The federal government's Boeing E-4B Nightwatch, a military aircraft known, somewhat alarmingly, as the “Doomsday Plane,” landed at Los Angeles International Airport this week, in what may be the famed plane's first LAX landing.
Aviation enthusiasts saw the plane Thursday on approach to LAX. Is billed by the US Air Force as a “command, control and communications center with high survivability.”
The plane is equipped to serve as an air operations center for the president, Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the event of a disaster that wipes out command centers on the ground.
His sudden appearance at a busy commercial airport sparked a flurry of online speculation.
“IMMINENT WAR?” a user awarein one of several anxious responses on social media to the plane's appearance.
In this case, the plane was transporting Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to Southern California as part of his month-long tour of the “Freedom Arsenal.”
Hegseth spoke Thursday at a Long Beach manufacturing plant, Rocket Lab, the second stop of what the Defense Department does. described as a month-long tour of American defense industrial companies.
The Department of Defense later posted images on social media of Hegseth working with the Reserve Officer Training Corps at UCLA.
Far-right activist Laura LoomBreitbart News reporter Olivia Rondeau and media figure L. Todd Wood They accompanied Hegseth on the trip and shared photos of themselves with the plane online.
The E-4B is a militarized version of Boeing's 747 aircraft and is designed to withstand electromagnetic pulses and the heat of a nuclear attack. The Air Force keeps at least one ready at all times in case of an emergency.
