B-1B aircrews with the 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess AFB, Tex., set three unofficial time-to-climb world records during separate flights April 29-May 1 at the Texas base, which is celebrating 25 years of B-1B operations. Wing officials said these marks eclipsed previous records set by C-17 transports. On May 1, pilots Lt. Col. Michael Starr and Maj. William Alcorn took a B-1 carrying a 5,000-kilogram payload to a height of 3,000 meters within two minutes and 25 seconds. On April 29 and April 30, different aircrews flying B-1s with the same mass of payload reached 9,000 meters in four minutes and 47 seconds and 6,000 meters in three minutes 28 seconds, respectively. Maj. Stephen Gerken and Maj. Paul Jones piloted the aircraft on April 29. Lt. Col. Brian Wallace and Capt. Brian Buschur flew the bomber on April 30. (Dyess report by SrA. Felicia Juenke)
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights from inside the command, which…