Have you ever wondered what it is like to chase enemy subs from the air or to hunt pirates off the coast of Somalia ? Foxtrot Alpha gives you an unprecedented expression into the world of a US Navy Maritime Patrol pilot, a job that continues to change and evolve american samoa firm as our increasingly complicated universe does. ad
holocene months have seen the U.S. Navy ‘s P-8A Poseidon and P-3C Orion featured in the news frequently. Search operations for MH370 and the late ‘Pivot towards the Pacific ‘ have highlighted the utility and these aircraft and their ability to gather information on ships, submarines, and land targets. Foxtrot Alpha recently had the opportunity to work with a pilot that has flown both the P-3 and the P-8 in an campaign to unveil the realities of the modern Maritime Patrol mission and how these aircraft have been used everywhere from Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror to the huge waters of the Western Pacific, vitamin a well as how they could be used creatively in future conflicts .
I remember watching the Blue Angels fly at an air show when I was seven…
‘What brought you here, ‘ is a motion Naval Aviators ask each other a batch. The personal floor is always singular. I remember watching the Blue Angels fly at an airshow when I was seven. That have stuck with me and as I got older I was convinced I wanted to do some type of tactically focused flying that was only available in the service. Without a doubt, my most memorable moment from flight school was my solo formation ride while flying the T-34C Tubro Mentor. Two students with probably less than 50 hours of fledge experience take two turbine-powered aircraft and fly a formation event with an teacher tailing them in a third base plane. The feel of province and accomplishment was amazing. A close second to this memory was my end musical instrument training flights in the T-44C, which is basically a militarized Beechcraft King Air. We flew an set about in a drive rainstorm with over 50 miles per hour winds using an antediluvian navigation post called a Non Directional Beacon. On a steady day the NDB swings steadily. On this ramp day, the indicator acerate leaf was absolutely haywire. rather of several minutes long, our final border on was 35 seconds because the gusting tailwind was so intense. That day I gained a distribute of deference for our fender ancestors and the challenges they had with thus small engineering while facing the like risks presented by Mother Nature .
You really can’t overestimate how important open and secure shipping lanes are to the world economy…
After earning my ‘Wings of Gold ‘ I was sent to NAS Jacksonville for refilling trail in the P-3C Orion. While the aircraft started life simply as a submarine hunt and patrol chopine, in five decades it has seen a big deal of change. The three main mission areas of the P-3C are Anti Submarine Warfare ( ASW ), Anti Surface Warfare ( ASuW ), and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance ( ISR ). The Orion is a pretty versatile chopine and it has lent itself identical well to modification with new sensors, systems, and payloads over clock. honestly, it ‘s the versatility of the platform that kept it relevant and off the budgetary chop stop during decades of declining numbers of aircraft and perceived threat. People do n’t get to hear a big batch about the aircraft largely because it has then much interaction with submarines. Submarine operations are by their very nature sensible, and if you ‘re hunting them, it ‘s sensible by extension. ASW is the effect mission bent of the community. The orion can transit to an area at high-speed and get sensors in the body of water promptly. While the P-3 is not vitamin a capable as a submarine ‘s sonar array or SOSUS, the ability to reposition quickly is cardinal. ASW is all about the time from the concluding know position of the bomber in wonder. geometry rules everything. A P-3C can promptly get on-station and get sonobuoys in the water system, increasing the chance of catching a submarine by minimizing the time from its last point of signal detection. The ability to carry weapons and attack that submarine if needed completes the Kill Chain, all in a unmarried package. Submarines are inherently furtive and pose an enormous menace to military and commercial ship. Being able to detect and track these boats for prolong periods of clock time was key throughout the Cold War and is just as crucial nowadays. You truly can not overestimate how important open and secure ship lanes are to the world economy. Sink one or two cargo carriers or supertankers and shipping policy rates go through the roof. You make shipping rates besides expensive and Asia ca n’t import raw materials. Factories shut down from lack of supplies. Without finished goods getting shipped to developed markets, big box retail shelves go evacuate. Wal-Mart ‘s ‘warehouse on wheels ‘ grinds to a arrest. If you do n’t have secure shipping lanes the globalize populace economy goes belly astir. The chilling separate of this world is that any tin-pot dictator with 200 million USD can buy a top of the line Kilo course diesel assail bomber. That ‘s a little price to pay to wreck the global economy .
