SPAIN IS TO update its 12 Lockheed Martin C/KC-130Hs with new avionics developed for the US Air Force's programme to upgrade C-130s and Lockheed C-141s.
CASA is managing the programme, with Lockheed Martin responsible for integration and AlliedSignal Aerospace supplying the avionics.
The first Spanish air force C-130, is already at Lockheed Martin's Marietta, Georgia plant and is scheduled to be flown by the end of 1996. Subsequent aircraft will be upgraded by CASA.
The upgrade includes a new digital automatic flight-control system, 150 x 200mm liquid-crystal displays, control/display units, mission computers, flight-management system, air-data computers, identification friend-or-foe transponder and a radar.
Spain is the first export customer for the upgrade, developed under the USAF's C-130/C-141 auto-pilot replacement programme (ARP), intended to increase avionics reliability by a factor of ten, says John Borghese, director, avionics systems business enterprise, at AlliedSignal Guidance & Controls.
Spain is the first C-130 customer for the liquid-crystal displays, which will be installed in C-141s only under the USAF's ARP upgrade. Borghese says that the displays are designed to fit in the C-130 also, but the USAF does not have the funds to install them.
The first C-130 upgraded by ARP prime contractor Chrysler Technologies Airborne Systems was flown in January, and the first updated C-141 is scheduled to be flown in April. Eight different C-130 configurations will be flight tested before the USAF begins kit installation, he says. Kit production is to begin in May for some 650 C-130s and 100 C-141s.
Source: Flight International
