The flight of a USAF MC-130E aircraft using the CIA's Fulton system in Spain

One of the greatest challenges for special operations military forces is carrying out exfiltrations quickly.

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Helicopters are a very useful tool for these types of operations, but they haven't always been the only solution. In the 1950s, an American inventor, Robert Edison Fulton Jr., created a personnel recovery system using fixed-wing aircraft, which made it unnecessary to land the aircraft to carry out the exfiltration.

The system was created at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United States' foreign intelligence service. The official name for this exfiltration method was the Surface-To-Air Recovery System (STARS), although it was commonly known as Skyhook or the Fulton method, in honor of its creator. The first Skyhook systems were installed on US Navy Lockheed P-2 Neptune maritime patrol aircraft.

The Fulton method consisted of attaching retractable clamps to the nose of the aircraft, which, once in flight and to carry out the exfiltration, were extended into a V shape. On the ground, it was necessary to deploy a self-inflating balloon with a rope, to which the person to be exfiltrated was attached by a harness. The plane had to fly up to the balloon, passing underneath it, hooking the rope and abruptly lifting the exfiltrated person. It was a risky method, but in 17 years of use, only one death was recorded in operations carried out using this system.

The first time this system was used on a human was on August 12, 1958, when a U.S. Navy S-2 Neptune picked up Marine Corps Sergeant Levi W. Woods. The US Navy used this system on P-2 Neptune and S-2 Tracker aircraft, the USAF on its C-123 Providers and C-130 Hercules, and the CIA on old C-47s, using them in its elite Special Activities Division (SAD). In the photos that appear in this article, taken from the U.S. National Archives, you can see images of the USAF MC-130E Combat Talons, special operations aircraft equipped with the Fulton method.

The system was used until 1996, when it became obsolete with improvements in helicopters and the introduction of the new V-22 Osprey tiltrotors. A few days ago, the YouTube channel Panzerargentino published an old video recorded during the Crisex 79 exercise, carried out by the Spanish and US Armed Forces in the Spanish province of Almería. In the images we can see an exfiltration exercise using the Fulton method, with an MC-130E Combat Talon of the 7th Special Operations Squadron of the USAF: