I think the individuals throwing stones at Airbus over the A400M need to look closely at the introduction of C-17 and how close congress came to cancelling the project.
Funny old thing, it was
Overweight
Overbudget
Late
From the above document:
The C-17 can operate on paved or semi-prepared airfields and
matting. Paved airfields consist of conventional rigid and flexible pavements and are
generally used for routine operations. A “semi-prepared” airfield refers to an unpaved airfield. The amount of engineering effort required to develop a semi-prepared airfield depends on the planned operation, the service life needed to support these operations, and the existing soil and weather conditions.
You cant develop a new concept from scratch without risk and those issues will pall out as the above, as they did with practically every single significant new aircraft project in history.
Besides, with Ireland trashing the Euro, it looks like we will be able to afford quite a few more for the same price sometime soon!