https://aviationweek.com/shownews/du...national-sales
Boeing Pushes P-8A Pod To Boost International Sales
DUBAI—Boeing is using Dubai Airshow 2021 to showcase an internally funded multi-role belly pod for the P-8A maritime patrol aircraft.
The pod is designed to house a wide range of sensors and mission systems, including potential multiple configurations of equipment provided by operator nations.
Housed under the forward fuselage on the center weapon station, the pod has already attracted interest from P-8A operators like Australia and the UK, says Stu Voboril, P-8A vice president and program manager. “With the ability to put new sensors in it, potentially developed using in-country capabilities and sensors, this allows them to do different missions than just the standard P-8A.”……
Developed with the same digital design tools used for Boeing’s T-7 advanced trainer, the pod will attach to existing attachment, power and cooling access points already provided for payloads such as the APS-149 Littoral Surveillance Radar System and the follow-on Advanced Airborne Sensor radar.
“Customers might want to do signal or communications intelligence or different kinds of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and have their own functions or their own mechanisms to do that using their own capability within country,” says Perry Yaw, Boeing’s leader of P-8 global sales and marketing.
Although fully designed, the pod still needs to go through airworthiness certification. The timing of that will be customer dependent, says Boeing. “If it is multiple nations then we’ll have a coalition or a partnership, and work through all the air-worthiness testing to get the pod certified,” the company adds. The company says wind-tunnel tests also indicate a negligible drag penalty for the installation.
