But at first glance, none of that was related at all to the $40 million Gulfstream that landed in Stuttgart—an hour’s flight away from Dresden—a day ahead of Obama’s Germany visit. The white unmarked jet blended in among the anonymous luxury jets that fill many major airports around the world—yet it had no apparent business in Stuttgart, and its crew hung close to the plane. It was in Germany only for a day and then promptly took off around the time the president departed Germany for the next leg of his trip, to France. As Air Force One went to Caen, the Gulfstream flew across the English Channel to the UK’s Mildenhall Air Force Base, where it waited in a hangar just an hour’s flight away from Obama’s visit to the beaches of Normandy for the anniversary of D-Day on June 6. Then the Gulfstream flew back to Andrews Air Force Base in the United States. On no leg of the trip did the plane appear to have any purpose whatsoever. Only someone who looked up its tail number, 60403, would discover its secret.
The C-20C in flight. | Photo by Lutz Lehmann
The Gulfstream was the Air Force’s plane 86-0403, one of three special presidential aircraft long tasked with evacuating the president in an emergency and preserving the so-called National Command Authorities, the officials with authority to launch nuclear weapons. Known as C-20Cs, the planes don’t really officially exist. But for years, they have gone nearly everywhere the president travels, paralleling presidential trips, serving as his chameleons, blending in anonymously at airports close by presidential visits—but never at the same airport where Air Force One itself is landing. During one of Bush’s trips to Homestead Air Force Base in Miami in 2001, for example, a C-20C shadowed the trip, standing by at Patrick Air Force Base near Cape Canaveral.
...The main purpose of the covert Gulfstreams, however—and the reason for their secrecy—is ensuring that the president maintains control of the nation’s nuclear weapons and can be safely evacuated in an emergency, particularly if the primary Air Force One is disabled or attacked or if the president can’t make it back to the airport where Air Force One was located. While the E-4B Nightwatch planes are meant to be long-term command centers, the C-20 aircraft—much smaller and able to carry far fewer passenger than a 747—are not meant as a long-term solution. Instead, their goal is to get the president to one of the roughly dozen major ground command posts scattered around the country from which he could securely lead the nation into war. In fact, this plan was nearly activated on September 11, 2001; after Bush took off from Florida, his staff’s original plan, before they realized the scope of the attacks that morning, had been to fly Air Force One to an airport near the capital—like Norfolk, Virginia—where he could be transferred to a small jet like the C-20 and brought either back to D.C. or to an emergency command post.
The ability of the C-20s to land on a runway just half the length required for a 747 means that they’re agile enough to use at nearly any airport in the world—which could be very useful if you were suddenly going to be trying to hide a president somewhere in the United States.
Specifically, if you’re trying to hide a president at Mount Weather in Virginia.