In reply to Ridge:
Perhaps the P8 is just a stop-gap. My feeling is that this kind of role is very much going to be the preserve of drones in the reasonably near future, and probably already should be. They do seem far better suited for the task in terms of endurance, bang for the buck, quantity, not to mention that a drone could probably be launched and recovered from something even smaller than a helicopter carrier if necessary - no more long commutes out to the patrol zone, by which point the Oscar has chugged off somewhere new. Certainly the days of needing the man in headphones to be sitting in front of a screen physically orbiting a patch of ocean must be long gone.
Hard to say how the crews will feel about that. What is more enticing for recruitment? A porta-cabin on an RAF or Naval base somewhere in middle England? Or the promise of 13 hours in the air, bouncing around in the murk, looking at an endless expanse of ocean (or more likely in a darkened fuselage looking at a monitor)? Thinking of their most recent public outing in the search for the Malaysian Airlines flight, perhaps a few dozen drones would have been better than all the P3s and P8s. Anyway...digressing.