On March 26, 2003, just three days into the U.S. invasion of Iraq, 15 C-17 Globemaster III transports took off from Aviano Air Base in Italy. The Globemasters were packed to the gills with an airborne task force of the 173rd Airborne Brigade on what can be the primary U.S. Army combat parachute drop for the reason that 1989 invasion of Panama. Their destination: Harir Air Base (then called Bashur Air Base) in Northern Iraq, where they’d open the northern front within the war to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The C-17s’ flight path took them over the Balkans, Turkey, after which finally Iraq itself. The pilots and flight crew wore night-vision goggles—gear they’d not normally trained with—to keep up formation throughout the night flight and into battle. Because the train of squat, heavily laden transports neared the air base, they began an unnerving descent from a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet right down to 1,000 feet at a rate of as much as 4,500 feet per minute. Although the maneuver was dangerous, especially with the pilots seeing the world through night vision, planners believed it was mandatory to avoid man-portable surface-to-air missile fire until the last possible moment. Shot down by an SA-14 missile, a single C-17 would claim the lives of greater than 100 paratroopers and Air Force personnel.
At five miles from the target, the transports leveled out, homing in on markers the pathfinders had arrange. Ten transports dropped paratroopers, while one other five dropped vehicles and pallets of kit. Each paratrooper had only one second to clear the door and exit the plane while laden with a parachute and the mandatory equipment, jumping into 135-knot winds. Once the drop was complete, the C-17s winged their way back to Aviano.
The following day, the brigade would air-land the remainder of the 173rd Airborne’s combat power, plus a task force of Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. Inside five days, a force of just 12 transport planes had flown 62 missions, delivering 2,175 personnel, 3,060 tons of cargo, and 408 vehicles to Bashur. The C-17 Globemaster III had just demonstrated what made it a badass plane.
Succeeding a Starlifter
Within the late Seventies, the U.S. Air Force began planning for a brand new transport aircraft that might replace the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter. The aircraft entered service in 1965, and a fleet of 270 Starlifters worked hard to support the Vietnam War effort in addition to the following Cold War. The service would want to retire the Starlifters sometime across the mid-Nineties, right around when the majority of the fleet would hit the 30-year mark.
On the time, the Air Force’s heavy jet transports included the C-5 Galaxy, able to carrying predominant battle tanks, and the C-141, which couldn’t. The service wanted a C-141 substitute that had the range of a C-5 and that would also carry tanks. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Iranian government had also placed an emphasis on rapidly deployable forces across the Pentagon that would operate from austere environments. So, the aptitude of taking off and landing from shorter, 3,000-foot-long landing strips was added to the brand new aircraft.
The Air Force announced the brand new aircraft, generally known as C-X, in 1979. Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell-Douglas (which might later change into a part of Boeing) recommend quite a lot of competing entries for the brand new aircraft, including militarized versions of business jetliners, an updated C-141, and fully recent designs. McDonnell-Douglas had developed the YC-15, a brand new transport for the short-lived Advanced Medium Short Takeoff and Landing Transport program, and the corporate’s C-X prospect retained plenty of those self same features, including the use of the Coanda effect. In line with NASA, this effect involves deflecting “an element of the exhaust from an aircraft engine over the wing of an aircraft in flight”; this increases lift by as much as an element of three.
In 1981, McDonnell Douglas won the competition to construct the C-X, which had officially been dubbed the C-17. The aircraft entered full-scale development in 1986, and first flew on September 15, 1991, a yr later than expected. The C-17 can be notably absent from Operation Desert Shield, the air bridge that shuttled U.S. military equipment from Europe and the continental United States to Saudi Arabia—an enormous deployment that might change into the C-141 Starlifter’s swan song.
Master of the Globe
The C-17 was 173 feet, 11 inches long from nose to tail. Curiously, the plane’s wingspan—at 170 feet, 9 inches wide—makes it nearly as wide because it is long. The cargo compartment is 85 feet, 2 inches long; 18 feet wide; and 12 feet, 4 inches high. Consequently, the wide-bodied transport has a gravid, lumbering profile that has earned it the nickname “Buddha” and “Moose.” The aircraft can carry a complete of 170,900 kilos of kit, 18 modular pallets of kit, or as much as 102 paratroopers.
The M1A1, at 12 feet wide and 126,000 kilos, couldn’t fit within the older C-141 Starlifter’s 10-foot-wide cargo box. The C-17 was specifically designed to hold one M1A1 Abrams tank. In lieu of a predominant battle tank, the transport could as an alternative carry two M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, three AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, or a single Patriot surface-to-air missile firing unit. Moreover, a C-17 can carry two M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, the Army’s tracked rocket launcher vehicle, or two M142 HIMARS truck-mounted rocket launcher systems.
