Poseidon

The P-8 may be generally described as a maritime patrol platform, but is more accurately a multi-mission type with extensive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. These are equally relevant for missions over land or over water. Even without any specific modifications, the P-8’s standard electronic support measures (ESM) suite allows it to act in an electronic intelligence (ELINT) collection role, specifically on enemy air defenses and electronic order of battles. This is something we will come back to later in this story.

As its main operator, the U.S. Navy has further adapted a handful of P-8s for specialized ISR, with modifications such as a secretive radar system, the AN/APS-154 Advanced Airborne Sensor, or AAS. Even without AAS, the U.S. Navy regularly uses P-8s to execute intelligence-gathering duties, specifically ELINT, outside of its sea control/anti-submarine warfare/anti-surface warfare tasks.

This is just part of the U.S. Navy’s extensive investments in further expanding the capabilities of its P-8s with new munitions, podded self-protection systems, and other improvements.

As for the Royal Air Force, however, the small fleet of just nine aircraft at Lossiemouth means that these have been primarily tasked with patrolling the North Atlantic, including the strategically vital Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom Gap, better known as the GIUK Gap. This includes defending against potential Russian aggression and tracking Russian submarine activity, which has been a growing area of concern for some time now, as well as protecting the U.K. Royal Navy’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) when they go out on deterrence patrol.

Indeed, the small size of the Royal Air Force P-8 fleet saw the United Kingdom discuss plans to team up with Norway to cooperate on Poseidon operations, and, in the future, Germany will be added to this group. This will provide a further boost to NATO’s ability to effectively patrol the North Atlantic.

As regards using its P-8s for overland ISR, the Royal Air Force has previously been lukewarm on this.

According to Gareth Jennings, the aviation desk editor at Janes, the Royal Air Force once planned to use the P-8 for overland surveillance, but shelved the idea due to the small number of aircraft being purchased

Whether the mission over Poland today signals some kind of change is unclear, but we have reached out to the U.K. Ministry of Defense and NATO to try and find out more about this flight.

Suffice it to say, activities in Kaliningrad and Belarus right now mean there are plenty of points of considerable interest to NATO.

Currently, the armed forces of Russia and Belarus are conducting the first iteration of their joint Zapad maneuvers since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Zapad drills — meaning ‘West’ — are widely seen as intimidation exercises directed against NATO’s eastern flank. Ahead of the exercise, Poland said it was deploying 40,000 troops along its borders with Belarus and Russia. Poland had previously closed most border crossings with Belarus, leaving only two in operation.

It’s also worth recalling that the Zapad-2021 exercise was used, in part, as cover for the westward movement of troops and equipment months before Moscow launched its all-out assault on Ukraine.

The scenario for Zapad-2025 involves an imagined Western invasion of Belarus. Although much smaller than in pre-2022 editions, the close coordination of Russian and Belarusian forces, including armor, crewed and uncrewed aircraft, air defense systems, and naval assets, provides an ideal opportunity for intelligence gathering.

While we cannot know for sure at this point, today’s P-8 flight would appear to be entirely in line with that kind of intelligence-gathering mission.

Elsewhere in Poland, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski reiterated that, while the drones that entered Poland last week were capable of carrying warheads, they were not loaded with explosives.

Increasingly, NATO leaders in Europe are seeing the Russian drone incursions as a deliberate, incremental escalation directed against NATO. This kind of approach is very much in line with an escalating campaign of hostile activities short of all-out war across Europe, of which Russia has been accused. The tempo of the operations has stepped up since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine. Even before then, Russia had a long history of so-called hybrid or gray-zone warfare operations that fit this same description.

The weekend saw another Russian drone incursion, this time in Romania and much smaller in scale than last week’s in Poland.

At least one Russian drone entered Romanian airspace at 6.05 p.m. local time on Saturday during a strike on neighboring Ukraine.

According to the Romanian Ministry of Defense, the drone was intercepted by two Romanian F-16s, which were carrying out an air patrol mission in northern Dobruja and which came close to downing it, after gaining both radar and visual contact.

The drone orbited for about 50 minutes, according to the defense ministry, before leaving Romanian airspace near the town of Pardina in northern Dobruja, heading toward Ukraine.

The Romanian foreign minister summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the incident, which also drew further condemnation from European Union leaders.

In a statement, the Romanian Ministry of Defense said that the various drone incursions in recent days “represent a new challenge to regional security and stability in the Black Sea area.”

Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “Russia’s incursion into Romanian airspace is once again a blatant violation of EU sovereignty and a serious threat to regional security.”

This morning, Russia attempted to deflect the blame, describing the drone incursion as “a provocation” by Kyiv, but providing no evidence to back this up.

