Airbus to produce military transport plane

Airbus is ready to start production of its first military transport plane, designed to give European countries better ability to respond to crisis without American help.

The Airbus A400M airlifter program, expected to cost $24 billion, was launched in the 1990s in the wake of the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia, when European countries couldn't dispatch peacekeepers to a region right on their own doorstep without American assistance.

At the time, the Clinton administration fiercely criticized the strategy as wasteful duplication _ since the U.S. had similar aircraft for sale, such as the C-130 Hercules. Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned of the potential "decoupling" of Europe and the U.S. if the European Union continued to divert resources from joint NATO-directed programs to its own security priorities.

But the war on terror has changed the relationship between the United States and Europe, who are facing common threats such as the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and rogue states like North Korea and Iran.

The most prominent example of U.S.-European cooperation is Afghanistan, where the EU now accounts for nearly half of the 35,000 allied troops and has expressed a firm commitment to see the job through.

While the Bush administration and many European allies disagree sharply over Iraq policy, the White House has toned down warnings of a trans-Atlantic rift, accepting the view that the four-propeller cargo airplane adds to the collective Western defense.

"Our activities are complementary, and if Europeans do manage to raise their game on defense, it seems to me to matter not a jot whether this is done on a NATO or an EU ticket," said Nick Whitney, head of the European Defense Agency.

"Everybody knows that if Europeans want to preserve effective military clout ... they have no choice but to cooperate."

The A400M is the first military plane produced by Europe's Airbus consortium. It looks like a larger version of the C-130, a workhorse of the U.S. Air Force and many allies for half a century. New variants still are being produced by Lockheed Martin Corp.

The prototype is scheduled to take to the sky in less than a year and about 200 will enter service in eight European air forces beginning in 2009.

Airbus will offer much greater range and nearly twice the payload of the C-130 Hercules, thus allowing the Europeans to quickly deploy forces to faraway theaters such as Central Africa, the Middle East, or Central Asia.