The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that plans to acquire additional A400M Atlas aircraft remain under review as part of the ongoing Strategic Defence Review, amid continued concerns about fleet availability and long-term capability.
In response to a written parliamentary question from Ben Obese-Jecty MP (Conservative – Huntingdon), Minister of State for Defence Maria Eagle stated:
“All capability requirements, including those for tactical airlift, are being considered as part of the Strategic Defence Review process.”
The question referred to earlier proposals made by a former Secretary of State to expand the RAF’s fleet of A400M transport aircraft—plans that have previously faced financial obstacles.
Back in 2022, the Ministry of Defence’s Equipment Plan noted that procurement of further A400M aircraft was contingent on affordability. A concurrent National Audit Office (NAO) report later confirmed that the option had been assessed as unaffordable, prompting Air Command to instead pursue a more modest Availability Improvement Programme (AIP).
More recently, the House of Commons Defence Committee has expressed renewed concern over the RAF’s ability to sustain operational availability across its 22-strong fleet. In a letter dated 27 March 2025, Committee Chair Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi MP highlighted that the current availability target—ten aircraft per day—represents less than half the fleet and falls short of past performance levels.
Committee members have requested clarity on the rationale behind this target, how it compares to earlier figures (which suggested availability of 13 to 16 aircraft in 2023), and how it aligns with current and future operational requirements.
In her earlier correspondence to the Committee, Maria Eagle pointed to improvements since the launch of the AIP in 2022, describing the current period as “a very positive period for the A400M programme.” She stated that the target of ten aircraft per day reflects a 66% improvement on the 2021–22 financial year, and a 26% increase on the previous year. The A400M fleet also achieved its projected 9,280 flying hours for 2023–24.
In addition to concerns around flying hours, MPs have sought detail on crew availability, spiral upgrades to deliver full operational capability, and the evolving requirements of future deployments.
The A400M continues to play a critical role in supporting global operations, including humanitarian missions and military logistics in regions such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
The logical thing to do would be to add another 12 of these to help offset the loss of the Hercs.
sit and wait
Fully agree there. That’d give 34 airframes. Personally I’d then round up to 40 for additional capability and to allow for losses.
We don’t need a large transport fleet to fight in Europe. Our money is better spent on actual combat units. You can train or drive to the Russian boarder from the UK in 24 hours.
So well put. We need fast jets and two more Wedgetails . Not army transports…..
Several Hercules alone supported DSF ops and exercises.
What supports them now?
These enablers are just as important as ISTAR assets.
Absolutely Daniele, we need at least 8 more to counter the missing J fleet.
If we are ‘serious’ about increasing mass, then air transport is a key enabling asset and a force multiplier.
My preference would be a fleet of 40, base them at Lynham ( no reason it can’t be a joint service base) and buy 4 addional secondhand C17’s.
Expand the versatility of the A400 fleet, with potenal future cruise missile and mass drone launching, plus AAR use.
We have to make sure we get maximum bang for our buck.
Too much focus for the last thirty years has been on special forces. They are great in terrorist campaigns and colonial policing but not so much use on a modern conventional battlefield.
You should watch Justin Bronk from RUSI on the subject, he is quite informative.
The reason we spend $74 billion a year but appear to get so little bang for our buck compared to somewhere like Finland that spends ten times less is an over emphasis on global power projection and keeping up with the USA that quite frankly pisses vast sums of money up the wall that it doesn’t have on gucci kit and capabilities.
Considering America spends more money than everyone else combined it has very few ships, soldiers or combat aircraft.
The C130J argument and the needs of special forces is the perfect example of this along with the vast size of the Chinook fleet.
Fighting in Europe does not require these very expensive assets. In most instances transport air craft and helicopters are suicidal to use given their large foot print and vulnerability to drones and missiles.
@Jim, most of that US expense goes towards logistics. The USA has a massive logistics network that spans the globe. It’s bigger than every EU country combined by several multiples.
Mark Rutte recently said the US can move material from warehouses in Iowa to the Ukrainian front lines faster than France can move material from French soil to Ukrainian soil.
@chris, yes I agree the US has the worlds greatest logistics but the US also needs the worlds greatest logistics because it’s so far way from everything else. I don’t think anyone can argue against the fact that the USA pisses vast sums of money up the wall as well. LCS, Zumwalt, Constellation class, Ford Class to name but a few.
It might be able to get something from Iowa to Ukraine very fast in peace time and when fighting a backward country like Russia but in a real shooting war no one will be sending expensive transport aircraft with in several hundred miles of the front line.
Everything will go by ground primarily air and trains. Even sea transport won’t happen due to long range missiles and radar satellites.
