The Turkish Air Force has reportedly reached an agreement to acquire 12 C-130J Super Hercules turboprop transport aircraft from the Royal Air Force (RAF), Scramble reported.
The military transport aircraft was decommissioned from the RAF fleet in June 2023 and the remaining examples have been stored at Cambridge Airport since then.
The Royal Air Force had 23 C-130Js, an upgraded variant of the Lockheed Martin aircraft, but eight of them were resold, five to Bangladesh, two to Bahrain and one to the US Navy.
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The remaining 15 aircraft are of the C4 (stretched C-130J-30) and C5 types, of which there are only two units.
It is not clear which C-130Js Turkey would have chosen, but it is understood that they would be the C-130J-30.
Greece
The RAF has decided to retire its Hercules after changing plans to keep them in service until 2035. This leaves the service solely reliant on the C-17 and A400M for tactical transport.
Not long ago, Greece had evaluated a possible purchase of British C-130Js, but the air force preferred to launch a competition to order new aircraft – Lockheed itself and Embraer are competing for an order with the C-390 Millennium.
Turkey, on the other hand, has a wider range of transport aircraft, including the A400M (10 aircraft and six more on order), CN235 (40 turboprops) and even the C-160 Transall.
In addition to these, there are thirteen C-130Es and five C-130Bs, some of which have been in operation for decades.
