Air Force's First WC-135R Constant Phoenix Nuke Sniffing Jet Has Flown
Emma Helfrich - Yesterday 5:04 PM
The first of what will become the U.S. Air Force’s fleet of three “nuke-sniffing” planes completed its pioneering flight test in Greenville, Texas this week. The KC-135R, with the serial number 64-14836, now converted into the WC-135R Constant Phoenix configuration, is scheduled to be delivered next month and will carry out operations that consist of collecting air samples to screen for the presence of notable nuclear materials. Beyond taking baseline readings around the globe, the Constant Phoenix jets can be deployed to monitor nuclear weapons tests and look for and track nuclear leaks and other nuclear incidents. In doing so, it can provide critical intelligence and help map and mitigate potential fallout.
Boneyard Safari, an aviation preservation organization dedicated to memorializing historical moments and objects in aviation history, sent their photography team to the L3Harris Technologies facility in Greenville where the aircraft is being converted to capture the images of the flight test included in this article, which can also be accessed on their Facebook photography page. While this airframe is anything but new — this one was built in 1964, nearly 60 years ago — it will serve the Constant Phoenix mission far better than the last remaining and now problem-plagued WC-135W.
The Boneyard Safari WC-135R Constant Phoenix configuration undergoing a test flight. Boneyard Safari
The Air Force's lone operational WC-135W, which carries the serial number 61-2667, is the last aircraft from a batch of 10 C-135B cargo aircraft that were first converted into WC-135B nuke-sniffers in the 1960s. That fleet steadily shrunk in the following decades, though a small number of the planes remained in service in this role into the 1990s, some of which were upgraded to the WC-135W configuration. By that point, the Constant Phoenix fleet had also been joined by a WC-135C, converted from a Looking Glass EC-135C airborne command post jet.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/air-force-s-first-wc-135r-constant-phoenix-nuke-sniffing-jet-has-flown/ar-AAZ2FZa?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=49c0acd2750347129f0156762adc7d95
