Withdrawal of the C-130J fleet from the RAF in 2022, a decade earlier than originally planned, has been a contentious issue ever since it was proposed in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. The initial controversy subsided while the RAF's Hercules continued to fly daily operations out of RAF Brize Norton, supporting numerous exercise and short-notice missions around the world, and I suspect the Ministry of Defence (MOD) hoped that it would eventually be able to quietly retire the type with little further outcry. However, this proved far from the case. So critical was the Hercules to ongoing RAF operations that the retirement date was extended until June 30, 2023 to support strategic lift operations that its replacement, the Airbus A400 Atlas, was unable to do due to a number of unspecified issues. With the retirement of the C-130Js at the end of June, the UK's military finds itself on familiar ground and has admitted to the wider media that there will be a capability gap. When asked about this, James Cartlidge MP, Defence Procurement Minister, stated: "Well, I think actually it's not a loss of capability, it's a gain of capability because the Secretary of State very clearly believes this is a next-generation aircraft [A400M] ahead of the Hercules."
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