TSAMTO, October 19. On October 18, Boeing Corporation announced the delivery to the Indian Navy of the 11th aircraft of the base patrol aircraft BPA P-8I "Neptune" (the Indian version of the American P-8A "Poseidon").
This P-8I is the third aircraft transferred in accordance with the realized option for the supply of four additional aircraft. The P-8I are designed for information gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance at sea, anti-submarine warfare, support operations to assist victims of emergencies and humanitarian missions. The Indian Navy is the largest P-8 operator outside the United States. The aircraft have also been adopted by the US Navy, the Australian Air Force and the UK. In addition, the P-8 was ordered by the Air Forces of the Republic of Korea (6 units), New Zealand (4 units), Norway (5 units) and Germany (5 units).
As reported by TSAMTO, the basic contract worth about $ 2.1 billion, providing for the supply of eight P-8I "Neptune" aircraft and auxiliary equipment, was signed by the Government of India in January 2009. India became the first foreign customer of the aircraft. To date, all 8 P-8Is of the first batch have been delivered, are based at the Rajali Airbase (Arakonam, pcs.Tamil Nadu) and have been in operation since 2013.
As part of the implementation of the option, a new contract worth $ 1.1 billion was signed in July 2016, providing for the supply of four additional P-8I "Neptune". The first of these aircraft landed at the Khanza base of the Indian Navy on November 18, 2020, the second was transferred in July 2021 at the enterprise in Renton (USA).
At the moment, the total flight time of the Indian P-8I has exceeded 30 thousand hours.
In April 2021, the US State Department approved the potential supply to India under the Foreign Military Sales program of 6 more P-8I Poseidon basic patrol aircraft, as well as related equipment and services. The total cost of the sale may amount to $2.42 billion.
According to Boeing, it is currently completing the construction of a Training and Data Processing Support Center based on Rajali (Arakkonam, pcs.Tamil Nadu) and an auxiliary center at the Naval Institute of Aviation Technology (Kochi) under a training and support contract signed in 2019. Training on the territory of India will allow Navy crews to improve their flight skills in a shorter time and reduce training time.
