I was thinking about how Europe might ensure its capability should the US reduce its commitment to NATO in Europe. In Pressing Reset, a Fabian pamphlet, Calvin Bailey MP, one of Labour’s ex-military MPs wrote in an article, “Defence Co-operation” that the UK had superior offerings in maritime capability, medical capability and logistics. The last of these surprised me and so I did some reading; here are my notes and links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Google Gemini says, https:\/\/share.google\/aimode\/B15z0FFZ9umDsDGbj<\/a> , European NATO forces rely on a mix of strategic and heavy-tactical airlift, primarily utilising the Airbus A400M Atlas<\/strong> and the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III<\/strong>. The A400M acts as the main tactical-strategic hybrid for nations like France, Germany, Spain, and the UK, while the UK and a multinational wing in Hungary operate C-17s for larger, outsize loads. This means that there are very few European operated Boeing C17’s which can carry twice as much. Again a more detailed comparison<\/a> between the two aircraft, from google Gemini, or here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The RAF have 22 A400m’s, the French 41 and the German’s 53. The Poles have a procurment competition in place, I assume they are swapping out their Warsaw Pact planes, if any. The UK have eight Boeings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Is the A400m good enough, and are there enough? NB <\/strong>it has in flight refuelling capability too. But to claim that logistics was a capability in which the UK had a potential leadership role seems a bit optimistic given the numbers deployed in Germany & France. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The featured image shows the two aircraft together with its predecessor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was thinking about how Europe might ensure its capability should the US reduce its commitment to NATO in Europe. In Pressing Reset, a Fabian pamphlet, Calvin Bailey MP, one of Labour’s ex-military MPs wrote in an article, “Defence Co-operation” that the UK had superior offerings in maritime capability, medical capability and logistics. The last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[140],"tags":[932,2259,141],"class_list":["post-14118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-defence","tag-nato","tag-politics-2"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@davelevy_eu\/116363075144958693","error":""},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/nato-heavyliftaircraft-viawikipedia.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14123,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14118\/revisions\/14123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}