Weather reconnaissance The official mission of the RB-57F was weather reconnaissance, and all RB-57Fs were assigned to meteorological units of the
9th Weather Reconnaissance Wing,
Air Weather Service,
Military Air Transport Service (MATS), headquartered at
McClellan Air Force Base, California:
Strategic reconnaissance , Texas on 8 March 1965. MATS (and its successor organization
Military Airlift Command) was frequently used by the USAF for clandestine, special operations missions prior to the establishment of
Air Force Special Operations Command in the 1980s. The RB-57F, with its extreme high-altitude ceiling was frequently used as a strategic reconnaissance platform. The four
Rivet Slice aircraft (converted from RB-57D airframes) were equipped with covertly mounted cameras and assigned specifically to reconnaissance work in 1965,
Rivet Slice 2 and 3 with the
6091st Reconnaissance Squadron at Yokota AB and
Rivet Slice 1 and 4 with the 7407th Support Squadron at Rhein-Main AB. The
Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 began while
Pee Wee III aircraft No. 2 was out of the country and No. 1 was operated by
24 Squadron of the
Pakistan Air Force. Older accounts of the
Little Cloud operation give the original reason for the RB-57F deployment to Pakistan as being the monitoring of Communist Chinese nuclear tests, which began in October 1964. The aircraft were said to have been flown by USAF crews during these operations, and one of the RB-57Fs was reported to have returned to its U.S. base before the outbreak of hostilities with India while the other remained. Because the PAF was outnumbered by its Indian counterpart, and with U.S. concurrence, the RB-57F was reportedly impressed into combat service with PAF's No 24 Squadron to carry out daily reconnaissance sorties over
Indian Air Force airfields at altitudes of up to . The RB-57F was also said to have been locally modified by the PAF to carry a bombload, but never actually operated in a bombing role. On other occasions, the RB-57F was accompanied by a pair of PAF B-57B Canberra bombers (apparently the
Rivet Flash configurations sold to Pakistan in 1959 as standard B-57s but modified in 1964 under a pre-agreement of sale to enable them to track Indian mobile radars) that were jamming Indian military radio transmissions. The damaged aircraft was returned to the United States to protect it from further harm and to process the sensitive collected data, which the Pakistanis did not have the capability of doing. Both aircraft were reassigned to the 7407th Support Squadron when 63-13287 emerged from its depot recycle. The
Rivet Flash B-57 was overflying a Pakistani radar site at
Rahwali, from Amritsar, when it was shot down on 11 September 1965 by its own AAA, mistaken for an IAF Canberra. What actually happened is still uncertain. There was speculation that the aircraft had been shot down by a Soviet
S-75 Dvina (NATO designation "SA-2 Guideline")
surface-to-air missile, but the official statement by the USAF was that the aircraft was on its third pass along its route when it deviated from its flight plan, orbiting and spiraling down to below minimum radar tracking altitude, indicating that the aircraft crew had probably perished from an oxygen system failure. Although searches for the wreckage continued until 28 December, only small bits and pieces of it were recovered, although unsubstantiated reports asserted that the two crew members had been captured alive by the Soviets. The third loss, that of the second prototype, was possibly a
Cold War casualty, also with loss of crew. In 1972, the high cost to the Air Force of supporting the ESA No. 3 operation became prohibitive, and the aircraft was transferred permanently to NASA. Two other WB-57Fs were transferred with the inactivation of the 58th WRS and eventually all those in NASA service were issued
FAA civil registrations. They are designated the NASA High Altitude Research Project at the
Johnson Space Center in
Houston, Texas, and operate from
Ellington Field JRB. Three of the four WB-57F aircraft used by NASA remain in operational service, conducting a variety of civil tasks worldwide: • N925NA (NASA 925), AF s/n 63-13501 (
Rivet Slice 3 and
Rivet Rap), retired 15 September 1982 • N926NA (NASA 926), AF s/n 63-13503 (
Rivet Slice 2), registry expires 31 August 2029 In August 2006, NASA 928 arrived at RAF Mildenhall totally devoid of all the usual identification marks, particularly serial numbers or NASA logos. The only insignia were a small U.S. flag on the tail fin and some even smaller flags beneath the cockpit on the port side. The lack of insignia possibly indicated that the aircraft was operating on behalf of another U.S. government agency. After some local sorties, possibly to test the onboard equipment, the aircraft departed to
Kandahar Airport,
Afghanistan via
NSA Souda Bay,
Crete. The aircraft then flew a number of sorties out of Kandahar, presumably carrying a classified sensor package and returned to Ellington Field via Souda Bay and Mildenhall. From November 2010 to August 2011, a WB-57 was deployed to Afghanistan with the High-Altitude Lidar Operational Experiment (HALOE) payload, surveying over , 10% of the surface of Afghanistan. An updated HALOE package has subsequently been installed in a
Bombardier Global Express BD-700 business jet. Reports surfaced in March 2011 that NASA 926 was observed performing flights from
Nellis AFB testing a new sensor package being carried in its pallet system payload bay over the period from 15 November 2011 until 1 February 2012. Although the reason for the deployment to the
Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) was unknown, it was linked to testing sensors within the NTTR. Since both NASA 926 and 928 have carried
BACN (Battlefield Airborne Communications Node) payloads in Afghanistan performing
network-centric warfare missions, it was speculated that the Canberra was testing new sensors and antennas used by BACN to relay communications between command and control centers and ground troops located within valleys and ridges in the Afghanistan mountains. NASA 927 joined the fleet after being taken out of
AMARG storage at Davis-Monthan AFB. The aircraft started its service life as B-57B s/n 53-3918 as a night intruder with the
8th Tactical Bomb Squadron and then was rebuilt as RB-57F 63-13295 in 1964. The aircraft was retired to the then
MASDC on 26 June 1972 and remained at the AMARC or AMARG until May 2011. The aircraft was then dismantled and trucked to
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) at
Centennial Airport, Colorado where it was refurbished to flying condition and flown to
Ellington AFB on 9 August 2013. The aircraft was turned over to NASA and re-designated NASA 927. NASA 927 is now the aircraft longest held in extended storage (41 years) before being returned to flight status. On January 27, 2026, NASA 927 was forced to perform a
gear-up landing at
Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base due to a mechanical issue. Both crew members onboard survived with no injuries. The WB-57F, N927NA, sustained significant damage and remains grounded as of January 2026. Its latest use was on April 10, 2026, when N926NA was used in the surveillance network for reentry of
Artemis II west of the coast of San Diego. ==Operators==