The U.S. Air Force said on Friday that it has awarded a contract to Sierra Nevada Corp to develop a successor to the E-4B, known as the Doomsday plane, due to its ability to survive a nuclear war.

The Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) project is intended to replace the aging 1970s-era aircraft, which is approaching end-of-service life, a Air Force spokesperson said in a statement.

To satisfy operational requirements, the weapon system will comprise of a commercial derivative jet hardened and modified to meet military requirements.

A civilian Air Force employee shared classified information about Russia’s war in Ukraine with a woman he met on a foreign dating app, federal investigators said.

David Slater, 63, worked at U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Neb., according to the Justice Department. Prior to his civilian work, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Army.

A civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force has been charged with sharing classified information related to the Russia-Ukraine war on a foreign online dating website, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

The indictment alleges that David Franklin Slater, 63, transmitted national defense information about the war in Ukraine on a foreign online dating platform and over email with an unidentified alleged female co-conspirator. He was arrested Saturday for allegedly conspiring to transmit and transmitting classified information.

A civilian US Air Force employee with a top secret security clearance used a foreign dating website to transmit classified national defense information to a person claiming to be a woman living in Ukraine, according to the Justice Department. 

David Franklin Slater, 63, was arrested Saturday after being indicted on charges of ​conspiracy to disclose national defense information and unauthorized disclosure of national defense information.

He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

A member of the United States air force who had set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in an apparent protest against Israel’s war in Gaza has died, the Pentagon says.

The 25-year-old airman, Aaron Bushnell of San Antonio, Texas, died from his injuries, the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, DC, said on Monday.

US media reports said Bushnell livestreamed himself on the social media platform Twitch wearing fatigues and declaring he would “not be complicit in genocide” before dousing himself in liquid on Sunday.

A man in US military fatigues set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC on Sunday, in protest of what he called a “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.

The protester was identified on Sunday by the independent journalist Talia Jane as Aaron Bushnell, 25, an active-duty service member of the US Air Force, who, from a public LinkedIn profile, appeared to work in the service’s IT department.

Late Sunday night, Jane reported that Bushnell had succumbed to the wounds sustained in the self-immolation.

US Air Force member Aaron Bushnell has died from his injuries after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, an official confirmed Monday.

A US Air Force spokesperson confirmed to The Post that 25-year-old Bushnell died overnight, though she did not officially name him, citing the ongoing notification of next of kin. 

Officials were still contacting family members Monday and will not officially announce his death until 24 hours after that is complete, the Air Force representative said. 

A member of the US Air Force is in a critical condition after setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Officers from the US Secret Service extinguished the flames before the man was taken to hospital on Sunday afternoon with serious injuries.

The US Air Force confirmed an active-duty serviceman was involved but he has not been identified.

The police, the Secret Service and other authorities are investigating.

The Air Force disciplined 15 members of the Air National Guard after an internal investigation found that a “lack of supervision” and a “culture of complacency” helped enable a 21-year-old airman to share hundreds of classified documents online in the sprawling leak of U.S. military secrets that rocked the national security establishment this spring.