On the occasion of the delivery ceremony of the first of two A400Ms ordered in 2021, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto stated that the country is interested in the acquisition of another four units of the European transport aircraft.
President Subianto did not specify when talks with Airbus Defence and Space for these additional aircraft would commence, but the interest by the Tentara Nasional Indonesia Angkatan Udara (TNI-AU) in this plane is significant.
The TNI-AU has five Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 and about twenty C-130H/H-30 in service, including those purchased new in the late seventies and early eighties and those bought second hand from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), who discarded them for their C-130J-30s.
For Airbus Defence and Space, the potential additional Indonesian order is critical in keeping the main assembly line in Seville, Spain open beyond 2028. This line is finishing the aircraft for the Luftwaffe and those of the Armée de l’Air y de l’Espace; while for those of the Ejército del Aire y del Espacio the program was remodeled from fourteen to seventeen units out of the twenty-seven originally planned.
Beyond current tasks, Airbus Defence and Space are exploring potential use profiles for the A400M including long-range jamming, configuring the aircraft as a ‘mother ship’ for remote carriers (UAS and loitering munitions), as well as increasing the transportable payload to forty tons (currently in certain situations it is thirty-seven tons, usually it is thirty-two tons).
Photo credit @Airbus Defence and Space
