Air Power 2017

72 AIR POWER 2017

21 ST CENTURY CAPABILITIES

21 ST CENTURY PARTNERSHIPS

Simon Michell underlines the reasons why the United Kingdom has

selected the P-8A Poseidon and looks ahead to when the Royal Air Force

can expect the first aircraft to roll off the production line

P-8A FOR THE RAF

A COST-EFFECTIVE AND RAPID

ACQUISITION PROGRAMME

I

n the absence of a sovereign fixed-wing

maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) capability, the

UK has been relying on a mixture of maritime

assets – ships and helicopters – as well as MPA

support from partner nations, including Canada,

France, Germany and the US, to keep an eye on its

coastal waters. These NATO allies have deployed

MPA to RAF Lossiemouth to help ensure that British

waters are free from unwelcome intruders and that

our legal responsibility under the Safety of Life at

Sea (SOLAS) Convention to undertake maritime

search and rescue is maintained far out to sea.

With the expected arrival of the nine Boeing P-8A

Poseidon aircraft at RAF Lossiemouth at the end of the

decade, the UK will once again become a powerhouse

in the fixed-wing MPA world. Poseidon was selected

for a number of reasons, most prominently because it

ticked all of the boxes that the RAF required, including

price, cost and speed of ownership and operational

capability. There were other potential contenders,

some of which may have required less investment, but

none that was able to meet the full list of capabilities

that the RAF needed. Over recent years, RAF teams

considered options including turboprops (such as an

MPA variant of the C-130 Hercules and the Airbus C295),

as well as the Japanese jet-powered Kawasaki P-1.

A major contributory factor to the P-8A’s eventual

selection was the fact that it is manufactured from

the outset as a thoroughbred MPA, meaning there

is no need to undertake time-consuming and costly

modifications of a basic Boeing 737-800 (such as

filling in window spaces and reconfiguring the

cabin). Furthermore, the decision to take Poseidon

in the same configuration as the US Navy, with the

same surveillance and weapon systems, rather than

asking for a ‘British’ version of the aircraft, also helps

to speed up the delivery process and reduce costs.

The RAF could have chosen to buy a

bespoke version much like the Indian Navy P-8I,

which has a raft of specific ‘fixtures and fittings’,

but that would have raised the price and taken

longer to deliver. There are, of course, additional

training and tactical benefits to Anglo-American

cooperation stemming from the fact that both the

RAF and US Navy will operate identical types.

Once in service, the RAF will operate two

front-line squadrons from RAF Lossiemouth with

an establishment of two crews per airframe. Each

A major contributory factor to the

P-8A’s eventual selection was the

fact that it is manufactured from

the outset as a thoroughbred MPA