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The last U.S. Air Force MC-130J takes off from Lockheed Martin’s Marietta, Georgia, facility on Dec. 13, 2024.
FORT WALTON BEACH, Florida—While the U.S. Air Force has completed deliveries of modified C-130 variants for special operations, the work is not done as the service needs to add new, long-term capabilities to keep the venerable aircraft relevant for a future fight.
The service in mid-January announced it had received the last MC-130J Commando II special operations variant of the Hercules—the 64th for the MC-130J fleet and the 134th total MC-130J, AC-130J and HC-130J.
“That doesn’t mean we can just stop,” said Brig. Gen. Craig Prather, the director of plans, programs and requirements at Air Force Special Operations Command, during remarks at the Special Air Warfare Symposium here. “We have to complete our modernization efforts. We have to pair those modernization efforts with the asymmetric capabilities that we think both the United States Air Force, United States Special Operations Command and the Joint Force require.”
Soon the AC-130 and MC-130 variants may look largely the same, save for the large, side-mounted cannons and howitzers on the AC variant, as they are both modernized, Prather says.
“The notion that really matters is really ‘platform agnostic.’ If we don’t modernize our platforms … you can forget about being effective in the future fight,” he says.
The MC-130J fleet is going through a series of upgrades, known as capability releases. The second capability release, which is fielding now, includes the Silent Knight terrain following/terrain avoidance radar, radio frequency countermeasures, airborne mission networking and a NextGen Special Mission Processor. The follow-on capability release three is a top priority that needs to “get out the door” to improve the aircraft’s integrated software capabilities, says Melissa Johnson, acquisition executive at U.S. Special Operations Command.
AFSOC also recently received the last AC-130J Block 30 upgrade, making the fleet all the same standard. This includes GPS-hardened mission operating pallets, improved sensors and other defensive systems.
AFSOC has integrated the Lockheed Martin Rapid Dragon pallet launcher onto its C-130, using a palletized system to air launch cruise missiles such as the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Missile. AFSOC is looking at ways to expand the capability of these “enhanced precision effects,” with new types of both kinetic and non-kinetic systems to include electronic attack and electronic warfare, he says.
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