Fantastic Friday: Huge Stories Today -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

As regular readers know, I post up to a dozen new stand-alone posts every day and update several other previous posts (as long as I am not traveling).

Earlier this morning I posted a reply to the comment I received some time ago from "anonymous" that North Dakota had only wheat and oil, and needed to have a more diverse economy if it was going to survive economically.

So I replied. In the course of that reply, I learned that the United States Air Force has stationed a number of Global Hawk aircraft at Grand Forks AFB. That is absolutely incredible. The aircraft arrived just last month, and are without question, one of the huge success stories of the 21st century. (I guess the first Global Hawk arrived in June, 2011, but the new models arrived last month.)

The idea for an unmanned surveillance aircraft of this type was but a twinkle in someone's eye when I was in my 20th year or so in the Air Force, and stationed at Langley AFB, Virginia, where Air Combat Command was the "sponsor" for the new technology. I was part of the mission that oversaw development of the Global Hawk, although I had absolutely no direct involvment. And then I moved on, and sort of forgot about it.

I started reading about the "US drone assassinations of US citizens" recently and still didn't remember the Global Hawk but then today, a writer let me know.

So, as I started out earlier today, saying that there were going to be some fantastic stories posted today, little did I know how exciting some of them were to become.

A huge "thank you" to my readers in general, and to "anonymous" in particular, for pointing out that the missions of the Minot and Grand Forks air bases had changed.

With regard to Minot AFB, it still does have the B-52H and the intercontinental ballistic missiles (unless the Minot AFB website is out of date -- highly unlikely). Aha -- the Air Force has not changed as much as I was led to believe. In fact, now that I am rambling, I remember how excited some local Minot folks were when the USAF announced that it would be bringing in another squadron of B-52's. The 69th Bomb Squadron was reactivated at Minot AFB on September 3, 2009.

Yeah, I would say that North Dakota still has a pretty diverse economy: grain, oil, coal, ranching, Air Force, universities, tourism, railroad, and whatever else I noted earlier this morning at the link above.

Oh, one last thing: the B-52 has outlived any number of other weapon systems, and has adapted from a high-altitude bomber (that's where the "strato" in Stratofortress comes from) into a low-level stand-off bomber. I was lucky enough to have my first (and only flight) in the B-52 in about 1982 (I forget the exact year, but I think it was 1982. It was already 30 years old then, its maiden flight taken in 1952 following the signing of a contract to have them built in 1946. 1952 - 2012 will be 60 years old. Hmmm.