Lockheed Pursues Possible International Consortium for Maritime C-130 | Defense News | defensenews.com
A news item I noticed in
Defense News a couple of days ago. Lockheed Martin is investigating the appetite for existing C-130/P3 operators to collaborate on marrying existing airframes with proven and available systems to plug the MPA gap for the UK and others. The potential advantages being the sharing of the development costs, which in any case should be much more affordable than new planes and equipment. And not a UAV in sight.
Others on here will be better able than I to judge the suitability of the Herc for this role but my initial impression is that this is a pragmatic suggestion in these financially constrained times. May be the last we ever hear of it or it may have legs. Given our current MPA capability I think it would be a positive, short to medium term option, even if not the one we would ideally want to see if we had a larger budget.
LF