This is the same plane -- with some modifications -- that was piloted by Francis Gary Powers and shot down by the Soviet Union in 1960.
With a fleet that now comprises 32 aircraft, known as Dragon Ladies, they have flown over every major battlefield and contested frontier in the more than half a century since the plane first debuted in 1955. The U-2 is the third leg -- perhaps most ignored and least understood because of its elite, top-secret status -- of today's espionage triad that also includes drones and spy satellites. Often, because unlike drones or satellites, it is piloted on board by top-of-the-line specialists able to react quickly to every observation, it is often the most important leg. But the plane and the courageous pilots who fly it to the doorstep of space deserve to be more publicly recognized and rewarded for their unsung roles in preserving America's security.
On Tuesday, CNN reported that intelligence showing that Iran is likely moving short-range ballistic missiles aboard boats in the Persian Gulf was one of the primary reasons the US moved the Abraham Lincoln group and B-52 bombers into the region. While Air Force officials refused to disclose the source of this intelligence, it is precisely this type of threat that the U-2 historically has been most adept at uncovering, its pilots and ground controllers told me.
Last Friday, I had the good fortune to spend much of the day with U-2 pilots and the intelligence specialists to whom they are tethered far below on the ground. What quickly became clear to me as they ran through their operations, training and the extraordinary machinery they pilot in astronaut-style space suits, is that we may quite simply have come to rely too heavily on --ultra high-tech spy satellites and drones. And in real-time battlefield conditions, satellites and drones have serious shortcomings.
"When you think about some of the technical capabilities that our adversaries are able to put in the field pretty quickly, pretty cheaply, GPS jamming, it definitely pays dividends to have a human being that's able to react in real time to developing situations at the forward edge of whatever you're trying to do," Major Matt Nauman, who's been a U-2 pilot for seven years, told me. "I can operate my aircraft wherever I need to go at a moment's notice, which is a huge advantage. There's a number of threats out there that I can see, and I can defeat."
Indeed, his fellow U-2 pilot Major Travis Patterson, observed, "I can be there in a moment's notice. I can go to a hotspot, I can deploy anywhere in the world," adding the U-2 program motto that each pilot is "alone, unarmed, and unafraid."
The two pilots and other Air Force officers connected with the program pointed out that the U-2 indeed has certain advantages over drones and spy satellites. In some circumstances, drones can find their control frequencies jammed by Russian forces or equipment as they have been over Syria and eastern Ukraine. Still, it was U-2, as I was told, that played a key role in identifying the Syrian government's use of sarin gas on their own civilians, making good use of its "stand-off" capabilities -- performing intelligence-gathering missions from well offshore.
At 70,000 feet, it is able to maintain a 300-mile monitoring radius. "If you're parked off somebody's coast with a 300-mile looking glass, that's pretty phenomenal," Major Nauman said with a smile. This is a useful operational radius that allows the plane to hover beyond danger when a U-2 is positioned off North Korea, Syria or the Persian Gulf where the American carrier battle group is headed.
At the same time, it can take hours, even days, to reposition a spy satellite. Amateur satellite-watchers on the ground, let alone hostile powers with military-grade equipment, can often see them coming with enough warning to conceal whatever the satellite was setting up to watch.
It's the pilots themselves, though, who are the greatest value of the U-2 program and the reason Air Force officers want to make sure it remains active and operational. "They care about getting their mission done," said Captain Joseph Siler, who spent years in a ground-based distributive operations group, figuratively "tethered" to U-2 pilots over Afghanistan when he was responsible for identifying "high-value targets" for Air Force sorties. "There's this tried and true method that those guys work to keep relevant."
A central question, though, is how quickly decision makers in Washington or at regional command headquarters can get their hands on the intelligence that the U-2 sorties capture. In the most urgent circumstances, within minutes, according to Air Force officials. But there are moments when seconds count, and this is where Congress and Pentagon budgeteers could make a real difference. What might be high on a U-2 pilot's wish list?
As Major Patterson put it, in the cockpit -- where they may spend 10 to 12 hours over a high-value target -- there could be even greater involvement by the pilot including "the ability to perform more and different mission sets during the actual mission execution. How do we integrate AI and machine learning into processing the things that are on the ground? How do we do that up in the air?" Patterson asked.
In other words, while in the cockpit, the pilots would have a greater ability to process intelligence as they send it to the ground, allowing them to react instantly to what their instruments and cameras are uncovering. The roundtrip between plane, ground station, command and back to the plane can feel like an eternity at tactical moments.
Major Nauman painted a more direct picture. "We are up in U-2, it can listen to signals and it can take images. So ... let's say I hear an interesting signal over there and then we start focusing our imaging radar on that. And I get a good idea: hey, maybe there's something of interest right here." He paused for effect. "It's constantly working together to paint the best intelligence picture." In the end, though, it all comes down to money. Will the U-2 and its pilots have the best available at any price?
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