Navy orders 10 more P-8A Poseidon surveillance and maritime patrol aircraft for U.S. and United Kingdom
PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – The U.S. Navy is ordering 10 more P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft from the Boeing Co. -- seven for the Navy and three for the United Kingdom -- under terms of a $1.2 billion order announced in December.
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 the 10 aircraft, which are part of lot 9 full-rate production P-8A aircraft.
The P-8 is a militarized version of the Boeing 737 single-aisle jetliner hardened for long-range surveillance, maritime patrol, and anti-submarine warfare missions.
This order also includes mitigating unknown component and subsystem obsolescence issues, as well as class I change assessment, and obsolescence monitoring, Navy officials say. The P-8A is replacing the Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion maritime patrol turboprop aircraft.
Ultimately, the Navy plans to buy 108 P-8A aircraft from Boeing, which is building the Poseidon at its factory in Renton, Wash. The 737 fuselage and tail sections will be built by Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., then transferred to Renton where all structural features are incorporated in sequence during fabrication and assembly.
The P-8A’s 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 Raytheon APS-137D(V)5 radar, which is installed on the P-8’s enlarged nose fairing, provides synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for imaging stationary ships and small vessels, coastal and overland surveillance, and high-resolution imaging synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) for imaging surfaced submarines and fast surface vessels operating in coastal waters.
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.
On this contract Boeing will do the work in Seattle; Baltimore; Greenlawn, N.Y.; Cambridge, England; North Amityville, N.Y.; Rockford, Ill.; Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.; Dickinson, N.D.; and other U.S. locations, and should be finished by December 2020.
For more information contact Boeing Defense, Space & Security online at www.boeing.com, or Naval Air Systems Command at www.navair.navy.mil.
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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.
