This mouldering, single-toed, young grey ungulate needs mercy
4-Year Delay Expected for A400MQuelle humiliation. The story recently--here, here, here, and here. Where are our journalists on the bird now? After all until a couple of years ago they were full of it. And this from June 2007.Paris - The A400M will be four years late for operational duty, and France could cut orders for the airlifter as it looks for "gap fillers" to make up for the delay in delivery, procurement Chief Executive Laurent Collet-Billon said March 17.
[Metaphorical about the toes - MC]An audit by OCCAR, the European arms agency, shows that the A400M's "operational delay" will be four years, Collet-Billon of the Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (DGA) said at a press conference on the DGA's 2008 results. That is longer than the three-year delay EADS previously announced.
EADS plans to deliver "a first aircraft after three years, with the second aircraft shipped after four years," Collet-Billon said...
The French Air Force is considering all options for plugging the capability gap, including acquiring a foreign aircraft, bringing forward the A330 multirole tanker transport or leasing German Air Force C-160 Transall transports. "We are looking at all options," he said.
If the German Transalls are leased to the French Air Force, they would need modifications, an EADS executive has said.
Collet-Billon ruled out an interim acquisition of the C-130J because the plane is too small for the loads envisioned. He did not exclude procurement of the C-17 but stopped short of saying the U.S. plane is a possible temporary solution.
"We are looking at leasing certain types of aircraft through NATO," he said. "There are no taboos."..
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 7:59 p.m.
2 Comments:
Shadenfrude is best served cold, especially to EADS and Canadian "journalists". Funny how when they are the "gotcha" in the story there is not a peep, not a word or apology, no "we messed up" . . . the silence is very revealing. The ethics of modern journalism and journalists for all to see.
The faster they go out of business and hit the bread lines the better we will all be. And they don't even realize this " gotcha" thingy that they think is journalism is suicide for them. Oh well, the old adage "life is a series of lessons, lessons will be repeated until learned" seems to be "out of scope" to modern journalists.
Given the severe financial stresses and strains in Euroland right now, with the global recession hitting much harder there than in the US or here, there will more financial mine fields for this program to tiptoe through to prevent cancellation.
Thank gawd we didn't succumb to the media circus and Liberal/NDP critic's blatherings and sign up for this aircraft.
Wonder how many missions or 17's will have flown before the first A400M even takes to the air, let alone gets certified operational.
Now if the government could learn from teh 17 acquisition and get moving on the Jercs and Chinooks.
"Collet-Billon ruled out an interim acquisition of the C-130J because the plane is too small for the loads envisioned."
FACT CHECK: The C-130J Stretch has a max payload of 24 tons. The A400M, with (among it's many serious development problems) is now acknowledged to be about 12 tons over original weight, reducing it's payload capacity commensurately. Independent aviation experts now conclude that the A400M's payload will end up below 30 tons, not much more than the C-130J Stretch's capacity.
Nice spin attempt, M. Collet-Billot.
In any case, we all know that whenever they manage to get that bloated Edsel flying, ultimately the Europeans will buy their fleets of overpriced, overweight, under-achieving A400Ms because of the European unacceptable political implications of doing the logical thing -buying Jercs and Globemasters. Le porc sours toutes, n'est ce pas?!
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