OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea (Reuters) - As the matt-black U-2 spy plane approaches, a sports car surges on to the runway and gives chase.
Within seconds, the car is right behind the glider-winged, Pinocchio-nosed jet, which seems to fill the windshield as it edges toward the ground.
"Four ... 2 ... 2 ... 1 ... nice job," the driver intones over a handset, guiding the pilot down while steering the sleek blue car one-handed at up to 130 mph (210 kph). "Welcome back."
It all sounds -- and feels -- like a one-off stunt for a big-budget action movie. Yet this chase is repeated many times a day at a handful of bases dotted strategically around the globe.
It is a vital and unique part of a routine that has kept one of the world's most hard-to-fly planes airborne near the edge of space for half a century to gather secret information for U.S. intelligence and the military.
"We are looking at something somewhere and helping somebody do their job or their mission in a very direct way," said Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Johnson, commander of 5th Reconnaissance Squadron, known as the "BlackCats."
"It is hard to hide from us and that can be a very good thing, I think," Johnson, 42, from Louisville, Kentucky, told Reuters during a rare visit to the squadron's high-security compound inside Osan air base south of Seoul. "It keeps everybody honest."
Originally designed for the Central Intelligence Agency, it could not be called a reconnaissance plane given the high secrecy around it. The air force decided to call it a utility plane and since U-1 was already taken they named it U-2.
The U-2 first flew officially on Aug. 8, 1955, and was soon conducting top-secret Cold War missions over the Soviet Union to assess Moscow's missile advances.
Source For Full Article : http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-07-31T015639Z_01_N30301928_RTRIDST_0_USREPORT-ARMS-U2-DC.XML
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