Could anyone here in the know care to speculate if the A400M would be flying today if they went with the Pratt &Whitney Canada powerplant instead of the Europrop/Snecma one?

Why Europrop/Snecma? I thought the whole consortium is called “Europrop”?

The latest A400 news is that it may have to take a 2 year holiday. The worst is that it could be cancelled. IMO if they do have a “Stop work notice” for two years it will then be cancelled. We can’t keep labour on pegs for two years, the whole team(s) will disperse and find other work. In two years the “Fat Herc” will be nearly flying, and that platform has pedigree and sound engineering to build upon.

The chance of the “Fat Herc” to fly at all is somewhere close to zero. From an engineering and flight performance perspective that aircraft has nothing to offer really, except bad looks.

Easiest option for KLM to do for is;

Dash Q400-To Replace the F70 and Some F100
ERJ 190/195-To Replace F100
737NG(-700, -800, -900)-To Replace all Short Haul 737 Classics
787-8-To Replace A330-200, 744 Combi
787-9-To Replace MD11
748-To Replace 744 (PAX and Combi Versions).

AF-KLM will most likely go for the A350.
At least is that what I expect from the AF-part.

I think that even if it falls short on the promised goals, it will still offer significant efficiency improvements versus current technology (A330/767/etc). IIRC, the original goal was to better the 767 by 30%. Lets say they only get 20-25%, thats still a lot of fuel.

20% was the goal and it will be achieved, maybe tight for the first few aircraft (due to some weight problems).

I can imagine what makes it so expensive. I am no insider in military aircraft systems, but just having the A330-200 MRTT around gives you an idea.

The boom and the fueling pods of the A330 MRTT are some kind of “external store”, actually the aerodynamic influences are less than hanging a big bomb under a small fighter. Still it generates lots of work.

First of all, you’ll need to make wind tunnel tests as external stores are more or less unpredictable. These have to range through all allowed flight regimes. That is, you basically make a full wind tunnel campaign, including transonic. With external stores you must crosscheck interactions, like asymmetric 2000lbs cowboy and center line tank.
The wind tunnel data are feed into the flight dynamical model of the aircraft and the consequences on stability and control are checked. If there are any consequences additions or restrictions are added (good example: see F-16C manual).
When the whole stuff is through you have a theoretically integrated weapon. Due to the immense non linearities and rather unpredictable aerodynamics you’ll need actual testing. That is initially to re-fly the computer simulations, later maybe weapons release (again: that gonna be simulated before).

Depending on aircraft and external store the work can be multiplied: a conventionally controlled subsonic aircraft will need few tests, a supersonic full FBW aircraft will need considerable.

I think the embedding into the software weapons-wise is normally rather simple. The weapon will have an interface that expects some particular input before its goes fishing, and if the bus is standarized and my aircraft is digital I just send it via bus. Once again depending on the weapon and the input it needs: a dumb bomb will need single order [Get lost, fatty!], while an AMRAAM wants to be fed with lots of infos.

Thanks for that Schorsch i did know as an Irish Man that we have our own language, i might look into that!As for the accent, im sure most people would have more of a problem understanding Mainland Europeans trying to speak English than they would Irish people speaking.

Tse fail is wiss tse schermans agän?

I think you nailed it with the term “Euro Wehrmacht”. 😀 (no offence intended).

While all this is an interesting exercise, it is just absolutely irrealistic, at least as long as Europe isn’t a reality. By that I mean, sure, there is an European government, but, Europe isn’t united through the people, the reason being that for example your regular Frenchman and your regular German will NOT be able to speak together… How do you expect to unite people who don’t even understand each other? Let alone have an european army where one bataillon and another wouldn’t comprehend each other? (Granted, the aviation part is easier, thanks to the universal use of English).

I agree that communication fails when you try to talk to the woman in the Lidl store, but for the issue at hand communication normally happens between educated people. French college people actually do speak English. It doesn’t make sense to mix nations within a unit, and on higher level just the officers have to understand each other.
When we talk of air forces the majority of people is the rather educated type. We might encounter deficiencies when we look at the average infantry man.

As Sens pointed out, it would be important that some air forces concentrate on some fields. For example, that one air force has dedicated SEAD assets (like Tornado ECR), other have AWACS. I am fearing that in ten years each air force will have good multirole aircraft (like Eurofighter or Rafale), but some special missions aircraft are amiss.
For example, an electronically updated Tornado still is a very useful weapon, like the British GR4.
Another field which is currently underdeveloped is aerial refuelling. I hope that more nations follow the British example and get themselves some A330-200 MRTT. It the MRTT makes in the USA, there is a good chance the aircraft gets the Western default aerial tanker.

No, it was more simple, Dassault proposed the mirage 2000 that fit the received Austrian request but it looks like it wasn’t what Austria had in mind.

After the problem in Norway, Korea and Austria, everyone undersatnd why Dassault is fed up with close competition and don’t want to waster energy on those one like Japan.

Obviously, the Eurofighter team has done a much better job than Dassault on that one.

The basic misconception is that nations buy a fighter and all the other stuff is just some foggy by-products that don’t matter.
Not so.

Nations, or better national economies, buy a solution for air defence. This solution has to be optimal in:
– air defence capability, which splits in
* airframe
* engine
* sensors
* weapons
– direct cost (tax payers money)
– indirect benefit (offset deals)
– life time costs
– capability sustainment
– political gains

The last one is hard to fix and not really something for the media in general, but all the rest can either be directly be calculated or at least assessed. I guess if the Rafale would come out as optimum under above conditions, it would have a deal. If it doesn’t have a deal by now, it would say it has weaknesses, which do not necessarily have to be connected to the aircraft itself.

In these fora the people tend to overstress the importance of the aircraft, sometime factor in the weapon system (but that is only for advanced users), but completely black out about all the rest. Austria for example chose the Eurofighter mostly due to soft factors like lifetime costs and capability sustainment (shared pilot training and maintenance). Capability was a secondary issue. The Austrian Eurofighters are basically Luftwaffe aircraft with different colors running on a different cost center.

Otherwise it is not explainable why people regularly point out 3D thrust vectoring of a Suchoi 35 when it comes to solutions for a national air defense.