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Airbus Awarding Major Contracts for A400M Program
The Airbus Military A400M airlifter is now a real program, with a signed contract (in March 2003), 180 firm orders at a fixed €88 million ($108 million) flyaway price, a fixed schedule and a growing list of subcontractors.
Airbus Military—a subsidiary of Airbus with additional shareholdings by EADS, Flabel and Turkish Aerospace Industries—is now freezing the final design of the A400M. Development and production are concurrent: the first A400M is due to fly from Seville—EADS-CASA is responsible for final assembly—in early 2008, and the first five aircraft will be used for flight-testing, due to be completed by late 2009. Customer deliveries will begin immediately.
Major contracts are being awarded. Ratier-Figeac will supply the 17.5-foot eight-bladed composite propellers—the biggest propellers manufactured outside Russia in 50 years. After re-competing the engine, Airbus Military awarded EuroProp International (EPI) a contract to develop the 13,000 shp (derated to 10,700 shp for take-off) TP400-D6 in January. Messier-Dowty will supply the landing gear, and GKN will produce the spars for the all-composite wing. Many other components will be produced by Airbus Military partners, reflecting their roles on other Airbus programs—Airbus UK is responsible for the wing design, Airbus Germany the fuselage and Airbus France the nose—and much of the avionics system will be common to the commercial line. Airbus will support the A400M worldwide.
The A400M marketing strategy is straight out of Goldilocks: in approximate numbers, the 286,000-pound airplane is twice the size of a C-130J and half the size of a C-17. With an 81,500-pound payload and twice the volume of a CC-130J, the A400M will haul many loads that are too large for the C-130, including a pair of Tiger helicopters with their rotor heads in place, and costs less than half as much as the C-17.
Noteworthy design features include the man landing gear, with three independent twin-wheel units on both sides. Many airlift designers have skimped on the wheels to save weight: "It's not a question of whether you can land on a soft field, but how many times you can do it before you chew the field up," says Airbus Military advisor Peter Scoffham. The A400M is designed for 1,000 passes on a CBR6 field: "If you played rugger on it you'd get muddy."
A400M designers spent a lot of time during the protracted pre-launch stage trying to forestall the propeller-airframe interaction problems that plagued the C-130J. One result: the "down between engines" (DBE) design. The inboard and outboard propellers will be opposite-handed with the downward blades between the engines. Thus, there is no critical engine and engine-out handling is more symmetrical, leading to a 15-20% reduction in the size of the vertical tail, and a more benign airflow past the side doors.
Like the A380, the A400M will have mixed hydraulic and electrical actuation for its flight controls, with implications for the airplane's vulnerability. It will be able to survive loss of both hydraulic systems, and the electrical and hydraulic circuits will be physically separated. Provisions for defensive systems—including a towed decoy—are standard, but the choice of specific warning and jamming systems is up to the customer.
Airbus Military is in Hall 4, Stand A14.
—Bill Sweetman
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