I’m not criticising the USA just pointing out that globally deployable militaries are very expensive and for us not that necessary anymore.
It’s a bit simple really. When you actually think about it in relation to all Ops and areas of interest. These Atlas are much maligned but in reality they have a large and useful capability, it’s a shame they are too large for certain Ops that the Hercs did so well.
The C130 is a massive aircraft and the A400M is much more nimble for its size. There is little if anything a C130 can do that an A400m can’t.
C130 can carry external stores and weapons, drop tanks.. It has much better short and soft field capability, better loiter times. The A400 has a wing designed for mach .70 like an airliner. The C-130 is like a giant Cessna, designed to go slow.
The A400M has under wing stores, you can google it and find that out. As yet no one has put a weapon on them, no one has had any need. The UK has never put a weapon on a C130. It’s not a thing outside of some questionable USAF and USMC variants of the C130. It’s certainly not something we have ever done to support SF.
The A400M has better short field performance than the C130 you can look a that up on google as well. The A400M is a decades newer design than the C130, it’s babs all round better performance than the C130 because it’s 50 years newer.
The plan was for 6 extra units. The Times reported last month that these long awaited extras will be cancelled in the SDR as will the idea for buying two extra Wedgetails (no doubt blaming the last government)
The military deploys beyond Europe.
The RAF Transport force supports more than “just the Army.”
Not for much longer mate, almost our entire out of Europe deployment pattern is in support of US colonial operations.
That was fine when the USA was committed to Europe but not now.
We need a bigger fast jet force and air transport has been the biggest beneficiary of spending in the RAF over the past thirty years.
It’s hardly Large is it ? But I agree that we really do need many more combat units. Infact, we need so much more of everything given the circumstances and rapid declines since the early 90’s.
There is a rapid decline in numbers but an exponential increase in capability. The RAF can hit more targets on its own today with less support from allied nations than at any time in its history. One F35 B with 6 Paveway IV can take out more targets than an entire squadron of Tornados in 1990 or all of bomber command in 1945.
The Russians are still operating with Cold War capabilities so in reality our airforce is much stronger.
Adding in another 100 F35’s is probably what we are going to do and then our airforce will be so far ahead of the Russians that we won’t need to fight.
We can buy a hundred C130J’s and fill them fool of SAS troopers and the Russians won’t give two s**ts.
That’s the difference.
Wow, that’s some incredibly confident claims you are making there.
We are not worthy in your superior company it seems.
I bow to your considerable obvious first hand experience and vastly superior knowledge.
Sorry those are not my confident claims that’s data from the RAF.
Tornado didn’t have a singled guided bomb until 1991 that’s why we had to rush Buccaneer to the gulf. Allied bombers in world war 2 required around 220 bombers to guarantee a 90% CEP on a 100 square foot target. One F35B with 6 Paveway IV can guarantee a higher CEP on six separate targets in one sortie.
I was referring to all your claims not just some RAF release.
The quicker we realise the 400 is a duff buy the better. Go back to the tried and tested and constantly evolving C130. With the 130 their is worldwide commercial service centres as well as other nations military assets that operate the 130 to help support airframes.
With UK based aircraft the 400 serviceability rates border on farce.
The A400 made the huge mistake of pointlessly reinventing the wheel with its powerplants.
A piece of European political meddling that came close to killing the programme.
It could have simply used off the shelf turbofans, that would have got the aircraft into service years earlier, cheaper and cheaper to operate.
As it is, the fleet has a bespoke powerplant, that will never be used by anything else and will continue to cost the uses a fortune to support.
Imagine if you suggested a brand new engine to Airbus that would only be used by one airliner and never anything else….
You would be laughed out of the boardroom by Airbus and every potential airline operator!
I believe the intention was to produce a Super Dooper Hercules that filled a gap between it and the C17. They have nailed that objective pretty much, It’s just a shame we binned the Hercs. I’d like to see a few C390’s for SF.
Like the RR Trent 900 which was only used on the Airbus A380 you mean?…
Or maybe the A350 which only has the RR Trent XWB, an engine not used on any other aircraft?
Really, what off the shelf turbo prop offered the required performance?
He is refering to the MTU lead on the engine. That was disputable, since MTU had no expertise, while Turbomeca had it mastered. In the end, to save the program, Turbomeca had to help.
Now, it seems to work ok.
Yeah let’s go back to an older aircraft, with shorter range, slower speed, smaller lift capability, and that requires longer runways for take-off and landing…
Of course not, too big and expensive. The correct thing will be to buy a smaller transport C-27 , or even what is the C-130 heir, the Brasil C-390 Millennium that most Europe is buying.
