The United Kingdom has joined six NATO allies in launching a new multinational project to establish a pooled fleet of Airbus A400M transport aircraft, modelled on the alliance’s shared tanker force, NATO has announced.
The initiative, launched at the NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum in Ankara on Tuesday as a High Visibility Project, brings together Belgium, Croatia, France, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the UK.
According to the alliance, it will follow the pooling and sharing concept pioneered by the Multinational MRTT Fleet, under which participating countries pool aircraft and share costs to benefit from economies of scale, with the project also allowing allies to cooperate in areas such as joint procurement, logistical support and training.
NATO said the A400M gives the alliance and allied forces much greater operational flexibility, allowing the movement of military assets across the alliance in peace, crisis and conflict, with a high payload and long range enabling it to access locations that many larger aircraft cannot reach. The announcement did not specify whether the project will involve the acquisition of new aircraft, the pooling of existing national fleets, or both, nor the number of aircraft envisaged, though.
All seven participants except Croatia already operate or have ordered the A400M, with the RAF flying its fleet of 22 Atlas aircraft from Brize Norton on tasks ranging from tactical airlift into austere strips to the air bridge to the Falklands, and the type has progressively taken on the load carried by the retired C-130 Hercules. A pooled arrangement following the MRTT model would give participants access to shared capacity beyond their national fleets while spreading the costs of support and training across the membership, and offers non-operators a route into the capability without buying aircraft outright.
The tanker fleet that provides the template also grew at the same event, with Finland joining the Multinational MRTT Fleet as its ninth member alongside Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The nine members announced the imminent delivery of the fleet’s tenth Airbus A330 MRTT, bringing the force closer to its full strength of 12 aircraft since the first was delivered in 2020.
The MMF provides its members with air-to-air refuelling, strategic transport and medical evacuation capacity drawn from the common pool, and NATO described both fleets as delivering advanced multi-role performance, higher efficiency and greater interoperability in support of deterrence and defence.
“Retired RAF Hercules.”
Cut RAF Hercules, there was no reason why the type couldn’t have remained in service, beyond financial.
It remains elsewhere as a perfectly good aircraft.
Good idea. Hopefully it doesn’t lead to force reductions, but to be fair, the similar programme with Norway for frigate has not led to force reductions.
I can see how tasking of UK A400M could be shared with NATO but I had understood that following the selling off the C130’s the UK didn’t have sufficient airframes for its own requirements so carringout NATO tasking could only be done at the expense of UK tasks. Who decided priority?
Alternatively, maybe the UK will buy-in to a further batch of new A400M’s as part of a joint NATO procurement perhaps the cheapest way of expanding UK airlift capability. There were roumers that the Germans wanted to sell off some of their A400Ms having bought a large number originally to keep the unit costs down.
Like many Government announcements they always lack precision and details leading to a whole lot of speculation and possibly giving the politicians rooom for reinterpretation at a later date.
Like most of the DIP and the SDR before it.