...about our government making really stupid military procurement decisions. They can weaken our fighting ability, endanger our forces, and waste financial resources. The latter can cause a whole new spiral of degraded war-fighting ability. To my mind, the F-35 'Brewster Buffalo II' (aka Joint Strike Fighter) is the very worst example of this sort of disaster. (don't get me started, that deserves a whole new thread)

I am a big fan of Wikipedia, and not one of those who dismiss it due to it's open source nature. It is what it is, a launch platform in the search for further information. I've noticed that most wiki pages dealing with technical subjects, evolve over time and tend to get cleaned up by the thousands of viewers they attract. Errors are challenged, and corrected, references added, and you generally wind up with a pretty good resource to begin your quest for further knowledge. Like I said, I'm a big fan. I quote from it here, all the time.

That said, the P8 Poseidon wiki page you linked to, is a little misleading on the subject of range. Not your fault.

It gave you the impression that “the total range for the P-8 is 1200 nmi”. That figure is not quite right.

The 1200 nm, is the Combat Radius and that means the P8 can take off from base, fly 1200 nm to it's patrol location, remain on station for 4 hours, then turn around and fly 1200 nm home.

This link from the Royal Australian Air Force gives even more information on that.

But all of that is just about Internal Fuel. (Various P8 versions have 3 to 6 additional fuselage mounted internal fuel taks, with room for expansion)

The real range of the P8 is limited by crew endurance, and lubricating oil for the turbine bearings.

That's because it is designed to be refueled by a fleet of boom equiped aerial tankers, and can stay aloft almost indefinitely. It has 3 pilots as part of it's regular flight crew, (Pilot, co-pilot, and 1 relief pilot) and a crew sleep station, just for that reason.

The airframe has also been re-engineered for low altitude, high maneuverability performance.