Photo By Staff Sgt. Jayden Ford | 1st Lt. Justin Click, 62d Airlift Squadron student pilot, enters flight data into a...... read more read more
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The C-130J Super Hercules community achieved another milestone toward its fleet-wide transition to the Block 8.1 upgrade, as two students from the 314th Airlift Wing’s C-130 formal training unit recently became the first to pilot a Block 8.1 aircraft within the training pipeline.
These pilots will be the first from the student pipeline to reach their initial duty station fully qualified to operate any C-130J that has undergone the 8.1 upgrade.
Since 2018, the 314th AW has been working toward the Block 8.1 transition – training instructor pilots to become subject matter experts on all of the upgrade’s technological advancements.
The Block 8.1 upgrade boosts navigation and inter-communication systems, updates friend-or-foe identification and standardizes aviation systems, which will improve interoperability across the fleet. The modification also allows the C-130J to comply with worldwide air traffic management regulations.
Previously, the Block 6.0 navigation system only allowed limited use of GPS area navigation, or RNAV, forcing the aircraft to primarily utilize legacy ground based systems for navigation. With the update, the pilots can now fully utilize RNAV arrivals, approaches, and departures, allowing for more direct paths outside the coverage of navigation beacons.
“As the airspace system modernizes, they're going away from the more out of date navigation aids and they're adding in new GPS requirements,” said Maj. Sean Fitzgerald, 62d Airlift Squadron chief pilot. “This upgrade will allow us to utilize some of the newer technology that's out there in aviation. We'll be able to make more precise calculations – allowing us to get into more airfields.”
Block 8.1 also improves the lighting systems in the aircraft, adding infrared lights in various sections of the plane to allow for aircrew to have better visibility when operating under the cover of darkness.
“When we deploy to certain locations, many of the missions that we carry out happen at night to mitigate potential exposure to threats,” said Tech. Sgt. Edwin Baxley, 62d AS tactics officer. “We don't want to highlight ourselves, so we use infrared lighting. The Block 8.1 lighting system allows us to focus more light into areas where we could not see as well before and fine-tune what is being lit at specific moments.”
The upgrade was initially tested in 2017 when the 19th Airlift Wing’s 61st Airlift Squadron conducted a training flight testing the first Block 8.1 upgraded C-130J. In the years following the initial test, the 19th and 314th Airlift Wings also tested the system, working with Lockheed Martin to report issues.
Since then, the 314th AW has pursued training expert 8.1 instructor pilots and loadmasters to instruct the next generation of C-130J aircrew.
“We spent a lot of time trying to familiarize ourselves so that when the new syllabus rollout happened, we were certified and capable of taking them out on an 8.1 tail, and completing syllabus-required mission sets,” Baxley said.
As well as training themselves and their students, the 62d AS also provided insight to airlift squadrons under the 19th Airlift Wing and 913th Airlift Group and have now spread their knowledge overseas, serving as the beacon for the upgrade’s rollout across the entire Air Force.
“Our squadron has been helping other units on base work through the upgrade process as they transition from 6.0 to 8.1 tails,” Fitzgerald said. “Now we are helping with Ramstein Air Base’s Block 8.1 initial cadre setup. We are writing them syllabi on how to manage the process and have already been sending loadmasters [from the student pipeline] who are certified on both [6.0 and 8.1] tails and eventually, we'll be sending them 8.1 pilots.”
With the squadron now instructing its first two 8.1 student pilots, Fitzgerald hopes they will charge forward at their initial assignments and accelerate change in the C-130J community.
“Starting them right out of pilot training – that's the first thing they’ve learned and they're going to build on that knowledge for the rest of their career,” Fitzgerald said. “We're laying the foundation here so that they can go out operationally and advance these capabilities. The students we're training today are going to be the ones who take it [Block 8.1] across the finish line to its fully realized capability of what we can do with this aircraft.”
| Date Taken: | 08.18.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 08.19.2021 08:46 |
| Story ID: | 403507 |
| Location: | LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, ARKANSAS, US |
| Web Views: | 90 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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