Watch at this beauty!
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7475687.stm

Nothing more to say.

She's a beauty alright!:up:

But the C-130 Hercules can haul more goods!:rock:

I remember walking around a mockup of the RAF's Future Large Aircraft at Farnborough 1994. This plane's been a long time coming.

Rifleman - the A400m can haul 37 tonnes, the C-130 33. Not much of a difference, mind.

Oops!:damn:

Just looked at Wikipedia and looked at the A400M's Maximum Payload and compared it with the C-130H's Maximum Takeoff Weight and confused the two! Sorry!:doh:

But to remind you of some troubles at Airbus, they entered a bid with the Canadians but they failed and the Canadians instead bought C-130J's and C-17s.:yep:

I antagonize with Airbus so much because of the 2-year delays and the incessant showing of reruns featuring the A380 in Discovery Channel Asia!:nope:

IIRC Boeing has some problems with delays too, don't they?

Eight blades per engine.

Interesting design, hope it serves the various militaries well

I was just thinking about the 8 bladed props, thats gotta be the most I've ever seen on an engine.

Does anyone have any info about the thinking behind that? I'm assuming its for efficiency reasons.

I was wondering too, couldn't find anything

Same here very interesting design. Looks cool.:yep:

A modern high-bypass turbofan has compressor blades which are larger than the rest of the engine, which aids by producing extra thrust, a la a propellor. It also sounds something like a propellor. This looks like it is meant to take that function even further.

I bet it has a very distinctive sound to it.

I was allready thinking the A 400M would never see the light of day!
10 years of CGI animations finally come to an end :)
From the An-72 controversy (the ukraine basically had the same aircraft ready for serial production) to budget cuts the A 400M survived a lot.
Strange that the gestation phase of a modern military project seems to be as long as its service phase. Especially strange since no one has yet started a replacement program for the Eurofighter or the A 400M.
One of the greatest "fails" in media history was when the german weekly "Focus" published a CGI picture of an A 400M refuelling two Eurofighters and captioned it: "the A 400M can tow planes in the air"
:rotfl::damn:

Ouch!!
Facts, Facts, Facts.... isn't that their slogan?:rotfl:

Those reporters from the "Focus" were idiots. It was clear that the two Eurofighters were pushing the tanker. It must have been tired or something.

sheeesh

Hey!!! They copied the C-130!!! Cheaters!

-S