The Belslow/A400M comparison's a bit of a red herring. As Beagle has pointed out, the A400M is much faster and stressed for tactical operations. It also flies higher and has a sensible crap-runway landing gear (three times as many wheels as a C-130, as many as the twice-the-size C-17). And if you look at the Belslow's payload-range performance and use the noggin a bit, you can see that it is a steep plummet from 80000 pounds at 970 sm to a mere 20000 pounds (MTOW minus OEW minus max fuel) at 5200 sm... even at 40000 pounds paylod, you can only carry 75 per cent fuel.
As for the C-17 - Boeing will offer you a good end-of-the-line price and the dollar's value helps. But it's a big aircraft, so think about the maintenance, the fuel burn and all that entails.