Australia To Help Upgrade P-8A Poseidon
By Bradley Perrett
Australia will help develop upgrades to the Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patroller under an agreement that Canberra says is its first step toward buying the aircraft.
The country’s defense white paper released last week (Aerospace DAILY, May 4) set out a plan to replace the Royal Australian Air Force’s P-3C Orions with eight manned aircraft, presumed to be Poseidons, and up to seven large drones, possibly Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawks.
The Australian Department of Defense “will collaborate in Spiral One, the first in a series of improvements planned through the life of the P-8A,” Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon says. “Through participation in the P-8A Spiral One cooperative development program, [the department] seeks to gain information on the P-8A to support the acquisition and through life support decisions, provide opportunities for Australian industry, and influence the direction of P-8A improvements.”
The minister did not, however, say how much money Australia would contribute to this process. And his prepared statement avoids formally identifying the P-8 as the aircraft it will buy, even though it is hard to imagine the country buying any other aircraft capable of the same mission.
The Orions are to be retired in 2018.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy’s second P-8A, T-2, is close to completion at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., site where it is being prepared for a short test and ferry flight to nearby Boeing Field.
The aircraft, also called YP003, will be dedicated to mission systems tests and is expected to enter the Navy test program in the first quarter of 2010. The aircraft will join T-1, which made a successful 3 hour 31 minute flight on April 25. T-1 is now at Boeing Field beginning system installation. T-1 is expected to enter the flight-test program around September, and along with T-2 and with a third test P-8A, the T-3, will remain based at Seattle for several months.
This follows the U.S. Navy’s recent decision to make more use of Boeing’s flight-test expertise before delivering the aircraft to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., in January 2010.
Although later than originally planned, the 2010 arrival of the P-8A test aircraft at Pax does not signal any delay to the start of initial operational test and evaluation, the Navy says. The fuselage structure for T-3, the weapons system tests aircraft, is also due to arrive later this month at Renton from Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan.
The P-8A incorporates a strengthened 737-800 fuselage and tail, with a beefed-up wing based on the design of the stretched -900 version. The fuselage is also unique in that it incorporates a weapons bay in the aft lower fuselage. The P-8A further has weapons stations under the wing and raked wingtips in place of winglets.
Photo: Boeing
