More Than Fuel and Ammo

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SOTECH 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 (February)

It Takes More Than Just Fuel and Ammo
to Keep AFSOC's Gunships Flying.

Both the duration and intensity of the war on terror have challenged maintainers of heavily armed Special Operations gunships. The U.S. Air Force’s Special Operations Command (AFSOC) must continue to meet these challenges on existing aircraft. It is planning to relieve some of the pressure by supplementing its current gunship fleet with more aircraft, arming multi-mission MC-130Ws for gunship duty.

AFSOC now operates a total of 25 AC-130H Spectres and AC-130U Spookies. The airframe was manufactured by Lockheed Martin as a variant of the C-130 Hercules and then converted into a gunship by Boeing. Each AC-130 is powered by four Allison T56-A-15 turboprop engines. The AFSOC gunships carry a wide variety of armament ranging all the way from 20 mm Gatling guns up to 105 mm howitzers.

AC-130 missions also vary widely, including close air support of ground troops and convoys, air interdiction, and protection of both air bases and other facilities. And these missions are now flown in some of the roughest conditions and remotest terrain in the world.

AC-130s have several levels of maintenance. Planned depot-level maintenance is performed at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, which is AFSOC’s center of excellence for the aircraft. All programmed depot maintenance (PDM) is done by Warner Robins’ 402d Maintenance Wing. The PDM schedule for the AC-130 is similar to that of the C-130. Unscheduled depot-level repairs are performed in the field by deployable depot maintenance field teams and a small contingent of personnel assigned to the onsite depot support team located at Hurlburt Field, Florida.

Wartime stresses have been showing up both in the field and in hangars. “AC-130 aircraft are a high use, lowdensity platform that plays a critical role in the global war on terrorism,” said Lieutenant Colonel Michael Senseney, commander of the 572th Aircraft Sustainment Squadron at Robins Air Force Base. “Increased flying hours and rigorous mission profiles required to support combat operations have resulted in a rapid accumulation of equivalent baseline hours, forcing maintainers to replace centerwing boxes and other critical time-change components before timelines predicted during testing and development.”

Usage has indeed been heavy for these highly specialized aircraft. AFSOC’s 17 AC-130Us flew a total of 7,664.2 hours in fiscal 2009, or an average of 451 hours per aircraft. Its eight AC-130Hs flew a total of 3,927.1 hours for an average of 491 hours per aircraft over the same period.

“Mission profiles flown by the aircraft also place increased stress on the airframe, resulting in greater metal fatigue and corrosion than is found on other C-130 cargo aircraft,” Senseney said. And the supply chain poses its own special problems. “As the aircraft age, original equipment manufacturers for unique, one-of-a-kind equipment installed on the aircraft have gone out of business or retooled for more cost-effective endeavors,” Senseney noted. “Loss of these suppliers, coupled with rapid depletion of spare inventories, makes sustainment of the aircraft challenging.”

A recent initiative by AFSOC and the 580th Aircraft Sustainment Group has been the development and implementation of an on-site, depot-support field team. “This team can increase aircraft availability and reliability while simultaneously reducing cost, by performing maintenance that is beyond the scope of field units at their home base instead of transporting the aircraft to Robins,” Senseney said. AC-130Us are based at Hurlburt, and AC-130Hs are based at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. Some of the specialized equipment installed on the aircraft is sustained through contractor logistics support (CLS) arrangements. AC-130s are equipped with a formidable array of weapons, including 7.62 mm miniguns, 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon, 40 mm L/60 Bofors cannon and M102 howitzers. The aircraft themselves are very robust platforms, with television and infrared sensors, synthetic aperture radar for target detection, inertial navigation and a global positioning system.

Kay and Associates, based in Buffalo Grove, Ill., provides on-site depot support for depot-level repairs on AC-130s at Hurlburt. Kay also has contract field teams supporting other aircraft at a number of Air Force facilities. Kay’s on-site depot contract for the AC-130 is a traditional per-transaction arrangement.

CLS contracts for AC-130 components have performance-based measures, and these typically involve the availability of the covered hardware. AFSOC has no public-private partnerships for the AC-130 at present.

“AC-130s are continuously upgraded to capitalize on technological advances and provide razor-sharp support for ground personnel,” Senseney noted. He said replacement of the center wing boxes is the most significant and labor-intensive upgrade that is now planned.

