eight P-8Is to India. The company expects to deliver the first P-8A to Australia, which ordered eight of the aircraft with an option for four more, this year. And the United Kingdom has publicly announced plans to purchase nine P-8As. Crews from Australia and the U.K. already have been training with the U.S. Navy. NAS Jacksonville is host to 10 Australians, who support U.S. Navy training and will be the Royal Australian Air Force’s first P-8A instructors, and through a cooperative program agreement, there are Australian personnel assigned to the Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Program Office in NAS Patuxent River, Md. The United Kingdom Seedcorn project provides maritime patrol staff at NAS Jacksonville and NAS Patuxent River to learn P-8A systems and maintain the skillsets their crew will need back in the U.K. While they do, Navy pilots such as Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Harrington, who returned to flying the P-8A less than a year ago after spending a couple of years working on an aircraft carrier, will continue performing P-8A missions wherever their wings take them. And Harrington’s wings have taken him far. Prior to the tour on the carrier, he spent two years at Patuxent River performing operational testing of the P-8A and flew test missions all around the world—Hawaii, Guam, Scotland, Australia, Japan. Next stop: Whidbey Island in Washington state, which soon will be receiving its first P-8A trainers. • VINETA.Z.PLUME@BOEING.COM To learn more about the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, see the November 2014 issue of Frontiers. Photo: Before dawn, ground crew ready U.S. Navy Poseidons for the day’s missions. APRIL 2016 | 25
Frontiers April 2016 Issue
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