C-5 Laboratory

Photo by Sue Sapp

Robins AFB, Georgia, officials held a ribbon cutting ceremony on 10 September 2010 to open the C-5 Integrated Aircraft Test Environment, a laboratory that will help keep the Galaxy flying for years to come. The 2,200-square-foot, two story building houses the flight deck salvaged from a C-5 that crashed at Dover AFB, Delaware, in 2006. The flight deck will be made fully functional in about a year. The laboratory will give software engineers at Robins a way to test software in a real environment without tying up actual C-5s with costly test flights, especially when these aircraft are heavily tasked.