So what would you want to see in capabilities in a PC-130J.
Please consider the altitude capabilities and other modified platforms.
I don't think the P-8A is a jumbo jet
- Thread starter blacklabman
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So what would you want to see in capabilities in a PC-130J.
Please consider the altitude capabilities and other modified platforms.
Actually, a fully loaded C-130 is not very maneuverable at low altitudes so I don't think the C-130 is a viable option.
If the Navy was smart, they would have just re-winged the P-3 and saved a ton of money instead of trying to design a new high altitude sub hunter.
If the Navy was smart, they would have just re-winged the P-3 and saved a ton of money instead of trying to design a new high altitude sub hunter.
glhs837
Power with Control
The issue there is that rewinging airframes that old means you are just waiting for the next big crack to appear. Like taking a car to the dragstrip, you are just setting up the next weakest link. The reqing method might work fine for countries with low annual flight time requirements and not much in the way of overseas commitments and far more search than ASW. If it were building new P-3 airframes, I might see it, but I wouldn't want to start a career in 40 year old airframes. These birds are NOT B-52s, with a history of "part of the triad" levels of maint. They are well used, and maintained as best we could, but they lived in the salt fog under stresses the BUFFs only saw during short time when folks went nuts and thought they could go ground hugging.
I think, once the new high altitude stuff comes online, which I hope is going to line up with the threat, that doing ASW down low, which was a technique required by the available tech, is just going to be a fond memory of folks like me. If I can drop an accurate pattern from 20-25K, why the hell not. And I firmly believe that making a buoy hit a target from that height is a thing well within our capability. I would never trade my hours down low, yanking and banking, like I'm sure my Dad would never trade his time hunting subs from seaplanes, and the hours spent sitting on a wing rocking in the waves. But we dont use seaplanes anymore for a reason....time moves on and we change things up.
The P-3C sucks at finding subs.
The airman standing in the catwalk on the carrier finds more.
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czygvtwkr
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Pretty sure putting the P-3 innards in a C-130 wouldn't come close to making it fully loaded. Could be wrong though.
glhs837
Power with Control
Your problem with electronics and buoys would be cubic size, not weight. Although once you add aux tanks, wing and weapon bay stores, you might be having issues with weight.
There is the Harvest Hawk to look at, but I imagine it's mission systems are a bit lightweight compared to a full ASW suite. Lockheed has pitched an ASW variant, but I dont think they have actually built other than a mockup, I dont know that anyone has bitten on that.