It should be no surprise that Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne has signed a letter of support for Utah’s legislators who are fighting a move to put a nuclear waste dump near the Utah Test and Training Range. The Air Force would prefer, along with the Utah crowd, to see a wilderness area near UTTR, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Wynne said in the letter that creation of the wilderness area would not hinder USAF range operations. The letter indicated that there are range encroachment issues with the dump plan presented by Private Fuel Storage, a group of electric utility companies.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…