The A400M project roots belong to the early 80s following NATO pressure regarding a lack of projection and strategic-tactical support capabilities among European armies. After the end of the cold war, the advent of the war-on-terror era, and the rising of the so-called “new threats”, greater emphasis has being put on the neediness of those skills. Now, European strategic capabilities have been proved nearly nonexistent and certainly incomparable with those showed by the United States. In Europe, most of strategic transport aircrafts are already old and inefficient; most of them are short/medium-range type and have light/medium load capacity: just consider that during the second gulf war in 2003 European forces had to rent the outsized Antonov An-124 form Ukraine. In this sense, the A400M represents European hopes of balancing US capabilities and of building interoperable force both with the United States and within the different European armies. 

But, as understandable by observing the chart below, European strategic capabilities are still unripe if compared whit the United State ones. By possessing 7 C-17 Great Britain is the only exception but they made clear that those aircraft will be used only in their own troops support without considering the possibility of deploying them within any European Union joint missions. The new A400M can be considered as a welcomed step forward compared with the older C-130 and C-160, but it cannot compete with the C-17s, nor with the C-5s or with the An-124s.  

In conclusion, being one of the few (but encasing) joint military projects, the new A400M can be considered as a great political result and a great example of European military integration within the EU. But speaking in military capabilities terms, judgments are really negatively affected.

Classification of strategic airlifters.

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