Last week the UK and Germany signed the Trinity House Agreement – “a commitment to improve and enhance bilateral defence co-operation between the Ministry of Defence of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
The centrepiece of this is the announcement that German P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft will occasionally operate from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland. This is good news for reasons I will make clear, although it is not strictly new news – they have been doing so for some time. But this formalises the arrangement and anything that improves the efficiency with which key assets like this can be used is indeed good news.
The Poseidon, made in America by Boeing, is based on a 737 airliner airframe and as such it is long ranging, able to roam far out over the ocean for long periods of time (for an aircraft, anyway). Like other maritime patrol planes it can do various things but its headline capability is submarine hunting.
British P-8s are the long-awaited replacement for the Nimrod MR2, our previous maritime patrol craft, which was based on the long defunct De Havilland Comet airliner. In the 90s and the noughties we attempted to rebuild and modernise some of these planes to the MRA4 standard – with new combat computer architecture by Boeing, engines from Germany and weapons from America.
Last week the UK and Germany signed the Trinity House Agreement – “a commitment to improve and enhance bilateral defence co-operation between the Ministry of Defence of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
The centrepiece of this is the announcement that German P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft will occasionally operate from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland. This is good news for reasons I will make clear, although it is not strictly new news – they have been doing so for some time. But this formalises the arrangement and anything that improves the efficiency with which key assets like this can be used is indeed good news.
The Poseidon, made in America by Boeing, is based on a 737 airliner airframe and as such it is long ranging, able to roam far out over the ocean for long periods of time (for an aircraft, anyway). Like other maritime patrol planes it can do various things but its headline capability is submarine hunting.
British P-8s are the long-awaited replacement for the Nimrod MR2, our previous maritime patrol craft, which was based on the long defunct De Havilland Comet airliner. In the 90s and the noughties we attempted to rebuild and modernise some of these planes to the MRA4 standard – with new combat computer architecture by Boeing, engines from Germany and weapons from America.