A striking image launched on February 22 by the Department of Defense exposes a distinct aerial scene: The image reveals the Chinese monitoring balloon as seen from the cockpit of a U-2 spy airplane on February 3, in addition to the pilot’s helmet, the airplane’s wing, and even the shadow of the airplane itself on the balloon. While the topic of the picture is the balloon, which was later on shot down by an F-22, the airplane that made the image possible is referenced in the image’s easy title: “U-2 Pilot over Central Continental United States.” Here’s a quick guide on that airplane, a high-flying spy aircraft with a credibility for being difficult to run and land. The U-2 airplane is created to run at “over 70,000 feet,” according to an Air Force truth sheet. That extremely high elevation indicates that it flies method greater than industrial jet airplane, which tend to travel at an optimum elevation in the lower end of the 40,000-foot variety. The U-2’s capability to climb up above 70,000 feet in elevation “makes it, I think, the greatest flying airplane that we understand about in the Air Force stock,” states Todd Harrison, a defense expert with Metrea, a company previously called Meta Aerospace. “That ends up being essential for an objective like this, where the balloon was running around 60,000 feet.”
[Related: Why the US might be finding more unidentified flying objects]
The aircraft includes wings that extend to a width of 105 feet, which has to do with 3 times longer than the wingspan of an F-16. “It is developed for extremely high elevation flight, and it has an extremely effective wing–[a] really high element ratio wing, so that makes it long and slim,” Harrison states. Long, slim wings are certainly more effective than much shorter, stubbier ones, which is among the factors NASA and Boeing are preparing to have truss-supported slim wings on an speculative business airplane called the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator that would be more fuel effective than existing designs. On the U-2, those long wings, which are a possession in the sky, produce a genuine obstacle when attempting to get it pull back on the ground. “This jet does not wish to be on the ground, which’s a genuine issue when it concerns landing it,” Matt Nauman, a U-2 pilot, stated at an Air Force occasion in 2019 that Popular Science went to. To land it, “we’ll really decrease, which nose will continue to turn up till the aircraft basically falls out of the sky,” at practically 2 feet off the ground.
[Related: Biden says flying objects likely not ‘related to China’s spy balloon program’]
A couple of other elements figure into the landing. One is that the airplane has what’s called bicycle-style landing equipment, rather than the tricycle-style landing equipment of a routine industrial aircraft. Simply put: It has simply 2 landing equipment legs, not 3, so is tippy, side-to-side, as it touches down. To assist with those landings, a chase vehicle actually follows the airplane down the runway as it’s being available in to land, with its chauffeur– a U-2 pilot also– in radio contact with the pilot in the aircraft to assist them get the bird on the tarmac. This video reveals that procedure. A U-2 pilot gets a screw tightened up on his helmet in the UAE in 2019. United States Air Force/ Gracie I. Lee Because the aircraft is created to fly at such high elevations, the pilot wears a heavy area match like this daredevil used in 2012, while the cockpit is pushed to an elevation of about 14,000 or 15,000 feet. Having that equipment on makes landing the airplane a lot more tough, as another U-2 pilot stated in 2019, showing: “You’re successfully using a fishbowl on your head.” Having the fit suggests the pilot is secured from the thin environment if the airplane were to have an issue or the pilot had to eject.
[Related: Everything you could ever want to know about flying the U-2 spy plane]
The point of the airplane is to collect info. “It is utilized to spy, and gather intelligence on others,” states Harrison. “It has actually been updated and improved throughout the years, with airframe modernization, clearly the sensing units have actually improved and much better.” The U-2 notoriously utilized to shoot photos utilizing old-school damp movie with what’s called the Optical Bar Camera, and stopped doing so just in the summertime of 2022. A U-2 in Nevada in 2018. United States Air Force/ Bailee A. Darbasie As for the current picture of the security balloon from the U-2, a press reporter for NPR hypothesizes that it was taken particularly “simply south of Bellflower” Missouri, as did a Twitter user with the manage @obretix. “It’s a quite amazing picture,” Harrison shows. “It does reveal that the United States was actively surveilling this balloon up close throughout its transit of the United States. It’s intriguing that the U-2 pilot was really able to catch a selfie like that while flying at that elevation.” On February 6, a Popular Science brother or sister site, the War Zone, reported that the United States had actually utilized U-2 airplane to keep tabs on the balloon. And on February 8, CNN reported prior to this image’s main release that a “pilot took a selfie in the cockpit that reveals both the pilot and the monitoring balloon itself,” mentioning United States authorities.