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To make the plane lighter, and thus able to fly higher, two "pogos"
-- wheel gear fixed to either wing -- automatically detach when it roars off the runway, meaning that when it comes back down the pilot must land on only two sets of wheels along the fuselage. At Osan, U-2 pilots in white Pontiac G8 "chase cars" race down the runway at speeds of more than 120 miles per hour (200 kph) to meet each landing and guide the pilot down. They estimate the plane's distance from the ground in feet and radio that to the pilot
-- "Five ... five ... four ... three ... three" -- until the plane is brought to a stall with about two feet (less than a meter) to go and essentially drops down to the ground. The Air Force has 31 U-2s in active duty. NASA operates two more. Though detachments are also located in Cyprus and southwest Asia, the key role it plays in monitoring North Korea is keeping the legendary plane from the chopping block. The plane, which took crucial photos of the Soviet buildup that touched off the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, has proven to be surprisingly versatile. The Air Force has given it a $1.7 billion makeover since 1994, transforming it into an essentially new aircraft in all but name. Its sensors can function day or night in any weather. The data it gleans can be relayed via satellite link in near real-time to troops on the ground. "Most of the aircraft are really quite young," the U-2 commander said. "The ones we are flying here are from the 1980s. They have been re-engined, rewired, new cockpits, advanced avionics. Of course, the sensors are continuously being updated. This airplane is cutting edge, absolutely." Still, the Air Force had hinted for years that the U-2's days are numbered. It was scheduled to be phased out by 2015 in favor of the Global Hawk, which was used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the U-2 gained a reprieve last month, when the Air Force decided that replacing it with the drone would be too expensive. Aviation analyst Loren Thompson, of the Arlington, Virginia-based Lexington Institute, said retaining the U-2 indicates the Air Force is more concerned with North Korea
-- and cost-saving -- than monitoring areas farther away. With no pilots to swap out, the Global Hawk can fly at altitudes of 60,000 feet (18,300 meters) for much longer-range missions than the U-2
-- more than 32 hours at a time. That is important as China's military growth is changing the balance of power across the region. "U-2 is very well suited to U.S. needs on the Korean peninsula, and the consequences of losing Global Hawk there will be minimal," he said. "The loss is more serious across the broad expanses of the Western Pacific, where the tyranny of distance makes long range and endurance especially valuable."
[Associated
Press;
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