Lockheed C-130 Hercules HC-130

The HC-130 is the extended-range search and rescue and combat search and rescue version of the C-130 Hercules. Two clearly different lines of aircraft share the designation, operated by two separate services of the U.S. armed forces.

The United States Coast Guard was the first recipient of the variant. In keeping with the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard designation system of the time, the first order in 1958 was designated R8V-1G; with the introduction of the tri-service designation system in 1962 this became HC-130B. Six HC-130Es were produced for the Coast Guard in 1964, but production soon switched to the new C-130H platform then entering service. The first HC-130H flew on 8 December 1964 and the Coast Guard began equipping with it in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was acquired primarily for long-range overwater search missions, support airlift, maritime patrol, the North Atlantic Ice Patrol and command and control of search and rescue, replacing the HU-16 Albatross amphibians and the land-based HC-123 Provider. Like their Air Force counterparts, Coast Guard HC-130s could airdrop rescue equipment to survivors at sea or over open terrain, and carried two 1,800-gallon fuel bladders in the cargo compartment.

The Air Force line began with the HC-130P Combat King, first flown in 1964 on the C-130E airframe. It was modified to conduct search and rescue missions, to serve as a command and control platform, to refuel helicopters in flight and to carry supplemental fuel in additional internal cargo bay tanks. It was originally fitted with the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system, later discontinued and removed from all surviving aircraft; the HC-130N was a follow-up order without the Fulton gear. HC-130P/N crews normally fly night, low-level air refuelling and airdrop operations using night vision goggles, with no external lighting or communications, to avoid radar and weapons detection. Secondary missions include the tactical airdrop of pararescue teams, small bundles, zodiac watercraft or four-wheel-drive all-terrain vehicles, and direct assistance to a survivor ahead of the recovery vehicle; a team of three pararescuemen trained in emergency trauma medicine, harsh-environment survival and assisted evasion is part of the basic crew complement. Until 2016 the fleet combined mid-to-late 1960s aircraft based on C-130E airframes with mid-1990s aircraft based on C-130H3 airframes; since 2018, apart from a handful in the Air National Guard, all remaining HC-130P/N aircraft have been operated by Air Force Reserve Command.

The current versions derive from the C-130J. The Coast Guard HC-130J is derived from the Marine Corps KC-130J: the first delivery took place in October 2003 and the six aircraft in service, which cannot refuel helicopters in flight, subsequently received significant modifications including a large window on each side of the fuselage for visual scanning of the sea surface, an inverse synthetic aperture sea search radar, flare tubes, a forward-looking infrared and electro-optical sensor, a gaseous oxygen system for the crew and the Minotaur Mission System. The USAF, in turn, fields the HC-130J Combat King II as its next-generation combat search and rescue tanker. In July 2015 it was announced that the U.S. Forest Service would receive some of the Coast Guard's HC-130H aircraft for use as aerial fire retardant tankers as the service replaced them with additional HC-130J and HC-27J Spartan aircraft.