New Delhi: With the crucial role that P-8I long-range reconnaissance aircraft had played in intelligence gathering during the Pakistan military deployment and keeping India’s western seaboard safe, Indian Navy will be inducting more such aircraft, boosting its capability to conduct sustained surveillance and anti-ship and submarine preparedness in the Indian Ocean Region.
The Navy will from April begin inducting four P-8I aircraft worth US$1.1 billion, orders for which were placed in 2016. This procurement is under an option clause as part of the earlier procurement of right P-8Is between 2013 and 2015 worth US$2.1 billion.
Indian Navy also plans to procure six more P-8Is under a different deal through the foreign military sales route between India and the US. The Rajnath Singh-led Defence Acquisition Council had cleared this procurement in November last year.
The P-8I deals are a sign of India’s increasing weapons procurement from the US, which has touched US$17 billion till date. It also comes in the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s India visit on February 24, which will focus on strengthening defence cooperation between the two nations.
Since induction six and half years ago, the P-8Is clocked 25,000 flying hours in December last year, officials said. Based at INS Rajali, a naval air station in Tamil Nadu, the fleet is the Navy’s eyes in the sky and gives it a significant edge in the Indian Ocean Region. It is used for coastal patrolling, search and rescue operations, anti-piracy and other military tasks. Its important features include anti-submarine warfare, anti-ship strikes and maritime surveillance.
The aircraft have also led to better synergy of the Navy with the Army and Air Force. “They have flown in support of the Army and the Air Force. They flew during the Doklam standoff and in the aftermath of the Pulwama incident,” an official said.
According to officials, during peak winter last year, a P-8I was deployed to monitor and classify two radar contacts moving in a formation towards Mumbai, which were detected by a drone along the Gujarat coast. “By first light, the P-8I had indicated that these were two warships of a neighbouring country proceeding to Southeast Asia, completing the information loop in the operations room at Mumbai,” an official said.
The P-8Is have also been instrumental in locating and tracking submarines operating in the IOR. They have also participated in several exercises with foreign navies. “Their enormous endurance of 10 hours and long operational range of over 4,000 km enable them to be our ‘Eyes in the Sky’ and have augmented the Navy’s ability to keep all ‘Areas of Interest’ under continual surveillance,” the official said.
The P-8I assessment of shipping traffic in important Sea Lines of Communication and choke points in the IOR is regularly provided to Indian Ocean Region-Information Fusion Centre (IOR-IFC) at Gurgaon.
