Sierra Nevada wins $13B contract to build Air Force ‘doomsday plane’

The Division of the Air Drive on Friday mentioned it awarded Sierra Nevada Corp. a $13 billion contract to exchange the service’s growing old E-4B Nightwatch “doomsday planes” that may fly throughout a nuclear conflict.

The corporate will develop and produce the Survivable Airborne Operations Heart, the identify for the plane that can succeed the E-4B, and is predicted to complete the work by July 10, 2036. The Air Drive is obligating $59 million in analysis, growth, check and analysis funds to Sierra Nevada to start out work on SAOC straight away.

“The event of this crucial nationwide safety weapon system ensures the division’s nuclear command, management, and communications functionality is operationally related and safe for many years to return,” an Air Drive spokesperson mentioned in an e-mail.

The E-4B, formally known as the Nationwide Airborne Operations Heart, is designed to permit the president to direct forces within the occasion of a nuclear conflict or different devastating emergency that destroys command-and-control facilities on the bottom. The Air Drive’s 4 E-4s have been flying for the reason that Nineteen Seventies and are approaching the top of their service lives.

Sierra Nevada’s contract to develop and produce SAOC will cowl the supply of engineering and manufacturing growth plane, manufacturing plane, related floor techniques, and interim contract help, the Pentagon’s contract announcement mentioned. The corporate will carry out work on SAOC in Englewood, Colorado; Sparks, Nevada; Beavercreek, Ohio; and Vandalia, Ohio.

The Air Drive mentioned Sierra Nevada will construct SAOC out of a hardened and modified model of a business by-product plane. And it’ll use a modular open system method to incorporate fashionable safe communication and planning capabilities.

SAOC’s floor help techniques will embrace trainers for aircrew, mission crew, and maintainers, in addition to floor help tools, check and sustainment system integration laboratories, and different techniques.

The contract consists of cost-plus-incentive-fee, fastened value incentive and cost-plus-fixed-fee parts, the Pentagon’s contract announcement mentioned.