In the
event of nuclear war, a powerful meteor strike or even a zombie apocalypse, the thoroughly
protected doomsday plane is ready to keep the president, secretary of
defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff and other key personnel in the air and out of
danger. It may not deflect a Twitter
photo scandal, but it can outrun a nuclear explosion and stay in the air for
days without refueling.
The flight team for the E-4B,
its military codename, sleeps nearby and is ready to scramble in five minutes.
It was mobilized in the tumultuous hours after planes crashed into the World
Trade Center, the Pentagon and southern Pennsylvania on 9/11.
"If the command centers that are on the ground in the
United States have a failure of some sort, or attack, we immediately get
airborne. We're on alert 24/7, 365," Captain W. Scott "Easy"
Ryder, Commander, NAOC, told ABC
News' Diane Sawyer as she traveled to Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the apocalypse-proof plane.
"Constantly there's at least one alert airplane waiting to get
airborne."
Watch "World News" tonight on ABC to learn more about
the Air Force's last line of defense.
All E-4B aircraft are assigned
to the 55th Wing, Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. The modified 747s can travel at
speeds up to 620 miles per hour, 40 miles per hour faster than their commercial
counterparts.
The $223 million aircraft is
outfitted with an electromagnetic pulse shield to protect its 165,000 pounds of
advanced electronics. Thermo-radiation shields also protect the plane in the
event of a nuclear strike.
A highly-trained security team
travels with the plane.
"The first people off of
the airplane are these guys, they'll position themselves appropriately around
the airplane," Ryder said to ABC News. "The secretary also has his
own small security staff that does similar things. So these guys are
predominately designed to protect our airplane, and the secretary's staff
protects him, as an individual."
Even though it carries VIPs,
their staff and security personnel, the plane is highly fuel efficient. The
plane can stay in-flight for days without refueling, a necessity if
circumstances demanded the plane's use by the nation's top officials.
A precision tech team mans the
sensitive electronic technology found on the plan. There is so much powerful
electrical equipment onboard a specially upgraded air-conditioning system is
necessary to keep it cool and functional.
"Give us the phone number
of anybody, anytime, anyplace, anywhere on earth, we can get a hold of
them," Master Sgt. Joe Stuart, US Air Force, told Diane Sawyer.
It can even communicate with
submerged submarines by dropping a five-mile-long cable out the back of the
plane. "[We] drop is down and [it] transmits coded message traffic to US
submarines," Ryder told ABC News.
Although the extreme amount of
survival technology on the plane more than makes up for it, the plane lacks the
amenities found in bases on the ground.
"It's like being
Fedexed," Gates told Sawyer. "It's fairly Spartan, with no windows or
anything."
Even the Secretary of Defense
only gets a tiny bathroom with a sink, but no shower. A small trade-off for
being able to board this plane as the rest of us dive for cover in a worst-case
scenario.
After third successful trial,
nuclear capable ballistic missile Agni IV ready for induction
Defence scientists claimed that Agni-IV, one of the nuclear
capable ballistic missiles in the long-range Agni series, is ready for
induction after successful trial from the Wheeler Island off the coast of
Odisha.
This was the third successful
trial in the row for the 4,000 km range missile which had met with failure
during the initial phase of development.
The DRDO statement said the
missile took off majestically and rose to a height of over 850 km and covered
the intended range in about 20 minutes, hitting the target with two digit
accuracy.
The missile is now ready for
deployment, said officials. A team of Strategic Forces Command, which would be
the eventual users, was also involved in the launch exercise.
The missile was fired from a road
mobile launcher which also has been developed by DRDO. The path was tracked by
long range radars and electro optical tracking systems placed along the coast.
The event of missile hitting the
target was witnessed by two ships located in the vicinity.
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