Watch Technicians Take Apart And Rebuild A U-2 Spy Plane
Stuck in a repair cycle it can't get out of
By Kelsey D. Atherton | Published Dec 5, 2015 3:55 AM
No spy plane in history is as long-serving as the venerable U-2. First flown in 1955, the plane was a major part of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and continues to serve to this day. While U-2 makers Lockheed Martin contemplate turning it into a drone and building a sucessor, the plane is still scheduled to stay in American service until at least 2019. Keeping an old plane flying requires a lot of maintenance, and in the U-2's case, that means taking it apart and rebuilding it after every 4,700 hours of flight time.
Captured by Sploid, this video shows a timelapse of the process, from disassembly to reconstruction, that happens every repair cycle. Most striking is the paint removal, which clocks in at about 1:13.
Watch the full process below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW7M4CDHIes?
Kelsey D. Atherton
Kelsey D. Atherton is a defense technology journalist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work on drones, lethal AI, and nuclear weapons has appeared in Slate, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere.
spy planes
U-2
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