AIRBUS A400 M

Airbus Military has completed the first paratroop drop tests involving its A400M "Grizzly"."Six freefall paratroopers made jumps from aircraft "Grizzly Three" in separate passes from 6,000ft [1,820m] at the Fonsorbes drop zone near Toulouse on 4 November," Airbus says.The personnel were drawn from the UK and French armed forces, and from the latter's CEV flight test centre. Two jumped from the A400M's rear cargo ramp, and four from the aircraft's left-hand paratroop door.

© Airbus Military

Airbus says initial feedback received from the paratroops is that the A400M is "easier to jump from than other transports". The company cites the type's ability to fly at just 110kt (203km/h) during the drop procedure as a contributory factor.Visible in the released image, the A400M's new side door deflectors were added to the development aircraft fleet after initial tests with the ramp and side doors open resulted in high noise levels and turbulence inside the cargo hold, says Fernando Alonso, Airbus Military's senior vice-president flight and integration test centre.

© Airbus Military

Conducted after initial tests using water-filled balloons and instrumented dummies released by static lines, the first paratroop jumps will be followed by further trials scheduled to take place during 2011, Airbus says.Each A400M will be able to carry up to 116 fully equipped paratroops once the delayed type enters operational service around 2013.After reaching a new agreement in Toulouse last week, Airbus expects to sign a new production contract before year-end with its European launch customers Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey and the UK. The nations are now expected to take delivery of 170 production aircraft; 10 fewer than previously contracted for. Malaysia will also receive four examples under the company's lone export deal for the type.http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/11/08/349448/picture-first-paratroops-jump-from-europes-a400m.html

Airbus Military should celebrate two further milestones in its A400M programme before the end of this month.

The company recently passed the first anniversary of the start of its flight test campaign involving the European transport. Aircraft MSN1 made its debut sortie from San Pablo airport near Seville, Spain on 11 December 2009.

Operating from San Pablo and Toulouse, France, the company’s now three available aircraft had logged 292 flights and a combined 965h aloft during the programme’s first year of flight activity. Some 200h of this total has been added since early November.


© Airbus Military


Airbus Military expects its fleet to break through the 1,000 flight hour mark before year-end, with the aircraft likely to be joined next week by MSN4, its fourth of an eventual five development aircraft. The last aircraft should fly during 2011.

Rejected take-off trials with MSN4 were due to take place on 16 December, with the process the last to be conducted ahead of its first flight event.

Production deliveries of 170 A400Ms on order for Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey and the UK should commence around early 2013, with four also to be delivered to export buyer Malaysia.

have very good news to announce,” French Defense Minister Herve Morin declared at a press conference on Nov. 5. “The [Airbus] A400M has taken off and can now fly its destined route.”

Morin, removed days later in a cabinet reshuffle, was speaking metaphorically. That morning, he and Louis Gallois, chief executive of EADS, met with Occar (a French acronym for Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation), which manages the A400M on behalf of seven partner nations, to finalize the contract, renegotiated last March, that will be signed by Occar on behalf of the partners with Airbus Military, a subsidiary of EADS.

Morin said the agreement “on Europe’s most ambitious [defense] program” means that the French air force, will receive the first of its aircraft in 2013 and the next seven in 2014. Originally, the first delivery should have been in late 2009 or early 2010. France will pay €8.4 billion ($11.1 billion) for the 50 aircraft it has ordered, an amount Morin says is “much less expensive than if we’d bought an aircraft off-the-shelf, which, in addition, would not have the same performance as [the A400M].” The price per aircraft, he said, “is less than that of a [Lockheed Martin] C-130J or a [Boeing] C-17.”

He added that the A400M could carry “the vast majority of our army’s equipment with no need to dismantle it. For example, we could fit two Tiger [helicopters] or three VBCI [armored wheeled infantry vehicles] in it.” The A400M can transport 15 tons of cargo nonstop from France to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, or 17 tons to Kandahar in Afghanistan and “land on [an earthen] runway,” which no other large military transport can do, he told journalists.

