Get Gas, Finish Tests

Posted 14 March 2011

TAGS:

Development testing of the new HC-130J Combat King II personnel recovery aircraft for the US Air Force was completed on 14 March 2011. The final test point—air-to-air refueling—marked the first refueling of an HC-130J. It also marked the first boom refueling of a C-130 with a refueling receptacle installed during aircraft production, rather than being retrofitted. Because of the similarities between the HC-130J and the new MC-130J Combat Shadow II aircraft now in production, the data gathered during this test will also apply to the MC-130J. Deliveries of the HC-130Js and MC-130Js will begin in August 2011. Initial operational capability for both aircraft is scheduled for 2012.

Comments

U-2 Articles
U-2 News
U-2 Video
U-2 Photos

View All Articles

U-2 Anniversary
7/16/2015
For sixty years, the U-2 Dragon Lady has been America's eyes, ears, and nose in the sky. Code One looks back at the U-2 program on the anniversary of its first flight.

U-2 Pilot Describes Earliest Missions
4/30/2015
Vito’s mission took him directly over Moscow and its extensive network of newly built air defenses, which ringed the city in three concentric circles at twenty, forty, and sixty miles from the city center.

Today's U-2 Fleet
9/14/2014
The end of U-2 production in 1989 marked the beginning of a host of evolutionary upgrades.

U-2 Factoids
9/13/2014
Facts, figures, and other essential details about the U-2 Dragon Lady.

Interview With U-2 Stats Keeper
9/12/2014
Reliability maintainability, and supportability lead engineer, tracks statistics for the U-2 program.

U-2 Life Support In Palmdale
9/8/2014
Mark Schroeder has had the responsibility of prepping, maintaining, testing, and inspecting survival equipment for U-2 missions.

U-2 Early History
2/15/2002
The U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, though designed and developed in great secrecy in the 1950s, has somehow never fully emerged from the shadows even though it has outlasted one successor, the SR-71 Blackbird.

View All News