To celebrate the anniversary of its first flight 70 years ago to the day, a U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane just set several new records, a U.S. Air Force official confirmed to The War Zone. The official could not immediately say what records were set, but the pilot’s conversation with air traffic control said it was an “endurance record for category and class for aircraft.”
“So we’re gonna uh…we took off about 930 last night, California time,” the pilot said Friday morning Eastern time, according to an audio recording of a portion of that conversation obtained by The War Zone. “We’ll land there this afternoon, then right before we start our descent, we’ll zoom climb to set the altitude record.”
The recording was provided to us by our friend, scanner enthusiast Bill Bagley.
The zoom climb at the end of the mission would put the aircraft at a low fuel state and very light weight — especially if it’s configured without mission systems — the exceptionally rare TU-2S trainer may be ideal for this, or a stripped U-2S. This would allow for it to streak skyward as quickly as possible.
It is unclear at the moment whether the U-2 landed or details about the records that were set. We’ve reached out to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, the jet’s home unit, for more information and will update this story with anything pertinent provided.
U-2s can fly at over 70,000 feet. You can see an amazing view of one flight in the following video.
The flight comes as the Air Force is looking to retire the turbofan spy plane, developed during the Cold War to gather intelligence about Russia. The Lockheed and CIA’s top-secret U-2 program, code named Aquatone, coincided with the founding of Area 51, with the aircraft taking its first flight from there on Aug. 1, 1955.
The specter of the U-2 being put out to pasture has been loomed over the community for many decades, but it has never come to pass. Its record for budgetary survival may finally be coming to an end as the USAF questions its ability to survive in the air. Despite what it can bring to the table in terms of the ability to fly high and linger long while collecting intelligence and sharing data, the Air Force plans to retire the fleet over concerns of its vulnerability in a potential future conflict.
“The increasing vulnerability of the aging U-2 to air defenses operated by even lower-tier potential adversaries, let alone near-peer competitors like China and Russia, has long been an argument in favor of retiring the jets. China, in particular, continues to expand its anti-access and area denial bubbles and push them further and further from the mainland.“
The U-2’s vulnerabilities are not necessarily a new issue. The jet became a household name during the Cold War when a Dragon Lady flown by Francis Gary Powers was shot down by a surface-to-air missile deep over Soviet territory on May 1, 1960.
Regardless, the Dragon Lady continues to be a uniquely high-flying ISR platform capable of carrying a wide array of different imaging, signals intelligence, data-relay and other sensors simultaneously. U-2s, which regularly operate from a variety of forward locations and fly long missions near enemy territory, provide immense flexibility, especially compared to satellites that are constrained by their orbits and very short times over the collection target. The U-2 also flies domestic missions, including on missions around the border with Mexico as part of the U.S. military’s support for southwestern border security efforts.
The U-2 can fly higher than any other non-orbital platform the U.S. military has, at least that we know about. A very public show of those capabilities came last year when a Dragon Lady flew over a Chinese spy balloon to gather intelligence about it as it soared through U.S. airspace before it was ultimately shot down. Perched in the stratosphere, which requires U-2 pilots to don what are effectively space suits, the jets can also peer obliquely into denied areas.
With the end possibly close on the horizon — 2026 was the planned out of service date — for the Dragon Lady community and its rich history, it’s amazing to think that after 70 years, these old spy jets are still setting records.
Update: 7:05 PM Eastern –
A U.S. Air Force official provided the following update on the record-setting flight of DRAGON70.
DRAGON70 landed at Beale this afternoon, California time, the official told us, declining to provide specific details. The jet set records for how long it flew and how far. However, it did not break the altitude record.
The official declined to provide specifics.
Though the flight was to “honor the U-2 community as a whole and all the pilots who came before,” the Air Force had already been planning to test how high it could fly anyway, and the two events coincided, the official added.
Update: 9:32 PM Eastern –
Staff Sgt. Frederick Brown of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing wrote a story about the historic flight. You can read the full piece here.
The flight took off on the evening of July 31st from Beale.
“Seventy years after the very first Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady’s accidental maiden flight in 1955 by Tony LeVier over Groom Lake, Nevada, the U-2 would finish the longest single flight this platform had ever attempted, flying across all 48 contiguous states of the United States,” said Brown. “When the Dragon Lady landed the next day at Beale AFB, it had flown longer than 14 hours and traveled over 6,000 nautical miles, breaking the endurance records for an aircraft of its class.”
Update: 10:11 PM Eastern –
Brown also took some photos as well. You can see the full gallery here.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com