Dont know where the anti-A400m hysteria is coming from on here, personally, I would love the opportunity to fly the beast.
Unfortunately, the Herc is a legacy piece of kit. Dont get me wrong, its an awesome aircraft (over 1300 hours on the J myself) and the Mk5s are a great SF platform, but when it cant shift a lot of the kit we are using, its time to move on.
Its worth noting however, that I hear rumours the 400m wont be able to shift FRES (if it happens) in a single piece, it will require 2 aircraft, which makes the C-17 the main contender for fleet expansion in the near future if we want to have better capability.
The problem we have currently is though we dont have any means of inserting these new all singinging and dancing vehicles in a tactical manner, be that unprepared strip or airdrop. This is something they need to look at if they are looking at phasing the J out. That will surely mean a europe based sim for the C-17 and expansion in capability at some stage, maybe not straight away, but in a decades time I can imagine it happening.
Last edited by VinRouge; 20th Nov 2010 at 12:25.