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We could rearm with AGM-65 Maverick and provide overwatch of an enemy nation’s port, engaging any small craft that might depart to threaten the Carrier Strike Group…
The bang-up part about flying maritime patrol is that we have two other key mission sets beside ASW. The P-3C is equipped to perform anti open war ( ASuW ), which means attacking targets on the surface of the ocean, and airfoil surveillance, either independently or in concurrence with a deployed Carrier Strike Group ( CSG ). The Orion carries a herculean radar arrangement, an electronic subscribe Measures ( ESM ) suite to detect and classify radar emissions, and an electro-optical turret which includes FLIR capability. For long-range engagements the P-3C carries the AGM-84 Harpoon sea-skimming anti-ship missile and the AGM-84K SLAM-ER. SLAM-ER has fold-out wings for increase range and an infrared seeker to manually re-target or fine-tune the missile ‘s terminal attack phase during the ‘end-game ‘ of an engagement. For inadequate range shots against smaller targets the Orion carriers the AGM-65 Maverick. A well exercise of the ASuW capabilities of the P-3C was demonstrated when an Orion attacked a libyan patrol boat that was shelling civilians near the port of Misrata. The P-3C besides has the ability to conduct stand-off target of enemy warships over the horizon using a sub-mode of the aircraft ‘s radar. This mode, known as Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar ( ISAR ), uses the movement of the embark in the waves to produce an trope of the vessel. Operators can match this ISAR image to silhouettes of known foe warships. This allows for recognition of enemy surface combatants well beyond ocular rate and outside the reach of foe air defenses. The P-3C besides brings retentive endurance and adequate to imaging sensors to the ISR mission typeset. Orion crews have operated extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan, providing overwatch for earth fight missions, acting as an ‘eye in the sky ‘ during convoy operations, and supporting extra operations teams by embarking an observer. The P-3C frequently carries a ‘rider ‘ from the grind battle forces involved with a particular mission to act as a liaison. These riders can better understand the needs of soldiers on the crunch and provide higher situational awareness ( SA ) to everyone involved. The P-3C can use it ‘s electro-optical and IR cameras to stream video to ground commanders in real-time or it can use its imaging synthetic Aperture Radar ( SAR ) to peer through clouds and develop diagrams of ground targets and define foe ‘s ordering of battle. overall, the P-3C and provide very useful capabilities to a air force officer. For case, a Carrier Strike Group ( CSG ) commanding officer could task an orion to screen the carrier wave from submarine threats while passing through a geographic suffocate point. The following sidereal day, the identical same crew and aircraft could re-arm with AGM-65 ‘s and provide overwatch of an enemy state ‘s port, engaging any modest trade that might depart to threaten the carrier. The future day, the lapp crew and aircraft can launch on an ISR deputation, mapping potential mobile airfoil to air projectile ( SAM ) sites to determine whether launchers or radars are present, all while staying safely outside of these air travel defense emplacements ‘ image. The tractability and capability built-in to a modern P-3C brings a great batch to the crusade .
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Anti-Submarine Warfare is a game of chess, & the aircraft is always playing from a slight disadvantage…
deoxyadenosine monophosphate a lot as folks are fascinated with weapons themselves the truth is that most weapons are useless without a good detector to point them in the right steering. When it comes to the Anti-Submarine Warfare ( ASW ) region, the key sensors we use are expendable hydrophones, which are more normally known as ‘sonobuoys. ‘ These buoys are dropped from the aircraft and once in the water they deploy a medium microphone to acoustically detect the presence of a submarine. once detected, tactical operators on-board the Orion will strategically place extra buoys to provide target motion psychoanalysis ( TMA ) and a ladder track of the submarine that is being hunted. Keeping a solid traverse allows for precise weapons placement if the submarine demonstrates hostile purpose. The best description of the implicit in trouble presented by forward pass ASW operations was actually given to me by a helicopter pilot burner, and it stuck with me because it encapsulates what a tough skill it is to track a submarine. Imagine soldiers on the prime on a dazed day, being fired on by enemies in a jeep. The jeep ca n’t be seen through the mist. It ‘s driving on a road and because the soldiers ca n’t see it, they have to listen to the sound of the plunder fire and guess the localization to fire back. sound does n’t travel immediately, and because the jeep is n’t close by, by the time the soldiers hear where the gunshots came from, the jeep has already moved on. The soldiers have to make their best think where the jeep is, being as the information they get is always a piece late to arrive and therefore inaccurate. We normally ca n’t see a submarine visually, unless it is operating in very shallow water and that water is extremely clear. Because of the rush of sound and the fact that our computers must process data to separate the sound of the submarine from the legal of ocean waves, and rain, and shrimp fertilize and then on, there is always a flimsy stay. ASW is a game of chess, and the aircraft is constantly playing from a slender disadvantage. Placing sensors or weapons precisely in a constantly changing water column is decidedly a challenge and an matter to task to say the least. Our sonobuoys are five inches in diameter and weigh 30 to 40 pounds each depending on the finical version. The most common buoy is known as a SSQ-53 DIFAR buoy, referred to as a ‘Pointer ‘ because it provides bearing information in sexual intercourse to a submarine. This buoy contains only a passive hydrophone, basically a sensible submerged microphone with guidance finding capability. The future most common buoy is known as a SSQ-62 DICASS buoy, which uses a transmitter array to send out active sonar ‘pings ‘ to detect a submarine. For decades this buoy has been called a ‘Cadillac ‘ by aircrews, because rumor has it that when initially built, the buoy cost therefore much it was closely deoxyadenosine monophosphate expensive as a new Cadillac. The Orion besides carries expendable temperature measuring buoys to provide a detail observation of the water system column itself, this helps predict how legal will move in that water column. Sound waves bend depending on water system temperature, so how sound will move has a huge effect on how and where we can detect a aim. We besides carry a detector called a Magnetic Anomaly Detector ( MAD ), which sits in the tail stinger of the P-3C. Submarines are so big that they will displace the magnetic field of the earth due to the metallic components in their hull. If we ‘re low enough, flying over or close to the bomber will trigger the MAD and reveal the presence of the bomber. submarine forces go to big lengths to reduce their charismatic signature while in-port by wrapping electric cables around their hulls and running current through them. This is called ‘deperming ‘ and while it will reduce the signature of the hull, it wo n’t hide it wholly. Physics is a barbarous mistress indeed .
