Pakistan gets P-3C Orion

ISLAMABAD—Pakistan Navy got the first US made Orion aircraft ahead of schedule, officials said. Pakistan will get eight P-3C Orion aircraft as part of a US military assistance package till 2009. The price tag for the jets and upgrades is around USD 970 million, they added.
This is an improvement in command-and-control capabilities as the Navy has until recently been flying three far less capable Atlantique maritime patrol aircraft and five Fokker F-27-200/400 aircraft, said a naval official.
Earlier Navy had three aircraft, one was lost while rest of the two were grounded but later remaining planes began getting upgrades. At that time, Navy was planning to buy eight older P-3B aircraft but subsequently placed an order for eight P-3C aircraft, as well as a number of other weapons systems.
The contract also includes upgrades to aircraft communications and avionics systems, plus training device assets, support and test equipment, engineering technical services, supply support, operations and maintenance training, and logistics.
As part of the deal, the P-3Cs would be upgraded to the Update
III Anti-Surface Warfare Improvement Program (AIP) and Block Modification Upgrade Program (BMUP) standards. The P-3C Update III AIP provide the capability of carrying the Maverick infrared-guided missile; the AN/AAS-36A infrared detection set; the AN/AVX-1 electro-optical sensor system; the AN/APS-137B(V)5 synthetic-aperture radar (SAR), which also has an inverse-SAR mode; the EP-2060 pulse analyzer; colour high-resolution displays; the Over-the-Horizon Airborne Sensor Information System (OASIS) III, and the OZ-72(V) Multimission Advanced Tactical Terminal (MATT) system. For self-protection, the AIP standard includes the AN/AAR-47 missile-warning system; the AN/ALE-47 countermeasures dispenser; and the AN/ALR-66C(V)3 electronic-support-measures system.—INP