The surviving North American XB-70 Valkyrie high-speed research aircraft is retired to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. The two XB-70s (one was destroyed after a midair collision) were flown 129 times for 252 hours and 28 minutes by seven contractor, Air Force, and NASA pilots. The two aircraft were flown at twice the speed of sound or better for nearly 52 hours.
The Air Force is on track to reach its annual goal of graduating 1,500 new pilots that had proved elusive to this point, one year after the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its undergraduate pilot training program, Air Education and Training Command said Sept. 14.
