Originally Posted by VX275
As launch customers for the J the UK aircraft were the standard. It could be said that it was the US that took them non standard. Admittedly the standard of J the UK accepted wasn't up to much, but for once you can blame the Lockheed accountants who designed it (to quote a Lockheed engineer) rather than the UK MOD.
I think you'll find that the C-130J was designed and developed to US specs by Lockheed with no military involvement or requirement. And it was in fact the MoD who changed from the "as delivered / sales brochure" specs - things like cargo floor & avionics primarily. MoD actually wanted to put that damn Beverly floor in the J and Lockheed said "No - the furthest 'backward' we'll go is the US-spec dash-4 floor", UK-spec avionics to prop up BAE and others, etc. To add salt to the wound, the MoD paid to convert "trade-in" Mk3 K-model Beverly floors to dash-4 floors on delivery to the US.
The UK did bear much of the development brunt and pains that go with being a launch customer, no doubt, but that certainly wasn't Lockheed's fault, nor the UK MoD, really - it is what it is. Although there were certainly issues with avionics compatibility early on.
Speaking of the floor and the 364L pallet system - RAF didn't care for that much in the beginning. But once C17 was online and the pallets went from Herk to Moose w/o being torn down and rebuilt, as roll-on/roll-off, the light bulb went on!
