Short sighted indeed and entirely based on saving money rather than anything to do with capability as even if the A400M were capable of successfully taking on the J’s roles the reduction in numbers of ac would amount to a severe reduction in AT capacity. With aspirations to ‘global Britain’ and operations in the Far East that AT capacity will be vital.

As you say all the other A400 users have C130s or similar to supplement and pickup the tasks that the former cannot do.

You also by killing off the J put the workload onto the other fleets reducing their life expectancy as well as struggling to meet any future crisis, the fact they have been struggling for capability at the moment by diverting them off tasking while they have the J in service does not bode well for future operations.

With a couple of irrelevant omissions - carrier-borne 5th generation combat air wing and critical sea line blah blah - France, who operate 4 J models, 2 of which are for special forces support.

The same France which has relied heavily on the UK for C-17 support due to its lack of strat lift? Keep looking.

And our Chinook fleet.

Of course the UK was dependent on NATO for marine recce for quite a while... that's the benefit of a proper alliance - not everyone has to do everything

Don't tell that to the government. They'll ditch the whole thing and rely on our alliance partners to do it for us.

and of course some do very little at all

"and of course some do very little at all"

regretfully that is the case - and they profit by doing it

Bring back the Andover.

Story in the Mail today that a 47 squadron aircraft landed near (not on) Kandahar air base at night and lifted about 20 Special forces out. The comment made that without the Hercules it wouldn't have been possible?
mmitch.

What are the operational limitations of the A400 as opposed to the C130, as cited by the Dutch?

You joke (I presume), but it strikes me as strange how the smallest airlifter in UK service will shortly be the A400M! I understand the MoD's arguments about the financial implications of sustaining three separate platform types, but what it seems to miss is that the C-130J, A400M and C-17 are each providing niche capabilities and are not duplicating each other's roles.

A genuine but rather noddy question, what is it that the Herc can do that we won’t be able to do with the A400m? I’d understood it to be very capable, and I promise I don’t work for Airbus

Ultimately, nothing. Once all of the A400Ms' capabilities and clearances are rolled out, it will be able to do everything that the Herc can do and more. The issue is one of numbers and economics, in that having fewer A400Ms means a reduction in mass which will result in a loss of capability. In terms of economics, it will be massively more expensive to transport a (typically) small SOF team in the back of a larger and more expensive to operate A400M than it would a Herc, and also the nature of SOF work means a far greater risk to losing/seriously damaging an airframe which given the fewer numbers would be a bigger issue than currently.

I think we have missed a trick- We could save more $s and increase capability.

Retire the A400, C-130J and those dangerous Chinook and Puma contraptions.

Replace the lot with the Mighty DHC-4 Caribou - sorted.

Take anything anywhere in theatre

In layman’s terms the C130J is an old Landrover Defender - old technology but reliable & dependable and you have no qualms about taking it in the rough stuff because you know it won’t let you down.

The A400M is more of a Bentley Bentaga - nominally it can do everything that the Defender can, it’s much nicer on the road (= strat flying) but would you seriously expect it to survive off road (= Tac flying) or would you fear that it’s delicate electronics and expensive body panels might not cope?

I haven't seen any Hercs on the flightline at Kabul on the news. Do they have the legs to get back from there to somewhere like Dubai or Qatar with a full load of PAX without AAR?

I think this SF thing is a bit of a red herring. How often have Hercs been used in anger for SF ops in say the past decade? And if push came to shove, I'm sure the cousins would gladly lend us one. Also, don't forget there are a couple of paradrop capable STOL turboprops lurking at Brize which could also be called into service (for a fee)...

Finally finally, I wouldn't be surprised if an Osprey or two came into the mix for such eventualities when we come to look more closely at Puma's impending replacement.

Similar arguments being advanced here to those which were made in favour of keeping more than two fast jet fleets. The flashy and expensive Typhoon and F35 both spend most of their time doing stuff that could easily be done with less capable platforms, but we need both types' capabilities in reserve for certain scenarios. The cost of using them inefficiently in the meantime is evidently less than the cost of running a third fleet.

Reading between the lines of the expert contributions above, my take is that we shouldn't really be operating both C-17 and A400M: the former was a stop-gap for the latter. However the users have come to value C-17 so much that it's unchoppable. And the A400M is both new and European, so in policy world it's unchoppable. So unless either user or policymaker budged from their positions, the C-130 was going to get chopped. The user appears to have concluded that C-17 was worth keeping over C-130, and I don't think many would argue.