The visible wear and tear of a Spanish A400M Atlas aircraft after only six years in service

One of the things that caught my attention about the A400M Atlas the first time I saw it was the gray paint that covers its entire fuselage.

Latvia shows two Spanish A400Ms in a large BRIPAC jump in that country
The wear and tear of a French A400M Atlas transport aircraft after ten years in service

Of course, this wasn't the first time I'd seen a gray aircraft, but the A400M's paintwork is particularly striking. As I explained here nine years ago, during the A400M's painting process, the aircraft is given an antistatic paint to dissipate electrostatic charges caused by friction from elements such as rain, snow, and dust. All non-conductive exterior surfaces of the aircraft are painted with an antistatic conductive coating, and a non-conductive coating of anti-corrosion paint is applied over this layer.

The A400M looks great thanks to this paint, but obviously even the best aviation paints eventually suffer wear from the aircraft's exposure to the elements and also from the extreme conditions found on many flights, with very low temperatures during the journey and then very high temperatures on some platforms and extreme cold on others.

A few months ago I showed here the wear and tear of a French A400M, the F-RBAE (above these lines), which made its first flight on May 12, 2014 and was delivered to the French Air Force on September 8 of that year. Ten years in active service had already dulled its paintwork, even showing some curious stains next to its cockpit.

Until today I had not seen anything similar on a Spanish A400M. Yesterday, the Ministry of Defense published a series of photos of a medical evacuation flight for children from Gaza. The flight took place from Torrejón de Ardoz Air Base bound for Jordan. In the photos we see the A400M T.23-04 (MSN082, 10174, 31-24), one of the aircraft of the 31st Wing equipped with Cobham 908E air refueling pods, despite the fact that its registration is not that of a tanker aircraft (TK), but only that of a transport aircraft (T). In May we saw this aircraft dropping paratroopers over Latvia here, in an excellent series of photos published by the Latvian Army and taken by Sergeant Major E. Grundstein.

In the photos published yesterday by the Ministry of Defense, we see this aircraft from the front, taxiing down a runway with some visible signs of wear on its paint. You can see the enlarged photo by clicking on the image. Unfortunately, these photos from the Ministry of Defense have much lower resolution than those published by the Latvian Army.

In this side photo, we see signs of paint wear on the fuselage. The paint has lightened on the fuselage and engine nacelles. The exceptions are the wing and the port wing refueling nacelle, which we see in this image.

In this photo of the tail, we can better see the signs of wear. The paint has lightened, especially on the upper part of the fuselage. It's as if rain or snow had fallen and degraded the paint.

In this photo we see the signs of wear even better, especially on the upper fuselage. Curiously, according to Defensa.com, the T.23-04 was delivered to the Spanish Air Force on December 3, 2018. It has not yet completed seven years in service, and it already shows even worse wear than the ten-year-old French A400M we saw here a few months ago.

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Photos: Latvijas Armija - Virsseržants E. Grundšteins / U.S. Air Force / Armée française - Opérations militaires / Ministerio de Defensa.