C-130 Hercules News

July 17, 2024 (by Nicholas Maxfield) - Marshall has received a £4.5m contract extension to provide ongoing engineering support for the French Air Force’s 14 Lockheed Martin C-130H Hercules aircraft.
The most recent extension builds on an initial four-year contract that has already been extended once by a period of two years. The awarding body is the Service Industriel de l’Aéronautique (SIAé), a state-owned maintenance organisation.

Marshall will provide engineering support for the C-130H’s maintenance, repair and overhaul, with work centred around SIAé’s facility in Clermont, France. The contract also covers the ongoing provision of C-130 parts and repair kits manufactured in-house by Marshall under exclusive Authority to Manufacture permissions granted by Lockheed Martin.

The extension bolsters Marshall’s well-established relationship with the French Air Force, which dates back to the initial contract award in December 2017. During and following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, Marshall continued to provide support for the Air Force.

"Securing this additional contract extension demonstrates the trust SIAé and the French Air Force continue to place in us to keep their fleet airworthy, "Thanks to our close working relationship and frequency of contact with SIAé, we can understand emergent needs and act on them immediately, drawing equally on our platform expertise and our engineering excellence," said Mark Hewer, Director of Aero Engineering for Marshall.

Reflecting the Hercules’ perennial role as the backbone of airborne logistical support for NATO member nations, the French fleet has notably seen action in military operations in Africa, including participation in Operation Serval in Mali, and has also been involved in humanitarian missions throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The two oldest aircraft in the fleet, both from 1975, were initially owned by Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), but were relocated to France when the country collapsed in the 1990s.