Amid all the news of Navy ships and aircraft steaming and flying through radioactive clouds near Japan, we thought we’d point out that the Air Force is deploying some of it’s most high tech assets to help with disaster relief there.
Yesterday, the air service announced that it has sent at least one U-2 Dragon Lady spyplane and a RQ-4 Global Hawk drone to provide high altitude imagery of the damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami that slammed Japan last week.
While the Global Hawk will be taking snapshots of up to 40,000 square kilometers a day using modern electo-optical cameras and Synthetic Aperture Radar the U-2 will be using its old school Optical Bar Camera which takes super high resolution photos on 10,500 feet of wet film. Yup, a similar camera used by the U-2 to spot Soviet missile sites during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The camera, developed in 1971, weighs about 300 pounds and its roll of film weighs more than 120 pounds. Pretty serious.
It’s always cool to see the U-2 and its replacement, the Global Hawk, working together. Yes, the Global Hawk can carry some interesting payloads and stay on station for a long time but the U-2 can still carry more sensors and cameras aloft; a feature that keeps it in service despite rumors of its imminent retirement year after year.
Click through the jump to see a picture of the Dragon Lady’s camera.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
I'm sure if they drop that over an enemy tank it'll destroy it
The Global Hawk does have one very useful feature that the U-2 does not: it can fly as close and for as long as it needs to near a damaged nuclear reactor without worrying about its pilot sustaining a harmful dose of radiation. Just the same, this is a great peacetime use of recon assets, both manned and unmanned.
Considering in the Cold War they were used to collect radioisotope readings to assess Soviet nuke testing I don't think pilot survival is particularly high priority. Breathing pure oxygen at altitude doesn't keep you healthy either, nor does unpleasantly severe dehydration.
More importantly, they are flying extremely high, in a hermetically sealed environment with their own oxygen supply. At that height, they already have to deal with radiation from space. I doubt the nuclear reactors would cause the pilots serious problems.
Who says they're flying at 70,000 feet? Nobody is shooting at them.
True, but the whole purpose of using the U2 is to fly at extremely high altitudes to get an expansive view of the ground below. It's probably more difficult to do that at 30,000 feet.
I currently work with 'the program' and we HAVE to fly at 70k+, as the camera systems are designed to achieve their greatest resolution at that height.
That the Japanese SDF is being bested by 50 year old technology (U-2) is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. The Japanese got off almost entirely scot-free for war crime responsibilities and any significant burden for their own future self-defense after WW2 due to the actions of one man: Gen Douglas MacArthur. He was expecting the same sort of pay-offs from the Japanese that he got from the Philippines– gold bullion that he hauled off along with his own ass on a PT boat while his troops stayed behind and suffered the murder of the Bataan March and Japanese imprisonment. I don't know if he got his Japanese pay-offs, but America has been paying very dearly for it ever since. And this self-serving incompetent has become a hero of the American Right. Maybe that is understandable.
What do you mean by bested? Unit 731 got away with war crimes because of their extensive..records. Same is true of many German scientists.
I've never heard anything about gold bullion…
Upon looking, it turned out that the president(?) of the Philippines at the time was compensating American commanders with money. Apparently a few declined the considerable awards, but MacArthur was not one of them.
A fair number of commanders were hanged, but if you think about it the majority of the triggermen rarely were punished in either case. Most attempted to disappear or were killed in combat. Regarding Japan, I don't doubt a fair number implicated in atrocities committed seppuku, preventing eventual prosecution.
wont U2 carry digital camera vs old style film camera?
Save weight alone & enhnace recon shots.
The U2 had a weight balancing issue where the film rolls occupied mass and were shifted as filmed to keep aircraft balanced.
Alternatively, there is the cost of designing a niche camera for a niche application…
in addition, the film camera has a resolution that digital cameras can't match (at least within the size and weight restrictions of the payload bay) – as an example, the optical bar camera can image the lines on the tarmac in a parking lot
This is inaccurate to a degree. Yes, the U2 is sensitive to weight and balance, HOWEVER the film spools are oriented along fuselage axis. As film is consumed, it is shifted front to rear (versus the IRIS we used to use, which would shift from right to left). In any case, the film only weighs 100 pounds, which wasn't enough to cause issues with the IRIS.
We carrying either film or digital (check out SYERS). We have the advantage of resolution, whereas they have the advantage of multi-spectral imaging, moving target indication, and near-real-time dissemination of the imagery (versus waiting for the jet to return to base, download the camera, download the film, develop and analyze it, etc.).
Ok….Guys I'm sure Constant Phoenix a/c are circling the perimeters of Japan 'sniffing'….
They would be doing the sampling…U-2s and GHawks are Rece Birds…
Come on guys…Get your acts together…
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/research/AirSc…
where do they get that film…..NLA i thought..
We get it from Kodak. Currently, we are the ONLY customer for wet film via Eastman Kodak. And we realize it more when we order new rolls, as they cost around $20k.
Agfa provides film products to the military, for Open Skies, reconnaissance, missile launches, weapons testing, etc., and supplying film for the U-2's OBC is not a problem
Nickname… because of the difficulty of flying it.
I've still got photos my mother took in southern California after the atom tests. Neutron spots all over the negatives and photos. Circa LA, 1946…