From my experiance of the A400M project a lot of its problems stem from the enforced lack of iBritish involvement. In the early days the UK involement was greater than it is now and it was between the UK, German and the French that most productive work was done, the other nations were just other faces around the table.
This stopped when a new broom arrived at the MOD and insisted that the UK involvement was reduced to the 12% of the project we deserved because we were only buying 25 (I still fail to understand why Germany, other than getting more workshare that is, needs 60 of the things, as they don't go anywhere).
The real villans in all this though are EASA who will not certify a piece of equipment with capability above the civil requirement (ie military)
and Airbus management who would insist on continually taking engineering staff off the A400M and putting them on the A380F and A350 projects.