P-3 Orion
ICAO P3The turboprop submarine hunter the P-8 replaced, still flying with a dozen navies. Live P-3 Orion positions.
Flying right now
Live · 30s
No P-3 Orion is transmitting ADS-B at the moment.
Military aircraft are not obliged to broadcast, so this happens regularly. The count refreshes every thirty seconds.
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Lockheed
- Role
- Maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare
- Class
- L4T — Landplane, 4 turboprop engines
- Crew
- 11
- First flight
- 25 November 1959
- In service
- 1962
Operators airborne
Nothing of this type is up right now.
About the P-3 Orion
For fifty years the P-3 was how the West hunted submarines. Built on the Lockheed Electra airliner, it carries eleven people, flies low over the sea for many hours, and drops the sonobuoy fields that make an underwater contact into a track.
The US Navy has largely moved to the P-8, but the type is far from gone. Canada flies it as the CP-140 Aurora, and Germany, Portugal, Greece, Chile, Brazil, New Zealand, Japan and others still operate it, in some cases with modern mission systems inside a 1960s airframe.
The long boom projecting from the tail is a magnetic anomaly detector — it senses the disturbance a steel submarine makes in the earth's magnetic field, which is why it has to be held as far from the aircraft's own metal as possible.
Callsign prefixes
- CFC
- Canforce — Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140
- GAF
- German Navy
- NAVY
- US Navy Orion flights
How to recognise it
- —Four turboprops on a low wing, with a long sting projecting straight back from the tail.
- —That tail boom is the single clearest identifier — no transport has one.
- —On the feed: low, slow and methodical over water, in patterns no airliner flies.
Common questions
+ What is the boom on the tail?
A magnetic anomaly detector. A submerged submarine distorts the earth's magnetic field slightly, and the sensor picks that up — but it has to be mounted far from the aircraft's own metal, hence the long boom.
+ Has the P-8 replaced the P-3?
For the US Navy, largely yes. Many other operators still fly the Orion, and Canada's CP-140 Aurora fleet has been modernised to keep flying into the 2030s.
+ Is the P-3 based on an airliner?
Yes, the Lockheed L-188 Electra. The fuselage was shortened and the structure reworked, but the lineage is visible in the wing and engine arrangement.