News

Salvaged C-5 cockpit to help test software

  • Published
  • By Wayne Crenshaw
  • 78th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
Robins officials cut the ribbon last week on a small but unique facility which promises to make a significant contribution to keeping the C-5 Galaxy flying for many years to come.

The C-5 Integrated Aircraft Test Environment is a 2,200-square foot, two-story building behind Bldg. 230. It houses a cockpit salvaged from a C-5 that crashed in 2006. The cockpit will be wired up to be made fully functional and used to test software for the aircraft developed by the 402nd Software Maintenance Group.

Brig. Gen. Lee Levy, commander of the 402nd Maintenance Wing, credited the development of the lab to "visionaries" at Robins who found a way to "turn lemons into lemonade" in the wake of the C-5 crash.

"This is a really great day not just for the 402nd Maintenance Wing, but for the integrated Team Robins effort as we take our facilities and our capacities further into the 21st Century to support the warfighter," Levy told a group packed into the first-floor area for the ribbon cutting.

After the ceremony, attendees were taken upstairs to see the cockpit, which was already wired to have some basic functionality. However, Levy said it will take another year to get thousands of wires and connectors set up to make the cockpit fully functional.

The idea is to give software engineers a way to test software in a real environment without tying up actual C-5s with costly test flights, especially when these planes are so needed in actual military operations.

"I expect we will get a lot of taxpayer value out of this building and the software we will produce," he said.

The cockpit had been in storage at Robins since January, when it was moved into its new home after the steel frame was erected. The building was then finished around it.

The building itself cost $658,000, but another $15 million investment was needed for the set up of the lab, including the cockpit wiring and engineering the lab capability, writing the simulation software and validating everything works as intended.