The C-130 has proven to be such a successful design that it has been repeatedly re-designed for two other modes of operation: as an amphibian, and as a VTOL craft. In the 1960’s, Lockheed studied a simple approach… mounting banks of lift jet engines under the wings. Later, North American looked at giving the C-130 new wings with turbofan engines, and making use of the ejector-wing concept (that was shown to be a flop on North American Rockwell’s XFV-12). And as recently as 2003, Lockheed revisited the VTOL C-130 idea, this time giving the plane an all-new sweptback wing with embedded lift fans and tail mounted forward-thrust turbofan engines. The system would use shaft-driven fans, using technology derived from the JSF/X-35/F-35 lift fan system.
Nothing seems to have come of the idea.
5 Responses to “VTOL C-130 concept”
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Sweet Bleeding Jeebus, the prop wash from that would be like standing in a tornado!
I’m surprised Lockheed would still call that a C-130, considering it looks like it only has the fuselage in common. Is it truly VTOL, or just STOVL?
Take away the fuselage and you have yourself a VTOL B-2
And I once saw a drawing of a VTOL B-2 variant for stealth insertion of commando troops.
It was apparently related to this, but with four lift fans:
And I once saw a drawing of a VTOL B-2 variant for stealth insertion of commando troops.
It was apparently related to this, but with four lift fans: http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/photogallery_image/articles/blackairplanes_ss_1.jpg
The overall appearance of the drawing I saw was like a B-2 minus the outer wing panels, so it looked like a wide diamond shape. It had a single tail point, like the early design studies of the B-2 had.
I can’t see the point of installing a stealth wing design on a C-130, as the aircraft is far from stealthy otherwise – that tail alone is going to be a wonderful radar reflector with its vertical fin and ninety-degree attachment of the horizontal fins.
About the only possibility is that speculation that the B-2 uses some sort of electrostatic airflow shaping over the wing to greatly reduce drag and up range, and they were going to grab that whole system intact and stick it on the C-130. Another good question is what’s supposed to drive those wing fans? The tail engines don’t look up to the job, and I don’t see any air intakes for another set of engines for the wing fan drive.