U.S. Air Force adds $12M for AI agents on doomsday plane

The U.S. Air Force has added $12.1 million to a contract with Scale AI to develop artificial intelligence agents for the E-4C Survivable Airborne Operations Center, the new “doomsday plane” meant to keep U.S. leaders in command of the military, including nuclear forces, if ground command centers are destroyed.

The modification raises the total value of the San Francisco company’s contract from $32.2 million to $44.3 million, the U.S. Department of War said. The work will be done in San Francisco and is expected to run through Nov. 5, 2027. The U.S. Air Force obligated $5 million in fiscal 2026 research and development funds at award.

The notice does not say what tasks the AI agents will perform aboard the aircraft, whether they will run on the plane itself or on ground systems that support it, or how much human control will be built in.

Agentic AI goes a step beyond chatbots that answer questions. These systems can plan and carry out multi-step tasks on their own, such as gathering and sorting information, drafting options or managing workflows, with people supervising or approving key decisions. On a command aircraft packed with communications gear and a battle staff, that could mean helping crews handle large volumes of messages and data during a crisis, though the U.S. Air Force has not described its plans.

The original contract was awarded earlier this year through the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate in Rome, New York. The latest modification was issued by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts.

The E-4C will replace the E-4B Nightwatch, a fleet of four heavily modified Boeing 747-200s that first flew in the 1970s and serve as the National Airborne Operations Center. The aircraft are hardened against the effects of nuclear blasts and can be refueled in flight, allowing them to stay aloft for long periods while the president, defense secretary and senior commanders direct forces from the air.

Sierra Nevada Corp. won a $13 billion contract in April 2024 to build the replacement. The company bought used Boeing 747-8I airliners from Korean Air and is converting them in Dayton, Ohio, adding protection against radiation and electromagnetic pulse, new communications antennas, computers and mission systems. The first E-4C test aircraft flew on Aug. 7, 2025, and flight and ground testing is continuing through 2026 before mission equipment is installed. Deliveries are scheduled to finish by July 2036.

Scale AI, best known for labeling data used to train AI models, has become a major supplier of AI tools to the U.S. military. In March 2025, it won the Defense Innovation Unit’s Thunderforge project to bring AI agents into military planning and operations, working with Anduril and Microsoft. Earlier this year, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office raised the ceiling on another Scale AI agreement from $100 million to $500 million. Meta holds a minority stake in the company.