Sierra Nevada purchases five B-747-8s to be converted into “Doomsday Planes”

Korean Air said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday that it will sell five of its Boeing 747-8 jetliners to Sierra Nevada Corporation for modification to “Doomsday Planes” for the U.S. Air Force.

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Sierra Nevada Corp. received a $13,080,890,647 contract for the Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) project, which aims to develop the successor to the Boeing E-4 Advanced Airborne Command Post of Project Nightwatch, a series of four strategic command and control aircraft operated by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) in situations of severe national threat, such as nuclear war.

As reported by Reuters, Korean Air will sell the aircraft in September 2025 for approximately $674 million, in line with the company’s medium- to long-term plan to dispose of older aircrafts to replace them with new-generation models.

End of an era: The last Boeing 747 ever built leaves the factory

Unlike the current E-4s based on the Boeing 747-200 and in service since the 1970s, the 747-8 had its first flight on February 8, 2010 (in its cargo version) and the “Intercontinental” passenger version flew for the first time on March 20, 2011, so these are aircrafts with a lot of future still ahead of them.

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Sierra Nevada reported that work to modify these aircraft to SAOC configuration should be completed by 2036, and being that their operational life will be measured in decades, it is likely that the “Doomsday Planes” to be used by future American leaders will eventually become the last 747s in service in the world.