India has received another Boeing P-8I Neptune maritime multimission aircraft (MMA) to add to the nine already delivered.
The tenth P-8I Neptune for the Indian Navy departs Boeing's production facility near Seattle, Washington. (Boeing)
The manufacturer announced on 13 July that the tenth P-8I was formally handed over to the Indian Navy from its Renton production facility near Seattle, Washington.
The P-8I is the Indian-specific variant of the P-8A Poseidon flown by the US Navy and international customers. The P-8I differs slightly from the P-8A in that it is equipped with an aft-facing radar (that operates independently of the forward-facing Raytheon AN/APY-10 surface search sensor), providing full-hemisphere coverage and an aerial target-tracking capability. A magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) system is also fitted in place of the Multistatic Active Coherent (MAC) capability to enable the detection of submerged submarines.
India became the first export customer for the P-8 when it signed for eight P-8Is in 2009 to replace its Russian-built Tupolev Tu‐142Ms that were acquired in 1988. Deliveries commenced in 2013, since when the fleet has surpassed 30,000 flight hours.
In 2016 India ordered a further four aircraft to take its total up to 12 (this latest delivery is the second aircraft from this follow-on batch), and earlier in 2021 was given approved by the US government to buy a further six. “This proposed sale of an additional six P-8I aircraft will allow the Indian Navy to expand its maritime surveillance aircraft capability for the next 30 years,” the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said at the time of the approval in April.
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