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A P-3C weapons bay carries a grim reminder of the Cold War inside it…
To attack submarine targets, the P-3C carries several variants of lightweight air-launched torpedoes. The Mk-46 is wide produced and was originally built during the Cold War. Software updates have improved the seeker capitulum and calculator logic, making it more effective. The Mk-50 was built in reaction to fast, deep diving, and double-hulled soviet attack submarines such as the Alfa class SSN, which were thus fast they could out-run and out-dive the torpedoes of their day. The MK-50 has a shape charge warhead which cuts through hulls in the like way an anti-tank warhead is shaped to punch through the heavy armor on a tank. This makes the weapon much more probable to score a kill. The Mk-54 marries the consistency of the Mk-46 with the seeker head of the Mk-50 and the command logic from the Mk-48 ADCAP carried by our submarines. All of these weapons are carried on the P-3 in a turkey bay that sits behind the pilots and below the tactical officers. A P-3C weapons bay carries a grim admonisher of the Cold War inside it. During the nuclear age, the Orion routinely carried nuclear depth bombs to target soviet projectile submarines that were about to launch their sea-launched ballistic missiles ( SLBM ‘s ). In fact, as a young student I received cockpit mock-ups that however depicted the nuclear arming panels where both pilots would insert their fire keys and provide dual concurrence to release the ‘nuke. ‘ The panels have long been removed and the aircraft no longer carries the wire for nuclear weapons, but many aircraft calm are equipped with the reinforce weapons pylon where the ‘special weapons ‘ were once carried. It ‘s a sober think about a very dangerous time in world ‘s history. A lot of people have seen photos of a P-3C armed with AIM-9 Sidewinders and have asked me whether I ‘ve ever carried the missiles or trained to dogfight. I have to laugh a bite when they ask that interview. The AIM-9 was tested on the Orion, I was told due to the experiences the british had in the Falklands campaign. allegedly RAF Nimrods encountered Argentinian patrol aircraft by find during scouting missions. unable to take action, the Brits promptly armed their Nimrods with infrared guided air-to-air missiles. possibly that ‘s where the program came from. I do n’t know for indisputable precisely, although I do know I sure would have loved to have mixed it up with an F/A-18 and trained to employ the weapon ! I should tell you that it has long been a Maritime Patrol Community rumor that a ‘black ‘ P-3B flown by the CIA over China shot down a MiG with a Sidewinder. This was allegedly in the 1960s. I have zero information to back that claim up but generator David Reade in the book Age of Orion makes claims that this incident occurred. I suppose we ‘ll never know what very happened. By the fourth dimension the truth is allowed out, anyone who flew these planes or operated them in such a manner will be long gone .
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As we left, the sub popped his periscope out of the water. How amazed must he have been to see not one, but two Orions right overhead…
As a kid, I read every Tom Clancy ledger I could get my hands on, and in respective books the generator featured the Los Angeles class assail bomber USS Dallas ( SSN-700 ). On my inaugural mission tracking an actual submarine in an practice, the aim submarine happened to be Dallas ! What a foreign co-incidence and good memory to look back on. Dallas fought arduous that day and while we tracked her for a good character of the use, she did prove identical elusive. I have the highest respect for our submariners and am in truth glad that they are on our side. They are a identical professional, effective, and deadly group and I would honestly hate to have them as an adversary. One of my most memorable flights was good before becoming an aircraft commanding officer. I ‘m not at familiarity to say where we were, but we were the beginning on scene to lay out buoys to trap a foreign submarine as it transited through a geographic choke luff. We had already laid a big pattern when we received a new localization as to where the submarine might be. The P-3C carries 84 sonobuoys and we had already laid about two thirds of our sensors before we gained a “ sniff. ” We called for a easing aircraft but were told it would be three hours till one could be there. We simply did n’t have enough buoys to track the baffling bomber using our original game-plan. We decided to drop buoys one at a fourth dimension, leaving gaps between coverage and making very educated predictions on where and when the bomber might re-appear. We dropped our final buoy equitable as our stand-in aircraft arrived to track. As we left, the substitute popped his periscope out of the water. How perplex must he have been to see not one, but two Orions right viewgraph ! Another flight I will constantly remember found us flying against a very adequate to alien submarine. Because the aim was so capable all the commanders and boldness in the operate area were matter to and closely scrutinizing our missions. After tracking it super-sub for a few hours, it passed near a bottom. This is not uncommon, but what was uncommon was that he did n’t reappear after the bottom moved on. Afterward we discovered the bomber had entered a current where the water temperature changes and therefore the way good moves changes drastically ampere well. now we could n’t hear the submarine and had no idea where he might have gone. My crew made an train guess on where we would go if we were the bomber captain and we laid buoy there in hopes that the target would stumble into them. Those 45 minutes were some of the longest in my life. I would n’t be able to look my buddies in the eye back in the ready room if me and my crew lost this all-important submarine. Our squadron would look bad in front of all the administration and a great coach opportunity would be lost. After endless waiting, my hustler yelled so loudly from his station that I could hear him from the cockpit over the drone of the P-3 ‘s four notoriously loud propjet engines. The submarine had faded in on our sensors and we had caught him again. We passed the contact over to our relief aircraft with fair one buoy remaining !
