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several other branches. Along with the Army National Guard, the Air National Guard and the Navy still fly the C-26.
The FWAATS works in conjunc- tion with the Operational Support Airlift Activity at Fort Belvoir, Virgin- ia, which manages the Army National Guard’s fixed wing share program of roughly 50 C-12 aircraft and 11 C-26 aircraft, moving the aviation assets to where they are needed most.
Until recently, two C-26 were deployed overseas and nine po- sitioned stateside. All 11 are now stateside and distributed among
the National Guard’s Fixed Wing Flight Detachments nationwide. How- ever, it’s expected one or two C-26 units will cycle back overseas in the next couple of years.
The most common Army National Guard missions for both aircraft types are strategic level transport of personnel and cargo. Over the past year, both models also supported the Army National Guard’s work related to the pandemic. The Guard’s fixed- wing force alone has f lown nearly 600 COVID-related missions, moving nearly 2,200 passengers and almost
20,000 pounds of cargo including ven- tilators and medical supplies.
FWAATS’ Current Fleet
The King Air and the Metroliner help the FWAATS meet its goal of de- livering high-quality, low-cost train- ing for Army aviators. While OSA- A frequently rotates the aircraft in the Army National Guard inventory amongst state units, the schoolhouse typically keeps their aircraft longer in order to coordinate training course schedules with scheduled mainte- nance. FWAATS contracts with Amentum/DynCorp International for King Air maintenance and M7 Aerospace for Metroliner work.
Throughout the year, the number of C-12 Huron aircraft on the FWAATS ramp ranges from three to five de- pending on the number of students enrolled. They employ a mix of mod- els including the C-12U in standard cargo and key leader/strategic level transport configuration and the C- 12R, which can be modified with EFIS glass cockpit instrumentation for re- connaissance missions. This prepares the student pilots to return to their units and start flying the C-12 vari- ants currently assigned to that unit.
Fort Rucker also offers C-12 train- ing, but the FWAATS is the only spot for C-26 Army training. The Army National Guard is the only entity in that branch currently flying the air- craft type. C-26 qualification students typically come to the West Virginia site two at a time, having started with two weeks in San Antonio on the only C-26 simulator in the U.S. and then spending three weeks in an aircraft at the FWAATS.
To support the increase in training needs, there are now two C-26 as- signed to the schoolhouse. Both rolled off the production line in 1992 and upgraded to Collins Proline 21 avion- ics in 2007. Metroliner #513 arrived at FWAATS in 2020 after multiple years in Afghanistan. Metroliner #527 has been a trainer for the FWAATS for the past 22 years, where it has ac- cumulated 10,000 hours.
FWAATS relies on Fairchild C-26 Metroliners and Beechcraft C-12 Hurons.
18 • TWIN & TURBINE / August 2021