bikerthai wrote:Not sure if routine harbor patrol is the responsibility of NATO.
Anyway, I believe Norway has underwater sensors in their waterways. That was how they detected the sardines that they thought were Russian subs.
The US is developing a variety of underwater UAV and it is part of NATO. But I get your point. That tech is not yet mature.
bt
We are not taking about harbour patrol, we are talking about the North Sea or the Baltic Sea, the Irish Sea, the channel, the Bay of Biscay, and probably the whole Med. all those areas which need to be crossed by shipping to reach ports in Europe and where a larger number of smaller planes would offer more capability than a small number of larger planes, if you look at the available fleets in NATO. NATO has/will have plenty P-8s to patrol around Greenland or Iceland, but nearly no small MPAs to patrol the North Sea and the Baltic. (except the small Polish An-28s) And if you use P-8s for the mission, you can not use them around Greenland or Iceland, so in the end it is a zero sum game if you look at capabilities.