U-2 poised to receive radar upgrade, but not un-manned conversion - 7/31/2015 - Flight Global: The Lockheed Martin proposal to “un-man” the U-2 is dead, but the old high-altitude surveillance aircraft is very much alive despite repeated attempts to kill the programme.
The air force pushed back the aircraft’s retirement from 2016 to 2019 in its latest budget submission, giving it more time to upgrade the Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk before sending the U-2 to the boneyard.
But the Lockheed Skunk Works thinks retiring the U-2 would be premature, since the U-2 fleet is as active and capable today as at any point in its 60-year history.
In fact, the U-2 programme is set to receive an improved Raytheon Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System (ASARS-2B) with double the range of the original -2A model, and a third-generation L-3 Communications radio that can relay data between fourth- and fifth-generation fighter jets, among other things.
“We’ve done some extensive stress analysis to verify our airframe is good through 2050,” Lockheed U-2 programme director Melani Austin tells Flightglobal. “That’s based on information generated from the engineering team here as well as concurrently evaluated at Warner Robins [Air Logistics Centre], our acquisition customer.”
