The US Coast Guard has ordered three new Lockheed Martin HC-130J airplanes to augment its surveillance and search and rescue capabilities.
Worth $218 million, the three new planes will boost the Coast Guard’s fleet of HC-130Js to nine.
The HC-130J is a variant of the popular C-130 Hercules military transport plane containing a belly-mounted 360-degree long range search radar, nose-mounted forward looking infrared radar and an advanced mission communications suite. The Coast Guard uses them for everything from tracking drug runners to finding stranded sailors.
Lockheed Martin delivered the first HC-130J to the Coast Guard in 2003.