I’ll be writing a column on this for Carolina Journal, but for now here’s a quick summary on the latest U.S. Air Force C-130 fleet plan, which was just presented to Congress. The 440th Airlift Wing at Pope AAF in Fayetteville is still toast. The N.C. Air National Guard here in Charlotte will still loss two of its C-130Hs, to bring the unit down to eight planes, which is the standard size for National Guard and Air Force Reserve C-130 units. (The manpower impact is likely to be minimal, as the NCANG gained almost no jobs when the unit gained those two planes in the last BRAC round in 2005.) And the Air Force wants to retire a total of 28 additional C-130Hs in FY2017 and FY2018, though it wasn’t announced yet which units would be losing planes as a result. I doubt Charlotte would be where those cuts take place if approved by Congress, but you never know.
You can read the force structure plan here via the Fayetteville Observer.