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P-3 crews still refer to the ‘Decade in the Desert’ to describe the years that we spent patrolling combat zones in the Middle East and Southwest Asia…
The end of the Cold War saw the enormous flit of soviet submarines return to port, many permanently. This drawdown had an incredible effect on the nautical patrol community. Almost nightlong, the Navy ignore from 24 P-3 squadrons down to 12. Think about losing half your storm and number of aircraft in less than five years ! A ‘peace dividend ‘ was a fantastic thing for the state, but it cut the coerce deeply. During the 1990 ‘s, the P-3 community was an organization in research of a deputation. It ‘s primary argue for being would never go away, but how can admirals justify their budgets when there are no non-allied subs out of port for months at a time ? To their credit, the community flexed. They found sour patrolling the Adriatic during the wars in erstwhile Yugoslavia. P-3C crews fired AGM-84 SLAM missiles into Kosovo during Operation Allied Force and they besides worked closely with DEA and U.S. Coast Guard assets during buffet narcotics operations in the Caribbean. The begin of the Global War on Terror and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan turned the U.S. defense institution top down once again. The P-3 community was no unlike. Maritime patrol crews saw themselves go from open-ocean patrol and surveillance in the littorals to operations over the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan supporting fight operations or patrolling for IED ‘s in Iraq ‘s disruptive Anbar province. Defense publications claim that the advanced APS-149 Littoral Surveillance Radar System was used extensively during both wars, providing imagination of overland targets of interest. Maritime crews placid refer to the ‘Decade in the Desert ‘ to describe the years that the P-3C exhausted patrolling fight zones in the Middle East and Southwest Asia .
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My worst fear was that we’d get there too late and see the pirates already on-board with the crew as hostages or possibly dead…
While I hit the fleet towards the fag end end of Iraq operations, I did have the chance to deploy to Djibouti, in East Africa. Djibouti is a bantam country sandwiched between Ethiopia, Eretria, and Somali. For years, the camp I was stationed at has been a base for anti-piracy operations, has hosted USAF Predator UAV ‘s, and generally provided a foothold to the mentally ill areas of East Africa. We flew chiefly nautical security missions to detect and warn merchant ships of the presence of pirate vessels. My most memorable time in Djibouti found us breaking up an assail on a malaysian cargo transport. The malaysian crew radioed a distress call reporting a pirate attack in progress. We were about 180nm away from getting to the scene, which equates to about 30 minutes meter. We were so far out to sea and far away from a divert tune al-qaeda that we could n’t fly at clear accelerate as we merely would n’t have the flatulence to get base. The waiting was frightful. My worst fear was that we ‘d get there excessively late and see the pirates already on-board with the crew as hostages or possibly dead. once the pirates were on-board there was little we could do. Pirates use converted fishing vessels called ‘motherships ‘ to patrol and speedboats called ‘skiffs ‘ to raid their prey vessel. Because the skiffs are n’t very fast in gamey seas, or very seaworthy for that matter, the pirates have to be ahead or abeam of the target embark for the skiffs to successfully engage. It ‘s a game of geometry and faster merchant ships can elude the pirates largely with their speed alone. The dim-witted fact is that pirates have to wait days if not weeks for raven to come along and be in just the right placement to be successful. When we dropped below the overcast we locked our EO/IR turret onto the skiff. I remember the pirate captain in the skiff turning up to look immediately at us. You could tell by his body linguistic process he was in blame. I ‘ll never forget it. You could see him turn his fountainhead, look at us, and you could literally see him thinking. For ten seconds, the skiff sped on towards the ship, getting closer and closer. then they slowed. The captain followed us with his eyes as we circled overhead, putting our plane between the skiff and the ship. He must have been thinking : ‘days of waiting and when my prey is in sight, the Americans show up. 800 miles off the slide of Somalia and the Americans show up now ! ? ! ? ‘ then you could see him gesture, and we thought he was probably yelling at the crew in the skiff. The skiff lento turned its crouch downwind, away from the malaysian transport and started heading back to the mothership. The merchant ship was safe. But watching that plagiarist captain think from our perch far off and high up in the sky and watching him literally weigh profit against freedom was a knock-down thing. I will never forget that .
