Originally Posted by
atakacs
Having some time for musing I was wondering about the advantages of the turboprop vs. using more conventional turbofans for the A400M.
Designing a completely new engine was obviously a very expensive proposition (and turned out to be even worse than that...) so what are the expected gains ?
you also get a lot of lift off the prop flow meaning smaller wing area which is useful in austere areas and (may be talking garbage here) the energised flow over the leading edge of the wing means you don’t need leading edge slats, which significantly cuts down on complexity of the design. The P factor was supposedly removed with opposing rotation of the props and also cancel out a lot of the asymmetric flow issues typical of Multi engine props.
Plus, any decent Air Mobility pilot knows that lots of Torques are always better than EPRs.