U.S. Navy E-6B Mercury in-flight

A US Navy E-6B Mercury, based at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., flies over Colorado. (U.S. Air Force photo/Greg L. Davis)

WASHINGTON — The Navy has accepted the first upgraded E-6B Mercury, the aircraft responsible maintaining the lines of communication between the president and the nuclear submarine fleet during times of crisis, as part of an ongoing $111 million contract with Northrop Grumman.

Naval Air Systems Command, the service’s primary agency for procuring aircraft, said in a statement today that the work was done throughout the past year and the plane was accepted this month.

“The $111 million contract provides six major modifications — called Block II — to improve the aircraft’s command, control and communications functions connecting the National Command Authority with U.S. strategic and non-strategic forces,” according to the Navy statement.

The deal, dubbed the integrated maintenance and modification contract, was awarded in February 2022 to upgrade the E-6B fleet, a derivative of the commercial Boeing 707, at Northrop’s facilities in Lake Charles, La.

Under the contract, the company will “will overhaul multiple E-6B Mercury aircraft by 2027,” according to the Navy’s statement. A service spokeswoman told Breaking Defense today Northrop will upgrade 12 E-6Bs.

“Northrop Grumman is leveraging cutting-edge technology in modernization, supporting the Navy’s mission to provide survivable, reliable and endurable airborne command, control and communications between the National Command Authority (NCA) and U.S. strategic and nonstrategic forces for persistent mission readiness,” Scott Pfeiffer, vice president of platform sustainment and mission readiness at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement today.

The company in the same statement said the second aircraft on schedule to be upgraded has arrived at its Lake Charles facility and work has started.

The plane itself is equipped with unique equipment that allows its operators to communicate with the Navy’s submarine fleet even while the boats are submerged. That equipment would be used to deliver orders from the president in the event the submarines are called upon to fire one of their nuclear weapons.

The E-6B fleet is flown out of Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma by Navy Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadrons 3 and 4, which are part of Strategic Communications Wing One, according to the service.

Separate from the contract to upgrade the E-6B fleet, Northrop Grumman is also on track to compete against Collins Aerospace for the E-XX TACAMO program, Breaking Defense reported earlier this year. That program will combine a Lockheed-built aircraft and Collins Aerospace-made communications equipment to produce the plane that will replace the E-6B later this decade.

Northrop and Collins will compete for the work associated with integrating the pre-selected equipment as well as designing and outfitting the rest of the aircraft. A public Navy notice published in April suggests the service intends to award the contract by September 2024.

For that competition Northrop will lead a team including business units from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin as well as Crescent Systems, a Texas-based hardware and software systems engineering firm, and Long Wave Inc., an Oklahoma-based company focused on strategic communications systems. Collins Aerospace, which itself is a Raytheon subsidiary, previously told Breaking Defense that it had recruited the privately held aerospace firm Sierra Nevada Corp. to join its team, but declined to name other partners.