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Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bright red flash and jumped in my seat as I heard an alarm scream…
One of my most memorable moments flying the P-3C was coming home to the States after a boastfully joint exercise in Lossiemouth, Scotland. We were halfway across the Atlantic flying west at 24,000 feet barely earlier midnight. Flying the Orion across the ocean is constantly challenge and interest, particularly over the cold and storm blown North Atlantic at night. The plane is scantily static in deliver and amphetamine when it is heavy, and if the center of gravity is aft, it is even less then. In fact, you can feel it in the controls when crew or passengers move toward the the back of the aircraft. If your radar operator gets up to use the flush toilet, you will feel the control pressure change as he walks back aft and then advancing to his console. On such nights the Northern Lights may be visible and the high frequency ( HF ) radios hiss in your ear as airliners make their placement reports. Fighting the plane, which rarely has an operable automatic pilot, is a full fourth dimension job, and the make noise of the radios combined with the arrant total darkness outside makes for a dreamlike experience. I was flying with a junior copilot while my command officer rested in the scat spinal column in the rear of the aircraft. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bright red flash and jumped in my seat as I heard an alarm scream. I looked to see what was wrong with the aircraft, but the alight and alarm were gone ampere quickly as they had came. As I turned to ask my flight engineer “ was that a fuel warn, ” the fuel warning timbre blared for one second and the fire light on the # 3 locomotive lit up. then it abruptly went out. For the future two minutes, the alarms would go off and then extinguish themselves randomly. I was shocked watching this occur. here we were, literally half way across the ocean, the most desolate part of the trip, and an locomotive was about to fail. This fitful dismay could indicate a defective detector or it could indicate that there was a hole in the locomotive and 900 degree Celsius exhaust gasses were escaping from the burner cans into the nacelle. That heat could start a fire, and this far out over the cold wintry Atlantic was not the identify to have that find. I called for my Skipper to come to the flight deck and a few moments late, we shut the engine down. We were past the equal clock time degree, where it would take the same total of meter to continue to Canada or Maine as to return to Ireland or Scotland. We landed safely on three engines in Bangor, ME. The mechanics found a faulty fire detector in the engine. Thank good it was just a raid detector. I hope I never have to see a disgusted engine over the water system like that again. even with three more, one sick engine was adequate.
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The P-8 Poseidon is revolutionary when it comes to sensor management, data fusion, and connectivity…
Following a few deployments with the P-3C, my squadron transitioned to the new P-8A Poseidon. The P-8A is derived from the Boeing 737. The aircraft features a Boeing 737-800 fuselage mated to 737-900 wings and is equipped with graze wingtips optimized for low elevation flight and long endurance. In plaza of a cargo delay, the aircraft boasts extra fuel tanks and a weapons bay. The dependability, speed, and detector capabilities equate to a significant improvement over the bequest aircraft ( the P-3 ). In the Poseidon, the Navy married advance sensors and communications connectivity with a modern, highly dependable and efficient airframe that already existed on the commercial marketplace. If I sound like a Poseidon lover, well then consider me guilty. I am, and admit it honestly. The aircraft is brawny, dependable, and easy to fly. It was a challenge transitioning from a straight wing propjet to a high altitude, swept wing fountain, but I personally found the P-8A to be intuitive and comfortable to fly. The largest dispute is not in flight characteristics, but rather in how the fender interfaces with the aircraft. The P-3C is flown hands-on, with fiddling if any automation. In the Poseidon, the pilot utilizes the Flight Management Computer and a highly advanced coupled autopilot to fly the jet. Whether flying on airline routes or positioning the aircraft to employ sensors, the Poseidon use high levels of automation. This is not harder or easier than flying hands-on, simply different, and requires a different approach. The tougher region about the jet is acting as a tactical operator and employing the sensors of the aircraft. The P-8A is revolutionary when it comes to sensor management, data fusion, and connectivity. The challenge for operators is not having insufficient detector performance, but rather how to manage indeed many capable sensors, process the information, and transmit actionable data to commanders through a variety of communications networks and datalinks. The P-8A boasts five mission crew workstations, all of which feature double reconfigurable touch screen displays and data entry keyboards. The ability to do any job from any workstation makes burden sharing possible and is indeed critical to success during a deputation. For example, during an information, surveillance and reconnaissance ( ISR ) missions we might have extra electronic war operators in the seats scanning for radar emitters while another operator scans the radar and maps where those emitters are located. conversely, during an ASW mission we can place excess acoustic operators in the seats to interpret sonar signals and track a submarine. The flexibility is extremely impressive .
