Indian Navy’s capability to defend our maritime interests and have a more robust presence in the Indian Ocean got bolstered when it received its eleventh P-8I long-range maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft from Boeing.
Just last week, four more Rafale fighters landed in the Indian Airforce base in Jamnagar Gujarat, increasing the number to 29.
The aircraft is part of the second batch of four P-8Is bought by the Indian Navy and it landed in Goa today (October 18) from Seattle in the United States.
India already has ten of these aircraft in service making the Indian Navy is the largest foreign customer of the P8 platform and one more is likely to be delivered this year and six more are being procured. India had recently used the P-81 in Ladakh for electronic surveillance.
Before that, the P-81 was used effectively during the 73-day-long Doklam standoff as the technology in aircraft was sending live data to support decision making during the Doklam face-off”.
Also, the P-81 aircraft was also put to use “to keep an eye on Pakistani troops movement after the Pulwama terror attack in 2019.
The P-8Is come equipped with the AN/APY-10 radar, which its maker Raytheon describes as a “maritime, littoral and overland surveillance radar”, capable of monitoring ground movement, and is fully capable of providing data in all weather conditions, both at night and day.
The plane is equipped with Synthetic Aperture and Inverse synthetic-aperture mode, the AN/APY-10 radar can penetrate through clouds and foliage to give detailed images of the surface below and images produced by the radar in these modes can give the size of structures on the surface, movement, and change which would allow senior commanders to make correct decisions and there are other features in the P8 that remain classified when it comes to enemy’s dispositions on the ground.
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