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Further purchases of A400's binned due to cost.

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Further purchases of A400's binned due to cost.

Old 1st Dec 2022, 15:08
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Further purchases of A400's binned due to cost.

Though I do know where there are some C130J's going cheap....
These additional A400's were remember to pick up the slack when the C130 was retired... Sigh, every man and his dog are strengthening their military during uncertain times and the UK PLC are chopping it left, right and centre, while they blow £100bn on a sodding rail link with 't Norf that will knock a whole 15 minutes off the journey time..

WTF does "Air Command is developing an affordable choice to improve A400M availability"

The Ministry of Defence has abandoned plans to purchase additional A400M transport aircraft due to cost.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Defence published its tenth annual summary of the defence equipment plan, the report contained references to the purchase of more A400M transport aircraft.

Part of the document stated:

“In later years of the plan, planned equipment investments worth £2.3 billion, including a second tranche of F35 and further A400M aircraft, have not yet been delegated to TLBs and doing so will be dependent on the affordability of the programme as a whole.”

However, in a report from the National Audit Office examining the announced equipment plan, it’s stated that this plan has now been dropped.

“An option to purchase additional A400M aircraft was assessed as
unaffordable. Air Command is developing an affordable choice to
improve A400M availability. Some funding is held centrally.”

It’s worth remembering that the Royal Air Force will lose its entire fleet of C-130 Hercules aircraft by 2023. The Defence Command Paper released last year, titled ‘Defence in a Competitive Age‘, states:

“The Royal Air Force will retire the BAe146 as planned by 2022 and take the C130 Hercules out of service by 2023. The A400M Atlas force will increase its capacity and capability, operating alongside C 17 Globemaster and Voyager transport aircraft and tankers.”

The C-130J variants first entered service with the Royal Air Force in the late 1990s and some of the C-130s have been retired in recent years but the remaining 14 had originally been due to keep flying until the mid-2030s. It is understood that, where possible, their missions will be picked up by the fleet of larger A400M Atlas transport aircraft.

What does Atlas do?

According to the Royal Air Force website, Atlas has the ability to carry a 37-tonne payload over 2,000nm to established and remote civilian and military airfields, and short unprepared or semi-prepared strips. Capable of operating at altitudes up to 40,000ft, Atlas also offers impressive low-level capability.

“It will accommodate as many as 116 fully-equipped troops; vehicles; helicopters, including a Chinook; mixed loads, including nine aircraft pallets and 54 passengers, or combinations of vehicles, pallets and personnel, up to a payload of 37 tonnes.”



https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/plans-to-buy-more-transport-aircraft-scrapped-due-to-cost/

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Last edited by NutLoose; 1st Dec 2022 at 15:20.
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Old 1st Dec 2022, 15:47
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Forgot to mention

Greece interested in surplus UK Hercules airlifters

01 December 2022

by Gareth Jennings

Greece is expected to acquire at least one surplus Hercules airlifter when the type is retired from UK service in 2023. (Janes/Patrick Allen)

Greece has shown interest in acquiring from the United Kingdom an undisclosed number of soon-to-be-retired Lockheed Martin C-130J/C-130J-30 Hercules airlifters.

The Greek Republic Ministry of National Defense (MND) announced in late November that it had held a teleconference with Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group to talk about the upcoming sale of one ‘short' C-130J (C5 in UK service) and 13 ‘stretched' C-130J-30 (C4) airframes that are to be retired from Royal Air Force (RAF) service in 2023.

“The purpose of the teleconference was to hold a discussion-update on the upcoming sale of the UK's C-130J aircraft, for which the Marshall company has been appointed as an external partner,” the MND said.

As noted by the ministry, the conference was attended by the UK defence attaché, Captain Alexander Bush, as well as representatives from the UK Defence Equipment Sales Authority (DESA), the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), the UK government, and Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group.

News of the event came approximately 11 months after the MoD told Janes


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Old 1st Dec 2022, 17:19
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Originally Posted by NutLoose

WTF does "Air Command is developing an affordable choice to improve A400M availability"


perhaps it means: "buy the spares that we were too cheap to buy in the first place"?

