lobbied and validated to acquire the Vikings
for our mission and eventually got the S-3 out
here. They found a great home at VX-30 for
the past ve years but the time came to nally
retire them for good.”
The existing infrastructure and parts
supply for the S-3 dwindled and due to the
requirement for the aircraft to go through
a major phase service in early 2016 the
decision was made by the Navy to nally
retire the last three Vikings. Cdr Hanaki
explained: “We knew that for a couple years
we needed to basically gure out where to
keep getting parts to support these aircraft
once the supply on hand at the depot in
Jacksonville started to run out. We were
getting toward the end of that supply of
parts very quickly and it was starting to
get less reliable from an operational and
planning standpoint in terms of what to
do when things broke on the jets. We did
not want to get to the point where when
something was broken there were no partsto x the problem and the aircraft just sat on
the ramp and that reality was creeping up
on us rapidly.
“A much larger issue for us was the
ejection seats. The one major limiting
factor, bigger than even the parts supply,
is the explosive cartridges for the ejection
seats, because they are not being made
anymore, we had to keep requesting
extensions from the Navy. I think the
command nally decided, for safety above
everything else that we could not grant any
more extensions. Once that was realised,
and we factored in the rest and gured out
it just would not be nancially feasible to
bid contracts for parts that are no longer
manufactured for just three aircraft or send
them through another major service life
extension to re-certify the seats, it just
seemed to be about the right time to retire
the aircraft. It is still a very capable platformfor the mission but the math didn’t make
sense any more for the Navy.
“We also have recently acquired two
additional P-3s from the eet to replace the
three S-3s we had here. They have a little
bit longer legs out on the range, true, we
lose the advantage of the speed and crew
manning size I mentioned earlier, but the
P-3s are certainly capable of doing all of
the missions we had the S-3 doing but that
is a short-term plan. We still need another
platform follow-on from the P-3s because,
similar to the S-3, they are even older and
eventually they are going to be retired from
Navy service but because they are still in
the eet, parts and maintenance are not an
issue for now.”
The last S-3 Viking left Point Mugu on
January 11 for storage at Davis-Monthan
AFB, Arizona. Two of the S-3s are in storage
with the Aerospace Maintenance and
Regeneration Group and the nal S-3 was
delivered to NASA at the Glenn Researchhttp://www.aviation-news.co.uk 23The cockpit of a S-3B Viking.The VX-30 ramp at Point Mugu.20-27_vx30DC.mf.indd 23 06/04/2016 17:01