The inaugural deployment of the P-8A Poseidon is now in the books.
Patrol Squadron 16 returned to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, after a seven-month deployment to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan. The squadron’s last P-8A touched down at NAS Jacksonville on July 16, signaling the beginning of the end for the venerable P-3C Orion, which will phased out over the rest of the decade.
“The P-8 Poseidon either met or exceeded any expectations I had for that aircraft,” said Cmdr. Daniel Papp, VP-16’s commanding officer.
Here’s what you should know about the airframe’s first time out:
1 Same mission, different tools. The squadron deployed with six aircraft and 12 aircrews — the same as with a P-3 squadron — and was assigned the same missions.
But a P-8 crew is smaller than a P-3 crew, with nine people instead of 11. One of those cuts was the enlisted flight engineer, a job made obsolete by technology upgrades. The two pilots, aided by high-tech avionics, are able to fill that role.
The P-8 is the first new maritime patrol aircraft to enter Navy service in more than 50 years. The P-8 offers greater payload capacity, higher operating altitude, and options to easily upgrade its systems, officials say.
2 Better ride. VP-16’s crews got to ride in style, after years of service with the notoriously turbulence-prone P-3.
The P-8 is built on the base of the venerable Boeing 737 airline frame, with the end result being a more steady ride.
“This was my observation about the P-8 going in: You could fly an eight- to nine-hour mission and I could walk away from that flight feeling more alert and much less tired than I could in, say, a five-hour P-3 flight,” Papp said in a July 17 phone interview. “It’s a smoother ride.”
The squadron flew 600 sorties and more than 3,800 hours.
3 The search for a missing jetliner. The P-8 joined the months-long, high-profile search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
In two months on scene, VP-16 kept two aircraft in the effort and rotated aircrews through Perth, Australia, to fly 38 missions, spending more than 300 hours in the air.
4 Less downtime. After debate in the airframe’s concept phase, officials decided sailors would shoulder the P-8’s service responsibility — just as in P-3 squadrons. Contractors remain in the picture as advisers, for now.
While on deployment, the maintainers did 14 extensive, pre-planned maintenance evolutions. Each one came in ahead of schedule.
5 What’s next. VP-16 will deploy in September 2015 and will move into the workup cycle immediately after post-deployment leave.
“We will begin to train and reform our aircrews and we will build on the experiences we had … and we expect to come back even more capable next time we deploy,” Papp said.
