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First Super Galaxy Delivered
First Super Galaxy Delivered: Lockheed Martin said it delivered the first fully modernized C-5M transport to the Air Force yesterday at Robins AFB, Ga. “The C-5 fleet is now beginning to realize its full operational potential,” Lorraine Martin, Lockheed’s C-5 program vice president, said in the company’s release. Lockheed has modified three C-5s to the M-model configuration to date. The other two are scheduled for delivery to the Air Force at Dover AFB, Del., in February. The C-5M, known as the Super Galaxy, feature new avionics, installed under the avionics modernization program, and new, higher performance engines and additional components added as part of the reliability enhancement and re-engining program. These three C-5Ms completed developmental testing in August; the Air Force anticipates beginning operational tests with them in the second half of 2009. The Air Force plans to upgrade 52 of its 111 C-5s to the M-model configuration. The remaining 59 C-5s will get only the new avionics. One of the issues facing the incoming Administration is the composition of the Air Force’s strategic airlift fleet. The Government Accountability Office last month warned against prematurely shutting down Boeing’s production line for the C-17 transport while questions still remain over the costs of the C-5 upgrades. (For more on the strategic airlift issue, read the Mobility Metric Quandary.)
12/10/2008
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Verbatim
Preemptive Action
"Since the [Defense] Department's acceptance of the independent estimates last fall, we've been, in just about every respect, acting as if the program were in a Nunn-McCurdy breach. ... We've been taking all of the mitigating and corrective action that we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach."
—Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, discussing with reporters the restructure of the F-35 strike fighter program announced in February 2010 and the probability that the program will soon exceed Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds that would necessitate, per US law, a program review and corrective steps, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2010. |
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Verbatim
Message for Grandma
"She has working for her as a citizen in the United States an Air Force Reserve that has some very talented, capable, patriotic, and willing individuals doing the business to keep this nation free. Just like her generation—the 'Greatest Generation'—was, I am very proud of the folks that we have got. If not the second greatest, then they are an extension of the greatest generation and they are ready, willing, and able to do the things that she would want them to do to make sure we keep our freedoms."
—Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, responding to a reporter's question on what the reporter should tell his 85-year-old grandmother to convey to her the importance of Air Force Reservists to the nation's security, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19, 2010.
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