Lockheed AC-130

Overview:

The Lockheed AC-130 gunship is a heavily-armed ground-attack aircraft. The basic airframe is manufactured by Lockheed, and Boeing is responsible for the conversion into a gunship and for aircraft support. It is a variant of the C-130 Hercules transport plane. The AC-130A Gunship II superseded the AC-47 Gunship I in Vietnam. The gunship's sole user is the United States Air Force, which uses AC-130H Spectre and AC-130U Spooky variants. The AC-130 is powered by four turboprops and has an armament ranging from 20 mm Gatling guns to 105 mm howitzers. It has a standard crew of twelve or thirteen airmen, including five officers (two pilots, a navigator, an electronic warfare officer and a fire control officer) and enlisted personnel (flight engineer, electronics operators and aerial gunners). The US Air Force uses the AC-130 gunships for close air support, air interdiction, and force protection. Close air support roles include supporting ground troops, escorting convoys, and flying urban operations. Air interdiction missions are conducted against planned targets and targets of opportunity. Force protection missions include defending air bases and other facilities. Stationed at Hurlburt Field in Northwest Florida, the gunship squadrons are part of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), a component of United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM). These heavily-armed aircraft incorporate side-firing weapons integrated with sophisticated sensors, navigation and fire control systems to provide precision firepower or area-saturation fire with its varied armament. The AC-130 can spend long periods flying over their target area at night and in adverse weather. The sensor suite consists of a television sensor, infrared sensor, and radar. These sensors allow the gunship to visually or electronically identify friendly ground forces and targets in most weather conditions. The AC-130U is equipped with the AN/APQ-180, a synthetic aperture radar for long-range target detection and identification. The gunship's navigational devices include inertial navigation systems and a Global Positioning System. The AC-130U employs technologies developed in the 1990s and can attack two targets simultaneously. It also has twice the munitions capacity of the AC-130H. Although the AC-130U conducts some operations in daylight, majority of its combat missions are conducted at night. [15]During the Vietnam era the various AC-130 versions following the Pave Pronto modifications were equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) system called the Black Crow (AN/ASD-5), a highly sensitive passive device with a phased-array antenna located in the left-front nose radome that could pick up localized deviations in earth's magnetic field and is normally used to detect submerged submarines. The Black Crow system on the AC-130A/E/H could accurately detect the unshielded ignition coils of Soviet trucks driven by the North Vietnamese that were hidden under the dense foliage of the jungle canopy along the Ho Chi Minh trail. It could also detect the signal from a hand-held transmitter that was used by air controllers on the ground to identify and locate specific target types. The system was slaved into the targeting computer. The PGM-38/U Enhanced 25 mm High Explosive Incendiary (HEI) round was created to expand the AC-130U gunships' mission in standoff range and survivability for its 25 mm GAU-12/U gun system. This round a combination of the existing PGU-25 HEI and a M758 fuse designated as FMU-151/B to meet the MIL-STD-1316. The FMU-151 has an improved arming delay with multi-sensitive range.

Specifications:

Role

• Fixed-wing gunship.

First Flight

• 1966

Introduction

• 1968

Status

• Active.

Primary User

• United States Air Force.

Number Built

• 43
  

Unit Cost

• US$132.4 million.

Crew

• Officers: 5 (pilot, co-pilot, navigator, fire control officer, electronic warfare officer)
  
• Enlisted: 8 (flight engineer, TV operator, infrared detection set operator, load master, four aerial gunners)
  
• Total: 13

Length

• 97 ft 9 in (29.8 m).

Height

• 38 ft 6 in (11.7 m).

Loaded Weight

• 122,400 lb (55,520 kg).

Max Takeoff Weight

• 155,000 lb (69,750 kg).

Powerplant

• 4× Allison T56-A-15 turboprops.
• 4,910 shp (3,700 kW) each.

Weapons

• 2× 7.62 mm GAU-2/A miniguns.
• 1× 40 mm L/60 Bofors cannon.
• 1× 105 mm (4.13 in) M102 howitzer.