Low flying near a city.

[Mike1158]

G'day folks,

We have had several low flying A400M which you would not find unusual in many parts of europe but flying below nearby terrain when out of the immediate vicinity of an airbase seems bloody daft.  Flying below terrain near a city?  Blows my mind.

Wots'it all about, Alfie?

[Ivanhoe]

All sorts of weirdness in the big boy aviation community, of late;

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gg5e7q5qlo

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

11 hours ago, Mike1158 said:

G'day folks,

We have had several low flying A400M which you would not find unusual in many parts of europe but flying below nearby terrain when out of the immediate vicinity of an airbase seems bloody daft.  Flying below terrain near a city?  Blows my mind.

Wots'it all about, Alfie?

A400 have taken over from the Hercules supporting the SF community, and they are probably practicing covert insertion. Many years ago we had a chinook fly down our valley at low altitude, almost certainly doing the same thing.

Bear in mind, with flight management computers, its near impossible to get lost now. Its pretty safe, at least until someone forgets about a power line anyway.

[Roman Alymov]

14 hours ago, Mike1158 said:

G'day folks,

We have had several low flying A400M which you would not find unusual in many parts of europe but flying below nearby terrain when out of the immediate vicinity of an airbase seems bloody daft.  Flying below terrain near a city?  Blows my mind.

Wots'it all about, Alfie?

As for me it strongly depends on terrain - see Sochi arport for example

Аэропорт Адлер. Взлёт. Вид сверху (youtube.com)

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Weeeeeee....

 

[Ivanhoe]

Lindbergh Field in San Diego is an interesting place to land;

 

[Ivanhoe]

Also KSAN, skip ahead to 2:30;

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

7 minutes ago, Ivanhoe said:

Lindbergh Field in San Diego is an interesting place to land;

 

When I was working for Train simulator we did a San Diego route and I had to put all that in. It was unnerving to see a build with one entirely unnecessary story, right on the flightpath. Its going to be exciting if the ILS is ever out.

[Tim Sielbeck]

@Stuart Galbraith  Do they use the Mach Loop everyday or do they let the public know when they will be flying it so the photographers can be out there?

[Stuart Galbraith]

Mod seem to post a timetable. And I'd imagine a lot depends on the weather.

https://machloop.co.uk/#google_vignette

USAF use it as well, at least as far back as F111 days.

 

[Tim Sielbeck]

Thanks.

 

[Olof Larsson]

14 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

A400 have taken over from the Hercules supporting the SF community, and they are probably practicing covert insertion. Many years ago we had a chinook fly down our valley at low altitude, almost certainly doing the same thing.

Bear in mind, with flight management computers, its near impossible to get lost now. Its pretty safe, at least until someone forgets about a power line anyway.

Seems like a job better suited to a C-27 or a C-295 or perhaps something even smaller, because I would asume it's pretty hard to be covert with 44'000hp and the radar signature of a small overseas territory.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well, this is one of the less controversial mistakes of the manifold defence screwups over the past 14 years based purely on fiscal cost. The idea was that the A400 could replace the Hercules for SF work. Which it does, sorta kinda. They were landing them on beaches in South Wales to prove the rough field capability, which seems to work out ok.

But was it a good idea to withdraw the Hercules? On balance, probably not, no.

[TrustMe]

One of the designed requirements for the A400M was for it to carry oversized loads that the Hercules couldn't fit. It's also faster and can carry a higher tonnage than the Hercules and a further distance.

Edited July 19, 2024 by TrustMe

[Ssnake]

Without doubt A400 is the better freight hauler. Whether it's the best choice for spec ops, I don't know.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Its  not better for SF. Its far bigger, making it, one might assume, considerably more difficult to get into some of the tighter airstrips of the world. Also, there was an operation in the Falklands war where it was intended to 'expend' 2 Hercules by crashing them onto an Argentine airstrip, before disgorging some SAS troopers (not surprisingly it called Operation Certain Death). Its one thing to throw away a Hercules or two, which is expensive enough, but a gargantuan aircraft like an A400 is getting cost prohibitive. In my view at least. We saw the RAF reluctant to risk Chinooks to lift an SAS patrol lost in Iraq, and goodness knows they are considerably cheaper by comparison. I can hardly see them jumping with joy to risk an Atlas, which is a cornerstone of their freight capacity.

 My own view, we should have jumped on board the Anglo French Hercules unit (perhaps even donating some aircraft) and fulfilled the role that way.

A400 can probably fulfill the role 90 percent of the time. Is it the ideal solution? Probably not, or the rest of Europe would already be using it the same way. Its perhaps a bit like using  a Ferrari Testarossa to do the shopping run. Sure, you can use it that way. Should you? Probably not.

