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Air Force One is well known as the plane that carries the U.S. President. Much less publicized is the U.S. Air Force E-4B, intended to carry the U.S. Secretary of Defense and other federal officials in case of a nuclear attack. The E-4B is a heavily modified Boeing 747 known as the “doomsday plane.” It stands six stories high, is powered by four huge engines and is able to endure the immediate aftermath of a nuclear explosion. It is considered to be a “backup Pentagon”. There are four identical copies of the E-4B, one of which is ready to fly twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. The four E-4Bs are operated by the 1st Airborne Command and Control Squadron of the 595th Command and Control Group located at Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska.
The E-4B is also known as the National Airborne Operations Center. The plane is basically a flying command center. The Secretary of Defense has access to all unclassified and classified communication systems and is never out of touch with the national defense command systems. There is a big hump on the top of the E-4B which is called the “ray dome.” It contains sixty-seven satellite dishes and antennas. The dome is one component of the E-4B communication system that gives the Secretary of Defense the ability to make contact with U.S. ships, submarines, aircraft and landlines anywhere around the globe.
The E-4B has huge fuel tanks and can refuel in flight which will allow it to stay in the air for up to a week if necessary. The plane has three decks and can carry up to one hundred and twelve people. It contains eighteen bunks, six bathrooms, a galley, briefing room, conference room, battle staff work area and executive quarters. The E-4B is built for utility and is almost windowless. The plane’s electronics and flight instruments are antiquated.
A crew member explained that “It’s a common misconception, but this plane doesn’t have digital touch screens in the cockpit or elsewhere. The conditions that this plane is meant to fly in call for analog, since digital tech would fry during a nuclear war.” The analog technology on the E-4B is not as vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse following a nuclear blast as is digital technology. The E-4B has state of the art direct fire countermeasures.
In January of 2006, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that the entire E-4B fleet was going to be retired starting in 2009. This was reduced to retiring one of the E-4B planes in early 2009. This order was reversed in 2-007 by the new Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. This action was taken with the cancellation of the E-10 MC2A program which was going to replace the E-8 series. The 2015 budget contained no plan to retire the E-4Bs. Since then, it has been announced that the end of the service life of the current fleet of E-4B will be sometime in 2039.