Airlift Rising

Reports that impending decisions on the Caribou and C-130H replacement programs have been put back until after the recommendations from the new White Paper have been digested opens up some interesting possibilities in the world of airlift.

This further 12 month delay means the poor old ‘Bous’ will not only have to keep soldiering on until 2012, but that acquiring additional C-130Js may no longer be the only answer for a C-130H replacement. Alenia and EADS CASA have been very patient this past decade while the on-again, off-again Caribou replacement game has been played out, and while this time last year virtually everyone (including us) had anointed the C-27J as the likely successor and that it was just a matter of when and how, not ‘if ’, the tide may now be turning.