Last week the United States Air Force sent four B-52 Stratofortress nuclear bombers to Europe. Now it has become known that an E-6B Mercury doomsday plane has landed in Iceland.
What is known
The arrival of the aircraft in Iceland was announced by the US Air Force European Command on Twitter. The service account notes that the E-6B Mercury performs activities within the command’s area of responsibility.
The doomsday aircraft is designed to communicate with strategic nuclear missile cruisers, which are carriers of intercontinental ballistic missiles. We are talking about Ohio-class submarines.
Each submarine can carry up to 24 Trident II D5 missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The maximum launch range is 11,300 km, and the thermonuclear charge yield is 475 kilotons. Instead of Trident II D5, Ohio submarines can carry 154 BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of up to 2500 km.
The E-6B Mercury doomsday aircraft is a modification of the Boeing 707-320 passenger airliner. It can reach speeds of 981 km / h with a cruising speed of 842 km / h and is capable of climbing to a height of up to 12.8 km. The practical range is 11,760 km.
The E-6B Mercury is equipped with an automated ICBM launch control system. For communication with missile cruisers in the ultra-long-wave range, additional antennas are provided, which are released from the aircraft fuselage.
Source: @US_EUCOM
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