Reasons for U-2

Why does U.S. military insist on U-2 for their reconnaissance plane?

U-2, which is also known as the ‘Dragon Lady’ was first shot down by Soviet Union in 1960. Since then it has been shot down over seven occasions and it has caused accidents frequently. In Korea, other then the January 26th incident, the U-2 has crashed over Osan in 1984, in the East Sea in 1992 and crash landed in the runaway of Osan airfield in 1994.

The U-2 was first introduced in the service in 1955 and for over forty-eight years it remains as the main strategic reconnaissance plane of U.S. military. For a while, the ‘Black Bird (SR-71)’ had competed with U-2 for its role but SR-71 was put out of commission in 1993. The U.S. Department of Defense plans to maintain the U-2 till 2020.

On January 27th, a U.S. webzine, the ‘slate.com’ explains that U-2 can gather most reliable intelligence, which is why it is still in the service. There are reconnaissance satellites that have no danger of being shot down, but satellites are limited by its orbits and cannot approached specific objectives. Also U.S. satellite orbit times are well known and there are measures to avoid satellite reconnaissances.

The maximum cruising speed of U-2 is mach 0.7. The SR-71 is four times faster with mach 3 speed. However the SR-71 was unable to replace U-2 due to various problems, such as fuel leakage problem during takeoff, high fuel consumption, requirement for special airfield runaway and etc.

According to ‘slate.com’, U-2 was responsible for 90% of the intelligence to the land forces in the 1991 Gulf war and 80% of the reconnaissance intelligence of NATO forces in the Yugoslav air strike.

The ‘slate.com’ also reports that U-2 is infamous for its difficult control and there are only about fifty pilots who are qualified to fly U-2. Due to difficulties in acquiring able U-2 pilots, U-2 will be expected to put out of commission much sooner.

An Un-manned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) called ‘Black Hawk’ was developed as a substitute but so far three out of total six UAVs produced have crashed and the rest are not operational. Each aircraft cost fifty million dollars (600 billion won), which isn`t greatly economical compared to U-2`s fifty-three million dollars cost.

Lockheed Martins Corporation has produced about a hundred U-2s, which includes eight different variations of U-2s.

Eun-Taek Hong euntack@donga.com