There have also been reports, not confirmed by the AFSOC, that AC-130s may be given standoff capabilities, possibly with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, based on Hydra 70 rockets, or the Viper Strike glide bomb.

DRAGON SPEAR

Due to heavy burdens placed on AC-130s in recent operations, AFSOC considered several options for supplementing this small gunship fleet. It initially sought to acquire and modify C-27s for this purpose, but funding for this plan was removed from the fiscal 2010 budget. AFSOC then exercised authority under Title 10 to use rapid acquisition, integration, modification and test approaches to look at alternative solutions for easing burdens on the AC-130U and Hs.

The result is Dragon Spear. According to Media Relations Officer Major Wes Ticer, Dragon Spear will install a package that is modular, scalable, and precision-strike capable on the MC-130W Combat Spear, of which AFSOC has a dozen. The weapons to be installed would include a stand-off precision guided munitions system (SOPGMS) and a medium-caliber gun; “currently the 30mm gun and SOPGMS will be the weapons of choice,” Ticer said.

AFSOC currently plans to modify four MC-130Ws. “But the goal is to eventually modify all 12 MC-130W aircraft in the command’s inventory,” Ticer explained. “Dragon Spear will not replace or eliminate the need for the AC-130,” he emphasized. “Rather, it provides an additional, versatile precision- strike capability.” AFSOC’s intent is to modify MC-130Ws with precision-strike packages, enabling these to perform an additional mission, but the modified MC-130Ws will continue to be multi-mission aircraft. “They can also be used for infiltration, ex-filtration, aerial re-supply and aerial refueling operations.”

BOEING SUPPORT

Since 1998, Boeing has provided integrated support for both the AC-130H and AC-130U gunships, according to Ken Hill, program director for special operations at Boeing. Under this integrated weapon support program, which is similar to a CLS, Boeing repairs and supports components of the AC-130s that are unique to its gunship role. For the AC-130Us, this includes weapons, avionics, hydraulics and mechanical components, as well as modifications. Boeing’s role in support of the AC-130H is smaller, mostly confined to weapon systems. Boeing also manages the supply chain for its share of components on both aircraft. Support of the ‘green,’ or non-gunship, parts of both aircraft is managed by Warner Robins, which does PDM on the AC-130s.

This is a sole-source, FAST-2 [flexible acquisition and sustainment team] contract with Warner Robins, and the support is primarily provided by Boeing’s Fort Walton Beach facility, located near Hurlburt Field, as well as by field service representatives (FSRs) who follow the gunships into the field wherever they go. The company now has about 500 people dedicated to this effort. The initial contract was a 10-year arrangement, and Boeing is now working under an optioned extension.

“We perform repairs at the organic, intermediate and depot level,” Hill summarized. FSRs have accumulated 6,000 man-days in the field with deployed AC-130s. Of its full workforce, about 100 to 125 employees are contract workers, responsible for technical data and other special assignments. Boeing also handles engineering, software and configuration management for the AC-130s.

Hill emphasized that the company works very closely with AFSOC, a collaboration made easier by the fact that roughly a third of the people Boeing employs for support of AC-130s have a background in special operations. Boeing has developed many of the unique test routines for the content it repairs on the AC-130s.

Repair work covers all the armament and gun mounts on both AC-130Hs and AC-130Us, and Hill is proud that gun systems have reported a 99 percent availability rate under the contract. “We have achieved an award fee of 100 percent and a delivery metric of well over 99 percent on repairs,” he also noted.

Hill says support of the gunships has been highly demanding for the same reasons cited by AFSOC: this is a small fleet of now intensely used aircraft. As supply-chain manager, Boeing is responsible for managing obsolescence as well. Intense usage for the AC-130s began in 2001, and Boeing has seen the effects of higher usage flow down to its own repair work, part-stocking and delivery duties. Hill says increased usage naturally reduces the calendar life expected of many AC-130 parts. The demand for Boeing FSRs to deploy with forces in the field has also increased dramatically since 2001.

So far, Boeing has been merely responding to specific AFSOC requests on the Dragon Spear project, but it is interested in further work. Hill is very proud both of Boeing’s technical performance in supporting the AC-130s and of the aircraft’s importance in the war on terror. AFSOC has not put support for Dragon Spear out for bidding as yet. ♦