{"id":141151,"date":"2023-05-12T16:37:06","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T20:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=141151"},"modified":"2023-05-11T17:09:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T21:09:16","slug":"quirky-herky-a-few-years-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=141151","title":{"rendered":"Quirky Herky a few years off"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Just when you thought they had done about everything worthwhile they could to the venerable C-130, they surprise ya. Covert ops? Gotcha. Go anywhere, do anything, last forever? Yawn. Load ‘er up with multiple Gatling guns or even howitzers? Been there, done that. We know the old girl basically walks on water – they want her to land and take off from it, too.<\/p>\n

An initial U.S. military demonstration of an MC-130J special operations tanker\/transport aircraft converted into a floatplane is now two to three years away, at least.<\/p>\n

U.S. Special Operations Command says it remains interested in exploring this concept as part of its broader interest in new runway-independent aircraft. With large established air bases and their runways expected to be prime targets in any future major conflict, such as one against China, the U.S. military as a whole is increasingly interested in a variety of novel aviation capabilities that make operations from austere locations more feasible.<\/p>\n

U.S. Air Force Col. Ken Kuebler, U.S. Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) Program Executive Officer for Fixed Wing (PEO-FW), provided an update on what is formally known as the MC-130J Amphibious Capability, or MAC, as well as other projects within his portfolio, to The War Zone and other outlets at a briefing today at an annual special operations-focused conference now called SOF Week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

WarZone<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn’t a completely new idea – Lockheed has been playing around with amphibious concepts since the ’60s – but this go-round has more legs than its predecessors. For example, a ’60s flying boat idea:<\/p>\n

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By word of explanation, if the bottom of the fuselage is in the water and functioning as a hull, it’s a flying boat – think a WWII\u00a0 PBY as an example. If it has floats where you expect to see the wheels go, it’s a float plane. The classic example of that would be the DeHavilland Beaver, arguably the<\/em> plane that helped explore Alaska.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now if that last one doesn’t make you want to go fish for salmon, hunt a big brownie, or pan for gold, you must not have a pulse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just when you thought they had done about everything worthwhile they could to the venerable C-130, they surprise ya. Covert ops? Gotcha. Go anywhere, do anything, last forever? Yawn. Load ‘er up with multiple Gatling guns or even howitzers? Been there, done that. We know the old girl basically walks on water – they want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-AID","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}