Civil Cert is the prefered way to go with the manufacturers and the PT who think that just because the process works with airliners it should work with military transports, which let's face it, spend a lot of time in airways flying routes.
The A400M is not novel in going down this route, the J Herc was built as a civil cert aircraft and then militarised the same process the A400 is going through.
The big problem with this process is that the civil authorities will not certify an aircraft system that has redundant capability ie a more demanding military role, so following civil certification a lot of systems will be ripped out and replaced with the military kit and the process begun again.
