Herculean expectations - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Herculean expectations

Responding to a Defense Department report concluding that the C-130J is not effective for worldwide operations in non-permissive threat environments, the Air Force says that no Hercules now flying is designed for such missions.

“The C-130E/H/J is not designed to operate in high-threat environments and avoids operations at altitude within the range of hostile surface-to-air missiles,” spokeswoman Capt. Anna Carpenter said.

For that reason, according to the Air Force, the limitations on the C-130J cited by the Pentagon’s director for Operational Testing and Evaluation in the agency’s fiscal 2006 annual report “do not impact the ability of the C-130J to conduct the current mission.”

The Air Force OT&E Center concluded in April 2006 that the C-130J is able to operate effectively in low- to medium-threat environments, Carpenter said.

According to the Air Force, sometimes there are discrepancies between the Air Force’s view of testing and the Pentagon’s, because the Defense Department’s office may evaluate Air Force data based on different criteria than the Air Force.

“The important point to differentiate is that it is not about whether or not DOT&E concurs or nonconcurs with a rating or vice versa,” the Air Force said in a statement. “It is about the accuracy of the data that we have reported. DOT&E’s rating is DOT&E’s rating, just as AFOTEC’s rating is AFOTEC’s rating.”

The Air Force fact sheet on the C-130 states that the plane is the primary transport for air-dropping troops and equipment into hostile areas.

The Defense Department’s OT&E report concluded the J was ineffective for worldwide operations because weaknesses in its missile defense system would put it at risk if deployed to certain theaters, and flaws in a computer system designed to keep the Hercules safely separated while in flight formation make it unsafe to air-drop personnel.

A representative for Lockheed Martin Corp., which makes the Hercules, said the problem systems noted by the report are both government furnished. Lockheed installs the systems, but they are not developed by the company, said spokesman Peter Simmons.

He said a C-130J squadron has completed a two-year deployment to Iraq, where the plane maintained better than a 90 percent reliability rate throughout.

He also said there is no requirement for the plane to fly in formation in Iraq, though it has flown “thousands of combat missions, millions of tons of cargo and literally hundreds of thousands of passengers.”