They’ll order no more of these or Wedgetails or Poseidons or any other type of hardware or personnel for any of the services. If anything they’ll not replace what’s already been chopped or even axe more.
This is all just a ruse. The increased spending will all ‘be spent’ on AI, cybersecurity and the like. Stuff where nobody can actually see what if anything was actually spent. But they can tell Trump they have increased defence spending.
I doubt we will get much if anything in the way of additional platforms or more personnel. But I wouldn’t describe it as a ‘ruse”.
Basically, service personnel numbers have been cut drastically for several decades, and just about every component of defence hollowed out, in order to pay for the reduced scale of equipment we have. The hard fact is that, on 2% of the UK’s GDP, there was never any way that we could afford big ticket items like our nuclear deterrent subs, aircraft carriers, warships costing £1bn+ a pop, etc. We have been prioritising show over substance. And now we have the additional challenge of a bunch of new technology weapons and systems to counter the new threats emerging, like hypersonic glide missiles, drone swarms, cable cutting, cyber and so on.
To even begin to rectify the hollowed out state of the forces, the personnel and equipment numbers, the new technology challenges, we would need to be looking at 3.5%, 4% or more of the national cake. What defence is getting is a small increase over 3 years, from 2.34% to 2.5%. It is badly needed and greatly welcomed, but that’s under a 10% increase. And about 30% of that is going to Ukraine, not into the core budget.
All the signs are that the small uplift in the budget will go into two areas, improving some of the basic elements of defence and rapid development of new technologies.
Among the former are the recent service pay rises, the uplift in spend on infrastructure, including barracks, service family
accommodation, new shiplifts at Faslane, refurb of Portsmouth base etc, etc, plus some moves on the recruitment process,
starting with getting rid of Capita.
The new tech items include UAVs, UUVs, counter-drone weapons and jamming systems, space satellites, laser weapons and so on.
There’s only £6bn a year extra from the new settlement, which will have to be spread pretty thinly. Additionally, defence already has a large financial black hole of somewhere between £11bn and £17bn, which means we have no budget for a lot of the new equipments and platforms desired by the services – additional A400s, the second Proteus MROS, anything more than 3 Stirling Castle MCMVs, probably the MRSS programme and the Dragonfire laser, etc. So some of the new money will have to go to bailing out the RN primarily.
Net upshot is that there is unlikely to be any money over for personnel increases or additional equipments. Hard choices, but I think it is wise to try to patch up some of the basic defence lacunae and put some money and effort into catching up on the new technologies, where we are falling some way behind.
£6bn a year extra
Believe your near-term MoD funding assessment is substantially correct. The intriguing possibility of an increase to 3% of GDP by 2030 may become a reality, either due to perceived geostrategic requirements, or perhaps, an increased NATO minimum defence spending goal. 🤞
Agree with a lot of this. Think we’ll try to funnel defence spending towards govts existing missions (grow economy, increase housing, climate targets and energy efficiency) but these will still be welcome boosts with reduced running costs and increased retention. Also lots of money funneled into dual use tech such as satellites, UK launch capabilities, drones, AI etc. I very much doubt we’ll see an increase in combat aircraft (F35 tranche 2 doesn’t count) or A400M or Wedgetails, but we might see orders of UK munitions and launchers such as Sky Sabre, Martlet, SPEAR and hopefully the latter rolled out to our Typhoons.
Moving to 2.5% won’t even plug the gap in funding for the current procurement programs. Without a significant uplift everything will continue to shrink. Kit isn’t even our biggest problem now, personnel is.
It would be interesting to compare military availability rates to civil airliners, especially.on A400.
It can’t continue to shrink Ben, nothing left to shrink.
The only option available from here, would be the ‘radical fleet’ option and simply remove what’s left of individual capabilities.
We have reached the bottom of the barrel.
Civiy airliners spend more time in the air than on the ground, designed to be used. RAF Transport fleet’s problem is that they sit on ground for days not being used. then don’t start when someone kicks tyres. GJ is probably most available Voyager as it flys the air bridge 5-6 days a week. The A400’s & C-17’s just sit around too much 🙁
Spain has 13 A400M it would like to sell. We might get a good deal, if we bought some of those.
Obvious low hanging fruit John….
Won’t Spanish ones be left hand drive???
Did someone mention that this comment section is having a refresh soon ? It’s all over the place, just can’t work out who is replying to who !
Yes. George told me that improvements were planned.
Going back to the set up before would already be a great improvement.
These things take time, and George and Lisa have lives of their own.
Why did they change it ?
Huge mistake and far too expensive when they use c17s because they are cheaper to lose