An Air Force Global Strike Command B-52 bomber will make an unprecedented flight to Moscow, taking the shortest and fastest route over the North Pole.
The Minot Air Force Base bomber will be one of several U.S. military aircraft to take part in the MAKS 2011 International Aviation and Space Salon in Russia.
"It's a milestone for the B-52," AFGSC spokeswoman Michele Tasista said, noting it will be "the first time to fly directly over the geographical North Pole followed by a landing in Russia, according to available mission records and our historian."
The polar route is new but the notion of an exchange or warcraft with Russia isn't, with Barksdale and 8th Air Force, headquartered here with AFGSC, historically front and center in past swaps.
In World War II, when the United States and the former Soviet Union were allied against Hitler, 8th Air Force B-17 bombers staged in shuttle missions to and from Russia and Italy. These were from June to September 1944.
The International Aviation and Space Salon will feature more than the B-52. Various models of U.S. military aircraft, equipment and approximately 100 aircrew and support personnel from stateside and U.S. bases in Europe are scheduled to provide static displays and aerial flight demonstrations. In addition to the B-52, U.S. aircraft will include the P-3C Orion, A-10 Thunderbolt II, F-16C Fighting Falcon, C-130J Super Hercules, C-5 Galaxy, F-15E Strike Eagle and KC-10 Extender.
A WWII vintage B-17 bomber Texas Raider made a stop in Amarillo yesterday for an oil top off. The B-17 (based in Houston) was on it's way from an Air Force Reunion at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. A select few photographers were allowed to photography and inspect the rare bird as it sat on the tarmac at Rick Husband International Airport.
Pakistan may have allowed the Chinese military to examine the US stealth helicopter downed in the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden, reports say.
US officials are quoted as saying there is evidence Pakistan invited Chinese military engineers to the site in Abbottabad in the days after the raid.
The Black Hawk helicopter was blown up by US Navy Seals after it crashed, but the tail remained largely intact.
The covert 2 May raid has strained relations between the US and Pakistan.
The two countries - allies in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the region - have been involved in a tit-for-tat row for the last few months, although they have tried to prevent a breakdown of relations.
Pictures and samples
Pakistan enjoys a close relationship with China, which is a major investor in telecommunications, ports and infrastructure in the country.
"The US now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence service], gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad," the Financial Times quoted a source in US intelligence circles as saying.
He said Chinese engineers were allowed to survey the wreckage and take samples of the "stealth" skin that allowed the Seals to enter Pakistan undetected by radar, according to the paper.
Both the FT and the New York Times quote intelligence officials as saying they are "certain" the visit took place, although the NYT said officials cautioned that they did not have definitive proof of it happening.
One source said the US case came mostly from intercepted conversations in which Pakistan officials discussed inviting the Chinese to visit the crash site.
In the immediate aftermath of the raid on the compound in Abbottabad housing Osama Bin Laden, US officials had asked Pakistan not to let anyone view the remains of the helicopter.
It was brought back to the US two weeks later following a trip by US Senator John Kerry.
An unmanned DARPA hypersonic glider — a prototype for a global strike weapons program — launched on its second test flight Thursday (Aug. 12) in a bid to fly at the mind-blowing speed of Mach 20.
The DARPA glider, called the Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2 (HTV-2), blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California atop a Minotaur 4 rocket at 7:45 a.m. PDT.
According to DARPA updates, the test flight appeared to go well until the glide phase, when monitoring stations lost contact with the HTV-2 vehicle. [Photos: DARPA Hypersonic Glider's Mach 20 Test]
"Range assets have lost telemetry with HTV2," DARPA officials wrote in a Twitter post about 36 minutes after launch.
The HTV-2 vehicle was expected to reach suborbital space, then re-enter Earth's atmosphere and glide at hypersonic speed to demonstrate controllable flight at velocities of around Mach 20, which is about 13,000 mph. At that speed, more than 20 times the speed of sound, a vehicle could fly from New York City to Los Angeles in 12 minutes, DARPA officials said.
A video animation of the HTV-2 flight test depicts how the the hypersonic vehicle was expected to pop free of its rocket, then soar through Earth's atmosphere for an inevitable, and intentional, plunge into the Pacific Ocean at the end of its mission.
"Assumptions about Mach 20 hypersonic flight were made from physics-based computational models and simulations, wind tunnel testing, and data collected from HTV-2's first test flight — the first real data available in this flight regime at Mach 20," said Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, HTV-2 program manager, in a statement. "It's time to conduct another flight test to validate our assumptions and gain further insight into extremely high Mach regimes that we cannot fully replicate on the ground."
An F-16 airstrike Monday night killed the Taliban fighters believed to be responsible for shooting down the Chinook helicopter that killed 30 American servicemembers and eight Afghans. Included among the U.S. dead were 22 Navy Seals.
Gen. John Allen, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, said the Taliban fighters were tracked through intelligence gathered in the aftermath of the crash, so that "we did in fact locate them with certainty, and we did strike them with an airstrike," Allen said.
He said the airstrike "does not ease our loss. But we must and we will continue to relentlessly pursue the enemy."
Allen described the airstrike as a continuation of Saturday's original mission that targeted the head of an insurgent network in the Tangi Valley of Wardak province, located southwest of Kabul.
Defense officials said that Army Rangers were engaged in a firefight with insurgents who were protecting a leader who was the target of the raid. When a small group was spotted moving away from the firefight, the Rangers believed their target was about to escape. Defense officials said it is common for senior Taliban leaders to flee the scene of a fight and leave foot soldiers behind to carry on the fight without them. At the time, the firefight had already left six Taliban fighters dead.
That's when the Rangers called on the Immediate Response Force of Seals and Afghan commandos flying overhead to provide reinforcements to cut off the Taliban leader's escape.
It is believed that one of the insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade that brought the helicopter down. NATO issued a statement today stated that said "while it has not been determined if enemy fire was the sole reason for the helicopter crash, it did take fire from several insurgent locations on its approach."
A Defense official said an rocket-propelled grenade round was seen targeting the helicopter.
Following the crash, Allen said intelligence leads and tips generated by local residents helped track the insurgents. According to Allen, "learning their location, we were able to deliver ordnance on that position and to kill them as well."
ABC News has learned that a special operations team tracked the men visually for more than 12 hours Monday before it called in the airstrike. Both the RPG triggerman and his leader, Mullah Mohibullah, were spotted getting into a vehicle that took them into a compound located in a wooded area. The two men were then spotted leaving the compound for the wooded area. After it made sure there were no civilians in the area, the team called in the airstrike that killed both men as well as other Taliban associates. he strike occurred at 11:47 p.m. Afghanistan time.
According to a NATO statement, the two insurgents responsible for the shootdown were thought to be fleeing Afghanistan to avoid capture at the time of the airstrike.
Allen said the Chinook shootdown was "a singular incident in a broader conflict in which we are making important strides and considerable progress." Though there will be challenges in securing Afghanistan, Allen expressed confidence that "all across Afghanistan, the insurgents are losing. They're losing territory. They're losing leadership. They're losing weapons and supplies. They're losing public support."
Allen said he had no worries about using Chinook helicopters in the future, given how they have performed in thousands of special operation missions this year.
