Air Force breaks silence on 'Doomsday plane' flight that sparked US bombing fears
President Donald Trump 's emergency command aircraft was caught flying over parts of the US on Tuesday, sparking fears that an attack on US soil was imminent.
Flight trackers spotted the Boeing E-4B 'Nightwatch,' also known as the 'Doomsday plane,' soaring from Louisiana to Maryland.
The Doomsday plane serves as a flying command post for key officials during times of crisis, particularly designed to survive a nuclear attack and coordinate military actions.
The craft took off from Bossier City at 5:56pm ET, traveled along the coast, looped around the border of Virginia and North Carolina, before landing at Joint Base Andrews at 10:01pm.
The flight sparked speculation about heightened presidential security amid growing tensions in the Middle East, where reports suggest Trump supports Israel 's military actions against Iran, demanding Tehran's 'unconditional surrender.'
However, the Air Force clarified that the flight was a pre-scheduled mission unrelated to current Middle East events.
The military unit also shared a post on X the day after the flight, showing Secretary Dr Troy Meink boarding the E-4B.
The post explained that Secretary Meink visited Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) yesterday for a Major Command (MAJCOM) immersion, a deep, firsthand overview of the command's operations.
No additional details have been provided, but the Air Force shared the post with Snopes when it enquired about Tuesday's flight.
The Doomsday plane took off from Barksdale Air Force Base. However, the craft is traditionally stored at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
FlightAware shows that the craft first left near Window Rock, Arizona, at 10:37am on Tuesday, making the trip to the Louisiana base.
It can be deployed to other bases for operational readiness and in support of various missions.
Past missions included transporting FEMA crews and acting as a command post during Hurricane Opal in 1995.
A plane was also reportedly used as a safe haven for President George W Bush after the 9/11 attacks.
However, the craft is not always used as doomsday vessels. The Secretary of Defense will occasionally travel overseas in an E-4B.
While Tuesday's flight was pre-scheduled, it came just hours before Khamenei said that Iran would 'stand firm against an imposed war, just as it will stand firm against an imposed peace.'
'This nation will not surrender to anyone in the face of imposition,' he said in his first televised comments since Israel launched its surprise attack on Friday.
Khamenei also alluded to Trump's recent statements, saying that 'intelligent people who know Iran, the Iranian nation, and its history will never speak to this nation in threatening language'.
'The Americans should know that any US military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,' he added.
Khamenei said that Israel had made a 'huge mistake' with its campaign, promising that it will be 'punished.'
Trump will decide in the next two weeks whether the US will get involved in the Israel-Iran air war, the White House said on Thursday, raising pressure on Tehran to come to the negotiating table.
Citing a message from Trump, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: 'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.'
The US has a total of four E-4B aircraft, featuring unique capabilities that cannot be duplicated by any other aircraft used by the Air Force.
They have thermal and nuclear shielding, and are capable of withstanding nuclear blasts, electromagnetic effects and cyberattacks. They can also launch retaliatory missiles.
The plane carries special equipment and can communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, and support analysts and strategists in-flight. E-4Bs have 67 satellite dishes and antennas in the ray dome.
Doomsday planes have three decks, which include a command room, conference room, briefing room, teamwork area, communications room and a designated rest area featuring 18 bunks.
