The carriervehicle will ferry suborbital craft SpaceShipTwo, modeled after Ansari X Prize winner SpaceShipOne, 50, 000 feet in the sky before releasing it.
The vehicle was dropped from a carrier aircraft high above California's Mojave Desert and ignited its rocket engine to go supersonic for a few seconds.
The one new vehicle the service has managed to field in recent years, a wheeled troop carrier called Stryker, is an important addition to the mix of systems used in places like Afghanistan that the service will keep refining with better armor and electronics.
It is also one of the very few places that could plausibly field a successor to the venerable M113 troop carrier, which the Military Channel recently designated as the most important infantry vehicle in history.