2021 U2 spy plane pilot tube food, US Air Force ration taste test MRE review

Yep.

“If you look at space and some of the other types of surveillance capabilities, they depend on a great deal of pre-planning to provide the information required. In contrast, the U-2 is always available and can be ready at a moment’s notice.”

“What I am often asked is, why can’t satellites do what the U-2 does?” says Chris Pocock, a former aviation journalist and the author of books about the U-2. “Well, they have fantastic capabilities now, but a predictable orbital path. This means that low-orbit spy satellites aren’t over any one area for very long, whereas the U-2 can loiter for a long time over one specific spot.” Satellites are also increasingly vulnerable to countermeasures such as lasers that can blind spy satellites, jamming or even missiles that can damage or destroy a vital satellite.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201210-lockheed-u-2-spyplane

The whole article is worth reading though, since it gives other reasons why the plane is still in service:

The U-2 has also acquired new roles, like that of a data relay. Its ability to fly high in the sky meant that it was in the perfect position to relay information from the battlefield to headquarters. In the process it has outlasted rival planes and seen off the surveillance satellites that were supposed to make it redundant.

Now the 31 operational U-2s in the USAF fleet are about to undergo a $50m (£37.8m) update and acquire a new mission which could see them fly on for another 30 more years. It may also see them go head-to-head with a drone so secret that its existence has yet to be officially acknowledged.

“We are not going away as a programme and we are investing heavily to bring the U-2 into its new mission environment,” says Lockheed Martin U-2 programme director Irene Helley. “In this new era there is no sunset date planned.”

The U-2 has so far seen off at least five possible replacements. The first, in the 1970s, was from the first-generation UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). The whale-like Northrup Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-altitude remotely piloted surveillance aircraft, is one of the most recent. When it first appeared in 1998 the U-2 was more than 40 years old. To pay for the U-2’s update, 24 Global Hawks are going to have to be scrapped.

With the Global Hawk sidelined, the evolution of the U-2 can take its next step. The changes to the plane will include better avionics, a touchscreen cockpit (that you can use with a pressure suit) and a new mission computer that will allow the plane to run the new Open Mission System (OMS). A bit like a spyplane equivalent of the Android system you might find on your mobile phone, OMS will enable aircraft like the U-2 to talk easily to the computer systems of tanks, ships, aircraft, satellites and even cyberweapons.

“That the U-2 can serve for another 30 years is really down to the genius of the folks who designed the plane,” says Helley. “When we started rolling off new versions of the plane it was built to have an excess amount of power and space – and the modular way it was redesigned… allows us to continually upgrade it or equip it to serve different types of missions.

“We can take something from concept to a demonstration flight and then testing in the field within weeks or months.”

cc: @mild_takes