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Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of the B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber’s first flight. The last B-52 came off the production line 10 years later. Such milestones are often celebrated nostalgically for their achievements in times past. However, we can’t call them the “good old days” quite yet for the B-52, since many are still flying today.

U.S. Air Force officials wanted to keep Family Research Council President Tony Perkins from speaking at a National Prayer Luncheon in February because his organization is opposed to Obama administration issues, according to internal Air Force e-mails.

For nearly a decade the Air Force has been trying to replace its Eisenhower-era fleet of refueling tanker aircraft. It has failed twice in rather spectacular fashion. And the double failures were due, in part, to the malign influence of Sen. John McCain (R?-AZ), who has been to the Air Force what malware is to your laptop.

A prototype spaceplane developed for the US military has been launched into orbit from Florida.

Development of the Joint Strike Fighter, as it is also known, has fallen so far behind schedule, with huge cost overruns, the defense secretary ordered the firing of the F-35 program manager.

The risk in Gates’ decision is hammered home by this stark fact: the Air Force estimates it could be short 800 fighter-bombers by 2024. Levin called it “a shortfall that’s large enough that if it were realized could cause us to tie up aircraft carriers at the pier for lack of aircraft to send with them.

The current and former House Republican Whips are calling on Defense Secretary Robert Gates to explain the “written or unwritten policies” that led the Air Force to rescind its invitation to conservative leader Tony Perkins from speaking at a national prayer luncheon at Andrews Air Force Base because he disagrees with President Obama’s policy on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“I think many members (of Congress) are outraged,” Kingston told CNSNews.com. “The mainstream media hasn’t given this as much coverage as they would if they agreed with Perkins. This is something that I think that people will be asking a lot of questions–a harbinger of what may be out there to come, you know, if on a high-profile captain like Tony Perkins, they reject him. They may (start) doing it to everybody else.”

“I do have serious concerns about the impact of a repeal of the law on a force that is fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight and a half years,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey told Congress. “We just don’t know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness.”

He doesn’t use much varnish in his treatment of opponents, either. While not quite condemning them outright, he does take a variety of players to task. He chronicles, for example, the current attorney general’s journey from counter-terrorism hawk in 2002 (“They are not prisoners of war…they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.”) to this in 2008 (“Our government…denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution….We owe the American people a reckoning.”) Thiessen is also not particularly kind to civil liberties lobbies who have seemed to push their agendas without regard for any security consequences and he saves a special brand of disdain for the pro bono work of law firms who seem bent on discovering new “rights” for enemy combatants.

Told He’d Never Walk Again, Tech. Sgt. Israel Del Toro Is Back on Duty