No Rest for a Cold Warrior

The U-2s flying today are not, of course, identical to the ones flying in the late 1950s. The body of the plane has been updated and enlarged, and its classified sensors are so advanced that they use a combination of seven different bands of visual and infrared imagery to produce images that look almost exactly like photographs, whether in the dark or through thick smoke, dust storms, or heavy cloud cover. They "can even see through camouflage," says Dick Wientzen, who managed the development of the sensors for Goodrich Corp. "They are good at looking at differences between man-made and natural objects." This technology is used regularly over Iraq, for example, to detect improvised explosive devices placed along major roads.

Challenging ride. One thing, however, has not changed. The U-2 is still legendary in the Air Force for being one of the most difficult planes to fly—and to land. To survive at 70,000 feet, pilots wear a pressurized spacesuit. They have to breathe pure oxygen for an hour before takeoff to stave off decompression sickness (better known to deep-sea divers as the bends).

Landing a U-2 is even more challenging, because the pilot must stall the plane only a few feet above the runway. As the U-2 comes in for a landing, a sports car races behind it to relay the plane's altitude to the pilot, whose field of vision is limited by the cumbersome pressure suit. "It's like riding on the handles of a bicycle backwards and trying to steer, because the tail wheel moves, not the nose wheel," says Samuel Ryals, a formerU-2 pilot who now is the director of research and development at Goodrich.

U-2 missions are also very dangerous. At least 34 pilots have been killed over the years, most recently in 2005 on a mission over Afghanistan. For decades, officials have explored replacing the pilot with a drone that could navigate remotely from the ground. Early models of the Global Hawk, which flies as high as 65,000 feet, currently perform operations over Afghanistan and Iraq, and more powerful versions are in the test phase. Northrop Grumman, which is developing the plane, insists that the time has come when there is no longer any trade-off in removing a human pilot from the cockpit. "If we have this other technology, why are we still stuffing guys into spacesuits for 12 hours and having them eat baby food and pee down their leg?" says Ed Walby, a former U-2 pilot now in charge of business development for the Global Hawk program at Northrop. "Why would you put people in harm's way if you don't have to?"

The Air Force is salivating over the Global Hawk because it can remain in the air for more than 30 hours at a stretch, well beyond the 12-hour limit of the manned U-2. Air Force planners envision a U-2 phaseout sometime around 2012 or 2013 as new, more powerful Global Hawks go into service. But some in Congress are concerned the Air Force is moving too fast, given the heavy reliance on the U-2 today. (During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, the venerable plane supplied 88 percent of all battlefield imagery.) Even though the last U-2 was built in 1989, they all have newer engines and cockpits and theoretically would be capable of flying through 2050.

The House of Representatives recently passed an intelligence authorization bill that would restrict the Pentagon's ability to phase out the U-2. "The bottom line is that we cannot afford to retire the U-2 until we make sure we have another aircraft to fulfill the same mission," says Rep. Wally Herger, the California Republican who represents the district containing Beale Air Force Base, which is home to both the U-2s and the Global Hawks.

The Air Force insists that the schedule for phasing out the U-2 is flexible, depending largely on how well the new- generation Global Hawk planes perform in tests. But the U-2 is expensive to operate, and Pentagon budget officials are eager to free up money for more Global Hawks. Today, there are 28 U-2s flying active missions from bases in California, Cyprus, and South Korea and near Iraq. "The Air Force is being very deliberate about taking the U-2 out of the inventory," says Bartlett. "We're not going to do it prematurely, but there are fiscal realities."