Greeks are smart to snap these up. Long live the Herc.
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Old 1st Dec 2022, 17:21
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I weep ... I just weep. Where has my old RAF gone?

Has anyone at Air noticed there's a bloody war going on at the border of NATO?
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Old 1st Dec 2022, 17:23
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"The only thing to replace an old Hercules"....yes, I know; I've said it before..on several threads
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Old 1st Dec 2022, 17:32
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Madness to get rid of Albert. We should have binned off A400 and bought more Alberts and C17s.
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 08:24
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Not many jobs in the UK buying those
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 08:27
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Not many jobs in the UK buying those
Maybe, but there aren't many jobs not buying A400 either
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 08:42
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there's always been the pull of local jobs and investment over value for money . TBH the UK taxpayer would probably have saved a large fortune if we just asked the USAF to add on 5% of their buy of any type for the UK
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 09:09
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The UK has a spectacular track record of asking questions that can only be answered with 'political gerrymandering'. 'What sits between a C130J and C-17?' Easy, nothing that makes any operational or operating sense - but Blair wanted to burnish his EU credentials so we got lumped with the A400M as a very expensive (and seemingly unreliable?) 'Super Medium' or 'Light Heavy' airlifter. At least the evidence on C17 capability was so overwhelming that we simply had to keep it - likely through the gritted teeth of europhiles. Another good one is 'What sits between a Puma/Sea King and a Chinook?'. Again, nobody else bothers with this stupid question; you either don't buy Chinook and have a mixed fleet of mediums/super mediums or you buy Chinook and a 'proper' medium. The UK? Nah - let's have 20-odd of those Merlins. More expensive to buy/fly than a Chinook, between 30-50% of the capability (depending what you're moving and where…) and barely any tangible benefit over an uprated Puma 2 - in a far bigger and costlier airframe. But, the Garage Door manufacturers in Somerset needed to be kept in business nailing together aircraft so 'have that RAF!' and ignore all that OA/Staff work and inter-service agreement that the answer was 'more Chinooks'. An extra 20-30 Chinooks would have been pretty handy in Afghanistan….For UK PLC, post C130J retirement, we will have nothing between a CH-47 and A400M with the exception of a few shiny Falcon biz jets. That's a huge capability hole, and one entirely of our own political making. Surely, if this truly is our '1938 moment', and if we're asking questions about a 'war reserve' of T1 Typhoons, at least looking at extending Albert back to 2035 is a sensible hedge? Somebody tell me that the handful of Desk Officers in AIR not looking for the latest woke bandwagon to leap on to appease the Star Chamber are pulling together an Option as we speak to extend the C130?
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 09:31
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Originally Posted by NutLoose
Sigh, every man and his dog are strengthening their military during uncertain times and the UK PLC are chopping it left, right and centre, while they blow £100bn on a sodding rail link with 't Norf that will knock a whole 15 minutes off the journey time..
Not wishing to derail the thread with the subject of HS2, but Nutty, you need to do some reading up on HS2, as knocking 15 minutes off a journey time is NOT why HS2 is being built. HS2 is being built for the added capacity, by removing the fast through express trains from the WCML onto HS2 which will free up capacity on that route for added local train services and more importantly extra freight use.

However, chopping Albert and reducing Atlas buy seems barking mad.......(while having the highest houred C-17 fleet!)
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 09:43
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Originally Posted by Evalu8ter
For UK PLC, post C130J retirement, we will have nothing between a CH-47 and A400M with the exception of a few shiny Falcon biz jets. That's a huge capability hole, and one entirely of our own political making. Surely, if this truly is our '1938 moment', and if we're asking questions about a 'war reserve' of T1 Typhoons, at least looking at extending Albert back to 2035 is a sensible hedge? Somebody tell me that the handful of Desk Officers in AIR not looking for the latest woke bandwagon to leap on to appease the Star Chamber are pulling together an Option as we speak to extend the C130?





