The Air Force's E-4B "Nightwatch," the airborne command post built to run a nuclear war, took off from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska on Thursday and flew east across the Midwest on a mission nobody has explained.
A rendering of an E-4C Survivable Airborne Operations Center. Credit: Sierra Nevada Corp.Flight-tracking data reviewed by the Daily Mail shows the jet crossing Illinois and Indiana into Ohio, where it was tracked at about 2:41 p.m. Eastern at 31,000 feet and a ground speed of 573 knots, roughly 660 mph. It then turned south over northern Virginia, west of Washington. The tracking images listed no destination, and the route alone does not show where it was headed or why. The purpose of the flight and the identities of anyone aboard have not been publicly confirmed, the Mail reported.
The E-4B is the National Airborne Operations Center: a modified Boeing 747-200 meant to let the president and senior military leaders direct U.S. forces, nuclear forces included, if ground command centers are destroyed. The Air Force flies four, all based at Offutt, and the Mail noted that one is kept ready around the clock when the president is in the country.
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