Why is the Lockheed U-2 still flying more than 70 years after its first flight? Built in the 1950s as a CIA spy plane to conduct reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the U-2 has outlasted satellites, drones like the RQ-4 Global Hawk, and many aircraft intended to replace it, including the SR-71 Blackbird. Yet today, the U-2S remains in active service, conducting reconnaissance missions around the world.
Developed by Lockheed’s Skunk Works, the U-2’s unusual design allows it to fly for more than 10 hours and cover over 11,000 kilometers without refueling, while carrying a wide variety of interchangeable cameras, sensors, and intelligence-gathering equipment. Over its long career, the reconnaissance aircraft has photographed Soviet missile sites during the Cuban Missile Crisis, supported operations from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, and continued flying missions into the modern era.
In this Airspeed video, we break down the U-2 Dragon Lady to see how it was designed to operate at extreme altitudes, how it became one of America’s most important reconnaissance aircraft, and why decades of newer technology have still struggled to replace it.
This video was created entirely by humans.
Chapters
00:00–02:29 Behind the Iron Curtain
02:29–07:02 Inside the U-2 Dragon Lady
07:02–08:22 Francis Gary Powers Incident
08:22–08:41 Cuban Missile Crisis
08:41–13:02 Why the U2 is Irreplaceable
🎬Special thanks to our team
-Hubert M, Stefan Z and Edin S: 3D Animation
-Liam S: Editing & Sound Design
-Federico B: Research & Script
-Ben S: Narration
-Lion & Louis: Direction
🧩 3D Assets
Third-party 3D assets used in this video have been purchased under royalty-free licenses.
🎵 Music and Sound
Music and sound design used in this video are licensed via royalty-free music libraries.
📚 Photo and Video Sources
Images and video used in this video are part of the public domain or used under Creative Commons licenses and sourced from:
-Internet Archive:
-Wikimedia Commons:
“National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day” — The U.S. Army — CC BY 3.0 — Edited
Source: [
#LockheedU2 #U2DragonLady #SpyPlane
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What’s your favorite military aircraft of all time, and why?
Everything you see and hear in our videos was made by real people who put a lot of time and effort into creating them, including the research, scriptwriting, narration, 3D modeling, animation, editing, and sound design.
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КОНЧЕННЫЕ мультики от ИИ
Фу и ДИЗЛАЙК 😱 !
Спасибо!😊
Интересно и познавательно.👍
its beautiful and its works thats it
Two interesting autobiographies to read are those of Gary Powers (U2 pilot) and Emil Goldfus (the spy he was traded for.)
The US was not caught off guard…the government/military thought an attack would be the response of its choice to stop selling oil to Japan. Pearl harbor was only caught off guard because the message warning of a potential attack arrived mere hours too late. So the US expected that its policy would result in an attack and in the US joining the war…it's very likely that joining would have happened regardless…they simply underestimated the speed with which the Japanese could attack.
유미나스이가 뭐냐.
Apparently, this author has NO CONCEPT of tail numbers/codes? They have 'BO'. They tail codes are such that 'BB' is supposed to be an approximation of the 'Home Base" such as 'ED" for Edwards Air Force Base etc. Under the small 'AF' (which DOES mean 'Air Force' btw.) is the year under which the budget appropriation (essentially when it was built — but truthfully — AND actually, it WAS the year of the budgetary item (i.e., In 1980 — for example, so many A/c's were budgeted AND allocated for the Air Force at that time) — there were NO Letters (as in this case, it was stated as being 'BO' instead of, perhaps, '80') then the number code was generally thought to represent that years' actual budget assessment number for the Air Force (in this particular case) — so it would have been the 73rd A/c iteration of that A/c. So 'BO' has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT — AT ALL!. BTW, stating in writing that this video is: 'This video was entirely created by humans.', is just a step to try to get people to think that no 'AI' was involved in this video — that's fine but also INTENTIONALLY inaccurate. Every video is something (at least at this point) that WAS created — in one way or another, by humans. Thast does NOT mean that 'AI' WAS NOT USED. That's just a scam to get you to view.
Think of the movie 'Tommy Boy' when whilst on a 'sales call' 'Tommy' goes to a parts store and is trying to sell brake pads to the store owner and the owner says that he doesn't like that there is 'NO GUARANTEE on the box…' and 'Tommy says that he could write on the box that there was a guarantee on the box but that all that it meant was that it was a guaranteed %100 PoS. That's what this 'mention' actually is.
무슨 배경음 때문에 무슨 말을 하는지 알아 듣지도 못하겠네
U2Sはランニング・コストは割と安いしね
偵察衛星に比べてね
現在の機器の性能は上がって、領空侵犯せずに
2万mの領空外からの偵察が結構いける
航続距離も7,800kmぐらい エンジンはF-118
B2と同じだから今後も整備はOK、
U2Sの母体はF-104 新造するにしても母体の機体が無いな
U2Sは33機ぐらいを運航、在韓米軍(烏山空軍基地)
に4機だって
低空の偵察衛星でも100kmぐらいだからね
（通常は500㎞の高度の軌道で偵察では100㎞ぐらいまで軌道を下げるから燃料の消費が大きく、衛星の寿命は2年未満）
Епа ное ии
Now they just need to make into a drone version
2:54 Aqui é possível ver uma câmera com a lente olho de peixe, se puxar vídeos de U2 sem essa lente, verá que tudo é plano. Mentiram para você a vida toda, sinto muito informar.
