Boeing has won a contract valued approximately $757 million to build five P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft for Germany.
“This modification exercises an option for the production and delivery of five Lot 12 P-8A aircraft for the government of Germany,” a U.S. DoD release today said.
Work is expected to be completed in February 2025.
In July 2021, Germany signed a letter of offer and acceptance for five Boeing P-8As under the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales process.
German companies that already supply parts for the P-8A include Aljo Aluminum-Bau Jonischeit GmbH and Nord-Micro GmbH. Recently, Boeing signed agreements with ESG Elektroniksystem-und Logistik-GmbH and Lufthansa Technik to collaborate in systems integration, training, support and sustainment work.
“By working with local suppliers, Boeing will provide support, training and maintenance solutions that will bring the highest operational availability to fulfill the German Navy’s missions.”
Would be Great if Lossiemouth could be a Nato p8 base with multiple Nations having p8s stationed there full tim.
Even better if Voyagers had booms so they could patrol further / longer through Baltic etc otherwise usuing too much of avail flight time just getting to patrol area rather than searching.
Yeah it’s a joke we don’t have booms, who the hell made that decision, We should at least get 5 converted. It seriously hampers our capability not having booms,.
I wonder how much we use the yank tankers with booms based in the UK! Or can we use them with the voyager contract…
RAF RC135 is topped up upon take off by USAF tankers from Mildenhall every time it sorties on an operational mission, often over the Baltic.
When I was stationed at RAF Kinloss, the Nimrods rarely used in-flight refuelling for normal maritime patrol of the North Atlantic as its endurance was very good, especially on 2 engines as they often did. I guess this is the rationale for not getting our Voyagers booms for the P-8’s, but could reduce flexibility in other theatres of operation, not that I’d expect any of the 9 we have bought to be available for ‘overseas’ ops.
There does seem to be a decent sized P8 fleet building up across NATO.
I just hope the German ones have some kind of real world operational availability.
After their recent election, I’ll be surprised if they get delivered.
The overall government will take a while to form, depending on how it ends up will shape defence but as of yet no one really knows.
I’m not overly optimistic, a coalition with FDP will more likely not be pro defence spending, anti drone and anti nuclear. But tough on China. They will be sending strongly worded letters, China must be ptsl
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/germanys-greens-go-government-winds-change-germanys-foreign-and-security-policy
Germany seems to be spending far more on Defence these days. They even have a bigger Army than The UK now but that’s not hard to beat I supose.
Best wait to see what happens given their election result
Hi Reaper.. I think the UK still has a larger Army than Germany, could be wrong though. UK has over 81,000 trained (77,000) trade trained Army. Plus of course the Royal Marines has around 6,600 trained personnel. The Army reserve numbers some 26,000 trained personnel.
Have a good day !!!
Just to add: When it comes to total armed forces personnel. Yup, numbers are a lot closer now. Think we have around 198,000 armed forces personnel plus somewhere around 57,000 civilians (MOD).
Looks like Germany has 184,000 armed forces personnel and some 80,000 civilians also 30,000 reserves. Plans also envisage a further increase with personnel numbers up to teh year 2025.
*the
Yeah, Lossiemouth will be a specialist Boeing P8 repair and service site so maybe we will get work from other European country’s like Norway, Germany and even USA.
I can answer that one, nope, no chance, never operationally deployed to a war zone ever, under the Official German ‘ride the coat tails and cheer from the sidelines’ policy.
Patrol the Baltic and occasionally the Mediterranean, if really pushed…..
The med? Do these aircraft drop towels on sunbeds? 🙂
😂😂 Excellent !!
No doubt, if the Germans were to spend huge amounts on their military, you lot would bang on about them becoming a threat to regional security.
The thing to consider is, what have we achieved by spending so much more than the Germans post Cold War? Has it all been worth it, given the huge cost to so many British families, not to mention the financial value to the public?
Well someone has to step up and it sure as hell isn’t the Germans…..
The reality is UK defence spending has been rather low since the cold war ended, it’s only just exceeded 2% GDP.
Does it bring financial value to the public …. It’s the first responsibility of any government to protect its people, the UK also has dependencies to protect and we are members of various alliances that we are honour and duty bound to contribute defence assets too.
