His assertions are bang on. The nonsense being spoon fed to seniors and politicians is embarrassing, even more so because they lap it up. Some of the downright lies thrown out at the recent committee meeting are quite staggering.

Really - what were the lies?

And that helps on a Short Field TacLand HOW exactly?

It helps with the CBR capability which is proven to be lower than that for a C130? Is that not right?

The short field performance comes from the overall improved aircraft performance of A400M over C130. For a given payload the performance is better, is it not?

How exactly do you think it is worse?

Ok. Tell me how much TacAT experience you have. Tell me how many TacLands you have done?

Tell me EXACTLY how an A400 outperforms a C-130 in that role (hint: It doesn't).

The french have ~25% availability on the A400

RAF Hercs are supposed to have a lower availability than the A400.

https://www.airforce-technology.com/...arting-c-130j/

Interesting is the available rate due to announcement they were retiring the aircraft, if you announce you are going to retire do you start to run down the spares and maintainence on them. Seems very low compared to USAF and the 75%

The official rule is that funding decreases by 20% for each of the final 5 years. (The 5-year rule). It's seldom applied these days, not least because many announcements of OSDs are sudden. You do not compromise on maintenance, but it is accepted that there will be more in the repair pool and the active fleet will (dis)gracefully run down. In theory, safety-related funding is not affected, as under the same rules it was ring-fenced and did not change with numbers or flying hours. But it's all lumped together now, so takes a hit even though the primary task is not volume related.

Well said. And I am not sure about the post about saying that the TP400 Turbo Prop engine is based on a French design. My understanding is that the TP400 engine was a new design by the 5 nation consortium.