B-52 bomber, dropped from the bomber, and then accelerated to Mach 7 by a booster rocket.
Kelly Flinn, the nation's first female B-52 pilot, to resign rather than face a court-martial.
Certain was captured by the Vietnamese in 1972 after his B-52 bomber was shot down.
B-52 bombers, but modern jets have 4m parts and are customised for individual airlines.
Even shorter was the weekend that it took to create the proposal for the fabled B-52 bomber.
At present the nation's long-range bomber force consists primarily of two aircraft: the B-52 and the B-1.
Then came Kelly Flinn, the Air Force's first B-52 female pilot, and, a few months later, William Kite.
"I think on balance it came out right, " says Widnall, who had flown in a B-52 with Flinn.
Previous bombing campaigns such as B-52 strikes in Vietnam and aerial campaigns in Bosnia and Serbia also provoked concerns.
The Air Force confirmed arrangements have been reached in the sensitive case involving the division's first female B-52 pilot.
B-52 bombed an area of western Afghanistan in support of American soldiers caught in a battle between rival Afghan warlords.
The 95 B-52's are all over thirty years old, and their ability to penetrate modern air defenses is very doubtful.
Despite the passage of 60 years since its inception, the B-52 remains the most common heavy bomber in the Air Force fleet.
FORBES: Air Force Wants A Bomber That Balances Cost With Capability
Flinn, a 1993 Air Force Academy graduate, became a B-52 bomber pilot in 1995 as the service began allowing women to fly warplanes.
She is now one of only a few women in the Air Force qualified to fly bombers such as the B-52 and the swing-wing B-1.
In the face of unconstrained and ever more competent Soviet defenses, large numbers of ALCMs have become essential to the continued viability of the B-52 fleet.
The sleek, missile-shaped WaveRider was released from a B-52 bomber 50, 000 feet above the Pacific and was initially accelerated by a rocket before the scramjet kicked in.
To be sure it reaches the necessary speeds, the X-43A will be attached to a booster rocket and ride piggy back on a B-52 to 24, 000 feet.
This is not enough to meet future requirements, particularly in view of the attrition that would occur in a conflict and the eventual need to retire the B-52's.
That effort produced the iconic B-52 bomber featured in the movie Dr. Strangelove that has played a role in every major U.S. military campaign from Vietnam to Afghanistan.
FORBES: Air Force Wants A Bomber That Balances Cost With Capability
The advent of GPS-guided smart bombs has made all of the bombers in the fleet, even the venerable B-52, more lethal than earlier generations of aviators could have imagined.
FORBES: Air Force Wants A Bomber That Balances Cost With Capability
An example is the Minot incident, where six live nuclear warheads were mistakenly loaded onto a B-52 and flown from North Dakota down to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
Given that the Air Force still doesn't have a plan to replace it, it has been said that the mother of the last B-52 pilot has yet to be born.
Pinned down by the onslaught, King said the troops called in "close air support" from a B-52 bomber on regular patrol over Afghanistan, which dropped seven large bombs, ending the confrontation.
The B-52 took to the skies Tuesday, but no other information about the test flight was available, John Haire, a spokesman for Edwards Air Force Base in California, said in an email.
MSN: Hypersonic aircraft taken out for a trial run on B-52 bomber
The administration has also made no decision about whether or how it will replace the B-52 bomber, which first flew in 1952, and under current plans will continue to fly until possibly 2037.
As a practical matter though, at some point in the first decade or so of the next century, the United States is going to have to replace its B-52, and perhaps its B-1 bombers.
In fact, the Air Force has already begun testing a program to certify coal-based synthetic fuels for the B-52 bomber, a process that may lead to synthetic fuel use in all of its planes.
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