As a trading nation, with important links world wide, we better be ready to protect our interests…
So yes, it provides value and ‘pride’ in so many ways Bluemoonday.
The British, French, Dutch, Polish and Danes step up when needed. The Germans always hang back and are happy to let us fight for them….
Personally, If I was the US, I would give them an ultimatum to step up and be counted, or I would boot them out of NATO and make Poland the predominant European hub for Uncle Sam.
In theory, I do not disagree with a lot of what you say. My issue is that the evidence does not support the case.
If stepping up is protecting your interest and providing some type of deterrence, then what happened in the Crimea? The Balkans, or even Syria? War crimes were committed right under our noses and in the Crimea, one of the supposed main threats to British and Western stability was allowed to carry out the exact activity we are meant to be prepared to counter? How is the Crimea any different to Taiwan, where we seemed determined to be more proactive, despite it being two oceans away.
There seems to a lot of hot air and bluster driving our policy and that is where my comment on value is directed. In some ways, I am glad we have not followed through all our rhetoric with actions as look where that got us in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Which is why I wonder if the German defence policy may perhaps be the smarter one. They are after all the ones facing off against any Russian incursion, as they have been for over 50 years, if not more. US threats to withdraw from NATO probably seem impotent to the Germans, because the reality of any Russian invasion is almost zero, whether the Americans are there or not. In fact most conflicts since WW2 have been civil wars, African and South American border disputes or western backed or led regime changes?
We seem to be falling over ourselves to maintain global presence, on the coat tails of the Americans, which suits them just fine. It is their party after all, yet we seem to be willing to help pay the bill. We like to justify it, by claiming a moral high ground, but is that really what it is all about? I think a lot of our motivation is ego driven and worse, industry backed.
I am no pacifist and also believe we should be prepared to defend ourselves and those who need it, but I cannot help be especially cynical following what happened in Kabul recently. At risk of repeating myself here, but can anyone honestly say to all those families up and down the country that their loved ones sacrifice was necessary?
Yeah, its probably good that more countries are operating the same gear. We’re building up a fair fleet in this corner of NATO as you say.
I don’t think there will be room, especially after our own 9 x P-8’s and the Wedgetails arrive, forward thinking would have reused Kinloss for this.
Yes a lot of key air assets under one hangar roof in the one place. Wouldn’t it be good to de-risk this and spread the fleet over two bases?
Would still prefer Kinloss myself as a NATO P8 base. How many more aircraft can Lossie hold? The idea of inter-operability and shared workload between UK, Norway and Germany with P8 for the Baltic, North Sea, Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic is attractive though though still need more aircraft
Germany will likely have a left wing government between social democrats and greens just like the one they had when they refused to join the Iraq war. So it’s foreign policy and military expenditure will be far more cautious than it is now. It will have a foreign policy centered around the EU than it currently has. The social democrats are far more pro EU than Merkel
Not a year goes past without a Government change within the EU pulling or pushing views one way or another. I’m not sure that that bodes well for consensus especially on expensive military projects although they might get consensus on environmental projects. I would have thought that when times are bad (which seems likely for many parts of the world) it is only natural for populations to favour strong national Governement doing what they want rather than federal arrangements. Unless relations with Russia warm a little are not central and eastern countries not going to get a little nervous?
Yeah, the Greens don’t support armed drones, nuclear sharing or the 2% GDP on defence. FDP will likely give on most of these. Negative side for UK the new government could block components that are required for UK to sell overseas 🙁
I don’t see the EU benefiting, German defence spending will shrink and projects like FCAS and a European MALE are certainly at risk.
I think the EU had a very rude awakening when the US pulled out of Afghan, which was further exacerbated by how Russia decided to cut the gas flow into the EU from 80 million cubic metres a day (Dec 2019) to 49 Million cubic metres a day in Aug 2021 and to 20 Million Cubic metres a day after Merkel told Putin on the 23rd Of August that if he uses gas as a weapon the EU would hit Moscow with sanctions. In the Med, the EU has twiddled its thumbs as Turkey has used its Navy to drill for oil in EU waters and currently in Iran, The mad mullahs have removed cameras fitted by the UN inside one of its nuke locations and is not only refusing to allow the UN to inspect and replace them, but is refusing to hand over the SD card from the camera it removed.