A U.S. Doomsday plane is quite an unusual sight for a Polish airport.

An E-4B National Airborne Command Post  (NAOC) with U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on board, departing Powidz airbase near Gniezno, Poland.

Mr. Hagel made a visit to Poland, to discuss various matters including NATO’s anti-missile shield, during his European trip to attend the Munich Security Conference.

The E-4B, designed to carry the U.S. SecDef as well as other U.S. top officials, is specifically designed to keep American decision makers alive in case of nuclear wars, zombie invasions or alien attacks.  Therefore, it has to be able to fly through any EMP (electromagnetic pulse) with unharmed systems. That’s why this highly modified Boeing 747 does not feaure modern glass cockpit: old fashioned, analogue-style avionics are more resiliant to EMPs.

Jacek Siminski for TheAviationist

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About Jacek Siminski

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Standing contributor for TheAviationist. Aviation photojournalist. Co-Founder of DefensePhoto.com. Expert in linguistics, Cold War discourse, Cold War history and policy and media communications.