[Ssnake]

Well, 95% of all missions assigned to transport aircraft are hauling freight. In that sense the A400M is not the Testarossa in your example, but rather the bigger shopping cart where you finally can handle the IKEA visit with a single cart - rather than two or three you used to tape together, and some parts still didn't fit.

If the "let's crash our Hercules on the landing strip to surprise the enemy with a move nobody would expect" is the metric to go by when assessing the utility value for spec ops, I suppose taking a few mothballed C-46s would be ideal; the smaller and cheaper in your scenario, the better.

I'm not going to defend the role of the A400M in special operations here. I'm just saying, as a transport aircraft it's pretty much exactly what all major European armies need; Globemaster and Galaxy are what I'd consider oversized for European needs. That you might want to round your fleet with a few smaller ones I won't dispute, but then you also have to have the budget for acquisition and operation.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I was trying to find into a unit cost price. Supposedly when the RAF bought their 24 C130J in 2000, it was at what I estimate as a unit cost of 41 and a half million. When the French were buying their A400 in 2013, it was at a unit cost of what my calculation suggests was something like 128million pounds. I doubt we got them much cheaper. Im just suggesting that if you are doing some haulage to some corners of the earth with not particularly great airstrips, you might be content to risk a Hercules, simply because you can replace it for a lot less. Considering how small the RAF Transport command now is, and they have to use the A400 for everything, there may be a calculation to not risk it, when perhaps you should, simply because you cant afford the fleet to be smaller than it is. I live at the end of the flight path of Brize Norton where all our A400's are park. They are getting a LOT of use out of the aircraft right now to haul weapons to Ukraine.

The other unresolved issue is reliablity. Nobody would criticise the Hercules for reliablity. The A400, last I heard, still had some issues with availablity in RAF service. I dont know if they have been resolved yet, but again, it may be another reason not to risk an extremely expensive aircraft.

Considering the RAF have just the Atlas, and the even more expensive, and even more irreplaceable C17, then clearly this might create a problem. Particularly as the SF community wont ever own the aircraft, or liekly ever be able to issue orders to the RAF to make them take the risk.

I quite agree about cheaper aircraft. But on the present budget, I suspect they would end up look ing like a Britten Norman Islander then some of the better European options out there.

[Ssnake]

While two Hercules can haul the same tonnage as a single A400M (for a shorter distance without refueling), you can't load whatever exceeds thir load volume, or weight limit. And then you need at least twice as many people to actually transport the stuff (pilot, copilot, load master, ...), possibly twice as many ground crew unless the turnaround time for a Hercules is less than half of that of an A400. Military organizations everywhere in the west struggle to fill their positions. Any system that promises to reduce the amount of personnel by 50% in daily operations is probably a win, even if the system price is three times higher, because it guarantees that you can perform the service at all. If you're short one load master or a pilot, you probably have to scrap the entire mission.

[R011]

58 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

While two Hercules can haul the same tonnage as a single A400M (for a shorter distance without refueling), you can't load whatever exceeds thir load volume, or weight limit. And then you need at least twice as many people to actually transport the stuff (pilot, copilot, load master, ...), possibly twice as many ground crew unless the turnaround time for a Hercules is less than half of that of an A400. Military organizations everywhere in the west struggle to fill their positions. Any system that promises to reduce the amount of personnel by 50% in daily operations is probably a win, even if the system price is three times higher, because it guarantees that you can perform the service at all. If you're short one load master or a pilot, you probably have to scrap the entire mission.

That assumes, though, that typically, one needs to move more than one Herc load equivalent on a regular basis.  I shouldn't think using an A400 to fly a load that wouldn't max out a C-130 would be cost effective.

[Ssnake]

I don't know how big the cost difference per flying hour is, and how many maintenance hours must be invested per flight hour for each model. Those would certainly affect the cost balance. But again, if you can increase your operational capabilities while reducing personnel requirements at the same time, that may very well be worth the higher costs from an army's perspective.

[Ivanhoe]

A400s plus some de Havilland Buffalos for hedge trimming.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Its a pity the caribou isnt still in production, because that, fitted with turboprops, would probably be near ideal.

[TrustMe]

You have to factor in the power projection fractor. A single A400M can support a fighter squadron in the field far better than multiple C130's. But that's assuming you want to do power projection, a country like Germany will never need to do it.

[futon]

A german A400 along with an A330MRTT and some Spanish and German fighters arriving at Chitose Air Base in Japan for joint-training.