Jercs to be based at Trenton

Starting to get ready:

After long decades of service, CFB Trenton's workhorse airplanes are getting exactly what they need: reinforcements.

Federal ministers announced a contract to buy 17 new C-130J Hercules transports for $1.4 billion.

The planes are to begin arriving in the winter of 2010 [emphasis added].

As a navigator, Col. Mike Hood, commander of 8 Wing-CFB Trenton, was among a crew flying one of the base's older Hercules that flew to Ottawa Wednesday.

He compared the effect of the announcement to the recent arrival of the CC-177 Globemasters in Trenton.

"It's a real morale booster," said Hood.

"People want to be part of an organization that has the best equipment [and] great capability. This is just the next step."

Though older Hercules models are flown elsewhere in Canada, Hood said the new J-models will be based in Trenton [emphasis added].

"The C-130J is meant to replace the C-130 doing the tactical airlift role," said Hood.

Tactical airlift - the process of delivering people and cargo with relatively short flights under often difficult situations [see this post for a hairy example in Afstan] - is what keeps Trenton's 436 Transport Squadron working constantly.

The Hercs are also flown by Trenton's 426 Transport Training and 424 Transport and Rescue Squadrons, but the bulk of the Canadian tactical airlift flights in Afghanistan and around the world are handled by 436 Squadron.

Hood said crews must now train in the United States to fly the J-model, possibly as early as this summer [emphasis added].

"While it looks like a C-130 on the outside, on the inside it's a very different aircraft than the one we've been flying," Hood said.

"It can fly higher, go longer, and carry more than the one we've been flying."..

Here's a good observation about the Jerc acquisition:

C-130J critics have one good point – that the ‘contest’ was written around the ’Js – while forgetting the obvious – that there is [sic] no realistic alternatives considering the time constraints. C-130Js are good aircraft..

Recent A400M news:

The first flight of the A400M’s TP400 engine has slipped further, to the second quarter of 2008 from the first. Following delivery of an engine to Marshall Aerospace for integration on the C-130 testbed and a review of the program schedule, the Turboprop International consortium developing the massive engine announced the change.

Plus:

The European aerospace giant EADS is facing new problems with its A400M military transport plane [nice photo at link] which could delay its maiden flight expected in July, a Germany weekly reported.

"There are still loads of unanswered questions," a senior EADS executive told the Wirtschaftswoche weekly in its edition to be published Monday.

The problems do not only concern the plane's engines but also the fuselage and the wings [emphasis added], the executive said.

The A400M, the most important military industrial programme ever carried out between European partners, was launched by seven countries in May 2003, but it is already six months to one year behind schedule due to technical problems.

The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company said in November that it was going to have spend between 1.2-1.4 billion euros (1.8-2.0 billion dollars) to deal with the delays.

The A400M aircraft is Europe's response to the ageing C-130 Hercules transporter, produced by the US firm Lockheed. EADS has said it will have greater airlift capacity and range than both the Hercules and the Transall, another ageing but widely used military transport plane.

Other goings-on at Trenton are available here.