Interesting reading on the P8
Analysis: OT&E Report Details Systemic Failures in US Weapon Testing
P-8A Poseidon: Not Mission Effective, But in Full-Scale Production
What is Gilmore’s “specific example?” He told the JCS Vice Chairman that “the P-8A Multi-Mission Maritime Patrol Aircraft could be fully compliant with all Key Performance Parameter (KPP) and Key System Attribute (KSA) threshold requirements, and nonetheless possess significant shortfalls in mission effectiveness.”
He also added that “The P-8 requirements define supporting system characteristics or attributes that are necessary, but not nearly sufficient, to ensure mission effectiveness.”
In an extreme case, he continues, “the contractor could deliver an aircraft that meets all the KPPs but has no mission capability whatsoever. Such an airplane would only have to be designed to be reliable, equipped with self-protection features and radios, and capable of transporting weapons and sonobuoys across the specified distances, but would not actually have to have the ability to successfully find and sink threat submarines in an Anti-Submarine Warfare mission (its primary mission).”
So how did the Joint Chiefs and the US Navy react to the “specific example” of the P-8A, which Gilmore concluded “is not effective for the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission, and is not effective for wide area anti-submarine search?”
They must be taking lessons from the UK.