Pot, kettle, black
Let's review your long posts. Remember, the thesis of the article is that the A-400M is not worth it, so a counter will involve actually saying something good about A-400:
1) The C-130J: Interesting tidbit, but hardly makes one think of anything more than remember that the A-400 (OK, and the propfan An-70, just to be fair) turboprop may also be forced outside of its optimal altitude band for similar reasons, thus its practical performance in peacetime may be less than what is promised to us. Not exactly something to make us feel the A-400 is all worth it.
2) C-17 Rough: That actually sounds more like an argument to get C-130Ks or cheap Antonov-12s or whatever. Doesn't help the A-400.
3) C-17 Para: True, but unless you can show that the A-400 will somehow require less training, less maintenance and all, this is not much of a pro-A-400 argument. In fact, it makes one conclude that the A-400 (which ain't cheap, and the cost of the plane is, though not proportional, correlated to its likely maintenance cost) will never do para-dropping or low-level either, which
4) USAF-RAF: Interesting, but it is not a plus for the A-400.
5) Interoperability: So, some parts aren't the same. Some parts are, which is more than could be said for the A-400.
6) C-17 project was nearly cancelled: True, but it wasn't. I agree that C-17 is something of an overhyped aircraft thanks to the efforts of a certain blog which closed shop (not just stopped making new posts; DISAPPEARED from public view) 2 months before the numbers FINALLY caught up with the C-17, but it is there. If you want a Western strategic transport, there are not exactly a ton of alternatives. If you want cheaper (and in many respect better), buy Russian and improve relationships. Not the A-400.
7) Double: Yes, there is a difference. The C-17 will probably carry that Chinook farther than the A-400, creating a band of areas and destinations that can be reached in one leap on the C-17, but not the A-400. Anyway, in his book, Lewis did mention that the US average load for the C-17 is 33-tons, which is very close to the MAXIMUM weight (read: greatly reduced range) capacity of the A-400.
8) Wiki: Stop talking tautologies. All this means is that the A-400 will suffer from the same limitations; hardly something to promote it.
Big Post 2:
2) Contracts: Companies are forced to reveal such secrets to their stockholders so they may decide whether their money has been well spent. Well, the UK people ARE the stockholders for the government.
3) What you've just said is that speed is less important if the sortie rate is low. Speed is over-rated due to fixed time costs in loading and maintenance, but not completely unimportant. In fact, your first longie already states some reasons why it may be important.
4) That schedule is presumably made based on average and maximum loads (say P=.95, with the remaining top-5% peaks being handled by specially scheduled flights) per day. For example, if certain airbase averages say 20 tons a day, but may go to 40 tons about 1 in every 10 days, they will under this scheme have to schedule 1 C-17 or TWO A-400M every day to guarantee that everything that has to go out can be shipped. Hardly a pro A-400 argument.
5) Basically a "Have-blind-faith-in-government" argument. If you are right, and we are not getting the information we need to judge reasonably whether we are getting fleeced or not from open sources, we can only conclude the government trying to avoid criticism of its actions by using the secrecy veal.
In none of this do we see any solid reason to be pro A-400.