The planes have remained airborne and operational for as long as 35.4 hours in one stint, but they were designed to operate in-flight for a full week without needing to land. The E-4B is also capable of refueling mid-air.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Thousands of Afghans face expulsion from US as Trump removes protections
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Afghans are also affected by Trump's refugee ban and that all comes amid almost daily news of stepped-up arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) affecting undocumented immigrants and also many with a legal status, from Central and South America, parts of Africa and Asia and other regions, caught in the dragnet and sending terror rippling through other communities. Shir Agha Safi, the executive director of Afghan Partners in Des Moines, a non-profit in Iowa where there are 500 families who evacuated from Afghanistan to escape the re-empowered Taliban, said members of his community are 'traumatized because they have seen what happened to Venezuelan immigrants in other states'. The loss of TPS for Afghans, which also provides employment authorization, goes into effect on 14 July. With the government's announcement, Safi said some in his community are too afraid to speak openly but had told him 'they would choose suicide over being tortured and killed by the Taliban'. Asked to elaborate, he said: 'They have said this because the Taliban is still there and if you send an Afghan back to Afghanistan that would mean a death penalty.' The US government initially granted Afghans in the US TPS in 2022, because the Biden administration agreed that it was too risky for them to return to Afghanistan due to the armed conflict and political turmoil that has forced millions to flee the country. Even before Trump returned to the White House their foothold in US society was uncertain. Now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argues that Afghanistan is safe to go back to. 'Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country,' homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said in a recent statement. The department cited rising tourism as a factor, with the Federal Register's item about revoking TPS for Afghans saying 'tourism to Afghanistan has increased, as the rates of kidnappings have reduced'. It quotes that from a US Institute of Peace report that assessed conditions three years after the Taliban took back control and does include that sentence – but the majority of the report describes negative conditions in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, where 'the rule of law has been replaced by the rule of force, where justice is not administered in courts but meted out through fear and violence'. The US state department website, meanwhile, puts the country in the highest-risk advice category for US citizens, warning: 'Do not travel to Afghanistan due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities.' But immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers say Taliban-controlled Afghanistan remains a dangerous country for many, especially minorities, women and those who assisted the foreign war effort, including humanitarian work. Some foreigners living in Afghanistan have been arrested by the Taliban this year and detained for weeks. California state senator Aisha Wahab, the first Afghan American woman elected to US public office, challenged the Trump administration's decision. 'Pushing these individuals to Afghanistan again – Afghanistan being a country that lacks basic human rights, basic women's rights, basic humanitarian support, a legal and justice system – is problematic,' said Wahab, who represents some of the largest Afghan immigrant communities in northern California. 'Afghanistan is a country that is landlocked, that struggles with trade, that more than 50% of their population are not allowed to get an education beyond sixth grade. It's a fact that it is led by a deeply religious regime that has a lot of problems,' she added. Hundreds of Afghans have been publicly flogged by the authorities since the Taliban took over in 2021, the Guardian reported last month. In a bipartisan approach, US Senators Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, have written jointly to secretary of state Marco Rubio. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion 'We are writing to express profound concern over the recent decision to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for over 8,000 Afghan nationals currently residing in the United States. This decision endangers thousands of lives, including Afghans who stood by the United States. This decision represents a historic betrayal of promises made and undermines the values we fought for far more than 20 years in Afghanistan,' the letter reads. 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The Guardian requested information on how many Afghans currently protected by TPS have also been granted other legal status, but DHS did not respond.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
As Ice infiltrates LA, neighborhoods fall quiet: ‘We can't even go out for a walk'
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She cried as she tried to explain to him and her mother why she cannot send home any money this month. 'It's so hard, it's so hard,' she said. She thinks about returning to work, but it's too risky. 'If they catch me, if they deport me, that's not going to help them, is it?' For now, Lorena and her husband are staying afloat thanks to a grant from Ktown for All, a non-profit that has been raising funds to help street vendors who fear arrest and deportation. 'At least the rent is covered,' she said. 'I am so thankful. There is nothing more to do than be grateful. And hope all this will pass soon.' ' The flower district – the largest wholesale flower market in the US – has emptied out as well. On Wednesday, vendors and customers alike locked up their stalls, and headed home, following rumors that raids were coming. In downtown LA's garment district, where the surge immigration enforcement began almost two weeks ago, tailor shops, which normally would be bustling with clients adjusting the fits on their graduation and quinceañera outfits, were generally quiet. At Fernando Tailorshop, which has been operating in the neighborhood for 54 years, owner Renato Cifuentes said he had never seen anything like the recent raids. 'I see this as a persecution of the Latino more than anything else,' he said. 