The first additional NATO fighters have now arrived in Poland to help bolster air defenses on the alliance’s eastern flank. These are French Air and Space Force Rafales from Escadron de Chasse 2/4 “La Fayette,” which are now at Mińsk Mazowiecki Air Base in eastern Poland. While there has been some surprise in certain quarters that this is a unit with a nuclear tasking, it’s one of two units that have a nuclear mission alongside other roles, including air defense.

It’s also unclear what Russian aircraft was involved, although it is certainly a fighter from the Flanker series, perhaps a Su-35S, a type that has been noted flying such interception missions in the past.

What’s most notable about the video, however, is the extended antenna for the AN/APS-154 Advanced Airborne Sensor, or AAS, the elongated pod that is sometimes seen fitted under the P-8’s fuselage. As we have discussed in depth in the past, this is a powerful radar system that entered development in 2009 and began testing in 2014. This may even be the first time that the pod has been observed in the Black Sea. It’s also very rare to see the antenna extended, usually it is tucked tightly below the aircraft’s fuselage in its stowed position.

The footage provides an especially good and very rare view of how the pod is deployed in flight, using the Special Mission Pod Deployment Mechanism (SMPDM). By extending the pod well below the fuselage while in flight, the radar’s fields of view are no longer obstructed by the P-8’s two engines.

Details about the AAS pod and its capabilities remain strictly limited. We know that it was developed by Raytheon and that it is based around an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. This has a moving target indicator (MTI) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) functionality, making it suitable for tracking moving targets below at sea and on land. It is able to detect and make SAR imagery of ships at considerable distances and can also collect very high-quality radar imagery of objects of interest for further analysis, even at night and in poor weather.

In addition, the pod may well have secondary electronic warfare capabilities. You can read much more about this sensor and what it offers to the Navy’s Poseidon fleet here.

The Black Sea, with its combination of maritime activity and proximity to an intense ground war in Ukraine, is an ideal theater of operations for the AAS-equipped P-8.

As TWZ has observed in the past:

“The AAS is also specifically designed to work in littoral regions where it might have to scan both water and land areas simultaneously. Traditional surface search radars are typically optimized for one environment or the other, or have dedicated modes for each, and generally have difficulty covering both at the same time.”

Since before the full-scale Russian invasion, an armada of NATO intelligence-gathering aircraft has been patrolling over the Black Sea, as well as elsewhere in proximity to Russian and Ukrainian borders. RC-135 Rivet Joints and RQ-4 drones, to name just two, have long been staples in the airspace over the Black Sea.

As for the P-8, its value in the region, especially when equipped with the AAS pod, is obvious, providing the ability to monitor, with great acuity, various objects of interest, including moving ones, both in the water and on land.

Having the AAS-equipped P-8 in this area, combined with the aircraft’s existing electronic intelligence, networking and data-sharing capabilities, makes for a very powerful standoff targeting platform. Data can be fed to other assets in the air, at sea, or on land. It can detect ships moving from great distances, even small ones, and than ‘image’ them using its powerful radar. Detecting and cataloging enemy air defense emissions and radar mapping shore and inland targets is all in a day’s work for this highly unique aircraft.

The aircraft, outfitted in this way, also provides a partial replacement for the EP-3E Aeries II, which has now departed U.S. Navy service. The AN/APS-154 is also a direct successor to the equally secretive AN/APS-149 Littoral Surveillance Radar System, another podded Raytheon AESA radar that was carried by some P-3C Orions.

The latest encounter between a P-8 and a Russian Flanker seems to have passed without incident, although there is certainly a precedent for some more tense intercepts over the same waters.

In September 2022, a Russian Su-27 Flanker fighter fired an air-to-air missile toward a U.K. Royal Air Force RC-135W Rivet Joint over the Black Sea, although the details of exactly why that happened remain somewhat unclear.

According to one account, a Su-27 pilot misinterpreted an instruction from a radar operator on the ground and thought he had permission to fire on the RC-135. The Russian pilot achieved a missile lock on the British aircraft, then fired a missile that “did not launch properly.”

In March 2023, an encounter between a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drone and two Russian Su-27 fighters over the Black Sea resulted in the drone being lost. A video released by the Pentagon soon after seems to confirm that one of the Su-27s struck the drone’s propeller, although it remains unclear to what degree that action was deliberate or a misjudgment.

U.S. Department of Defense video showing part of the encounter between a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 and two Russian Su-27 fighter jets over the Black Sea on March 14, 2023, that resulted in the drone being lost:

The video of the P-8 being intercepted by a Russian fighter once again highlights the relatively intense activity by surveillance aircraft and the fighters that monitor them in some of the tensest skies in Europe.

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