Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has reportedly joined the push to have a squadron of eight C-17s stationed at Stewart ANGB in Newburgh, N.Y., to replace the 12 C-5As that currently are assigned to the base’s 105th Airlift Wing. The Mid-Hudson News Network reported Aug. 8 that Clinton, sent a letter on that same day to Gen. Norton Schwartz, newly confirmed to be the next Chief of Staff, urging him to consider assigning to Stewart eight of the additional 15 C-17s that the Air Force will receive with funding provided in the recently passed Fiscal 2008 war supplemental. Clinton said given that the base’s C-5As are not slated to get new engines and reliability upgrades, it would “better aid the Air Force in meeting the global challenges facing our nation” by stationing the C-17s at Stewart.
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…