Construction projects totaling nearly $49 million are being requested for Hill Air Force Base and the Utah Test and Training Range for the 1991 construction and budget year.
Construction of a $37 million, eight-acre facility for the C-130 maintenance program and three training range projects of almost $12 million are being requested, according to base officials.The C-130 maintenance complex and a new mission control center for the training range would be built on now-vacant property east of Hill's main runway. Base officials said their construction also will require building a new gate on Hill's southeast corner for improved access.
The C-130 facility is a complex of five connected hangars, each able to hold two of the cargo aircraft, spread over the eight acres.
Hill just received the C-130 maintenance and overhaul program last summer. It was transferred from the Air Force Logistics Center in San Antonio, Texas. It was brought to Hill to take advantage of the skilled work force and maintenance facilities available at Hill because of the phasing out of the F-4 Phantom fighter from the Air Force's inventory, according to base officials.
The base can overhaul 30 C-130s annually in its present facility, according to Maj. Frank DeLuca, deputy chief of engineering and planning in airplane maintenance.
Construction of the new complex, which could get under way as early as October 1991, would double the capacity to 60 C-130s a year, DeLuca said, which the Air Force is requesting.
In the overhaul, workers strip, inspect, repair, and modify the aircraft's mechanical, electronic, and avionics systems.
"The C-130 hangar construction project will poise Hill for future transport aircraft workload responsibility," said Boyd Thurgood, deputy director of maintenance. "Cargo aircraft such as the C-130 are a stable workload and something Hill workers can depend on.
"It also gives us the possibility to work on such aircraft as the Kc-135, C-141, and the C-17," Thurgood said.
The proposed training range mission control center is scheduled to begin construction in 1991 and should be operational by 1993, according to Dick Hector, chief of the electronic combat project division, which oversees operation of the range.
The proposed 50,000-square-foot control center is the first stage of what could be a five- to 10-acre complex of up to 13 buildings required for support of the Air Force's proposed electronic battlefield on the range.
Public hearings on the electronic battlefield concept are currently being held and the Air Force's official position is that the project is still a proposal.
Hector said the $7.3 million mission control center would contain the current training range control center, now housed in a 2,400-square-foot building. Future construction could include test and threat aircraft hangars, a heliport and facilities for contractors, engineers and range air traffic controllers.