Officials recently broke ground on a new $16.5 million control tower and operations building to replace the current air traffic control facility at March ARB, Calif. The planned 16,000-square-foot combined-use facility will replace the current building that dates to 1958, according to a Jan. 5 base release. “Over the last 20 years or so, we’ve invested several hundred million . . . to make this the premiere Air Reserve base,” said Rep. Ken Calvert (R- Calif.) at the Dec. 8 ground-breaking ceremony. The Air Force is constructing the building to meet the federal government’s “silver” environmentally friendly and energy-efficient design criteria. “What this design is doing is providing something that is sustainable and ensures the future success of the base,” noted David Van Dorpe, the Army Corps of Engineers’ Los Angeles district deputy program engineer, who is overseeing the project. (Includes March report by Dave Palmer)
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…