A400M new again

The RAF’s A400M fleet is set to replace C-130J tactical airlifters but it will not be able to offer a full range of capabilities until 2025 at the earliest. (RAF)

BELFAST — Top UK defense officials from the Royal Air Force (RAF) have strongly defended accelerating the retirement of Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules tactical airlifters by 12 years, despite acknowledging the decision will lead to a two-year airlift capability gap.

“There are a small number of niche capabilities that the C-130J has that will not be transferred across to the A400M program at the point in which the C-130 is retired in the summer [of 2023],” RAF Deputy Commander Capability Air Marshal Richard Knighton told a Wednesday UK defense committee hearing.

At the hearing Mike Wigston, RAF Chief of the Air Staff, also revealed that as part of the replacement program, the service also intends on acquiring an additional six Airbus A400M Atlas transport aircraft before 2030, in conflict with National Audit Office’s (NAO), a financial watchdog, assessment deeming such a procurement “unaffordable.”

At the time, the early retirement of the C-130J fleet from 2035 to 2023 was one of the most surprising decisions to emerge from the UK’s Integrated 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, with the A400M set to replace it.

“When ministers made the decision in 2021 [to retire the C-130J fleet] we were very plain with what the niche capabilities were and what the potential operational impact is,” Knighton said. “In concert with our operations staff, ministers concluded that, the level of operational risk [outlined] was small enough to be tolerable.”

Wigston told the committee that the C-130J retirement decision had been taken in the face of being “lobbied hard” by members of the service who opposed it.

Lawmakers questioned why the C-130J fleet could not have been spared until the niche capabilities with the A400M had been proven, but that idea was ignored based on “having to pay for it and something else [another aircraft or acquisition] having to be removed,” according to Knighton.

C-130J

A Royal Air Force C130J Hercules tactical air transport aircraft attached to 903 Expeditionary Air Wing, RAF Akrotiri, conducts a local flying sortie in order to maintain crew flying currency (UK MoD)

Other issues besides funding influenced the decision to accelerate the C-130J retirement.

“It was about the capacity of the air force to run two tactical airlift fleets, each of them having their own supply chain, their own tail, their own training requirements, their own aircrew requirements,” Wigston explained.

Drawing further on the matter, Wigston also noted that “part of the bargain” to prematurely withdraw the aircraft, included the RAF agreeing to add the range of capabilities available on the C-130J to the A400M as soon as possible.

“By and large we have done that,” he added.

To date, four of 14 C-130Js have been retired, according to Wigston, but concerns over airlift operational output and Special Forces limitations persist because the A400M fleet has experienced reliability problems, suffered from technical faults including discovery of landing gear bay corrosion and requires long landing strips.

Tobias Ellwood, MP and Chair of the Defence Committee, said he had concerns around taking the C-130J out of service because it denies Special Forces “the skillsets they need” to carry out their missions and noted Royal Marines will be unable to carry out boat drops from the A400M as they can with the C-130J.

Earlier in the hearing, Wigston confirmed for the first time that the RAF plans on buying six more A400M “by the end of the decade” which would increase the fleet to 28 aircraft, 21 of which have already been delivered by Airbus.

That decision came in the face of the National Audit Office’s Equipment Plan 2022 to 2032, published in November 2022, which said, “An option to purchase additional A400M aircraft was assessed as unaffordable,” and noted Air Command was “developing an affordable choice to improve A400M availability.”

The NAO does not hold any enforcement powers, so the RAF is free to proceed with the new order, despite the funding warning. Formal approval for the six additional aircraft could be issued by the forthcoming Integrated Review refresh, as the UK looks to update national defense priorities in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Aside from air mobility issues, Wigston said that the RAF will stand up a second F-35 fifth generation fighter jet frontline squadron and receive a first MQ-9B SkyGuardian (known as the Protector in UK service) Remotely Piloted Air System (RPAS) delivery “this year.”

Cost increases for Protector, spiralled by 74 percent between an initial cost evaluation and year of acquisition approval, according to the NAO. The drone was originally due to enter service in 2018 but was delayed due to budgetary problems. A new date of 2024 has since been set by the RAF.

Such a high cost is one reason observers have said such platforms as the Protector and the MQ-9 Reaper wouldn’t be as valuable in a contested environment, like the skies over Ukraine, compared to cheaper, more expendable platforms. Wigston bluntly agreed.

“There are many platforms that I would not choose to operate in that environment [Ukraine] freely, Protector and Reaper would be [two] of them,” he said.