Lockheed's New Cargo Order

Lockeed has unveiled plans to bring the popular C-130 Super Hercules to the commercial market as part of it's plan of dominating the ever growing global Air Cargo Business. It's part of a two pronged effort to dominate the high end and low end of the Air Cargo business.

The C-130s will cover air cargo deliveries that need to be made quickly or over very long distances. If the range of the destination is more then 800 nautical miles, Airships become less attractive, as the amount of fuel the airship would need to take to move the fuel it would need, makes it's efficiency only slightly better then the C-130 at these ranges with a whole lot lost in time.

However the C-130 is too expensive to operate in the sub 800nm ranges routinely. In that zone the Hybrid Airship is the king of efficiency, while also remaining timely. On top of that each platform can get into landing locations the other might not be able to reach. The Hybrid Airships might not be able to find an open area large enough to land, that might only be serviceable by a small airstrip not large enough to fit the airship but will fit the C-130. On the same token areas with vast open expenses but terrain too rough for the C-130 to land on will be easily accessed by a Hybrid Airship.


Any air cargo business can see why having both of these platforms makes a lot of sense. When you are not in a hurry you have the Hybrid Airships do the bulk of the cargo operations in your area, with the C-130s only flying long range cargo missions where the premiums are not too expensive. Allowing for a maximum of savings without any lose of coverage. However when you need to move cargo quickly you can send out the C-130s for shorter trips and they can still land at almost the same number of locations as the Hybrid Airship.

This allows for any air cargo carriers to have all their bases covered. When business is slow you scale down the usage of C-130s and double up the Airship cargo routs. When Business is booming you fill in the gaps left by the airships with the C-130.

It's a very smart plan that will have wide ranging impacts on the Air cargo industry. Not only is Lockheed increasing the capabilities of Air Carriers to land anywhere, not only are we seeing increased fuel efficiency because of the use of Hybrid Airships, but we will see increased efficiency for the C-130 as well because it will not be delegated to missions that it's incredibly inefficient for.

That is something that will benefit everyone on the planet in the near future and beyond.