And we start by taking you to experience the exclusive access we gained onboard one of the jewels of the U.S. Air Force fleet, the B-52 bomber.

CNN was the first news organization to be given access to a B-52 and its command center.

We were onboard as the B-52 flew one of the longest military missions in the world, a 33-hour, 13,000-mile journey from Louisiana to Japan and back.

Boeing built the B-52 to carry bombs, and it can drop the widest array of weapons of any jet in the Air Force, including nuclear weapons.

But on this flight, the jet was unarmed.

That's because the point of this mission was deterrence, to show other nations, both adversaries and allies alike, that the U.S. is still the preeminent force dominating the skies.

The military began using B-52s in 1955, and many of the planes still in operation were built several decades ago.

And as you'll see in this exclusive news report, these old planes can sometimes show their age.

CNN's Oren Liebermann has more.

MYLAR11 0933 lander (ph) 330 -- Under the shroud of predawn darkness, flight MYLAR11 roars out of Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base.