GeRam while that is a laudable aim, hacking bits off the planned new network ( Leeds) to reduce costs does throw that advantage into question, and as far as 't norf, once past Crewe you are back to the old infrastructure and Manchester is more midlands than the North.... (Speaking as a Northern lad)

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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 10:24
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Blame the Army!

In 2002 the FRES User Requirement Document required a battlegroup to deploy at least x000nm with crew and mission essential equipment, and to be able to undertake operations within one hour of deplaning.

It was determined by a Studies Assumptions Group that the current UK air fleet could not deploy a C130 compliant FRES battlegroup within the CI4a timelines. That, the C130 envelope placed too stringent a constraint on FRES, so the most efficient means of strategic air transport of a FRES-equipped force and its combat supplies was considered to be by A400M and ‘other Future Large Aircraft’.

Therefore, DEC DBE (Direct Battlefield Engagement) selected A400M compliance as a system-level Key User Requirement for FRES, with C130 as (merely) a priority 1 requirement, Mobility and C2 roles being the priority for C130J compatibility. Priority 1 often falls into the you must be bloody joking category when it comes to approvals.

The pitfalls are obvious. The FRES URD was a beyond parody, and clearly wouldn’t be delivered within a decade of the notional In Service Date. And so it proved. (And it wasn’t DEC DBE’s top priority at the time anyway). The knock-on effects on other programmes, not least C130, were equally obvious. And managing such programmatic integration is quite difficult, and almost impossible if not resourced correctly. (Just because FRES slips, doesn’t mean dependencies get compensatory funding, which creates gaps). One of the assumptions made was that this would all be managed by a Service HQ department that had been shut down 15 years before, without replacement. The technical term is **** show.
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 10:41
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Thats what happens when you allow one group to spec something - they go for the Rolls Royce option - there should be effective management to look at alternatives but hey this is the MoD
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 12:03
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On the other A400 thread, it says the Spanish have some surplus.
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 13:52
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Regardless of the A400 v C130 debate an aircraft can only be in one place at once & apart from Belgium & Luxembourg every other A400 operator has a fleet of smaller aircraft (C130, C235 & C295) to supplement the A400 fleet, is everyone else wrong & the RAF is right?
The RAF will be left with 2 x Falcon 900, 22 x A400, 8 x C17 & 10 x A330 while the UK has more military commitments than most & is heavily involved in humanitarian aid which will keep them very busy.


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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 15:39
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Originally Posted by A4scooter
Regardless of the A400 v C130 debate an aircraft can only be in one place at once & apart from Belgium & Luxembourg every other A400 operator has a fleet of smaller aircraft (C130, C235 & C295) to supplement the A400 fleet, is everyone else wrong & the RAF is right?
The RAF will be left with 2 x Falcon 900, 22 x A400, 8 x C17 & 10 x A330 while the UK has more military commitments than most & is heavily involved in humanitarian aid which will keep them very busy.
Where did we leave those Andovers?
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 16:07
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They became Seconandovers..
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 16:11
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Originally Posted by A4scooter
Regardless of the A400 v C130 debate an aircraft can only be in one place at once & apart from Belgium & Luxembourg every other A400 operator has a fleet of smaller aircraft (C130, C235 & C295) to supplement the A400 fleet, is everyone else wrong & the RAF is right?
The RAF will be left with 2 x Falcon 900, 22 x A400, 8 x C17 & 10 x A330 and 1 x C-47 while the UK has more military commitments than most & is heavily involved in humanitarian aid which will keep them very busy.
FIFY. Don't forget BBMF's "other" C-130 replacement.
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Old 2nd Dec 2022, 19:05
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Originally Posted by Asturias56
Not many jobs in the UK buying those
Do please remind us what UK jobs are in the A400. Assembly is in Spain, engines built in Munich, the props come from France ... I think the wings do come from Chester, but the capacity there is sold out anyway on other Airbus programmes, so nothing additional.
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