The Governor of Montana doesn’t think it likely that the Air Force will reopen the runway at Malmstrom AFB, Mont., one of the options floated recently by the state’s Congressional delegation. Instead, Gov. Brian Schweitzer met this week with the Air Force’s top loggie, William Anderson, to discuss the potential for installing a coal-to-liquids plant at Malmstrom as part of USAF’s switch to synthetic fuel. Actually, the idea started with Anderson, who contacted Schweitzer after hearing him talk at a coal-to-liquids conference. The Great Falls Tribune reports that Schweitzer believes such an effort would produce a thousand jobs at Malmstrom.
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…