AJACS Load: US Begins (Another) Next-Gen Tactical Transport Project
From "C-130J Acquisition Program Restructured":
"[The C-130J Hercules] has since been deployed into theater by the USAF, where its vastly improved performance in "hot and high" environments has come in very handy. Unlike the pending Airbus A400M, however, the C-130J doesn't solve the sub-survivable 20-ton armored vehicle limit that has stymied multiple US armored vehicle programs from the Stryker IAV to Future Combat Systems. As such, it represents an improvement that fails to address US tactical airlift's key bottleneck limitation."
A pair of recent contracts for something called the Advanced Composite Cargo Aircraft (ACCA) may - or may not - represent a first step toward addressing that issue. It may also represent a US aerospace effort to avoid a looming future in which the Airbus A400M would be the only available tactical transport for survivable armored personnel carriers.
With the light transport JCA made up of entirely foreign designs, the 20-ton transport market beginning to crowd, and the heavy-lift C-17 production line headed toward shutdown, the US aerospace industry risks a slip from a 1980-1990s position of market dominance in the military transport space into near-irrelevance by 2015........