Free Republic

America’s doomsday planes are in the air following news that the nation’s commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump, has COVID-19. Two US Navy E-6B Mercury nuclear war command posts were observed in flight this afternoon, one on each coast of the United States. They were initiating the “Take Charge and Move Out” (TACAMO) defence protocol – essentially dispersing the command and communications facilities needed to control the US nuclear arsenal. These aircraft are activated by the Pentagon when it is deemed necessary to communicate with the US Navy’s secretive nuclear missile submarines, stealth bombers and missile silos.

Not only were they among the last Boeing 707 derivatives ever built, but they are also packed full of EMP hardened systems and highly skilled crews that would literally hold the world as we know it in their hands during a major crisis. Although advanced and highly secure satellite communications and line-of-sight data-links are critical parts of their capability set, a far more cumbersome system is used to talk to ballistic missile submarines hiding deep below the waves. The deployment of this fascinating capability was caught today by a plane tracker that was monitoring an E-6B operating off the coast...

A routine training flight by the U.S. Navy’s E-6B Mercury “doomsday plane” captured the attention of sky-watchers this week in Colorado. The four-engine command-and-control plane based on Boeing Co.’s 707 airliner on Wednesday took off from Travis Air Force Base in California and circled over Denver before continuing on to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. It was apparently the hour-long racetrack holding pattern that turned the heads. “Did you see this today?” a newscaster at the KMGH, the local ABC affiliate, asked during a broadcast. “There was this plane just circling the metro, circling and circling, and many of...