Next-generation ‘doomsday planes’ move closer to reality

The E-4B “Nightwatch” is the aircraft the United States never wants to use: a militarized Boeing 747-200 that can turn into a mobile command-and-control for the president and senior military officials if the country comes under nuclear attack.

The U.S. has four of these Cold War-era “doomsday planes,” and they’re finally getting an upgrade. In August, the next-generation aircraft began flight tests, according to Sierra Nevada Corp., the Sparks, Nevada-based firm that won the $13 billion contract last year to replace the aging E-4Bs by 2036.

The E-4Bs and their eventual E-4C replacements are intended to ensure political continuity if a nuclear bomb or other catastrophe wipes out U.S. ground command and control.

Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University, said that since the dawn of the atomic age, “the priority was on preserving civilian control of the decision to use nuclear weapons — which, in the U.S. context, meant preserving the president’s control.”

That promise serves as a pillar of credible nuclear deterrence. As Feaver described it, if an adversary believes it could strike the U.S. fast enough to decapitate its leadership and render its nuclear arsenal impotent, that might incentivize a foe to try it during a conflict. The E-4 fleet makes that a riskier gamble.

“You only want it in the worst-case scenario,” Feaver said. “But you really want it in that worst-case scenario.”

While the “doomsday planes” are a niche program with only a few aircraft, they’re critically important to America’s national security. Similar to Air Force One, the E-4C is modified from existing planes — in this case, a retired passenger jet becomes a command center capable of surviving a nuclear crisis.

For SNC, the program marks a leap forward. “This is a lot of real estate to be dealing with, a lot of complexity, so it’s going to be a real test of their ability to stretch upward,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, about the contractor.

The “highly survivable” doomsday planes

The technical and operational details of the program are highly classified, but the E-4Bs are built to be “highly survivable,” according to the Air Force. Each is a “four-engine, swept-wing, long-range- high-altitude airplane capable of refueling in flight.” They’re protected against electromagnetic pulse and “other nuclear and thermal effects,” and outfitted with advanced communication technology so the president could securely give orders and run the country from the skies.

The fleet is stationed at Offutt Air Base in Nebraska, although at least one E-4B is on alert around the clock. The defense secretary can travel on an E-4B for foreign trips, and, since the 1990s, the planes are sometimes used to support emergency relief efforts in the U.S., such as hurricanes or other natural disasters.

The original E-4A first flew in June 1973 and became operational in 1974, at the height of the Cold War and nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union. President Jimmy Carter in 1977 became the first president to hitch a ride on one of these planes, traveling from Washington, D.C., to his home in Georgia as part of a demonstration flight.

Carter said he hoped the plane would never have to be used. “It is a relization [sic] of what might occur unless we do assure peaceful relationships with other nations, and the constant, escalating nuclear capability is one that I accept as a major part of my responsibility as President,” Carter told reporters at the time, according to the Washington Post.

The Air Force later upgraded to the E-4B, the first of which was delivered in 1980. The rest of the fleet was converted by 1985.

The end of the Cold War reduced the prospect of that “worst-case scenario,” and the U.S. deprioritized its nuclear arsenal, focusing on maintaining rather than upgrading or replacing infrastructure. That included the doomsday planes, a relatively small program that competed with other funding priorities.

But as the global war on terror wound down and the U.S. began to focus on great-power competition with peer adversaries, such as Russia and China, policymakers also recognized the need to upgrade its nuclear program, including nuclear command, control and communications. The U.S. is now undergoing a multibillion-dollar nuclear modernization through the 2040s.

The E-4C upgrade fits into this larger strategic effort. “It is yet another example in a broader set of   strategic tradeoffs, but we need to plow through,” said a former defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the E-4 program.

Indeed, the E-4B is “rapidly reaching the end of its service life,” according to the Pentagon. The planes rely on old parts that are hard to maintain and even more difficult to replace. This is not a new concern; more than a decade ago, Congress reported the Air Force had informed lawmakers of “several abortive attempts to initiate a replacement program for the aging E4-B fleet, as well as the increasingly difficult and costly efforts to sustain and recapitalize E4-B systems.” In 2019, the Department of Defense had to decrease their use for the secretary’s foreign trips because of the increased wear and tear on the very old aircraft.

The U.S. will still rely on these E-4Bs through this decade and into the next — July 2036 is the target for the E-4Cs to enter service.

SNC’s task ahead

In April 2024, the Air Force awarded SNC the $13 billion deal, reporting that it received two offers for the program. Reuters reported in late 2023 that Boeing had been eliminated from the program.

“Airborne command-control is a sweet spot for Sierra Nevada, and they’ve been doing stuff in the spooky world for a long time, so it was a great win for them,” said Jerry McGinn, director of the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The company acquired five retired Boeing 747-8i jets from Korean Air, which SNC confirmed last year will be part of the E-4C program.

SNC conducted its first risk reduction flight tests in Ohio in August, which it said was intended to manage risks and avoid issues in later stages of development. “These flights will continue through the design phase, building momentum toward establishing the technical design baseline for the modernized E-4C fleet,” Brady Hauboldt, vice president of aviation strategy at SNC, said in a statement. SNC said ground and flight testing will continue through 2026 in Dayton, Ohio, and Wichita, Kansas.

The Pentagon initially obligated $59 million to start research, development, test and evaluation at the time of the contract. The $13 billion contract covers development and production of the Survivable Airborne Operations Center Weapon System, including the delivery and manufacturing of development aircraft, associated ground systems and production aircraft as well as interim contract support. The proposed fiscal year 2026 defense budget sets aside $1.8 billion for the E-4Cs, up about $217 million from the previous year’s funding.

Modification work is big business, Aboulafia said, and if SNC succeeds in this space, “it means a new and more capable competitor.”

McGinn said it’s only one year into the contract, so it is hard to judge the progress so far. “It’s only when you start getting into some of these intermediate steps in the program, we can start getting on a sense of, ‘OK, they’re on track, or they’re not on track,” he said.