Deficiencies with the C-130J that were cited to support the decision included being unable to drop heavy equipment, the inability to perform combat search-and-rescue missions, cold-weather performance issues, the risk of paratroopers hitting the fuselage when jumping out of the aircraft, major cost increases, and inadequate radar to fly into hurricanes. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz approved a program budget decision that ended the procurement of C-130J for the Air Force and completed the remaining KC-130J order for the Marine Corps in 2006, which would save US$5 billion in the Pentagon budget. The standard C-130J had a flyaway cost of US$62 million in 2008. Deliveries commenced in 1999 as the Hercules C4 (C-130J-30) and Hercules C5 (C-130J). įAA type certification occurred in September 1998 following 4,000 hours of flight testing. By the end of 1998, the company owed the RAF about US$50 million in penalties due to the delivery delays. By May 1998, Lockheed had spent over US$900 million in development costs for the C-130J. These issues resulted in Lockheed Martin exceeding its initial C-130J development budget of US$300 million. This problem forced the company to extend the de-icing system higher and lower on the vertical stabilizer to prevent ice formation, causing another delay of five months. This situation had been anticipated, but the cyclic system that replaced the old de-icing system was found to be insufficient when the C-130J flew in extreme conditions. Because the AE 2100 engines were more powerful and fuel-efficient than the Allison T56 engines that they replaced, the engines no longer produced enough bleed air to continuously warm the tail. In late 1997, the company discovered that directional problems could be caused by ice build-ups. The stick pusher was meant to be a temporary addition until Lockheed Martin could find an aerodynamic fix for all of the new stall conditions. Lockheed Martin changed the cockpit to include a stick pusher, which takes control and automatically pushes down the aircraft's nose if the pilot does not respond to stall warnings.
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Lockheed Martin spent five months making 20 unsuccessful attempts at aerodynamic solutions, but the stall problems were so varied that the fixes it tried to make applied only to specific conditions (such as only during power off, or only at full power). The stall problem was caused by the additional power of the engines and the increase in propeller blades from 4 to 6, which changed the aerodynamics so that the aircraft had a greater tendency to stall and roll at lower speeds.
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The program suffered from problems such as software integration glitches that extended the schedule by three months, followed by a nine-month delay caused by undiscovered stall characteristics that required aircraft modification. However, certification was stipulated in Lockheed Martin's contracts with some subsequent customers, including the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
Civil certification was not a regulatory requirement and was unneeded for the RAF launch order. To speed up the sale of military and commercial versions of the aircraft, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) civil certification was pursued before delivery would happen. The promised deliveries of the C-130J allowed the British Ministry of Defence to meet the 1996 deadline for replacing half of the RAF's aging fleet of Hercules aircraft, while the FLA aircraft was not expected to be available at the time until 2003.
The RAF ordered 25 aircraft for a total fixed price of US$1.6 billion, with first deliveries originally scheduled to begin in November 1996. The FLA commitment, which reduced the size of the C-130J launch order, was intended to ensure a 20 percent British workshare in the FLA program, and to prevent German industry from threatening British Aerospace's position as the wing manufacturer on the FLA and future Airbus commercial projects. It was paired with a commitment to buy 40 to 50 of the proposed European Future Large Aircraft aircraft (FLA, which was later designated as the A400M). The C-130J launch order occurred after a UK government stalemate of several months that concerned whether to buy new transport aircraft from Europe or the United States. On 16 December 1994, Lockheed received the launch order for the J-model from the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force (RAF).
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