U.S. Navy's new surveillance plane is full of flaws

bhramos

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U.S. Navy's new surveillance plane is full of flaws and not yet effective



Although it has not been released yet, the outcome of the annual report on major weapons, by Michael Gilmore, chief of the Pentagon testing office, has already made the news.

Even if the report does not use the word "flop", it depicts the new Boeing P-8A Poseidon as just not yet effective in two of its main missions: anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and wide area reconnaissance.

Flaws in the multi-million program (actually, a 35 billion USD endeavour) are almost everywhere: radar, sensor integration, data transfer.

According to Bloomberg News, Gilmore said the new aircraft shows "all of the major deficiencies identified in earlier exercises when subjected to more stressful realistic combat testing from September 2012 to March 2013."

For this reason the P-8A "is not effective for the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission and is not effective for wide area anti-submarine search."

Obviously, at least "some" of the issues will soon be fixed, but the reports highlights that the B737-800 packed with sensors aren't ready to be deployed and used in combat simply because they would fail in tracking Chinese subsmarines.

Still, the U.S. Navy has already deployed six P-8As (out of 13 delivered so far) to Japan to perform that mission.

So far Navy's comments on the plane have always been positive and this is also the official stance of Boeing, that has also said it they will closely work with the service to solve any issues that come up.

Although the test office found that, currently, the P-8A provide the same small-area search capabilities of the older P-3C Orion it is slightly replacing, the Poseidon is a quite young weapons system, hence it is provides the U.S. Navy a higher reliability, maintainability and availability with an increased range, payload and speed.

The problem is not with the airframe, but with the costly sensors that should be the real added-value of the new aircraft: radar and ESM (Electronic Support Measures) that make both ASW and ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) missions possible.

These will be fixed in the next months.

The U.S. Navy plans to operate a fleet of 113 P-8A Poseidon next generation maritime patrol aircraft.

Image credit: U.S. Navy
The Aviationist » U.S. Navy's new surveillance plane is full of flaws and not yet effective

then what about our P-8?

are we getting any flaws?
are they powerful or equal to Tu-142 operated by IN
 

SajeevJino

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Most of all the American version of P 8 A and Indian Version of P 8 I is common ..but the Communication systems and IIF was designed by the BEL fitted in P 8 A into P8 I
 

SajeevJino

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Feed Back from the US Navy

"Feedback we've received to date is that the Navy is very happy with the P-8A's performance," he said. "As always, Boeing will work hand in hand with the Navy to support any issues that come up."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, during a trip to Japan in October, lauded the P-8A's "cutting-edge technologies."

Gilmore spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea said the test office concluded the aircraft was effective in providing small-area searches similar to the P-3C Orion it's replacing.

The aircraft also is effective in conducting "unarmed anti-surface warfare missions," and its radar and supporting sensors "provide an effective, all-weather surface target search," she said in an e-mailed statement.

Gilmore's office also concluded the airframe is reliable, offering "significant improvements in hardware reliability, maintainability and availability" over the P-3C, she said. Overall, the Boeing system "provides increased range, payload and speed," she said.
Boeing Surveillance Plane Not Yet Effective, U.S. Tester Finds - Businessweek
 

feathers

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did we still started operations on P-8I as they still didnt arrive at ARK yet, i have seen Tu-142M operating still, i even know operating times of it..
How many P-81 have been received out of 8 so far ?
 

SajeevJino

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did we still started operations on P-8I as they still didnt arrive at ARK yet, i have seen Tu-142M operating still, i even know operating times of it..

Indian Navy already received the P 8 an they are in Combat duty
@Twinblade @p2prada
 
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Twinblade

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Most of all the American version of P 8 A and Indian Version of P 8 I is common ..but the Communication systems and IIF was designed by the BEL fitted in P 8 A into P8 I
P-8I has magnetic anomaly detector as on P-3 and Bears. P-8A will not carry M.A.D. Basically USN is doing away with the low altitude tactics, hence they do not consider M.A.D a necessity while Indian navy would be operating very close to the coast, hence the loss of range due to low altitude tactics would not matter.
 

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