Page "Strategic Air Command" Paragraph 22

Despite SAC's establishment of " hardened " underground command and control facilities at its headquarters at Offutt AFB, LeMay and his planners knew that a direct nuclear strike by Soviet forces employing hydrogen weapons would likely destroy the facility.

As a backup to this potentiality, the concept of a SAC airborne command post was developed.

As envisioned, the airborne command post would be carried on a long range / long endurance aircraft, manned by a battle staff headed by a SAC general officer of at least brigadier general rank.

The aircraft would be equipped with the latest in electronics and communications equipment so that it would be able to assume control of all of SAC's bomber, aerial refueling and reconnaissance aircraft, as well as SAC's land-based intercontiental ballistic missile ( ICBM ) force and the U. S. Navy's Fleet Ballistic Missile ( FBM ) submarine force in the event SAC headquarters was destroyed.

Like the B-52, the airborne command post would also be hardened against electromagnetic pulse ( EMP ) radiation, making it capable of operating during a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

A fleet of these aircraft would also enable SAC to keep one such aircraft continuously airborne, 24 hours a day every day of the year.

The aircraft selected for this duty was a derivative of SAC's KC-135 Stratotanker.

Named the EC-135 Looking Glass, it realized the SAC vision of a flying command post.

As a result, one of SAC's EC-135 Looking Glass aircraft was constantly airborne from 1961 until the dissoultion of the Soviet Union and the de facto end of the Cold War in 1990.