Last RAF C-130 Operational Mission

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The UK Royal Air Force’s remaining Lockheed Martin C-130K tactical transports will be formally retired next week, with its last two examples having made their final operational flights on 25 October.

Operated from Brize Norton air base in Oxfordshire, the RAF’s final K-model Hercules will be flown to St Athan in south Wales on 29 October.

The RAF began operating its first C-130Ks in 1966. The type will be replaced by the service’s future fleet of 22 Airbus Military A400Ms, the first of which is scheduled to be delivered to Brize Norton in September 2014. It also expects to continue flying its new-generation C-130Js until around 2022.

Read more: https://www.flightglobal.com/raf-c-130k ... 04.article

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Final RAF C-130J mission set for 17 June as Hercules retirement nears

By Dominic Perry17 April 2023

The UK’s long history as an operator of the Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules will all but come to an end on 17 June when the Royal Air Force (RAF) performs its final mission with the type.

Consisting of a three-ship fly-past as part of the King’s Birthday celebrations, the sortie will be a bittersweet moment ahead of the official retirement of the RAF’s remaining J-model aircraft on 30 June.

Defence officials announced in 2021’s Integrated Review that the 15-strong C-130J fleet would be retired by 2023 due to cost savings, with operations transitioning to the Airbus Defence & Space A400M. That date was subsequently extended until end-June due to availability issues with the European type.

Group Captain Gareth Burdett, Commander Air Wing – Air Mobility, says just six Hercules remain in RAF service. Those already withdrawn from use have been relocated to Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge where they are being prepared for sale.

Although concerns had been raised at the A400M’s ability to take on all the missions performed by the smaller C-130J, Burdett says the Atlas has risen to the challenge.

“There will be some capability gaps in very niche areas, all of the capability improvements have been significantly accelerated since the decision to sunset the Hercules was taken.

“Many have been brought forward by a number of years and the most critical capabilities have had the gap eradicated.”

He cites the A400M’s better range and payload over the C-130J, and its short-runway performance, as key attributes for end-users.

“What our customers are saying is that they appreciate the benefits and enhancements the A400M can bring over the C-130 in almost every regard that enables them to deliver their mission more effectively,” he says.

Reliability and availability have been a concern for all users of the A400M, with the type’s Europrop TP400 engines posing a particular issue.

Burdett says the situation has improved thanks to joint efforts by Airbus Defence & Space and the Ministry of Defence, adding: “While we are yet to see the full benefit that their brochure promised, certainly we are seeing a stable and useable amount of aircraft that reflects the availability we’d expect from other [transport aircraft] fleets.”

Cirium fleet data shows the RAF as operating 21 A400Ms; a 22nd and final example will be delivered by the end of the month, adds Burdett.

Burdett, who is qualified on the C-130, has responsibility for the RAF’s Brize Norton-based transport fleet which includes the A400M, A330 Voyager multi-role tanker transport, and Boeing C-17.

The UK has been a C-130 operator since the mid-1960s, taking delivery of its latest J-model examples from 1999.

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RAF retires the C-130 Hercules – we’re now dependent on the abysmal A400M Atlas

Today there were farewell flypasts by the Hercules transport plane across the UK, as the workhorse aircraft leaves RAF service. From the end of this month, we will be heavily reliant on the A400M Atlas: and this is not a happy prospect.

The American-made Hercules has a long and glorious history with the RAF. The A400M’s history, by contrast, is long and inglorious. Like most of Britain’s defence procurement disasters, it is a European collaboration in which the manufacturing is distributed across France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Turkey and the UK. The Ministry of Defence issued its requirement for new transport planes just 30 years ago in 1993: with the usual sort of speed one expects from a Euro-collaborative defence project, the first plane arrived with the RAF more than two decades later in 2014. Our last one, the 22nd, was finally delivered last month.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/raf-retires- ... 51176.html