocessor-controlled, electrically driven, underwing refueling pod designed and built by Flight Refueling Ltd. was to be used on the KC-130J. However, finding the correct combination of software programming and hose reel response, or how well the hose reacted when the receiving aircraft connected with the drogue, presented an unexpected challenge for the new design. “We got close with the FRL pods, but nobody knew how many more software builds it would take to get them to work well,” adds Kuhn. “We had come to a crossroads, and the Marine Corps needed to get the aircraft into the fleet.”

A Two-Part Solution
As a result, the Marines, the Naval Aviation Systems Command, or NAVAIR (the office responsible for developing and acquiring Navy and Marine Corps aircraft), and Lockheed Martin agreed this past April to give the KC-130Js the capability to use the existing, in-service Sargent Fletcher pods on the KC-130Js. Sargent Fletcher Inc. is a sister company to FRL, both being owned by Cobham plc in England.

The Sargent Fletcher pod has been in use on tanker aircraft for more than thirty years and is based around a simple hydraulically operated hose reel that gives consistent performance. The aircraft modifications necessary to make the existing pods work with the KC-130J were tested in early 2003. Lockheed Martin engineers developed a final configuration for the systems, which include a larger hydraulic reservoir and new hydraulic and electrical lines, implemented the design on the assembly line, and received approval from the Marines in only seventy-two days. The first two aircraft with the modifications were delivered in June.

The Sargent Fletcher transition program will be implemented in two phases. In Phase I, the capability to use refueling pods currently in use on the legacy KC-130 fleet will be given to the KC-130Js. This modification will give the Marines a near-term, full tanking capability. It will also allow their aircraft to be fully deployable. In Phase II, new enhanced pods, which will look like the existing equipment, will be built and installed. The new pods will have an in-line pump to increase fuel flow capability and will be fully integrated with the mission computer on the aircraft. This will allow for tanking of helicopters and fighters anywhere in the KC-130J’s in-flight refueling envelope.

Phase I consists of installing the upgraded systems on four new-build aircraft, including two aircraft delivered this summer and two KC-130Js to be delivered later this year. A retrofit kit for the other nine aircraft currently in the Marine test fleet has been developed and is being installed by Lockheed Martin technicians. All of the fleet aircraft—the four KC-130Js currently assigned to MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, the home of the Battleherk fleet replace-ment squadron, and the aircraft at the test facility at Patuxent River—will be modified on the flightline at the Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta.

The Final Exam
With the Phase I modifications installed, the Marine Corps/Navy test team completed developmental testing and began operational tests with the KC-130J. Starting in October, the operational test team, which consists of line pilots and maintainers, will go to NAF El Centro, California, with two aircraft to simulate a Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable detachment. “We are not looking for a data point at a certain altitude at a specific temperature,” notes Maj. Rick Uribe, the KC-130J operational test director. “We are evaluating how well the aircraft performs in an operationally representative environment.”

Operational testing will be divided into three parts. The first segment will concentrate on aerial refueling of all air refueling capable Marine fixed and rotary wing aircraft, which include the CH-53, F/A-18, AV-8B, and EA-6B; airland, the delivery of cargo; and rapid ground refueling, an important part of the service’s concept of operations. Rapid ground refueling is currently conducted with hoses run directly from the aircraft’s main single-point fueling port on the side of the fuselage and fuel is pumped out to heli-copters and vehicles on the ground. “We will make sure the performance of the aircraft meets the thresholds specified in the requirements documents,” observes Uribe.

The second segment of operational testing will consist of air delivery using a temporary landing zone, low-level operations, combat offload, aided and unaided navigational flights, and formation work. The final segment, scheduled for December 2003, includes making long-range navigational flights, making sure the aircraft is compatible with European air traffic operations, and conducting cold weather operations. “We want the KC-130J to cold soak in an environment like Minnesota or at NAS Keflavik in Iceland for a day to ensure that the aircraft is capable of operating in that kind of environment,” Uribe adds.

What’s Next
Ninety days after the completion of the operational test evaluation, the test team will submit a suitability report to the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The service chiefs, who will make their final decision based on the test team’s input, will then authorize an initial operational capability, which will allow the KC-130J to enter operational service. That decision should come next spring.

Phase II of the refueling transition program begins in May 2004, when the first new-build refueling pods are delivered for installation. The new pods will go in the first of twenty KC-130Js recently purchased by the US government as part of a six-year multiyear procurement contract. Phase II pod testing by the Marine Corps/Navy test team is scheduled to begin next October.

Unlike the existing pods, the Phase II pods will have a rapid ground refueling port. The port provides an additional safety factor since the hoses can be attached farther away from the fuselage.

“The capabilities of this airplane will really support the Marine Corps,” says Kuhn. “Initiating the program will take a little time. But once the KC-130J gets integrated into the fleet, it will be the aircraft the Marine Expeditionary Force commander will ask for. We have gotten a lot out of our F, R, and T models, but their capabilities don’t come close to what the J can do.”

Jeff Rhodes is the associate editor of Code One.