It’s not every day you see an aircraft as big as the C-17 Globemaster, but the painters using the GFS paint booth at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska do.

GFS has had the privilege to work on many special projects over the years, but few compare in sheer size and complexity to the paint booth system we engineered for the C-17’s stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, AK.

The C-17 Globemaster is an astounding aircraft, designed to haul massive amounts of cargo over extremely large distances. Some examples of what the C-17 can carry include up to 134 troops, or vehicle cargo such as an M1 Abrams tank, 3 Stryker armored fighting vehicles, or up to 6 M1117 armored security vehicles.

Integrated in to an existing structure at Elmendorf, GFS engineers designed the paint booth for the C-17s to be supported from the building structure. Overall, the booth stretches 200ft wide x 200ft deep x 72ft tall, and its massive air movement system produces a staggering 820,000 CFM. In addition to the sheet metal and air movement system, GFS also supplied the tremendous number of high-efficiency light fixtures required to produce the necessary illumination for the painters to work. The paint booth included bottom-rolling filtered intake plenum entry doors, and a special 3-stage exhaust filtration system designed to remove particulates and VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) from the exhausted air.

GFS is proud to have played a vital role in the C-17 PACAF mission, and also once again proud of our engineering team for accomplishing an impressive feat of ingenuity and innovation!