Winglets coming to a C-5M, C-130J or a P-3 near you.

According to a 2011 Department of Defense report, the US armed forces consumed nearly five billion gallons of fuel of all types in military operations in 2010. Those gallons cost $13.2 billion, a 255 percent increase over the fuel bill in 1997. “Saving even one percent of those five billion gallons is a huge amount of fuel and a big reduction in cost,” said Chuck Hybart, who headed the fuel efficiency studies program for the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, the company’s advanced technology development organization. Winglets, such as shown on a C-130J in this artist concept, is one major way to improve fuel efficiency.

Winglets are one promising option that turned up on the C-130, C-5, and P-3. Winglets are the upturned wingtip devices that improve the efficiency of fixed-wing aircraft by reducing drag through partial recovery of the vortex energy created by the airstream as it goes over the wingtip. These devices also increase the effective aspect ratio—that is, wing length-to-chord—without materially increasing wingspan. A combination of CFD studies and actual wind tunnel testing was conducted for both the C-130 and P-3. This is a computer-generated version of a C-130J with winglets.