RAAF C-130H Fleet

[Brenden S]

Just wondering if any of the H model herc's have left the country yet?

[A McLaughlin]

Nothing will happen for a long time yet.

All but twol need a major service and it has not been decided who will do this yet. Then the US State Dept has to give approval for their release to the Indons.

[JamesL]

Yes it has, it's QDS, and the first one finished its deep maintenance and went to TSV during the week for repainting!

[A McLaughlin]

QDS has had the C-130H DM contract for years and is in the process of winding up that contract. The aircraft (006) that was doing flight tests at RIC the other day and is being painted in TSV was booked in before the decision to retire the C-130Hs was made.

The RAAF will probably still put some of them through DM as they are worth more after a DM than "as is, where is", plus it will help to sustain some of the QDS workforce until the C-27J support contract or something else comes up.

Any DMs for the Indon Hercs will be arranged by the Indons. They are being gifted "as is, where is", and only when/if US State Dept approval for the gift/sale is granted.

[Jayden Laing]

Pardon my ignorance but why do the US State Dept need to approve the gift/sale??

[A McLaughlin]

ITAR - Int'l Traffic in Arms Regulations...

If you buy anything with a military application from the US, you buy it from the US Government, not Lockheed/Boeing etc.

If you want to sell it on when you're done with it, even if you bought a British aircraft or a German ship which may have been built with a screw that was made in the US, the US State Dept has to approve it.

[Jayden Laing]

Ok thanks for that Andrew :-)

[Nigel C]

That was an issue with the sale of the A4 Skyhawks too, wasn't it?

[A McLaughlin]

Partly...I think the fact that NZ refused port visits by US ships may have played a part too.

Also, the NZ A-4s were supposed to go to a private company...meaning more ITAR hoops to jump through.

[Greg Hyde]

Isn't that the same reason that the F-111 fleet were schreaded and buried ?

[A McLaughlin]

That, the fact that no one else could have possibly afforded to buy, upgrade, and operate them. Plus there are some (not many) common systems with the F-14s still operated by Iran...

Only about half the F-111 was buried (none shredded), and many of these were G models which hadn't flown and had been stored in the open for years.

At least a dozen Pigs have been allocated to museums.

[Brenden S]

Wasn't the F111 was buried due to the nuclear capability?

[A McLaughlin]

That was part of it, but I think the F-14-commonality played a big part too. The F-111Gs were de-nuked before we got them - even the astro-nav system was removed.

Basically, if the F-111s couldn't be displayed in a museum with the appropriate level of security as approved by the Commonwealth, they had to be either returned to the US, stored in a Commonwealth facility, or destroyed. Initially the only museums that were going to be able to get them were those on bases (e.g Point Cook, Amberley, Edinburgh), but this was relaxed.

As the cost of disassembling them and removing some of the more toxic substances was more than the scrap metal value, the decision was taken to bury them. I think the burial site is also fenced off and security monitored.