U.S. Airborne Command Post E-6 Mercuries Operational Off East and West Coasts
October 2nd, 2020In case you’re not familiar with the E-6:
Via: Forbes:
U.S. president Donald Trump tested positive for the novel-coronavirus on Friday morning. Shortly before the news broke, the U.S. Navy’s doomsday planes launched on both American coasts.
The E-6B Mercury is one of the Pentagon’s airborne nuclear command posts. The four-engine planes—derivatives of the Boeing 707 airliner—carry special communication systems and crews for commanding the Navy’s Ohio-class nuclear ballistic-missile submarines.
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In an atomic war, the E-6s would relay directions to the Ohio boomers, helping the boats’ crews to target enemy cities and military bases with nuclear-tipped Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs.
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Hogan tracked the E-6s on public software that registers airplanes’ radio transponders. Military planes often switch off their transponders in order to avoid being tracked. If a military jet’s transponders are on, it’s because their crews want to be seen.
In the case of the E-6s, “it’s a message to the small group of adversaries with SLBMs and ICBMs,” Hogan noted. The Pentagon apparently wants atomic-armed rivals of the United States—Russia, China and North Korea—to know that America’s nuclear command system is intact, even if the commander-in-chief might be sick.
Related: The President Contracting COVID-19 Is A Major National Security Crisis