'If you look like a Latino, the agents go after you – that's not right.' Most of his workers are afraid to come into the shop. His customers – citizens and immigrants alike – have been staying away as well. Business is down by more than 50%, he said. 'Most of my customers are Latin, and they are afraid. Some of my customers are Iranian – and they are worried about war,' he said, 'It hurts me a lot. Everything, everything is affected.' Meanwhile, families of those arrested in the first rush of raids earlier this month, including at clothing warehouses and wholesalers in the district, have been grappling with the aftermath. 'We had to change how we eat, how we sleep, how we live, everything,' said Yurien, whose father Mario Romero was arrested in a raid at Ambiance Apparel. 'We've had to change everything.' Two weeks ago, Romero had texted her, his eldest daughter, that agents had arrived at his workplace, and that he loved her. Yurien had rushed over, and watched as agents shackled her father, and shoved him into a van. Several other family members worked at Ambiance – and were arrested as well. Normally, on weekends,Romero would bring home a huge haul of Mexican candy, brew up a big batch of agua de jamaica, and pick a classic movie for the whole family to watch. But last weekend, Yurien spent hours refreshing her search in the Ice online detainee locator system, hoping it would tell her where her father had been taken. 'We went days without knowing, without any idea what had happened to him,' she said. Later, she learned that agents had kept them in a van for more than eight hours, without food or water, or access to a restroom. Then Ice transferred them to the Adelanto detention center, in California's high desert. Local Zapotec community organizers were able to help her find him – and more than a week after his arrest, Yurien was able to put funds into his commissary, so he could call her from the detention center. 'He sounded so sad, he was crying,' she said. Yurien hasn't really felt hungry since then. She had planned to matriculate at Los Angeles Trade-Technical college, but she deferred her plans so she could take over her father's responsibilities – including the care of her four-year-old brother, who has a disability that requires close monitoring and regular doctors visits. 'It's been so hard. I've always been a daddy's girl,' she said. 'But I can't really show my emotions, because I have to stay strong for my mom, for my siblings.' Lucero Garcia, 35, said she could relate. 'I'm so overwhelmed, I'm so stressed,' she said. 'I still wake up every day and act like nothing ever happened, because I feel like I'm the main person in our family that kind of keeps it together.' Nothing has been the same for her family since her 61-year-old uncle, Candido, was arrested while working at his job at Magnolia Car Wash in Orange county, just south of LA. It was one of more than two dozen car washes in the region that have been visited by immigration agents, according to the Clean Carwash Worker Center. Before her evening shift at work on Tuesday, Garcia put on her professional black trousers and white knit top, and drove more than 90 minutes north to the Adelanto detention center, and met with congress members who were seeking to meet with constituents who had been transferred there, to investigate reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions inside. After local representatives confirmed that detainees had been denied clean clothes and underwear for days, she stood outside in the searing desert heat and shared some words about her uncle – who had lived with her family for years and has been like another father to her. 'This is just crazy,' she said. 'I've never talked to the press before, to give speeches like this.' She had to rush back home right after to wrap up errands, and head to work. Garcia has her green card, and her sister has citizenship – so the two of them have taken shifts running errands for their entire family – picking up groceries and prescriptions, getting kids to and from playdates and activities – so that those without documentation don't have to risk stepping outside. At home, the conversations have been heavy. Some of her family members are meeting with notaries to arrange paperwork, so that she can take custody of their children, should they get arrested or deported. 'I'm so glad it's summer vacation, that none of our kids are in school right now,' she said. 'At least we don't have to worry something will happen while they're at school.' Out in her neighborhood, restaurants sit half empty, and there's no more lines at the gas station. Inside her house, it's been oddly quiet, too. Most all of Garcia's family lives in Orange county – within 5 or 10 minutes from her – and most days a cousin or an uncle would swing by, unannounced, bringing a dish or even just ingredients to cook up. Garcia is famous for her beef birria and pozole. These days everyone is staying confined to their own homes. Last weekend, they nearly forgot it was father's day. 'The vibe is not there to be celebrating,' she said. 'And even with the smallest gathering, there's a risk to leaving the house.' And there's guilt. 'Like, how can you be having dinner when others are in detention without enough food? The guilt doesn't let you move forward.' The Guardian is not using the full names of some people in this article to protect them and their families.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Belarus' Lukashenko meets with US envoy Kellogg, Belta reports
MOSCOW, June 21 (Reuters) - Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko met with U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg, Belarusian state news agency Belta reported on Saturday. Lukashenko discussed with Kellogg the political situation in the world and the bilateral relations between Belarus and the United States, Belta reported. Earlier this week, sources in Washington told Reuters of Kellogg's plan to visit Belarus and meet Lukashenko. They said that while the exact agenda for the meeting was unclear, the envoy viewed it as a step that could help jump-start peace talks aimed at ending Russia's war against Ukraine. In a video of the meeting released by Belta, Lukashenko warmly embraces Kellogg. "Who doesn't know him? He is the most media-savvy person around these days," Lukashenko said. Kellogg is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the authoritarian state in years.
