C4ISR Center Provides Real-Life Training: The Air Force’s Pentagon Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence-Surveillance-Reconnaissance Visualization Center recently was the setting for Air Force and Coast Guard leaders who played out a homeland defense exercise spread across the country. One scenario featured a 9/11-type situation with a hijacked airliner—it was shot down by two F-16s—and another had an unmanned aerial vehicle heading up the Potomac from some unknown source. The exercise participants in various parts of the country had to communicate and determine a course of action. The center’s computers and huge flat screen TVs provide a means to simulate often-difficult logistical exercises in cyberspace and on networks. The center “provides the perfect complement to live flying with an incredible amount of fidelity and realism,” said USAF Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, the chief of warfighting integration and information.
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…