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Lockheed Lovin’ the A400M Blues

By Colin Clark Friday, June 19th, 2009 3:51 am
Posted in Air, International, Rumors

The A400M, built by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS), will provide the world with a very impressive lift capability — when it can fly as a production model. Beset by technical problems, the plane isn’t quite there yet and is now scheduled for delivery in 2011.

There has been speculation here at the Paris Air Show that the A400M deal might collapse as European governments fight over the multi-billion dollar deal, but a European industry source rejected those arguments, saying everyone has too much to lose in military capability, industrial capability and plain old treasure if the plane were to be canceled.

In the meantime, C-130J maker Lockheed Martin is willing to lease its C-130Js to those European countries who were counting on earlier delivery of the advanced cargo plane, their top salesman, Jim Grant, told me here at the Paris Air Show. The partners on the A400M are Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey. Grant said that Lockheed has had talks “at some level” with those countries scheduled for early delivery of the A400M.

Chief among those is France. The head of the French air force, Gen. Stéphane Abrial, recently told Defense News that he wanted to team up with a partner or lease some C-130Js since he was unwilling to build a very expensive fleet of C-17s. France was supposed to get the first of its 50 A400Ms this year.

C-130J leases of five to seven years to the European customers would be “likely,” though Lockheed would certainly be willing to sell the planes outright, said Grant, who boasts the wonderful title of vice president for customer engagement for air mobility and special operations programs. Once the leases run out, they might be distributed among some of NATO’s central European countries, suggested Grant.

