#37: A Fresh (water) Runway: ERDC’s ice and snow expertise enables historic LC-130 landing

When the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing needed to find a suitable location to land its massive LC-130 Hercules cargo plane during an Arctic exercise in March 2025, it turned to ERDC for help. Although the nearby sea ice was not thick enough to support the maneuver, ERDC devised a plan to land the plane on a nearby freshwater lake, a novel approach that required less ice. Leaning into ERDC’s deep expertise in developing ice and snow runways, the 109th completed the landing at Parsons Lake in Canda’s Northwest Territories – the first time the U.S. military has landed an LC-130 on a frozen freshwater surface. We discuss this feat with T.J. Melendy, a research civil engineer at ERDC’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. Topics include Melendy’s experience with ice and snow runways (5:02), how the idea to land on a freshwater lake originated (11:44) and the differences between freshwater ice and saltwater ice (3:53). We also discussed the process of testing the potential freshwater ice landing (13:30), why this achievement was significant for the U.S. military (24:20) and what is next for this effort (27:01). Watch a video of this podcast on our website at PowerofERDCpodcast.org/37-lc130-landing_video. For additional information, including photos from the landing, visit PowerofERDCpodcast.org/37-lc130-landing_resources.