India Receives 10th Boeing P-8I Poseidon Plane

The Indian Navy received another Boeing P-8I Poseidon long-range maritime reconnaissance anti-submarine warfare aircraft.

The patrol aircraft is an integral part of the Indian Navy’s fleet and has surpassed 30,000 flight hours since it was inducted in 2013, Boeing said in a release.

The Indian Navy was the first international customer for the P-8, which is also operated by the U.S. Navy, the Royal Australian Air Force and the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force. This is the second aircraft to be delivered under an option contract for four additional aircraft that the Indian Ministry of Defence awarded in 2016.

Boeing supports India’s P-8I fleet by providing training of Indian Navy flight crews, spare parts, ground support equipment and field service representative support.

The company is currently completing construction on the Training Support & Data Handling Centre at INS Rajali, Arakkonam, Tamil Nadu and a secondary maintenance training center at the Naval Institute of Aeronautical Technology, Kochi, Kerala as part of a training and support package contract signed in 2019. This new indigenous, ground-based training will allow Indian Navy crew to increase mission proficiency in a shorter time while reducing on-aircraft training time resulting in increased aircraft availability.