[2] The project was intended to provide a simple means of extending the stand-off range of nuclear weapons delivered using the toss bombing technique, as some slower aircraft still faced marginal escape conditions when delivering ordinary gravity bombs even with the use of this technique.

[2] Twenty test firings during the course of 1955 were conducted without a single failure,[1] and in 1956 the rocket entered operational service.

[2] BOAR was intended to be an interim weapon;[2] a more advanced development, Hopi, entered flight testing during 1958.

[4] Hopi, however, failed to enter production, and BOAR remained the only standoff nuclear air-to-surface missile fielded by the Navy.

[2] In service, the rocket proved unpopular with the pilots of the aircraft assigned to carry it: the loft-bombing maneuver, called an "idiot loop", was considered dangerous.