Article Posted on : - Aug 10, 2009

A File Photo of Boeing's P-81

NEW DELHI (PTI): Clearing the decks for acquiring Boeing's P-8I long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft for the Navy, the government has given its nod to the technical assistance agreement (TAA) with the US.

"The Cabinet Committee on Security has recently given its nod for signing the TAA to buy eight Boeing's P-8I Poseidon long-range maritime reconnaissance (LRMR) aircraft," Navy sources told PTI here.

Now the US State Department has to clear the TAA before it is signed by the two countries.

The USD 2.1 billion deal is India's largest defence purchase ever from the US after the USD 962 million contract signed in 2007 for six Lockheed Martin's C-130J 'super Hercules' transport aicraft for its special forces.

The TAA allows Boeing to commercially sell the eight aircraft and provide all technical help to the Navy in operating the aircraft for military purposes.

The Defence Ministry and Boeing had entered into a contract for the eight P-8Is this January. The Poseidon induction is expected to strengthen the Navy's intelligence gathering capabilities.

The Navy will get its first aircraft under the deal by 2014 and the rest seven would be delivered in phases before the end of 2016, the sources said.

Though Boeing had offered the aircraft to Indian Navy in January 2008, the dire need for the LRMR aircraft came to the fore after the Mumbai terror attacks last November when the Navy was tasked to track down a rogue vessel that carried the terrorists to the city's shores.

The contract also provided for the Navy to place follow-on orders for eight more aircraft, being purchased to replace the existing fleet of eight aging Tupolev-142M turboprops.

The P-8I is armed with torpedoes, depth bombs and Harpoon anti-ship missiles and is capable of anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface warfare.

Expected to help in plugging the existing gaps in Navy's maritime reconnaissance capabilities, the aircraft has an operating range of over 600 nautical miles.

Customised to meet Indian Navy's needs and based on the Boeing 737 commercial airliner, the P-8I aircraft is a variant of the P-8A Poseidon multi-mission maritime aircraft under development for the US Navy to replace its P-3C Orion fleet.

Its purchase would greatly help "inter-operability and supportability objectives of both the Indian and US Navies", according to a Boeing official here.

Apart from the Tu-142Ms, the Indian Navy currently uses IL-38SDs and Dorniers for surveillance operations in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

It was also looking for six advanced medium-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft at a budget of Rs 1,600 crore to further boost its patrol and intelligence gathering capabilities in the IOR.