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	Zach June 19th, 2009 at 4:28 am Does anyone know if there’s been any talk of replacing the C-130’s in the US Air Force with a new transport? The C-130’s first came off the production line in December 1956 :S (I know they been upgraded since then, with the C-130J “Super” Hercules being the latest, but that’s 57 years of continuous modifications and upgrades to one airframe!) Surely there’s new technology and more modern aerodynamic airframes that could be used to make the transports more “efficient” right?
	Dan June 19th, 2009 at 6:55 am Perhaps unfortunately, I did not learn the things that I was supposed to learn during my period of military service. One thing that I often heard repeated was, lead follow or get out of the way. Today I was trying to teach someone that is special to me, not to lead not to follow and if you see that a crowd is heading for a cliff to stick out your foot. By making someone fall you just might save their life. A young Spartan Eagle heard me remarks and charged me with a spear. Just how is it that a blind man can know when a crowd is headed for a cliff he remarked. I said that if only a man could hear and smell as well as a wolf his world would appear much different. The Spartan growled why people like you are an obstacle to the defense of civilization. It is only out of respect to your father that I do not fillet you like a Walleye you Loon. If we can not supply our army by air to continue its crusade against the barbaric enemies of freedom half way around the world your children will be fighting them in the streets of Wichita. If we do not destroy their S300 missiles in the middle east they will learn from us and use 8 million barrels of oil a day to move those missiles to Cuba and threaten to shoot down our bombers before they can even leave the ground of Missouri. You are a disgrace to our great nation. I can not believe that you were even allowed in. That special person then said to me. See how stupid you are dad. I am not going to stick my feet any where except under my body because I want to keep them. I just thought well I guess that I am going to have to try again later and hope that I have better luck next time. I will not give up in the battle for the mind of my children.
	Aurora June 19th, 2009 at 11:33 am I don’t understand the advantage to Lock-Mart in leasing the French the aircraft. After 7 years, then what? Do they revert back to the manufacturer? I guess the structure of any lease would require a hefty down payment to make this option worthwhile?
	jimbo June 19th, 2009 at 12:34 pm Prob a hefty downpayment like u said. then they will jus refurbish and sell them to another country for cheap when the lease is over, or jus release them.. its like used cars…
	Parsecwalker June 20th, 2009 at 3:16 am Lockheed still needs to plan for the future by developing a wide-body variant of the C-130 with extensive usage of composite materials so the aircraft could accept larger and heavier cargo without a change to it’s engines or make the switch to small turbofans to replace the 4 turboshaft driven propellers.
	Carl June 21st, 2009 at 5:07 pm Zach, In the 1970’s the USAF tried to replace the C-130 with either the Boeing YC-15 or the McDonnall Douglas YC-15. Flights test proved the C-130 could do the same job cheaper. C-130 will be in production a many more years and in use will into the 22 century.
	Zach June 21st, 2009 at 9:54 pm 22nd century? That’s 91 years away! We’ll probably have matter-to-mater transporters by then. And spaceships flying around the galaxy.
	Zach June 21st, 2009 at 9:55 pm Oh, and thanks for replying about the air force attempting to replace the C-130 in the past.
	Highlander June 22nd, 2009 at 11:31 am Along with flying 20 something other major aircraft, I managed to accumulate 2,500 farly sporty hours of flight time in the “Herk”. I have pretty much flown them all. And the “Herk” is a fantastic machine, 55 plus years old or not. I screwed up a very,very short dirt field landing in Africa one time. We landed 30 feet short of the runway in a drainage ditch. The 130 plowed on through it all got up on the runway, and flew for many other years after that.( Having flown Airbus aircraft,I can assure you they won’t do that.) In asia I flew a 130 with 3 engines shot away, and half the crew dead. I’m still here. In a very abrupt and unplanned power on dive from 29,000 feet I saw the 130 survive exceeding its redline speed by 70 knots. It’s incredibly strong. I’m sure the Airbus will have lots of special whistles and bells, but if my butt was on the line. It would be in the “Herky Bird”.
	JSF MIKE June 23rd, 2009 at 5:35 pm The C-130 is still around because it does what is was designed to do. It’s a dump truck meant to haul all kinds of stuff all over the place, get in and out with no muss, no fuss. The J model does it faster, higher, with more acceleration and heavier lifting. With the upgraded ramp it can deploy parachute equipped cargo at 225 knots. It’s basic design is what a trash hauler is supposed to look like. The A400M started as a 4 jet engine model but they soon found out it wouldn’t work for the missions they were envisioning. Oops! So they switched to turboprops, just like the C-130. The A400M is an in-between airplane – between the C-130 and C-17. They are just spending billions to keep their plants open and so France can put its nose up to the US and UK. For that kind of Euros they could have bought a bunch of both of the American planes already. Everyone is still waiting for the first flight of the A400M after all these years. It’s amazing what pride costs these days.
	Alan June 25th, 2009 at 9:51 am My brother pilots P-3s, cousin to the C-130. When he was coordinating a life-expectancy review of the P-3 a few years ago, he got into great detail with the Lockheed representatives. A big takeaway is that these aircraft were designed by guys using paper and slide rules, not super-computer CADD systems. They designed every part with an extra safety margin, and whenever there was an unknown factor where they had to make an assumption, they would make the part that much bigger. The end result is a plane with a lot of beef contrasted with today’s much more “refined” designs. A new design would use less material, be lighter weight and cheaper to produce, but the old-school Orion or Hercules can absorb much more overstressing and keep rolling.
	El Coqui June 25th, 2009 at 11:02 am Agreed with JSF Mike, my impression of the A-400 program had always fallen on the “Anything that you do, I can do better” mindframe that Europeans, especially France seems to have. As expected from what otherwise would be a job and show the flag program, they are behind and some of the partners are talking about bailing out. On the meanwhile, even India is thinking about obtaining C-17s. If Boeing management were smart, they had tried to lower the flyaway price for each of their planes and really driven a stake through their program. But them unlike theirs, our government don’t subsidize Boeing.
	pyyhkiherra June 27th, 2009 at 12:49 pm JSF Mike, to me, it sounds like you are jealous that every single country in Europe won’t buy American but rather co-operate to make an aircraft that outpreforms (in theory at least) the C-130. Europe has less reason to NOT chose the A400 than the USAF has to chose the airbus tanker. And regarding highlanders comment; do you claim to have flown the A400?? A normal airline airbus is not the A400. The ready plane will be able to take rough and soft fields, better than the Transall which was pretty good at it.