The airplane has been around for 50 years. I flew it 43 years ago. This one (295) sat in the boneyard "show and tell row" for forty years. Well two aren't enough to do the Afghanistan mission so they rebuilt a fifty year old airplane. Imagine a flight log that has a forty year break between flights. Remember NASA (Note the lack of markings) conducts scientific research and weather reconnaissance.

now that's cool!!

So is it for NASA, or is that just the last paint job it had?

They repainted it. Apparently NASA does a lot of weather research in Afghanistan.

Got to see it when they were doing the rebuild, it was incredibly awesome, especially if you geek on engineering at all. They had to completely redo the entire wings from the nacelles outboard. Most of the manufacturing techniques are no longer practiced, none of the tooling exists, and all the sizing is non standard nowadays. They got a guy who restores old ferraris to do some of the metal forming, no other way to do it.

Modern avionics and ejection seat (ACES II I think), newer engines. It should blow doors on the other two in performance and capabilities.

And that particular one was parked in 63 (so I was told), so spent 50 years there. Set record for longest period in desert before return to fly status.

It is true that they do a lot of research - not all of it weather related

Everything is weather related. Sneaky climate-changers are everywhere!

Here is the kind of weather we flew in (RB57D Photo)

Good mid 60s film clip. Please not the camera weighed 4,000 lbs not 40,000 lbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErYKD0jG64s

And the 2008 video of an "F" returning to Nellis AFB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R82c1mQQTk

I can think of one good use for high-altitude sampling in that region.