Airbus bids to replace Hercules
Airbus is making a big play to replace New Zealand’s ageing Hercules by swooping in with its hulking A400M air lifter this week.
Britain’s Royal Air Force is bringing one of its near-new Airbus planes, which it knows as Atlas, to display on the ground at Ohakea this weekend as the RNZAF celebrates its 80th birthday.
The Air Tattoo will attract big crowds and the display includes aircraft from all over the world, including fighter jets and C-17 Globemasters from Australia and the United States.
However, it’s the muscular presence of the turbo prop A400M that is notable. Airbus and the RAF are also showing journalists the plane on Friday morning.
The even larger C-17 was an early front-runner to replace the five Vietnam War era Hercules, but now Airbus’ A400M programme is recovering after a number of setbacks, including a fatal crash, the European planemaker is keeping its hat in the ring.
Also in the contest is the KC-390, Brazilian planemaker Embraer’s first foray into military transport. The innovative, versatile and very fast twin-jet-engine plane has been successfully undergoing testing but is not yet in service. Defence chiefs have looked over it.
Also in the running is the new C-130 Hercules, which is similar in appearance to the original Lockheed Martin model developed in the 1950s.
The Airbus plane — known also as Grizzly — looks like a Hercules on steroids and has a far greater payload, which it can carry at much higher speeds, with four engines built by a European consortium that includes Rolls-Royce. Its counter-rotating, eight-bladed, carbon composite and nickel-edged propellers give it a distinctive look.
Its flight deck is similar to that in Airbus’ A380 super jumbo but adapted for military use.
While Airbus and the other contenders are aiming to fulfil New Zealand’s typical missions — responding to natural disasters and serving Antarctic operations — the A400M has a range of optional defensive countermeasures if used in hostile environments.
“The A400M has been specifically designed for low detectability, low vulnerability and high survivability, giving it excellent self-protection,” Airbus says.
“With clean and minimised infrared signature engines, highly responsive fly-by-wire flight controls, four independent control computers, damage-tolerant controls, and comprehensive optional defensive aids and cockpit armouring, the A400M is hard to find, hard to hit and hard to kill.”
The A400M programme was launched in 2003 to meet the combined needs of seven European nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey and Britain), with Malaysia joining in 2005.
Its maiden flight took place on December 11, 2009, and the delivery of the first A400M was in August 2013 to the French Air Force. Two years later an aircraft destined for Turkey crashed shortly after takeoff in Spain, killing four of its six crew. Investigators found a software glitch meant engines were mistakenly shut down and could not be powered up in time.
Like many other new aircraft programmes, the A400M’s development was plagued by years of delays. It was the European consortium’s first military venture.
The Daily Telegraph reported that even after its maiden flight in 2009, it looked as though the project might be scrapped entirely. Eventually a $5.17 billion government bailout in 2010 allowed the aircraft to officially enter service.
Airbus now has orders for 174 of the planes although, besides Malaysia, it is struggling to find buyers outside Europe.
Airbus says it is not only capable of carrying large equipment such as tanks, trucks, boats and helicopters, such as the NH90 that New Zealand has, but ideal for a paratrooping role.
It can drop from both high and low altitudes (as high 12,200m for special forces operations, and as low as 5m for low-level load deliveries). It can carry 116 fully equipped paratroops, who can jump two at a time from the ramp or through side doors.
Airbus says it can operate on marginal airstrips as short as 750m and its 12-wheel main landing gear is designed for operations from stone, gravel or sand strips. New gear box technology allows propellers to counter rotate, giving smoother flight.