Marine Corps Teaches Old Plane New Tricks In Afghanistan

[Chris Kennedy]

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?contentBlockId=6bea894f-930c-476c-90a5-5a331a9360f9

[cpasley]

A '130J' carrying hellfires?!? man talk about multitask

[Joe Copalman]

There's a local tie-in to this story.  N118TG out at Coolidge was the initial testbed for the Hellfire-armed C-130 concept.  The program was called "Killer Herk" and involved launching a small UAV from underneath one of the C-130's wings and using it to look for targets, and then using Hellfires under the other wing to engage the targets.  They flew several test flights over Yuma, and the data was then passed on and incorporated into the Harvest Hawk kit for the Marines and upgraded MC-130/AC-130 mods for the Air Force.

[Chris Kennedy]

118 had spray bars mounted on it Saturday. Somebody must be spraying some BIG fields.

[Joe Copalman]

Yup.  They just added the spray kit to it this year, as N121TG needed backup for the oil spill response mission after the BP spill.  IAR now has two birds on the Maritime Spill Response Contract.  118 was also a firebomber - I think Bill actually did some of the installation work on the retardant system.