JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii—The Singaporean Ministry of Defense sees its possible purchase of F-35s only as part of “long-term” plan. The country is looking at? the prospect of an F-35 fleet in the “2030 and beyond” timeframe, said Ng Eng Hen, the country’s minister of defense, during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations informal meeting on Sept. 30 in Hawaii. In the meantime, the country is instead looking at upgrading its F-16s and continuing use of F-15s. The current fleet will last for another one to two decades and the ministry is still discussing its F-35 future, Hen said.
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…