“This is an emblematic program which the Europeans could not afford to let go,” Morin stressed, adding that “if it had failed, Europe would have been under the yoke of the United States in the 21st century” when it came to sourcing air transports. Cancellation would have had unpleasant political consequences, as well, in the form of massive job cuts—40,000 positions in Europe depend on the program, including 12,000, directly and indirectly, in France.

The Nov. 5 contract that was endorsed by the seven nations largely follows the agreement they reached on March 5, 2010: the partners will pay €11 million per aircraft and lend Airbus Military €1.5 billion, which the company will reimburse from export contracts for the aircraft. The partner nations also agreed that the aircraft will have six versions, the final one being launched in 2018.

Gallois attributes the delays in the A400M program to its size and engineering challenges. When EADS signed the initial contract in 2003, “we grossly underestimated the complexity of this program, and that’s why we fell behind. The [initial] 6.5-year [development] calendar was unrealistic.”

Meanwhile, the Grizzlies, as the test A400Ms are named, are undergoing intensive flight tests. On Nov. 4, Grizzly 3 dropped paratroopers for the first time, two each from the U.K. and French armed forces, and two from the French flight-test center. By the second week of November, the test aircraft had accumulated more than 800 flight hours. Grizzly 4 was to be delivered by the end of December.

Airbus Military says the flight envelope, artificial icing, velocity of minimum control and velocity minimum unstick tests are complete. Testing of cruise performance, climb, braking and flutter flight were underway at press time. Some military-specific tests such as night-vision operations have been done, and tests for landing on unpaved runways are planned.

The cold-weather and hot-and-high trials take place this year, along with cargo operations and evaluation of the autopilot. “The objective is that we get civil certification before the end of 2011,” Barbara Kracht, a representative of Airbus Military, tells DTI.

The seven partner nations of the A400M program are Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, the U.K. and Turkey. The original order called for 180 aircraft, but this is now 170 after Germany reduced its order to 53 from 60 (see p. 48)—although it maintains an option for the seven it cut—and Britain reduced its order to 22 from 25. France has maintained its 50-aircraft order, as have Spain (27), Turkey (10), Belgium (7) and Luxembourg (1).

There may be fatigue setting in on the A400M over the nearly two-year process it is taking to rework the contract for the military transport aircraft, but today it is a different type of fatigue that's in the spotlight. Airbus Military has released this picture of MSN5001, a ground test A400M, commencing fatigue testing:






The work is taking place in Dresden.

Several test periods are planned, with the first one lasting four weeks in which the airframe will be put through the equivalent of 160 flights.

Airbus Military notes that "the first 1,665 simulated flights are required for European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) type certification of the A400M, but over the next 18 months a total of 25,000 simulated flights will be performed – equating to 2.5 times the A400M´s design-life." Airbus CEO Tom Enders says civil type certification is due to be in-hand by year-end.

Static testing of MSN5000 is already done, but the manufacturer says more tests will be performed throughout the year and into early next year with the airframe.

Moins d'A400M pour la Luftwaffe



L'Allemagne réduit encore la voilure en matière de transport militaire. Le Bundestag (Parlement) vient en effet de décider que l'armée de l'air (Luftwaffe) ne recevrait finalement que 40 Airbus A400M sur les 53 que l'Allemagne s'est engagé à commander à l'industriel. Les 13 appareils supplémentaires devront être revendus à un autre client, qui reste, pour l'heure, à trouver. Au départ du programme, l'Allemagne avait prévu d'acquérir 60 A400M.

Pictured is Airbus Military's second A400M development aircraft undergoing cold weather trials earlier this month in Kiruna, northern Sweden.

The aircraft - Grizzly 2 - experienced temperatures as low as -21ºC as it underwent tests on its powerplants. It was accompanied by an Airbus A340-300 carrying support equipment and the test team.

It will experience further cold weather testing in Kiruna and at other locations this winter and next says Airbus Military.