UK Takes First non-U.S. C-17s

Boeing has delivered the first two of four C-17 Globemaster III heavy transports the UK's Ministry of Defence has leased to meet joint rapid reaction force commitments.

The other two will be delivered later this summer.

The USAF already operates 72 C-17s, but these are Boeing's first Globemasters to go to an international customer.

The Royal Air Force will be operating them on a seven-year lease--with no restrictions on how or where they can fly with their cargoes of one battle tank, three Apache helicopters, three Warrior armored vehicles, 13 Land Rovers, or 169,000 pounds of mercy supplies.

There was a top-brass sendoff for the first C-17 export model, with Jerry Daniels, president and CEO of Boeing Military Aircraft and Missile Systems, and Maj. General Paul Essex, director of Global Reach programs for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, figuratively handing over the keys to David Gould, deputy chief of Defence Procurement for the UK.

The aircraft was flown to Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina where it appeared in the Charleston Air Show before loading up with some of its own support equipment and heading off for the RAF's largest operational base in Britain, at Brize Norton.

At the controls was S/Ldr Malcolm Brecht, commanding officer of No. 99 Squadron, which has been re-formed for C-17 operations. It last flew Bristol Britannias in the 1970s.

Brize Norton, an air transport and flight refueling base, will be the permanent home for the RAF C-17s. A new squadron headquarters is being built there, as is a five-bay hangar with built-in C-17 tail docking area.

As part of a separate contract with Boeing and the USAF, the first four British pilots and four air loadmasters have undertaken simulator and operational flying training at Altus AFB in Oklahoma since the beginning of the year.

The remaining air crews are currently undergoing up to eight months' simulator and operational training.

"Classroom and practical training with the USAF at Charleston was a unique experience for everyone there," S/Ldr Catherine Coton of the RAF's HQ Strike Command told Show News.

"We have markedly different training and parts handling methods," she said, "so there had to be some radical changing of practices; and, because of the practical training arrangements, our personnel were permitted only to shadow the U.S. engineers.

"But they were a great bunch of guys and there was a good co-operative spirit."

It's all meant that back in the UK, intensive training is continuing, and air crews are already clocking up flight operational training hours towards combat readiness.

By Steve Morris