WASHINGTON — The US Navy earlier this month revealed the popular name for its EC-130J nuclear command and control plane, Phoenix II, alluding to the mythical creature renowned for being reborn from flames and ashes.
The plane — if everything else during a large-scale conflict went wrong — would play a critical role in ensuring a continuance of operations for the Navy’s all important nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines.
“This meaning of rebirth is a nod to the proven C-130 platform fulfilling the TACAMO mission since 1963-1993 via the EC-130Q,” Naval Air Systems Command said in an Aug. 7 statement about the name choice. EC-130Q is the Lockheed Martin-made aircraft that took over the TACAMO, or Take Charge and Move Out, mission in the 1960s.
When Phoenix II does take flight, it will be poised to take over a historic mission for the Navy, but it may lose an equally important mission covered by its predecessor pending a decision by the Pentagon to transfer that responsibility back to the Air Force.
The Mission
The EC-130J’s mission is TACAMO, which is meant to provide the president, secretary of defense and other parts of the national command authority with a secure communications line to the operational forces behind the nuclear triad.
“This is a mission that started way back in the Cold War because of the concern that, while it might be difficult for an adversary to take out our nuclear missile submarines, they could take out communications to and from, and essentially render the United States unable to respond to a nuclear first strike,” Jeremiah Gertler, a senior analyst at the Teal Group Corp., told Breaking Defense. “TACAMO was set up to be a highly mobile, constantly connected alternative path for messages regarding nuclear use to reach the operating units.”
Gertler added that while TACAMO was originally envisioned for communications with the Navy’s submarines — a task that requires specialized equipment due to the differences between transmitting radio waves through water rather than air — over time the Pentagon has adopted the plane as a backstop for communicating with all nuclear forces.
The Plane
The Phoenix II will replace the Navy’s legacy fleet of E-6B Mercury aircraft, a plane derived from a commercial Boeing aircraft and brought into service by the Navy in the 1980s.
The Pentagon in December awarded Northrop Grumman a $3.5 billion contract to act as Phoenix II’s system integrator, beating out a team headed by Collins Aerospace.
In that role, Northrop will bring together Lockheed Martin’s C-130J-30 airframe, a stretched version of the C-130J transport aircraft, with the Collins Aerospace-made Very Low Frequency Communications system, a critical component for allowing Phoenix II to contact operational submarines, as well as integrating other systems onboard the aircraft.
The Navy’s budget justification documents indicate it is requesting $1.2 billion in research and development funding for TACAMO in fiscal 2026. Further, the service’s contract has options to purchase up to six prototype and testing aircraft as well as another six planes in the first production lot.
The (Possible) Change
When the Pentagon expanded the E-6B’s missions beyond communicating with submarines, one role it took on was called Operation Looking Glass, which focuses on maintaining communications with nuclear launch forces on the ground, even if a command center was destroyed.
That mission was assigned to the Air Force’s EC-135s, a command and control aircraft introduced in the 1960s and retired around the turn of the millennium. Breaking Defense reported earlier this year that the Defense Department was considering once again splitting TACAMO and Looking Glass between the Navy and Air Force.
“The Air Force can do that mission by a variety of ways now, and it comes down to an efficiency question about whether it continues to make sense to have everybody on one asset,” Gertler said of the Pentagon’s choices. “But particularly as the Navy is re-homing TACAMO, the Air Force needs a different set of performance parameters than the EC-130J is going to be able to offer.”
A Navy spokesperson declined to comment on whether that decision has been finalized, but deferred questions about a potential stopgap capability — between the sundown of E-6B and the establishment of an Air Force capability to perform Looking Glass — to comments earlier this year by Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe.
Wolfe, the director of the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs Office, told House lawmakers during a May 7 hearing the Navy is engaged on how to meet the requirements of both missions — TACAMO and Looking Glass — “until that ultimate decision is made and those responsibilities move.”
An Air Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense, “the decision regarding future ownership of the Looking Glass mission has not been finalized. As Lt Gen Andrew J. Gebara explained in his testimony comments, if the decision is made to transfer the mission to the Air Force, we will move out on that mission with a full Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, and Facilities analysis to ensure we are choosing the most efficient, effective, and affordable warfighting platform.”
A spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense did not respond by press time.
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Author: Justin Katz
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