Along with its core transport mission, the C-17 shines as an aeromedical evacuation transport. The missions typically involve transporting seriously wounded personnel from a combat theater to hospitals within the U.S. or Europe. The C-17’s “big, shiny, and spacious interior,” with hookups for medical-grade oxygen, make it the aircraft of alternative for the mission. A C-17 could make room for as much as 60 litters, with one doctor, two flight nurses, and three medical technicians to are inclined to patients through the flight.
A C-17 may also embark the Transportation Isolation System (TIS), a self-contained, palletized package that enables the air transport of individuals with infectious diseases. The TIS was developed in 2014, when U.S. forces were deployed to Africa to assist contain an Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The TIS is watertight and utilizes “high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration systems to contain each airborne and non-airborne pathogens.” As such, the TIS features a decontamination chamber for medical personnel to don and take away protective gear. Each TIS can accommodate two litter patients or 4 ambulatory patients, and every C-17 can carry two TIS pallets.
Taking Flight
The C-17’s operational record began with 1999’s Operation Allied Force, the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia. In 2001, C-17s supported Operation Enduring Freedom, the invasion of Afghanistan after the attack on 9/11. In 2003, the massive planes flew in support of the invasion of Iraq, including the airdrop of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. C-17s supported European deployments to Mali and Australian deployments to East Timor in 2006. C-17s also commonly deliver humanitarian aid to disaster zones worldwide; their ability to land in only 3,500 feet and reverse engines backward helps them operate from short or damaged runways.
C-17s commonly fly the route between Christchurch, Recent Zealand and McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The aircraft make use of fields of sea ice for runways on the frozen continent, though the ice have to be at the least six feet thick to support the burden of the aircraft. C-17s also support the President of the USA and the presidential motorcade when it travels outside Washington D.C. In 1998, a C-17 was chartered to move Keiko, the Orca that inspired “Free Willy,” from its home in Oregon to Iceland where he was prepared for release.
The Future
The C-17 Globemaster is essentially the most flexible cargo aircraft to enter the category of airlifters, capable of transport troops and cargo quickly and strategically to predominant operating bases or to forward operating bases across the globe. (U.S. Air Force Photo By Travis Burcham)
In a future conflict, the C-17 Globemaster’s un-refueled range will allow it to support U.S. forces across the Asia-Pacific, hauling troops, fuel, food, weapons, and spare parts wherever they’re needed. The aircraft can fly as much as 2,400 nautical miles un-refueled, or from Travis Air Force Base in California to Joint Base Hickam on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Its midair refueling capability and the Air Force’s large fleet of aerial refueling tankers, just like the KC-135 Stratotanker and recent KC-46 Pegasus, give the C-17 effectively unlimited range.
Other missions might be more “kinetic.” In December 2021, the U.S. Air Force tested its recent Rapid Dragon concept, by which palletized missiles akin to the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, an air-to-ground cruise missile, are loaded onto transport aircraft, transforming them into temporary bombers. Once a transport just like the C-17 enters strike range, the pallets roll off and start launching their missiles. Using the pallet system, a C-17 could launch as many as 27 JASSM missiles, greater than a B-2 stealth bomber.
Certainly one of the latest missions for the C-17 might be as a part of an air-land rocket raiding force. The U.S. Army’s HIMARS trucks train to roll onto C-17s, quickly roll off at their destination, fire a salvo of precision-guided rockets at unsuspecting enemy targets, and return to the C-17 for a fast departure. Rockets include the GMLRS GPS-guided missile utilized in Ukraine, the ATACMS tactical missile, and the brand new PrSM missile with a 300-mile range. The Air Force may even transmit targeting data to the Army’s rockets and missiles mid-flight, ensuring that HIMARS units don’t must spend a minute more on the bottom than absolutely mandatory.
There are exactly 222 C-17s in service with the U.S. Air Force, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard out of an original buy of 223 aircraft. Despite nearly a dozen mishaps, just one aircraft has been lost in 30 years—a remarkable safety record. The C-17 production line led to 2015, so the Air Force and its allies won’t be buying any more aircraft. There are currently no plans to exchange the plane, despite the fact that the typical aircraft age is nineteen years.
Most of Popular Mechanics’ badass planes are armed aircraft like fighters, attack jets, and bombers. But a plane able to hauling a killer whale halfway around the globe at some point, launching greater than two dozen cruise missiles the subsequent day, and transporting infectious disease patients the day after that’s in its own class entirely. There’s nothing quite so versatile on the planet because the C-17 Globemaster III, and nothing quite so badass.