The federal government’s Boeing E-4B Nightwatch — a military aircraft known, somewhat alarmingly, as the “Doomsday Plane” — touched down at Los Angeles International Airport this week, in what may be the famed aircraft’s first-ever LAX landing.
Aviation enthusiasts spotted the plane on Thursday on its approach to LAX. Billed by the U.S. Air Force as a “highly survivable command, control and communications center.”
The plane is equipped to serve as an airborne operations center for the president, the Defense Secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the event of a disaster that wipes out command centers on land.
Its sudden appearance at a busy commercial airport sparked a flurry of online speculation.
“WAR IMMINENT?” one X user posted, in one of several anxious social media responses to the plane’s appearance.
In this case, the plane was ferrying U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to southern California as part of his monthlong “Arsenal of Freedom” tour.
Hegseth spoke Thursday at the Long Beach manufacturing plant, Rocket Lab, the second stop on what the Department of Defense described as a monthlong tour of U.S. industrial defense companies.
The Defense Department later posted images on social media of Hegseth working out with the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at UCLA.
Far-right activist Laura Loomer, Breitbart News reporter Olivia Rondeau and media figure L. Todd Wood accompanied Hegseth on the trip and shared photos of themselves with the plane online.
The E-4B is a militarized version of Boeing’s 747 aircraft, and is designed to withstand electromagnetic pulses and the heat of a nuclear attack. The Air Force keeps at least one at the ready at all times in case of an emergency.
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