U.S. Air Force Launches 8 C-17 Transport Aircraft in Wartime Deployment Test.

Imagery released by the U.S. Department of Defense shows eight C-17 Globemaster III aircraft launching in rapid sequence from Joint Base Lewis-McChord during exercise Kraken Reach 2026. The drill highlights how quickly the US military can generate heavy airlift for real-world deployments, not staged displays.

Imagery released on January 23, 2026, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service shows a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III from the 62d Airlift Wing lifting off from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, during exercise KRAKEN REACH 2026. Photographed on January 7, the scene captures a key phase of the exercise focused on the rapid generation and launch of eight C-17 airlifters in quick succession. Rather than a ceremonial “elephant walk,” the drill was designed to test how fast parked aircraft could be converted into an airborne mobility package under operational time pressure, reflecting real-world deployment demands.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

A C-17 Globemaster III from the 62nd Airlift Wing launches from Joint Base Lewis-McChord during Kraken Reach 2026, demonstrating the U.S. Air Force's ability to surge long-range airlift of troops and heavy Army cargo, deliver into short or austere runways, and generate a rapid global response at operational speed (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

For Army commanders, the significance is immediate: Joint Base Lewis-McChord is not just another airfield; it is one of the United States’ most consequential power projection hubs on the Pacific side of the map. McChord Field’s active duty 62d Airlift Wing operates alongside its Reserve partner, the 446th Airlift Wing, and the base states the two wings together fly 40 C-17s, a concentration that can translate political decisions into physical mass movement with little warning. The 62d Airlift Wing’s own mission statement explicitly links global airlift to preparing for joint and coalition multi-domain operations in near-peer contested environments, an unusually blunt acknowledgement of the operational reality now shaping U.S. planning.

The aircraft at the center of Kraken Reach is the C-17 Globemaster III, still the most flexible platform in the U.S. strategic airlift inventory because it bridges two worlds that rarely align: inter-theater range and tactical access. Powered by four Pratt and Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofan engines producing 40,440 pounds of thrust each, the C-17 combines a high-lift wing with externally blown flaps and thrust reversers engineered to reduce foreign object ingestion in dusty conditions. In practical terms, that design is what lets the aircraft haul heavy loads into shorter, less forgiving runways without requiring a pristine main operating base at the receiving end.

Its numbers explain why it remains the backbone of “get there fast” logistics. The Air Force lists a maximum cargo load of 170,900 pounds across 18 pallet positions, the ability to carry 102 troops or paratroops, and a maximum takeoff weight of 585,000 pounds. The cargo compartment, roughly 88 feet long, 18 feet wide, and over 12 feet high, is built for outsized military freight rather than commercial efficiency. The Air Force also notes the C-17 can accommodate virtually all of the Army’s air-transportable equipment, explicitly including a 69-ton M1 Abrams main battle tank, which is the kind of capability that turns a mobility sortie into a ground combat option instead of a symbolic airlift gesture.

The C-17’s value is less about raw payload and more about access under constraint. The aircraft can operate from runways as short as 3,500 feet and only 90 feet wide, turn around on narrow pavement using a three-point star turn, and even back under its own power using thrust reversers. That matters in theaters where airfields are limited, targeted, or politically sensitive, and where the difference between landing at a major hub versus a forward strip can decide whether forces arrive as a coherent combat package or as a slow drip vulnerable to disruption. The platform’s ability to conduct airdrop missions and rapidly convert for aeromedical evacuation underscores that mobility aircraft are not single-mission trucks but adaptable systems designed to sustain combat and absorb casualties.

Exercises like Kraken Reach are about more than pilots taking off on time. Generating eight heavy airlifters rapidly forces every supporting function to perform at war speed: maintenance to clear discrepancies, aerial port teams to prepare loads, security forces to keep movement lines open, and command and control to sequence departures safely while maintaining tempo. For U.S. Army units stationed at and around Joint Base Lewis-McChord, including major deployers that rely on rapid reinforcement timelines, the difference between launching a few aircraft over several hours and launching eight in a tight window is the difference between “arrival” and “arrival with options.” When an Army formation needs its launchers, radars, fuel bladders, and sustainment enablers to show up together, airlift becomes a combat multiplier, not a logistical footnote.

The drill fits squarely within the U.S. mobility doctrine that treats deterrence as a function of timelines as much as platforms. Rapid global mobility underpins the Joint Force’s ability to put effects in the right place at the right time, while strategic lift remains the enabling layer for deployment, employment, sustainment, and redeployment. In an Indo-Pacific scenario defined by distance and contested basing, or a European contingency defined by speed of reinforcement, the ability to generate a mass departure package from McChord is not a local training event; it is a strategic signal that the United States can still move.

Kraken Reach 2026, in other words, is a snapshot of the hard part of power projection: not owning aircraft, but proving the enterprise can launch them quickly, repeatedly, and with the loads that actually matter. In any major crisis, the first decisive maneuver may not be a brigade crossing a line of departure, but eight gray transports clawing into the winter sky on schedule, because the fight cannot start where it must without the lift to get there first.