Congress is looking to press the U.S. Air Force to provide details of its place to maintain the Airborne Command Post (ABNCP) capability — better known as Looking Glass — including the possibility of hosting it on a platform based on the Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 cargo plane. The ABNCP mission involves the relaying of orders to Air Force nuclear-capable bombers and silo-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. Currently, it is fulfilled by the Navy’s E-6B Mercury fleet, which supports both ABNCP and the broadly similar Take Charge And Move Out (TACAMO) mission, which relays orders to Navy Ohio class nuclear ballistic missile submarines. Between them, aircraft fulfilling these two missions are commonly called ‘Doomsday planes.’
As it now stands, the Boeing 707-based E-6B is slated to be replaced by the E-130J aircraft, which Northrop Grumman will modify from C-130J-30s. A rendering of an E-130J appears at the top of this story.
It is important to note here that the current plan is for the E-130J to supplant the E-6B only when it comes to the TACAMO mission. How the Air Force will continue to meet its Looking Glass mission requirements is not entirely clear, though its future fleet of Boeing 747-based E-4C Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) might help meet those needs, at least to a degree. The E-4C — and the E-4B Nightwatch aircraft it is set to replace — are also ‘doomsday planes,’ but are configured to act as much more robust flying command centers than the E-6Bs.
The latest version of the defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for the 2026 Fiscal Year, was released late yesterday by the House Armed Services Committee. The draft legislation reflects the results of extensive negotiations with its Senate counterparts. Different versions of the Fiscal Year 2026 NDAA from the House and Senate had to be aligned before it could be put to a vote, which could happen as early as this week.
The draft legislation includes a section outlining a “limitation on availability of funds pending [a] report on acquisition strategy for [the] Airborne Command Post Capability.”
The report appears to be required with a degree of urgency.
Under the relevant section of the proposed legislation, the House Armed Services Committee says that the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force will be permitted to spend only 80 percent of the allocated funds for travel expenses in fiscal year 2026, with the remainder withheld until the report is submitted. This is an unusual measure, but it does happen from time to time, and is an indicator of how forceful Congress is being on this.
As for the concerns about the future of the ABNCP, the questions that the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force (together with the Commander of the United States Strategic Command) needs to answer are twofold.
First, the draft bill seeks information on the potential for expanding production of the C-130J-30 Super Hercules “to provide additional airframes to preserve the Airborne Command Post capability.” The C-130J-30 subvariant, which is in common use around the globe, has a longer fuselage than the baseline type.
This indicates that, in the future, the ABNCP mission may be handled by specially modified C-130J aircraft, mirroring the Navy’s approach with the E-130J.
Second, NDAA calls for “an outline of the future relationship of the Airborne Command Post capability with the Secondary Launch Platform–Airborne effort.”
Secondary Launch Capability is the name for the command-and-control architecture that is planned to replace the existing Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS), currently installed onboard the E-6B. ALCS was tested on an E-4B Nightwatch aircraft, but the decision was ultimately made not to install it on these aircraft.
ALCS provides a survivable alternate capability for launching the Minuteman III, connecting the E-6Bs with the missile fields as well as with the United States Strategic Command, Vandenberg Space Force Base, Hill Air Force Base, and other key nodes. In the future, the Secondary Launch Capability will also carry out this mission for the Minuteman III’s replacement, the LGM-35A Sentinel.
When the Secondary Launch Platform–Airborne (SLP-A) entered development, back in 2020, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center told Aviation Week that the aircraft that will host the system “has not been determined at this time.” The spokeswoman added: “The SLP-A will be adaptable and modular to accommodate future airborne platform(s).”
The inclusion of these questions in the latest version of the defense policy bill is indicative of the fact that, so far, there has been no public description of a detailed plan for ABNCP after the E-6.
It is unclear when the E-130J might begin to enter service. In the past, Navy budget documents have laid out plans to order three of the aircraft in Fiscal Year 2027 and six more in Fiscal Year 2028.
It’s also worth noting that, earlier this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) called into question the viability of using the C-130J as the basis for the Navy’s new TACAMO plane, something you can read about here.
Also of note here is the fact that, before the E-6 entered service, the Navy operated EC-130Q TACAMO aircraft based on the older C-130H variant of the Hercules. Those aircraft were not configured to perform the Looking Glass mission. It was only the arrival of upgraded E-6Bs in the 1990s that led to the consolidation of those two mission sets on a single aircraft.
Previously, it had appeared that the future of the Looking Glass mission might lie in other aircraft, like the Boeing 747-based E-4C Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) jets that the Air Force is now in the process of acquiring. The fact that five airframes have been earmarked for the E-4C program, compared to the four E-4Bs that they will replace, was taken by some as evidence that the new aircraft would take on an expanded role, including Looking Glass. The fleet of E-4Cs could also be expanded to as many as ten aircraft, as well. Having E-4Cs take on some of the Looking Glass mission could still turn out to be the case, perhaps augmenting a fleet of specially adapted and far more efficient C-130s. With much of the development working being already paid for by the Navy for its very similar and nuclear-hardened EC-130, the USAF could piggyback onto that effort with its Looking Glass variant.
Either way, it’s certainly significant that there is now serious thought being given to migrating the ABNCP mission onto a C-130-based platform, especially with the Hercules never having hosted it in the past.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com