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The P-3C that is honestly trying to break, catch on fire, or generally kill you during any given flight…
I wo n’t claim the P-8A does everything better than the P-3C. For one, the controls feel very unlike between the two aircraft. I find the P-3C to be a bite crisp on the controls, specially at low altitude and in the landing pattern. This is n’t surprising, given the Orion ‘s chummy, straight wing and the sweep wing and spoilers on the Poseidon. besides, the lack of a magnetic Anomaly Detector ( MAD ) aboard the P-8A is a drawback. many folks ask if I feel less comfortable with two engines in the P-8A preferably than four in the P-3C. Realistically, I ‘ll take Poseidon any day. The dependability of the CFM-56 turbofans on the coal-black is generations ahead of the T-56 turboprops on the Orion. CFM-56 closure rates are on the order of three per million flight hours. In fact, P-8A has been flying for more than three years and has yet to have an in-flight locomotive closure. I ‘ll take the dependability of the P-8A every clock time over the P-3C. overall, I ‘ve found the P-8A allows crew-members to focus more on tactical use and getting every snow leopard of performance out of the jet ‘s sensors and weapons. While the Orion is a very safe airplane statistically, it was designed in another senesce with unlike blueprint philosophies. It ‘s very hands-on and user intensifier particularly for pilots and flight engineers. Because of the fact that the P-3C is honestly trying to break, catch on fire, or by and large kill you during any given flight, we have to devote a great manage of energy just to operating it safely. This is n’t a hit on the P-3C, any airplane of that generation is like that, and the fact that some of these birds are over 40 years old is a testament to the engineers who designed them and our maintainers who keep them flying. Because dependability is baked into the P-8, we can focus more on tactical potency. The result is higher situational awareness ( SA ) and much better mission operation in the new jet .
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There are currently two schools of thought in the community right now when it comes to how the P-8 should be used…
many people are curious about the capabilities of limitations of P-8A. It ‘s matter to to note that when the Navy solicited platform offers for the aircraft that became P-8A they called the project the ‘Multi Mission Maritime Aircraft ‘ or MMA. The calculator systems and networks on the Poseidon are open-architecture, reconfigurable, and can grow in a low-cost, flexible manner. The stores management and data-transfer systems are all digital, meaning that the merely variable star for growth is cost and software upgrades. Combine the ability to ‘plug and play ‘ fresh sensors and weapons with the aircraft ‘s communications connectivity, excellent gang coordination abilities and flexibility and you have a weapons system that is honestly limited only by weight, the training of it ‘s operators, and the task assigned by the commander. In early words, the P-8A can be as ‘Multi-Mission ‘ as commanders desire it to be. P-8A acquisitions and capabilities have been planned around incremental upgrades. With nowadays ‘s engineering and budgetary environments, acquiring every capability, detector, and weapons organization concurrently is besides expensive and excessively bad. P-8A hit the fleet with service line ASW capability and a specify ASuW capability via the inclusion of AGM-84 Harpoon capability. follow-on increments will add multi-static sonobuoys to achieve wider area signal detection of submarines. future capabilities will probable feature net-enabled weapons like AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon ( JSOW ) and very probable the approaching Long Range Anti-ship Missile or LRASM, a derivative of the AGM-158 JASSM-ER. This is all a great thing in a military that is seeing more and more platform winnowed away by budget cuts and massive “ sacred-cow ” programs like F-35. Unlike the F-35, which sought a rotatory overture with technologies such as the Distributed Aperture System and extremely boost detector fusion, Boeing and the Navy minimized the P-8A ‘s risk by getting baseline capabilities online and jets out to the Fleet and then building on those technologies with sweetheart upgrades. It ‘s a work in advancement but I think Boeing and NAVAIR had a lot to be proud of with Poseidon so far. There are presently two schools of think in the Maritime Patrol Community right now when it comes to how the P-8 should be used. One where it works closely along the lines of its harbinger, and follows the P-3 ‘s traditional mission sets of ASuW, ASW and limited ISR, and another where the P-8 can be adapted more dramatically for a litany of missions, including direct attack on background targets. personally, I believe the P-8A should besides be equipped with a more full-bodied jell of weapons and sensors for the fight against smaller vessels in stiffen littoral environments. Harpoon is a bang-up weapon, but it ‘s excessively imprecise to use with civilian ship nearby and in dense target environments stopping point to shore. P-3C had a robust short compass ASuW capability with AGM-65 Mavericks, and we saw that used in Libya. We took a major step back capability-wise with only Harpoon being deployed aboard the P-8. I would equip P-8A with an off-the-rack targeting pod such as the AAQ-33 Sniper, which is presently found on everything from USAF F-16s to B-52s. Couple the targeting pod with short-circuit range, laser guided munitions such as AGM-65 Laser Mavericks, AGM-176 Griffon, and/or or Small Diameter Bombs and you have a deadly and dogged weapons system. The Marines have done a like upgrade with their KC-130 “ Harvest HAWK ” broadcast and the Air Force is moving in a exchangeable direction with it ‘s newfangled AC-130W Stinger II and MC-130J Combat Spear aircraft. I am actually quite curious as to why senior leadership insists on utilizing expensive bombers and combatant aircraft requiring extensive tank to provide preciseness fires that can be achieved by lower price, persistent assets such as a P-8A or C-130 in low-threat environments ? Are they just in love with their ‘sexy ‘ weapons systems or do they want to get the most bang for their acquisition buck ? I besides believe that P-8A should be equipped with a more robust plant of radio frequency countermeasures. Long stove SAM systems such as the S-300, S-400, and HQ-9 are quickly proliferating around the globe, bringing high-value ISR platforms such as P-8A or RC-135 into menace ranges of land based air defense sites. If commanders desire intelligence up to and after the first shot of a conflict is fired, they need to provide their previously ‘untouchable ‘ ISR assets with more full-bodied countermeasures mirroring those provided to penetrating bombers such as B-1B and B-52. A jamming pod such as ALQ-184 and a tow radar decoy such as the ALE-50 or ALE-55 would greatly benefit the Poseidon and make this high rate aircraft survivable on the advanced forward pass battlefield .