Ну, положим, для моего ЗРК большой дальности С-200В (1962 года выпуска) этот москит был легкой и "чистой" целью. Я был знаком с членом экипажа SR-71, который увидев радиолокационную сигнатуру нашего комплекса, разворачивался и шел на почтенной дистанции вдоль границы СССР.
Как учили меня мои офицеры, не так страшен танк, как экипаж внутри него…
Кто более подготовлен и более мотивирован – тот и победитель…
Gehört eigentlich nicht zur Air Force sondern zur CIA! Nur die Piloten wurden von der US AF ausgeliehen!
Странно в СССР был учебно тренировочный самолёт ПО-2 и у него было второе название У-2
США преступники 1:28
The Lockheed U-2 has been shot down multiple times in combat history.
A total of seven U-2 aircraft have been verified as shot down by enemy surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) during the Cold War.
1 over the Soviet Union (1960): The most famous incident occurred on May 1, 1960, when CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk by a Soviet S-75 Dvina (SA-2) missile. Powers survived the crash, was captured, and the incident sparked a major international diplomatic crisis.
1 over Cuba (1962): During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, USAF Major Rudolf Anderson Jr. was shot down and killed by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 missile while capturing intelligence on nuclear sites.
5 over China (1962–1967): The Chinese military shot down five U-2 planes. These extremely hazardous missions were part of the top-secret "Black Cat Squadron," where Taiwanese pilots flew CIA-provided U-2s to gather intelligence on China’s nuclear weapons program
World be like "70-Year-Old Spy Plane Is Still Irreplaceable" : Lol
The soviets still shot it down.
Kelly Johnson and his team were ridiculous designers… half their shit was ahead of their time, and the other half was at the bleeding edge and is still relevant today
Biggest dependency injection ad
This aircraft will inevitably be replaced by a drone. The RQ4 was an early effort that fell short, but the technology is there for a better design to take over soon. Coming from someone who works in the field
RQ-180 had entered the chat.
I caught sight of a U-2 spy plane on Google maps. I still have the screen shot.
At the end Iran just nailed them in coffin ⚰️, 1$vs 100million 😂😂😂
I didn’t realize the Hubble space telescope was a spy satellite
Turn it into a ground attack aircraft
Hey, Airspeed, are you AI?
Back when I was stationed at Osan in the 80s, we had the U-2R model flying for us. Loved the folks at the Det there who flew and maintained the aircraft and the pilots.
How could you not mention that it was based on the f104?
Because the newer generation of people are too dumb to create anything that simply works.
top stuff, not slop
Do one on the RB-57! Always second fiddle to the U-2, but did its share of spying on the USSR.
Why not just convert her into a UAV?
I think it’s a mixture of engineering and I believe the actual photography plus other technology that make’s the U2 actually the prefect design
The reason the US and USSR went from Allies to rivals almost overnight at the end of WW2 as stated at about 0:50 is because the US was not only not against fascism, it was the prototype for it (as demonstrated by the inspiration drawn by both hitler and mussolini from the US treatment of Indigenous people and Black populations in and after slavery). Operation paperclip brought around 1500 of the top people from the third reich and gave them protected lives here because big power and money has been the only thing the US Constitution has allowed the interests of to get served. It is the same as the Proclaimed fascists on that point because the US Constitution was written by (protofascist) Propertied Opulent white protestant men… For the service of the interests of themselves and their class (their version of the "master class/race"). Anyone who digs deeply enough into documents they kept themselves, the federalist papers, state legislature records, the letters they communicated with, etc cannot honestly Not dispel the myths of a nation built for democracy (the fear of "the tyranny of the majority" is too prominent to allow the service of the interests of the masses) or even in the service of widespread well-being. The constitution, the institutions it sets up, the rules and laws that support it set up a self correcting course toward something described almost two centuries later in a dystopian fiction work (1984) as "Oligarical Collectivism". I propose people think about this and whether they really want to keep this course. I think we can do far better if we choose.
Watched this after seeing the Spirit of St. Louis video. Both really well done. Subbed!
How is such a small channel able to make such high quality videos?
Now ask why they are replacing the A10…..
FYI, the Hubble Telescope isn't a spy satellite.
The U-2 always being flown gently, strain sensors show very little to no airframe degradation to date. Operational life expected to be at least a full century.
AI SLOP
Great video. More simpler answer for that question could be just like this: Because US can't produce or design any better thing than it for that job. Especially for last several decades it happening much more frequently in several big powers. They couldn't develop something cost effective while still could produce state of art things.
U-2 can break fIight ceiIing record easiIy but they didn't changed the engine to be more efficent it stiII operates with F118 they couId've used Iow baypass new gen engines and spec it specificaIIy for U-2 it can go much much higher aItidutes