Boeing announced Tuesday that it has received a $31 million Air Force contract to supply two more avionics upgrade kits for legacy C-130 transports. A kit corresponds to one aircraft. This work is part of the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program’s low-rate initial production phase. Boeing will provide a total of 20 AMP kits during LRIP. It has already delivered several; this contract is a follow-on to keep the kits flowing. Overall, the Air Force intends to modernize the avionics on 221 of its C-130H2, -H2.5, and-H3 aircraft. These C-130s will get a glass cockpit with a head-up display; six flat-panel full-color displays, and night-vision capability. Air Force personnel at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Ga., will install 10 of the 20 LRIP kits. In the past, the Air Force has said Boeing would install five kits and a second company would fit the remaining five.
The U.S. homeland is vulnerable to air and missile attack across the Arctic because the network of ground, air, and space-based defenses guarding those approaches have atrophied over time, according to a new paper from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