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The ability to cover huge swaths of ocean or monitor an area of interest for hours on end are hallmark maritime patrol missions, and few assets do that better than a UAV….
The Maritime patrol community is presently in an interest time and place. We ‘re about to retire, or ‘sundown ‘ as we say, two long-standing platforms, the P-3C and the EP-3E Signals Intelligence ( SIGINT ) aircraft. In their place we ‘ll have P-8A and the MQ-4C Triton Unmanned Aerial System ( UAS ). I know many of my mate pilots stress about lose manned platforms, but realistically it ‘s the reality of where war is headed. english peasants killed hundreds of mounted french knights at Crecy with longbows while losing only a few twelve of their own. Did french chivalry whining about the ‘dishonor ‘ of their enemies make the cavalry charge more effective against archers ? No. technology changes and war changes with it. aircraft are used in war because of their speed and because of their ability to carry sensors and weapons. They do n’t exist to provide joy-rides for pilots. Unmanned aircraft bring more perseverance, and doggedness is what an air-breathing intelligence gather platform offers over a satellite. The ability to cover huge swaths of ocean or monitor an area of concern for hours on end are authentication nautical patrol missions, and few assets do that better than a UAV. There ‘s no use fighting the inevitable. deplorably I think excessively many of our pilots, senior officers included, are more in love with the physical act of flying than they are the art of war-fighting. That ‘s a shame. It is worth considering what the MQ-4C Triton can and can not do. Any Signals Intelligence ( SIGINT ) operations by Triton will likely be limited by satellite bandwidth. I ‘m speaking from my own cognition and assumptions here, but consider the undertaking at hand. If you want real-time data off a UAV you have to transmit it via a satellite uplink to a grind monitoring station. Think how costly this bandwidth is during peacetime. Is it more cost-efficient to plainly wait till the MQ-4C lands and accept that the download intel will then be hours old ? possibly or possibly not. nowadays let ‘s consider a wartime scenario. other nations have demonstrated anti-satellite capabilities, including kinetic hard-kill capabilities against gloomy Earth orb satellites. While this is n’t a business for geo-synchronous communications satellites, the ability to jam or parody UAV satellite uplinks was possibly demonstrated during the passing of the RQ-170 over Iran. How plug precisely are our satellite uplinks ? Are they safe from cyber attack ? Will this bandwidth be available to the Navy during wartime or will more bid communications take precedence ? This is all above my pay-grade but realize that UAV survival does n’t come without a price. There ‘s another factor to consider and that ‘s the nature of the EP-3E ‘s mission. EP-3s are capable of supporting a Carrier Strike Group ‘s air wing by providing communications and signals intelligence support. This is a distinctly ‘real-time ‘ function as enemy air defense operators may merely speak for a few moments or activate SAM radars for several seconds. The latency ( time delay ) implicit in in satellite communications and dominance systems could possibly mean the difference between life and death for affect pilots in F/A-18 Hornets heading into the target area. If you take away EP-3E, you may lose that real-time SIGINT and COMINT capability. The good news program is that P-8A boasts a identical capable ESM system. The ALQ-240 system is derived from the ESM system on-board the EA-18G Growler jam aircraft. The organization has the capability to detect and geo-locate hostile threat emitters and subscribe hit forces. Whether the Navy chooses to leverage this capability or rely on the Air Force for non-organic hit support with aircraft such as the RC-135 Rivet Joint is however to be seen .
