Washington state’s Democratic Senatorial delegation—Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray—have put in play an amendment to the 2008 defense authorization bill to save the 36th Rescue Flight at Fairchild AFB, Wash. The amendment (S.A. 358) would restore some $4 million to the Administration’s budget—there was no money for the 36th—and would direct the Defense Secretary to “ensure that no action is taken to deactivate the 36th Rescue Flight or to reassign or reorganize any of the search and rescue capabilities of that unit.” In a joint statement, Cantwell commented that the unit’s UH-1 helicopters “train thousands of aircrews each year and provide critical search and rescue capabilities for Northwest communities and the nation.”
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…