A needed update to an old friend

Lets face it, the C-130J is a failure. Sure, it is a great plane if you just want to bring cargo from Point A to Point B but it sucks in the dirt, She sucks for Maintenance, she sucks at airdrop. when she does fly into combat she has to bring two MORE pilots as outward looking observers(they have kicked off the Eng. and the Nav. on the J-Model)
Basically, the C-130J is an entirelly differient aircraft with an entirelly differient mission then the old true C-130s (C-130a/b/e/h/h1/h2/h3 types)

There is hope out there though, The C-130AMP has flown (the first aircraft's first flight was back in Sept. 2006) and the second example flew yesterday, this time being Louisville's own 91-2139 and I believe both examples of modded aircraft were originally H2 aircraft.

Why is this important? Because you now have a more modern flight deck to make the pilots happy. It is nice because you need to tape every light source when going on NVGs ...no more mini chem lights the Eng has to spend hours taping up and around instruments just to see the bloody things on Nogs.

So, it looks like if congress gets off their asses and approves this, we will see the much needed wingbox replacement for all C-130s (I will tackle that topic later) as well as a mid-life update. with all the capabilities of the older herks but, without all the stupid crap that the J model tries to bring to the table.



Let the C-130J try to replace the C-141 (she will fail at that too) and let the real herks fly into combat.