PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. - Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., are asking the Boeing Defense, Space & Security segment in Seattle to build 10 more P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft - seven for the U.S. Navy and three for the United Kingdom - under terms of a $1.2 billion order that includes mitigating unknown component and subsystem obsolescence issues, as well as class I change assessment, and obsolescence monitoring.
The P-8A surveillance aircraft has an electro-optical sensor turret that can accommodate infrared, CCDTV, image intensifier, laser rangefinder, and laser illuminator sensors.
The Navy plans to buy 108 P-8A aircraft from Boeing, which is building the Poseidon in Renton, Wash. The 737 fuselage and tail sections will be built by Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan. The flight management system and the stores management system have been developed by GE Aviation Systems in Grand Rapids, Mich. The cabin has as many as seven operator consoles.
The Poseidon's MX-20HD digital electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) multi-spectral sensor turrets come from L-3 Communications Wescam in Burlington, Ontario. The MX-20HD is gyro-stabilized and can have as many as seven sensors, including infrared, CCDTV, image intensifier, laser rangefinder, and laser illuminator.
The aircraft has the upgraded APS-137D(V)5 maritime surveillance radar and signals intelligence (SIGINT) system from the Raytheon Co. Space and Airborne Systems (SAS) segment in McKinney, Texas.
The P-8A will have the CAE Inc. advanced integrated magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) system, and eventually may use air-deployable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to handle magnetic anomaly detection. The Navy plans to arm the P-8A with the MK 54 torpedo.
Work on the contract should be finished by December 2020.
For more information visit Boeing online at www.boeing.com.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
