UK Armed Forces and several partner nations arms battled each other in the air, at sea and on land in Europe’s largest military exercise this year.
From Mar. 31 to Apr. 12, Joint Warrior 14-1 saw over 35 warships, 25 types of aircraft and more than 13,000 military personnel focused on a realistic simulation of a live operation.
The core scenario of the Joint Warrior series of exercises (held twice a year in the UK) is based on the fragmentation of the fictional “Ryanian Empire” into its four constituent nations in the late 1960s, and the intervening period of “history” up to the present day.
A different scenario is then re-written for each edition. The 14-1 one simulated the creation of a multinational task force to perform a peace enforcing operation following a civil war in the fictional country of “Pastonia” and to support the legitimate government.
The aviation segment of the exercise saw RAF Lossiemouth as the drill’s Main Operating Base and featured the U.S. P-8A Poseidon, from VP-5, NAS Jacksonville, at its first deployment in Europe with a front line squadron (the aircraft deployed to the UK with the VX-1 in 2012), along with several other Maritime Patrol Aircraft, including two Royal Canadian Air Force Lockheed CP-140 Aurora from 404 Maritime Patrol and Training Squadron, CFB Greenwood; a Royal New Zealand Air Force Lockheed P-3K Orion from 5 Squadron, Whenuapai Mil; and a Royal Norwegian Air Force Lockheed P-3C Orion from 333 skvadron, Andøya airbase.
Among the assets taking part in the exercise even some Royal Navy BAe Hawk T1 jets from 736 Naval Air Squadron RNAS Culdrose operating out of Lossiemouth.
Aviation photographer Estelle Calleja visited RAF Lossiemouth during the Joint Warrior 14-1 and took the images that can be found in this article.
Although it has not been released yet, the outcome of the annual report on major weapons, by Michael Gilmore, chief of the Pentagon testing office, has already made the news.
Even if the report does not use the word “flop”, it depicts the new Boeing P-8A Poseidon as just not yet effective in two of its main missions: anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and wide area reconnaissance.
Flaws in the multi-million program (actually, a 35 billion USD endeavour) are almost everywhere: radar, sensor integration, data transfer.
According to Bloomberg News, Gilmore said the new aircraft shows “all of the major deficiencies identified in earlier exercises when subjected to more stressful realistic combat testing from September 2012 to March 2013.”
For this reason the P-8A “is not effective for the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission and is not effective for wide area anti-submarine search.”
Obviously, at least “some” of the issues will soon be fixed, but the reports highlights that the B737-800 packed with sensors aren’t ready to be deployed and used in combat simply because they would fail in tracking Chinese subsmarines.
So far Navy’s comments on the plane have always been positive and this is also the official stance of Boeing, that has also said it they will closely work with the service to solve any issues that come up.
Although the test office found that, currently, the P-8A provide the same small-area search capabilities of the older P-3C Orion it is slightly replacing, the Poseidon is a quite young weapons system, hence it is provides the U.S. Navy a higher reliability, maintainability and availability with an increased range, payload and speed.
The problem is not with the airframe, but with the costly sensors that should be the real added-value of the new aircraft: radar and ESM (Electronic Support Measures) that make both ASW and ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) missions possible.
These will be fixed in the next months.
The U.S. Navy plans to operate a fleet of 113 P-8A Poseidon next generation maritime patrol aircraft.
The Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft is nearing fleet service with the U.S. Navy (USN).
USN VP-16 is approaching completion of a training syllabus at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida and is expected to reach IOC (initial operational capability) in Feb. of 2013.
Five Poseidon aircraft, serials 168428 through 168432, are being used for pilot and mission operator indoctrination. The aircraft are augmented by an extensive suite of synthetic trainers, including Level D equivalent flight simulators and mock mission crew workstations.
Image credit: Drewski2112/Flickr
The introduction of the P-8A marks an important milestone for the USN, which has operated various versions of the legacy P-3 Orion turboprop patrol plane for over five decades. The Poseidon is a derivative of the Boeing 737, incorporating a 737-800 series fuselage mated to 737-900 wings and featuring raked winglets to improve low-altitude fuel burn. The aircraft can carry the Mk-54 airborne ASW torpedo and the Harpoon anti-ship missile.
The P-8A offers greatly improved communications and connectivity in comparison with the P-3C. Additionally, the open-architecture mission systems allow for simple and relatively inexpensive software upgrades to quickly introduce growth capabilities. The USN plans to operate the Poseidon in conjunction with the MQ-4C Triton UAS (Unmanned Aerial System), itself based on the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk. Current budgets call the purchase of 117 P-8 model aircraft.
Test flights of the P-8A are still in progress at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. Flight characteristic evaluation is being conducted by VX-20 while operational weapons and test evaluations are being carried out by VX-1.
Michael Glynn for TheAviationist.com
The Spanish Air Force (Ejercito del Aire) detachment in Djibouti, inside the structure of the EUNAVFOR (European Union Naval Force) in the Operation ATALANTA, reached the 4,000 flying hours in operational missions in support of the fight against piracy in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.
Image credit: Spanish Air Force
This unit of the Spanish Air Force deployed in Djibouti has a Tactical Air Detachment entity with the mission of the surveillance, reconnaissance, information gathering and prevention of maritime piracy in the framework of Operation ATALANTA, within the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and has been deployed continuously since the beginning of the mission, now three and a half years.
The past Aug. 19, during a flight with the Lockheed P-3 Orion, the ORION Detachment surpassed 4,000 flight hours in this mission. Of this total, approximately one quarter represents the contribution of the crew and staff of the 48 & 49 Wings, when they are deployed with a CN-235 VIGMA aircraft supporting the operation.
Image Credit: Lockheed Martin
This important figure coincides with the 50 years being in service of the Lockheed P-3 Orion, joining a very few club of airplanes in the world that can tout this distinct honor such as the spy plane Lockheed U-2 and the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress in the USAF, and the British Vickers VC10 in the RAF.
The P-3 Orion has been in the frontline from the Cuban Missile Crisis, three months after delivery of the first unit to the US Navy in 1962 to nowadays anti-piracy missions over the Gulf of Aden, with the spaniards P-3M Orion, flying tens of thousands of missions over the world’s seas and oceans.
According to the Norwegian newspaper Andoyposten which gave the news, Apr. 10, 2012 will go down as a date that one particular Royal Norwegian Air Force P-3 crew will never forget.
Whilst flying over the Barents Sea on a routine mission, the P-3 Orion came across a Russian Air Force Mig-31 Foxhound. Nothing unusual, apparently, as the RNoAF planes come close to the Russian ones, especially when the Norwegian F-16s are called to intercept Russian aircraft approaching Norwegian airspace, normally without incident.
However, on this occasion, the Norwegian crew initially observed the Mig-31 twice shadowing the P-3 at a safe distance, then disappearing. Moments later the Russian fighter jet came back from behind the patrol aircraft, so fast and close it was in danger of a mid-air collision.
Fortunately, in spite of the “uncomfortable distance” the Orion did not collide with the Foxhound and the aircraft could safely return to its homebase.
Quite upset by such shows of bravado by the Russian interceptor Lt. Col. John Espen Lien, communications director of the RNoAF HQ said that the incident “will be dicussed with the Russian Armed Forces”.
Although damaged, both planes were able to land safely, but both episodes show how close encounters are inherently dangerous.
By the way, do you remember the Hainan Island Incident when a U.S. EP-3E collided with a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) J-8II interceptor?
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