The RAF’s latest submarine-hunting spy plane is “the equivalent of a flying iPhone”, according to a top commander.
Air Vice Marshal Harvey Smyth, the RAF’s senior operational commander, hailed the Poseidon P-8A’s capabilities as the first of the new planes arrived at RAF Lossiemouth.
“It’s like the iPhone because it can be constantly upgraded to meet each new threat as it emerges,” he said. The nine-strong fleet of maritime patrol aircraft, equipped with torpedoes and harpoon anti-ship missiles, is at the core of a £3billion programme for Britain’s contribution to an allied force of surveillance planes operating out of the Scottish base.
The Poseidons fill a gap left by the cancellation of the Nimrod patrol aircraft programme in the defence review 10 years ago. Since then the UK has called on patrol aircraft from allies such as France, Canada, Norway and the US to track Russian spy vessels and submarines approaching Britain.
The new planes will work in a joint force with the US Navy and Norway. Both deploy the Poseidon, and will swap pilots and crew with the RAF.
Russian activity by air, sea and underwater is now at its most intense since the Cold War, with 10 Russian submarines being detected at one time in the north Atlantic in October last year.
“There’s a new adventurism,” the head of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wig-ston, said yesterday. “They are not playing to the rules with the incursions of their aircraft. Sometimes they don’t file flight plans and turn off their identification transmission. They are interfering in the normal commerce of the seas.”
The Poseidons arrive as the services face what one of their chiefs calls a pivotal year, with the Government about to launch the most comprehensive defence, security and foreign policy review since the Cold War.
