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P-8A Poseidon I3B2: Navy Buys $119.7M Upgrade Kits

The Navy awarded Boeing a $119.7 million modification for nine more P-8A Increment 3 Block 2 retrofit kits for U.S. and Australian Poseidons.

ByPeter
Gray unmarked maritime patrol jet flying over open ocean under a cloudy sky, no markings or flags
AI-generated illustration

The U.S. Navy has ordered another tranche of Increment 3 Block 2 upgrades for the Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. According to the Department of War’s contracts announcement for 4 November 2026, as republished by TheFly/TipRanks and detailed by Defense WarRoom, Boeing received a $119,654,234 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification (P00001) to order N0001926F1095 under basic ordering agreement N0001926G1002.

The modification exercises options for nine more retrofit A-kits that incorporate Increment 3 Block 2 (I3B2) Engineering Change Proposal 6: seven for Navy P-8As and two for Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) P-8As. It also funds installation of four retrofit A-kits and associated government-furnished B-kits on Navy aircraft. A [DefenseHub mirror of the same announcement]({DH}) quotes the same dollar figure and contract numbers.

The award builds on a June 2026 order under the same BOA that covered nine A-kits (six Navy, three RAAF), three Navy installations, and non-recurring engineering for diminishing manufacturing sources, Defense WarRoom reported. With this modification, the order totals 18 A-kits — 13 for the Navy and five for the RAAF — plus seven Navy installations. Work is expected to finish in May 2030.

Gray unmarked maritime patrol jet flying over open ocean under a cloudy sky, no markings or flags
AI-generated illustration

What Increment 3 Block 2 adds

Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) announced on 24 April 2026 that the Navy had declared Initial Operational Capability for P-8A Increment 3 Block 2 after the initial phase of Initial Operational Test by Air Test and Evaluation Squadron One (VX-1), with support from the Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft Program Office (PMA-290).

According to that NAVAIR release, I3B2 upgrades the airframe and avionics with new airframe racks, a radome, antennas, sensors and wiring, and adds a combat systems suite with improved computer processing, a higher security architecture, wideband satellite communications, an anti-submarine warfare signals intelligence capability, a track management system, and additional communications and acoustics systems. Rear Adm. Michael Wosje, Director of Air Warfare (OPNAV N98), said in the release that the modifications enhance maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting — “the eyes of the Fleet.”

Defense WarRoom, citing program documentation and the Navy’s description, explains the A-kit/B-kit split: A-kits are the permanent airframe provisions Boeing installs; B-kits are the mission equipment the Navy procures separately and furnishes to the installer. The same report describes ECP 6 as the combat-system architecture upgrade (higher-than-Secret processing, Minotaur track management, wideband SATCOM), with a follow-on ECP 7 aimed at enhanced multistatic active coherent sonobuoy processing.

The U.S. Navy Fact File describes the P-8A as the service’s multi-mission maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft for anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, ISR and humanitarian response. NAVAIR’s product page lists a crew of nine, two CFM56-7B engines, a 129.5-foot length, a 123.6-foot wingspan and a maximum gross takeoff weight of 189,200 pounds, with armament listed as torpedoes and cruise missiles.

Where the work happens and who pays

Per the November contracts text as reported by Defense WarRoom and TheFly, Boeing will perform 79.6% of the work in Jacksonville, Florida; 10.9% in St. Louis, Missouri; and 9.5% in Mesa, Arizona. Jacksonville hosts Boeing’s maintenance, repair and overhaul hangar at Cecil Airport. USNI News, summarizing NAVAIR, reported that the Navy sent its first P-8A for I3B2 modification in March 2024 and that work there finished in June 2025; Defense WarRoom gives the induction date as 27 March 2024.

Funding at award is $110,156,192 in fiscal 2027 Navy aircraft procurement (APN) funds and $9,498,042 in RAAF cooperative partner funds, according to those same reports of the Pentagon announcement. The modification was not competitively procured. Naval Air Systems Command is the contracting activity.

Australia is the first international P-8A customer committed to Increment 3 Block 2 modifications, USNI News reported. Its first aircraft entered modification in Jacksonville in October 2025; a second is to be upgraded in the United States while remaining RAAF aircraft are planned for upgrade in Australia. This modification buys RAAF kits but no RAAF installations, consistent with that in-country path. The announcement does not disclose a unit cost per kit or per installation.

Key specs

ItemFigure (source)
Modification value$119,654,234 CPFF (DoW contracts Nov. 4, 2026 via TipRanks / Defense WarRoom)
New A-kits in this mod9 (7 Navy, 2 RAAF) with I3B2 ECP 6 (DoW contracts)
Navy installations in this mod4 A-kits + GFE B-kits (DoW contracts)
Order totals after this mod18 A-kits (13 Navy / 5 RAAF); 7 Navy installs (Defense WarRoom)
Work shareJacksonville 79.6%; St. Louis 10.9%; Mesa 9.5% (DoW contracts)
CompletionMay 2030 (DoW contracts)
Funding at awardFY27 APN $110,156,192; RAAF coop $9,498,042 (DoW contracts)
I3B2 IOCDeclared Apr. 24, 2026 after VX-1 testing (NAVAIR)
P-8A crew / MTOWNine; 189,200 lb (Navy Fact File / NAVAIR)

Why it matters

Analysis, based on the sources cited in this article:

I3B2 is already past IOC; this award is about fleet density, not a first fielding. Seven Navy installations funded through May 2030, against a turnaround Defense WarRoom says NAVAIR has estimated at more than six to eight months per aircraft in a July 2026 sources-sought notice, implies a mixed-configuration P-8A fleet for years. Throughput, not the headline dollar figure, is the binding constraint on how fast the upgraded combat system reaches the squadrons that hunt submarines.

Australian co-funding keeps U.S. and RAAF airframes on a common sensor and software baseline. That matters for combined anti-submarine operations across the Indo-Pacific, including approaches to the Taiwan Strait and the waters inside the First Island Chain, where P-8As cue surface combatants and, potentially, systems such as NMESIS. The same logic ties maritime patrol denser networking to the Navy’s broader undersea and surface modernization, from Virginia-class attack submarines to unmanned surface vessels.

What the public record still does not show is how many fleet aircraft have completed I3B2 modification to date, or the unit cost of a kit versus an install. Until those numbers appear in budget justification books or a later contracts release, the $119.7 million figure should be read as a tranche size, not a per-aircraft price.

What to watch: further option exercises on N0001926F1095; any installation award from NAVAIR’s sources-sought effort; the pace of RAAF inductions in Australia; and whether FY2027 budget documents state how many Navy P-8As will fly the I3B2 baseline by year.

Sources

Additional sources

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