2023年8月2日 · DAYTON, Ohio— The Air Force plans to retire its U-2 Dragon Lady fleet in fiscal 2026—but until then, officials say they’re hard at work to keep the iconic high-altitude surveillance planes flying and testing out technology that may be used on future aircraft.

The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is an American single-engine, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated since the 1950s by the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It provides day and night, high-altitude (70,000 feet, 21,300 meters), all-weather intelligence gathering. [1]

2024年6月4日 · Members of Congress are moving to prevent the U.S. Air Force from retiring its fleet of iconic U-2 Dragon Lady spy planes. The Pentagon approved a waiver last year that had cleared the way for the service to begin divesting the high-flying Cold War-era jets, which The War Zone was first to report.

2023年3月16日 · The U.S. Air Force may be ditching its aging U-2 spy plane in favor of a mysterious drone. The U-2 is heading for retirement by 2026 due to budget concerns, according to a new report .

2023年5月2日 · The Air Force is forging ahead with its plan to retire the storied U-2 Dragon Lady spy aircraft in fiscal 2026, as part of a yearslong effort to reshape how the service surveils American...

Spy planes are still in use and Lockheed Martin’s U-2 remains the supreme, go-to jet for high-altitude reconnaissance. U-2s have been around since the 1950s and the US Air Force fleet maintains more than 30 of the spy planes. US Defence Department: the pilot of the U-2 spy plane checks out a Chinese balloon.

4 天之前 · One nearly six-hour flight on February 3 was conducted by a U-2 spy plane, one of the US military’s most venerated reconnaissance aircraft, designed during the Cold War for collecting high ...

2023年11月7日 · The U.S. Air Force’s proposed plans to retire all of its iconic U-2 Dragon Lady spy planes by 2026 have taken a major step forward with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s signing of a critical waiver to make the controversial move a reality.

2024年3月22日 · As Beale Air Force Base, Calif., prepares to bid farewell to its U-2 Dragon Lady fleet, it is poised to welcome a new battle management squadron, which will bring some 140 Airmen to the base starting in summer 2025. The new squadron will stand up preceding the planned retirement of all 27 U-2 spy aircraft by fiscal 2026.

2018年9月13日 · Now, a suite of new sensor upgrades designed to fit snugly within a fairly compact modular package promises to not only extend the useful lifespan of the U-2, but also to dramatically increase...