The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is an American single-engine, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated since the 1950s by the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It provides day and night, high-altitude (above 70,000 feet, 21,300 meters), all-weather intelligence gathering. [1]

The struggle between the CIA and the US Air Force to control the U-2 and A-12 OXCART projects reveals how the manned reconnaissance program confronted problems that still beset successor programs today.

After stopping U-2 flights over the Soviet Union in May 1960, the Intelligence Community looked for new ways to use this unique reconnaissance asset. One idea was to modify the U-2 to fly from US Navy aircraft carriers.

2013年8月15日 · CIA history reveals newly declassified material on U-2 and OXCART reconnaissance programs; information and map of Area 51/Groom Lake; fresh detail on spy flights over China, USSR, France

In July 1956, the ability of the U.S. to penetrate Soviet territory in the pursuit of intelligence, particularly photographic intelligence, took a big step forward when the CIA's U-2 successfully completed its first missions over the Soviet territory.

This volume presents to scholars and the public the CIA's newly declassified internal history of the U-2 program. The original study, written by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach for the CIA History Staff in the 1980s, was published in 1992 under the title The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART ...

The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974 Created Date: 19990210102848Z ...

2022年7月29日 · PREX 3.17:C 33Digitized from IA1177309-13-0028, IA1177309-13-0029, IA1177309-13-0030.

This report contains a comprehensive and authoritative history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program, which from 1954 to 1974 developed and operated the U2 and the A-12 OXCART. It describes not only the program's technological and bureaucratic aspects, but also its political and international context.

By late May 1957, the CIA planned a series of U-2 missions to overfly and photograph the Soviet nuclear complexes at Tomsk, Novosibirsk, and Krasnoyarsk, uranium-mining operations in Siberia near the Chinese border, and the atomic weapons test site at Semipalatinsk.