Great system and still versatile. You can retask these faster/better than a Global Hawk. The mission is still needed.

I’d be interested to find what fuel consumption was on the SR-71 at altitude, it having to expend all sorts of power and hence fuel to remain at such a high speed. The U2, though, being basically a slightly-powered glider, had no need for gratuitous thrust to remain at her top speed and altitude.

The U2 and SR-71’s were very well suited to specific missions, and they did them better than anything anybody ever came up with. Gotta give the nod to the SR-71 though — there’s just something awfully sexy about being at the same altitude at mach 3+, and shock diamonds in the exhaust ain’t nothing either.

– Max

Back then, an U2 would launch mid-morning most days during the week, making a huge racket. They’d recover later in the afternoon, and you could watch a pickup truck or two running down the runway parallel with the aircraft to catch the wing tip so it wouldn’t drag.

Worked just fine the couple times I managed to catch a landing.

Of course the reason the AF killed off the Blackbird is that it was coming out of their budgetary hide and during crunch time something had to go, while the U2 was a CIA/SRO budget deal (even those the AF flew), IIRC. That, and the fact it siphoned off some of our best pilots and isolated/stove-piped them such that it was hard to promote them in numbers to higher commands due to lack of the right punched staff school tickets, experience in larger commands, etc.