The US Navy has made the first deployment of its new P-8A Poseidon Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft,or MMA,to Kadena Air Base,Okinawa,Japan.Two of the large,combat-ready reconaissance warplanes took off from Norfolk,Virginia recently,headed into a very tense East Asian theatre of operations.In light of China's new Air Defence Identification Zone over the East China Sea,the aircraft are now most welcome by Japan,a country that almost kicked the US out of Okinawa a few years ago.*
The Navy took delivery of the 12th P8-A on 31 October.It is a modified Boeing 737-800 ERX,featuring a fully connected,state of the art open architecture mission system that,combined with the next generation sensors and highly reliable airframe will dramatically improve Anti-Submarine and Anti-Surface Warfare capabilties.The nine-person crew will have at its disposal an internal,five-station weapons bay;4 wing pylons and 2 centerline pylons;a rotary reloadable,pneumatically controlled sonobuoy launcher;and a Net Ready suite of Link-11/Link-16,Internet Protocol,Common Data Link(CDL) that is FORCEnet compliant.*
The P8-A is armed with joint attack munitions;cruise missiles;mines;and torpedoes.The Open Mission System Architecture is a reconfigurable and expandable system facilitating easier,more affordable upgrades.*
The P-8A Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft secures the Navy's future in long-range maritime patrol capability.It provides more combat capability from a smaller force and less infrastructure,while focusing on worldwide responsiveness and interoperability with both traditional manned forces and evolving unmanned sensors.*
The P-8 is a true multi-mission platform,according to Rear Admiral Matt Carter,Patrol and Reconaissance commander.The number of submarines in the world is increasing rapidly.Other countries are either building or purchasing advanced,quiet and extremely hard to find submarines and we need to be able to match that technology to be able to detect them.*
Boeing(BA)
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