U.S. AIRBORNE COMMAND POST E-6 MERCURIES OPERATIONAL OFF EAST AND WEST COASTS

(Source cryptogon.com) U.S. president Donald Trump tested positive for the novel-coronavirus on Friday morning. Shortly before the news broke, the U.S. Navy’s doomsday planes launched on both American coasts. The E-6B Mercury is one of the Pentagon’s airborne nuclear command posts. The four-engine planes—derivatives of the Boeing 707 airliner—carry special communication systems and crews for commanding the Navy’s Ohio-class nuclear ballistic-missile submarines. In an atomic war, the E-6s would relay directions to the Ohio boomers, helping the boats’ crews to target enemy cities and military bases with nuclear-tipped Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs. Hogan tracked the E-6s on public software that registers airplanes’ radio transponders. Military planes often switch off their transponders in order to avoid being tracked. If a military jet’s transponders are on, it’s because their crews want to be seen. In the case of the E-6s, “it’s a message to the small group of adversaries with SLBMs and ICBMs,” Hogan noted. The Pentagon apparently wants atomic-armed rivals of the United States—Russia, China and North Korea—to know that America’s nuclear command system is intact, even if the commander-in-chief might be sick.