The Portuguese air force’s ability to conduct maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare duties is to be significantly enhanced via its ongoing acquisition of additional used Lockheed Martin P-3C Orion airframes, a service official says.
Lisbon has purchased six surplus P-3Cs, along with a major package of spares and a simulator from Germany, whose navy will start replacing the veteran type with a new fleet of Boeing P-8A Poseidons from later this year.
“We are already modernising the five [P-3C] aircraft that we had before, in Canada,” notes Major General Joao Nogueira, director of the Portuguese air force’s weapon systems maintenance directorate. Being performed by General Dynamics Canada, that work mainly covers the integration of a Link 16 data link and Mode 5 interrogation friend or foe capability, along with updates to some other equipment.
Nogueira describes the spares package being acquired from Berlin as “quite impressive”, and as enabling Portugal to continue flying the aircraft for a long period.
“It was a good opportunity for us to maintain and also increase the size of the fleet,” he told journalists at the air force’s Lisbon headquarters on 26 March.
“We have already received four [ex-German] aircraft, and the last two are coming at the end of this year. For sure it will put us in a different level of availability with the P-3 fleet.
“The P-3 for Portugal is very relevant – we have a huge ocean to surveil in front of us, but also we want to be relevant, especially with NATO,” he says. As an example, the service is due deploy the aircraft overseas next month in support of a commitment to the Western military alliance.
“We want to maintain the platform’s relevance for those missions,” he says. “With the spares that we have bought, I think we will be in a good condition to sustain the fleet.”
Operated from Beja air base, the Portuguese air force’s P-3Cs are flown by its 601 Sqn. Aviation analytics company Cirium records its in-service examples as having been in operational use for up to 42 years, and originally flown by the Royal Netherlands Navy.
