02/28/2015. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "The development of the A400M tactical and strategic military transport aircraft is managed by Airbus Military, a new company formed in 1999, and shared between Airbus, Casa of Spain, Flabel of Belgium and TUSAS Aerospace Industries of Turkey. Five development aircraft were built, which were referred to as Grizzly 1 to Grizzly 5. The picture above was taken on the day of roll out of the first, by that time nine countries had ordered 192 aircraft.

However, by the time Airbus Military Chief Test Pilot Edward "Ed" Strongman and his crew took the first prototype F-WWMT to the air for its first flight on December 11, 2009 (eighteen months after roll-out), due to increasing costs, technical problems and delays, the number of ordered aircraft had reduced to 174 by eight countries: Belgium 7, Germany 53, France 50, UK 22, Luxembourg 1, Malaysia 4, Spain 27, and Turkey 10. On July 6, 2012, the A400M was officially named Atlas. The first production aircraft flew on March 6, 2013, and the first delivery was made to France in October 2013.

With the A400M, a first for a military transport, commercial practices are applied both in the development and in the production processes. Many parts come from civilian models from, e.g. the cockpit, which largely corresponds to that of today's Airbus airliners. The A400M is intended to replace the C-160 Transall and C-130 Hercules. In contrast to these types it has, by the same high operation cost, a double payload/volume capacity. The cargo compartment is 58 ft 1.25 in (17.71 m) long (incl. ramp 75 ft 9.8 in, 23.11 m), 13 ft 1.5 in (4.00 m) wide and 12 ft 7.6 in (3.85 m) high. Besides the Transport version, a tanker version is planned as well."