WI/PC: Airbus C-330 developed instead of A400M?

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
What if Airbus instead of developing the A400M military transport, instead designed and built a C-17 class of transport based on the A330 airliner, a possible C-330?

I'm thinking of moving the wings into an over into a shoulder position.

Redesigning the tail into a T-style unit allowing a rear cargo door to be inserted.

Also the wheels and their bogies lowered so as to allow the aircraft a lower profile to assist loading and unloading.

How would this aircraft perform compared to the C-17?

Would it perform better than the A400M?

Would there be more of a market for this aircraft?

Regards filers.
 

Archibald

Banned
Too expensive for European armed forces. Plus the modifications you describes essentially amounts to an entirely new aircraft. The major issue is that airliners have pressurised cabins while military cargo aircrafts have large cargo doors that must open in flight to drop parachutists and payload. Also airliners like large airport runways, while military cargo aircraft must land on short landing strips full of dirt and other crap.

While the 747 is often seen as Boeing losing C-5 bid turned into an airliner, Boeing C-5 was actually very different. Low and high wing.
 
This wouldn't be 'too expensive', it would be utterly impossible.

As if all the threads based around 'what if bad engine replaced by 'super magiks' engine' weren't bad enough...

What you propose would require a 'clean sheet' design.

I have no idea how a non - extant design would perform against the C-17, which actually exists.

As to potential markets, Boeing built the last few C-17s as 'white tails' (that is, speculatively - without a customer) and the last one is only now being pursued by India, so probably not so much...

And the plural of 'aircraft' (singular) is 'aircraft'...
 

SsgtC

Banned
All those changes mean it's not based on an A-330. What you're proposing is basically stretching an A400 to the length of an A330, replacing the turboprops with turbofans and calling it a day. All this gets you is a bigger A400. A plane that's under spec, over budget and behind schedule.
 
The reason the USAF has a lot of cargo aircraft is that the USA is a superpower with worldwide interests, and therefore needs to be able to deploy forces worldwide very rapidly - which requires air transport. Europe by and large doesn't - the only countries with interests that go much beyond the Russian border are France and the UK, and their armed forces are so tiny compared to the American ones that you'd never be able to justify a specialist airlifter. Indeed, I'm more than a little surprised that Embraer are making the KC-390 work, and that's a much smaller aircraft than any nominal "C330"
 
On the other hand, there's the example of the C-135, which was pretty much a 707 flying Air Force colors...well, sort of. It was derived from the same prototype, anyway, and there were significant similarities. There were C- versions of the aircraft (i.e., not KC- or RC- versions that weren't transporting any cargo), but I think they were only used for personnel transport (and not just VIP transport). Not useless, certainly, but not exactly what the OP is looking for, I should think.
 
There are a few like that...
1023px-RCAF_CC-150_Polaris_Davies.jpg
 
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