After 17 years of upgrades, the Air Force's biggest plane is ready to stay in the air for decades

(AP Photo/Francois Mori)

• Lockheed Martin has finished upgrading 52 of the Air Force's biggest plane: the C-5M Super Galaxy.
• The main element of the upgrade was a new, more powerful engine.
• The upgrades started in 2001 and are supposed to keep the massive plane in service until the 2040s.

Lockheed Martin said earlier this month that the last of 52 upgraded C-5M Super Galaxy cargo planes had been delivered to the Air Force, finishing the nearly two-decade-long modernization of the service's largest plane.

Lockheed began work on the Air Force's Reliability and Re-engineering Program (RERP) in 2001 and turned over the first operational C-5M Super Galaxy, as the latest version is called, on February 9, 2009.See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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