Acceptance of France’s first C-130J-30

With this article we begin regular coverage of the French military, NATO and a wide variety of European defense issues by Murielle Delaporte, a deeply experienced and knowledgeable expert on French strategy and acquisition. Murielle, who travels regularly between Washington and Paris and to the traditional haunts of the French military, is editor of Opérationnels, a French-language defense magazine. This marks the beginning of a measured but marked expansion of Breaking Defense’s coverage of the US and foreign militaries. Read on! The Editor.

“Our two nations share the same thirst for excellence, the same willpower to act and the same irrepressible desire for freedom: these C130Js are a demonstration of this.” French Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly at Orléans-Bricy Air Base on Jan. 19.

FRANCE: To some French observers, purchasing American military transport aircrafts seems like heresy. It’s an admission of failure of the A400M European adventure, many argue. But this nascent fleet of C130Js is really the stepping stone towards a new Franco-German bilateral unit (some refers to it as a squadron) to be based in 2021 at FAB Evreux and symbolizes the drive towards the dream of a true European defense both French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel aspire to.

The A400M in low speed tests

It also marks one of the fastest major military acquisition in French history. Barely two years passed between approval of the actual FMS contract in January 2016 and the delivery of the first C-130J-30 to France last December at the Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta, Ga.

The contract includes support, spares and a two-year maintenance program, as well as training in the US centers consisting in 10-month periods for pilots ad loadmasters, and two to three month periods for non-flying staff. The training for loadmasters is especially important, as, the same way than on A400M,  that profession is changing while taking over more responsibilities in flight.

This move was decided with the signing of a pooling and sharing agreement by former French minister of defense Jean-Yves Le Drian and his German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen in April 2016 (hence before Emmanuel Macron became president last June); it was then reinforced with a bilateral cooperation agreement signed between Maj. Gen. Philippe Coindreau and Vice Chief of Defence Vice Adm. Joachim Ruhle in October 2017. Concretely, the deal is for both nations to join forces and share costs, i.e. respectively 4 C130Js on the French side to be acquired by 2019 and 6 on the German side consequently to the Bundestag’s expected green light in 2019. The IOC (Initial Operational Capability) is planned for 2021 and the FOC (Full Operational Capability) for 2024.

Sharing costs starts with an equal investment of 50 million Euros (about $61 million US) each to build the necessary infrastructure to welcome this new generation aircraft at Evreux. But sharing costs also means working together on maintenance and support, hence the planned arrival of a still-to-be-determined number of German personnel.

It is not a first since there are already German military staff deployed in France – such as for instance at the Franco-German Army Aviation training school for the Tiger helicopter crew (EFA Tigre for “ Ecole franco-allemande de formation des équipages Tigre”) at Cannet-des-Maures in the south of France. What is new is the desire to go beyond what has been perceived as a limited success to truly pool resources together. The goal is not to create a simple training center, but to be able to conduct joint operations with mixed crews.

Traditionally, such efforts have been met with skepticism because French and German armed forces have grown apart in terms of the way they operate in theater. However, two trends tend to show the potential feasibility of such an ambitious undertaking:

• The first is the growing, albeit discreet, success of the Eindhoven-based European Air Transport Command (EATC) which manages since 2010 air assets’ operational readiness among an increasing number of European partners on the basis of C130 flight hour exchanges (which would occur in the Evreux joint squadron);
• Burden-sharing has developed between France and Germany around the A400M, whereby tactical training of respective flying crews take place in France and logistics and support training of both countries’ maintainers take place in Germany.

While the A400M gets ready to kick in as a fuller capability, both in numbers and tactical capacities, the C130J – although a US-made asset – could actually contribute to revive what we can call the early Transall (C160) spirit. Lest we forget, Transall was a Franco-German project born in 1959: the name Transall actually comes from the German “TRANSporter ALLianz” and French “TRANSporteur ALLiance”). The rationale behind the acquisition of C130Js stems from the long overdue retirement of the Transall fleet in 2021 in Germany and 2023 in France.

However, it is not the only reason that brought military decision-makers (and first and foremost former Joint chief of staff General de Villiers as early as 2015), to push for the C-130J-30.

The new planes will participate in the following missions, as defined by the French Air Force:

• • Protection: CSAR, TRAP, but also evacuation (hostage; humanitarian; etc) and rescue missions.
  • Intervention: power projection, airborne operations, overseas operations.
  • Logistic support: logistics, support, evacuation, airdrop of personnel and equipment, refueling on the ground.

With the arrival of the KC-130J, French helicopters will also finally be able to be refueled in flight without having to request another country’s – often the United States – assets. The A400M was supposed to fill the gap, but has not been able to deliver so far.

Having several assets with different strong points is actually a bonus in military planning as it offers more options at a time when allied armed forces are especially in demand on very harsh territories. For the French Air Force, which has been operating for several years in the Sahara-Sahelien region (with the Barkhane Operation) and over Syria and Iraq against terrorist groups (with the Chammal Operation), the A400M, which can carry 30 tons in 6 hours on a flight between Orléans and N’Djamena in Chad, the C-130H-30, which can carry 7 tons in 8 hours, and the C-130J-30, which can carry 10.5 tons in 7 hours, are all complementary.

They offer self-deployable and self-sustainable assets which France can use on its own or within a coalition of allies, such as Germany and the United States.