2 April 2015

Surveillance Showdown: U-2 Spy Plane vs. Drones

March 30, 2015

The history of the mighty U-2 Dragon Lady surveillance plane, and its future, is so tightly intertwined with drones that the death of one has often meant the survival of the other.

In fact, today’s modern U-2 fleet was born of a dead drone project in the 1970s called Compass Cope, a first-generation remotely-piloted aircraft program designed to replace the Dragon Lady with an unmanned alternative.

The U-2 first flew in 1955, and versions of that original spy plane — built to peek behind the Iron Curtain — continue to be the Air Force’s go-to plane for high-altitude photographic and signals intelligence gathering.

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