17 March 2023
The completion of the first depot maintenance on Air Force’s P-8A Poseidon at RAAF Base Edinburgh in South Australia recently has been hailed as a showcase of Australian industry’s technical prowess.
Following rapid hangar modifications to accommodate the P-8A airframe, RAAF’s first P-8A aircraft was inducted into the heaviest servicing program in August last year.
The Boeing Defence Australia (BDA) depot team worked with P-8A ‘Through Life Support Enterprise’ partners over 12 months to prepare all aspects of the project. This included rehearsing and optimising critical depot maintenance events in the state-of-the-art P-8A technical training centre.
BDA P-8A Program Manager David Kleinitz said the organisation had worked with Air Force’s 92 Wing, the Surveillance and Response Systems Program Office and industry partner Airbus to deliver P-8A sustainment services since its introduction into service in 2016.
“The addition of depot maintenance to our current through-life support program enhances our regional capability to perform future upgrades and complex sustainment services for the life of the fleet,” Mr Kleinitz said.
The BDA team expended about 8000 hours of labour in completing more than 860 maintenance tasks, including the removing hail damage suffered during a major storm in 2021.
All work was completed using bespoke work stands provided by Victorian manufacturing company Air Fab.
Officer Commanding 92 Wing Group Captain Paul Carpenter said the addition of local depot maintenance know-how added to the wing’s capability by increasing P-8 fleet availability and enhancing technical skillsets in the Edinburgh precinct.