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The funny thing is that MMA was originally envisioned as providing tanking services to the air wing…
Observers have compared the ASW and ASuW capabilities of the S-3 with the P-3C and asked how retiring this platform effected Naval Aviation. The truth is it effected the air wing enormously, but not in the ways one might think. With the loss of the Viking, the air wing had to rely on debauched come to aircraft for organic tank. Plugging tanks and buddy stores on an already short-legged strike combatant such as the bequest F/A-18C or even the upgrade F/A-18F is not about deoxyadenosine monophosphate effective as a dedicate tanker aircraft with long legs. The funny thing is that MMA was in the first place envisioned as providing tanking services to the breeze wing. rather of deploying independently, each P-8A squadron would be tied to a finical air wing. The P-8A ‘s would follow the carrier as it moved from its homeport to an operate on area, hopping from tune base to vent free-base. When a carrier would go into flight ops, the P-8A would launch, tank aircraft using windsock and hose buddy stores, conduct a surveillance flight around the carrier wave, tank car during recovery, and then return to base. This was a big idea but got killed by inter-service politics. When the Air Force heard that the dark blue was soliciting proposals with the tanking mission included, they cried foul, saying the fleet of KC-135 ‘s and KC-10 ‘s were the sole source of strategic tank as mandated by Congress. The Navy replied “ well, it ‘s not strategic tank, it ‘s tactical tank, ” but that battle had already been lost. A big idea withered on the vine because of ill-considered junior-grade inter-service politics. Naval Aviation has always been shorted by USAF tanker assets. Why else would an arrangement like Omega Tanker exist ? They provide on-demand tank for the air wing because the USAF makes it besides cumbersome. Oh, and because the Navy decided to retire the S-3 with no long-range tanker surrogate. That decision did n’t help the publicize wing but it surely helped Omega ‘s shareholders. It in truth is a shame that the P-8A was n’t tied to the publicize wing as it was envisioned at one time. Both organizations would become more effective and deadly with the synergy of a herculean and persistent land-based detector platform with tons of flatulence to play with and the all the singular fall, air-to-air and search and rescue capabilities of the atmosphere wing. Maritime patrol crews get a hard fourth dimension for not being conversant with operate with the carrier and her aircraft but that ‘s apprehensible if you consider the context. P-3C and P-8A crews normally lone educate with a aircraft carrier once or twice a year during a carrier group ‘s pre-deployment authentication exercises. Would anyone expect a football team to practice twice and then be ready for the large game on Friday night ? No way ! Why would anyone expect that something like antenna war would be simpler than a football game ? The more the P-8A and the carrier air wing fly together, the more effective both will be .
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For more on the potential future uses of the retired S-3 Viking chink on this Foxtrot Alpha special have. ad
The line that separates tracking a sub and killing a sub is literally opening the weapons bay and throwing a switch…
P-3C is a demanding aircraft to fly, and because high fidelity simulators were n’t available for most of its life, train had to be done in the aircraft. Simulating systems failures, landing with flaps up, executing high focal ratio aborts, and simulating multiple engines out were routine maneuvers in the P-3C. As a result, the acme of a well educate pilot was a be a Fleet Replacement Squadron teacher and in charge of Standardization. A demanding aircraft required very well educate Instructor Pilots to safely train the future generation of new pilots. As I mentioned earlier, the P-8A is generations ahead of the P-3 in terms of safety and dependability, and this allows crews to in truth focus on their mission. Poseidon is a force out multiplier when you consider the sensors, weapons, and connectivity it brings to the fight. Acting as an armed C5I ( Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Collaboration, and Intelligence ) node, the P-8A is becoming more useful to a combatant air force officer. That mission concenter has put new stress on the Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Weapons School. The ‘Weapons School ‘ is where the top Weapons and Tactics Instructors from the Fleet serve a shore tour. They conduct graduate level discipline for fleet squadrons and act as an incubator for tactics growth and shaping requirements for new weapons and sensors. credibly the best partially of being in the maritime patrol community is the prospect to practice our deputation all the time and interact with early nations. A fighter fly may go his integral career without flying an actual wartime combat tune patrol ( CAP ) or even seeing a real enemy jet. On the early handwriting, the line that separates tracking a substitute and killing a bomber is literally opening the weapons bay and throwing a substitution ! In the last several years I ‘ve flown against many alien submarines, operated near contested areas in the Pacific, and seen pirates attempt to hijack ships. The casual to be America ‘s ambassador in the grey areas around the world is besides humbling. When commanders talk about projecting ability, that ‘s what they mean. And the find to do that as a twenty-something class honest-to-god with a crew of 10 well-trained, motivated men and women is very special. To fly and lead is an honor. All of us pilots and Naval Flight Officers are very gallant of that .
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Foxtrot Alpha would like to express its gratitude toward our Maritime Patrol Pilot for sharing his detailed thoughts and stories with our readers, and to all who perform in this essential mission in defense of our country and its allies. ad
Read more: A Man Quotes Maritime Law To Avoid Ticket
Pictures via Tyler Rogoway/Foxtrot Alpha where branded, USN, Boeing, Lockheed where not. Tyler Rogoway is a defense journalist and photographer that maintains the website Foxtrot Alpha for Jalopnik.com You can reach Tyler with story ideas or direct comments regarding this or any other defense topic via the email address [email protected]