Germany Receives First Boeing P-8 Long Range Anti-Submarine Warfare Plane

The German Navy has taken delivery of its first P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, which is the first of eight ordered from 2021-2023 by the country’s defence ministry to replace ageing P-3C Orion aircraft. The P-8 was designed primarily as an anti-submarine warfare aircraft, although it is also capable ofintelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and search-and-rescue operations, and can carry a limited armament for striking surface targets. The aircraft’s advanced acoustic sensors and high speed data links allow it to work alongside other anti-submarine warfare assets to achieve high levels of situational awareness for a joint network. The deployment of such aircraft is considered particularly critical for NATO members due to the Russian Navy submarine fleet’s combination of world leading sophistication and considerable numbers, as the service has invested particularly heavily in such assets at the expense of its surface fleet.

The P-8s is the most widely fielded maritime surveillance aircraft in the world, with approximately 125 currently in service in the U.S. Navy alone. When operating against hostile submarines, the aircraft drop sonobuoys in patterns to establish acoustic coverage, with data from these sensors fused by onboard processors to classify and track potential targets. The Link 16 data link system allows the vessels to share data with satellite networks, which is vital to facilitating continuous tracking in coordination with other assets such as nearby U.S. Navy destroyers. New sensor pods are expected to continue to be developed for the P-8, increasing its versatility for a range of roles, with the new AN/APS-154 Advanced Airborne Sensor radar pod allowing the aircraft to track moving targets at sea and on land, including providing moving target indication and synthetic aperture imaging.