Lockheed E-XX
The Lockheed E-XX is a planned United States Navy aircraft based on the EC-130J and intended to replaced the Boeing E-6 Mercury in the TACAMO role, communicating with US nuclear ballistic missile submarines. The current E-6 aircraft were built in the late 1980s, and while they are expected to fly into the 2030s, the underlying platform is aging and support costs are increasing. Because of this, in 2020, the Navy began a program to develop a new platform. This program will take several years to complete, and the E-6 will continue to fulfill the role in the meantime. Development The US Department of Defense has relied on the Boeing 707 platform for decades, going back to the KC-135 in 1956 that technically predates the 707 itself, which did not fly until 1957. Boeing continued production of various military aircraft using the basic platform until the last E-6 Mercury aircraft were delivered in 1991. Since then, spare parts for the platform have gotten harder to find and operations have become more expensive. By 2015, both the Air Force and Navy realized that they had to look ahead to new platforms to manage their nuclear arsenals in combat. The Air Force had already retired its KC-135-based EC-135C aircraft in 1998, turning over its Looking Glass mission to the Navy's E-6 fleet while continuing to fly the Boeing E-4 as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post. But the E-4, built in the 1970s and based on the Boeing 747-200, was also aging and in need of replacement. For a few years, the Air Force and Navy considered a unified replacement that would move the E-6's combined TACAMO and Looking Glass mission to a single new aircraft run by both branches. In 2018, this program was envisioned to replace the E-4, E-6, and the C-32A (based on the Boeing 757 and often used as Air Force Two) with a single aircraft under the moniker NEAT (combining National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC), Executive Airlift, Airborne Command Post (ABNCP), Take Charge and Move Out (TACAMO)). However, in December 2020 (Fiscal Year 2021), the US Navy announced that it awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin for the purchase of three EC-130J-30 Hercules aircraft to be used as testbeds for the TACAMO mission, signaling that the two branches would go in different directions. The aircraft were fully funded in FY2023. One aircraft is to be used for air vehicle testing while the other two are planned for mission systems testing, "allowing simultaneous mission system, flight and ground test, and correction of deficiencies." The aircraft selection represents a return to the C-130 platform by the Navy, which for years used the EC-130Q (an older variant despite the higher letter) for the TACAMO mission prior to adoption of the E-6 Mercury. The selection of the C-130 platform, which is much smaller than the E-6, was surprising to some who expected something based on the larger P-8 Poseidon (based on the Boeing 737) or the much larger KC-46 Pegasus (based on