African states mostly lack the airlift capability they would need to deploy their forces across the continent, but France, which has been actively involved in African military operations, has a sizable operational air transport fleet. Still, France has faced serious challenges in maintaining its airlift capability and mustering the necessary air transport for the ongoing interventions it has conducted in the Central African Republic and Mali. Procurement is expensive and time consuming in the best of times, and budget restrictions in defense spending have cut into numerous programs, including France's next generation of transport aircraft. Despite numerous delays and cost overruns, the French air force has stuck to its plan of replacing its air transport fleet with Airbus' A400M transport planes. However, the first of at least fifteen of these planes that France will purchase only arrived in September 2013, leaving France with a less than ideal transport capability consisting mostly of its Hercules and Transall transport planes. Consequently, France has had to depend on the ability of its Western partners to deploy aircraft and support crews to facilitate its interventions.
During the January 2013 French intervention in Mali, airlift support was especially necessary to overcome time constraints because al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was expanding its territory quickly south and threatening the intervention's staging area. France depended heavily on the additional airlift capability delivered by 11 C-17 Globemasters, eight C-130 Hercules and three Transall C-160 aircraft, with a combined carrying capacity of 1,063,909 kilograms or 2,489 passengers. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the United Arab Emirates all contributed planes to this force. This multinational transport fleet was not only responsible for the initial deployment of French troops and their equipment from France and bases within Africa, it also made it possible for African countries such as Chad to deploy forces to Mali to take part in the operations within a minimal amount of time.
