WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The United States, United Kingdom and Norway have agreed in principal to create a trilateral coalition built around the P-8 maritime aircraft\u00a0\u2014\u00a0though exactly what that means remains unclear.
Given the shared area of responsibility and the small fleet sizes for both nations, analysts believe cooperation around the P-8 is a no-brainer. And while the U.S. has a larger fleet, being able to share assets such as maintenance will help bring costs down and keep readiness rates high for American assets surveilling the waters near Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked in December about forming some sort of P-8 coalition between the three nations, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work said, “We haven\u2019t had something like this since the Cold War, \u2026 and that just opens up a whole new level of possibilities for us to in the future do collaborative and coordinated operations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“When you have that interoperability and you can land and get servicing wherever you land\u00a0\u2014\u00a0wash racks, maintenance hangars you can use\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it just makes it a lot easier,” Work told Defense News on Dec. 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vice Adm. Joseph Rixey, the outgoing head of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, said in September that he wanted to expand a recent program that allows NATO allies to pool their resources and buy as a group from the U.S., holding up the P-8 as an example where nations could find joint savings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Imagine what you could do with lead nation procurement if you could get something like the P-8 \u2014 maybe not the P-8 itself, but certainly all the support, the sonobuoys, the spares, everything associated with it that you could buy \u2014 in batch quantities and not have to worry about third-party transfer restrictions,” Rixey said then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States, United Kingdom and Norway have agreed in principal to create a trilateral coalition built around the P-8 maritime aircraft \u2014 though exactly what that means remains unclear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":44323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,46,11,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-21663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-europe","category-global","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"NV5M5NKLFFFP5P24QQAAMU72OQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2017\/07\/03\/pentagon-seeks-increased-p-8-ties-with-norway-uk\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n