Maritime Patrol Aircraft
(asked on 4th March 2019) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what estimate he has made of (a) the annual in service cost of the P-8 patrol aircraft and (b) the number of years those aircraft can be expected to remain in service.
Answered by
Stuart Andrew
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Initial support for the RAF P-8A fleet is covered as part of the Foreign Military Sale case for procurement of these aircraft, enabling us to utilise US experience and leverage economies of scale from the existing US Navy support arrangements as we develop our own UK-based support.
Work is currently under way to define the requirements for the UK support solution, but I am withholding details of financial estimates as disclosing this information would prejudice our commercial interests.
The UK has ordered nine P-8A maritime patrol aircraft and the current planning assumption is that they will have an expected service life of 25 years.