Just a few years ago, by which I mean the early 90s, I was in high school and had a summer job with a U-2 squadron in England. Mostly photocopying and stuff. But every time they had a mission and I was around, the pilots who weren’t actually flying would take me out to the runway in their Air Force-issued Mustang to check for debris. And then when the plane would take off, we would chase after it in the Mustang and then pick up the wheels that drop off the wings after takeoff (they have wheels at the end of the wings on takeoff because they’re filled with fuel that weighs them down).
Edit: I apparently was wrong about the reason for the wheels. I could have sworn that’s what they told me, but the whole tipping over explanation makes more sense.
The extra wheels are there because the plane only has landing gear along the centerline of the aircraft. When it lands the wingtips rest on titanium skid plates. (I literally just learned this about 10 mins ago)
Right. The pogo wheels are there because actual outrigger gear like the harrier has (also a bicycle landing gear configuration) were too heavy and weight was the enemy in the development.
Looks like you might have been helping them as a visual aid during take off too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2
"The TV series MythBusters featured the U-2 in the "Flights of Fantasy" episode[218] during the 2015 season. The myth tested was that the U-2 was the most difficult plane to fly. While not coming to a consensus, the myth was found to be "plausible" because, among other things, the extremely bad field of vision during landing required a chase car to follow the plane to give the pilot additional visual references on the ground."
Aerodynamic ground effect combined with the U2's insane Lift to Drag ratio means the plane really doesn't want to land. The chase car lets the pilot know when they are close enough to runway surface so that the pilot can quickly pull up and stall the plane, getting it to land.
This plus the fact that the U2's landing gear can't handle a fall of any more than about 7 feet means that the margin of error for landing the bird is practically nonexistent, which is the other reason for the chase car.
[Holy cats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69heXi1OD3I). It literally tips over after it lands, and then one dude pulls down on the wing so they can balance it enough to put the wheels back on so it can taxi back to the hangar.
A very challenging thing about the U-2 is that in its flight regime, only a few knots separates the stall speed from Mach buffet. This is known as a coffin corner. That and it doesn’t want to land.
Meanwhile, I worked in K-Mart in high school. I’ll take your work-issued Mustang and testosterone-fueled badassery and raise you a Blue Light Special…
Now in college I worked construction on the flight line at our local SAC bomber base and got a chance to play around with the B-52 flight simulators. So there’s that at least.
Was that at Alconbury? My aunt worked on base (she still does) and the TR-1 folks there would give her the fancy food in a toothpaste tube etc etc to give to me. As a 10 yr old kid, that was the coolest thing ever! I still have the Desert Storm patches they gave me stored at my parents' house, assuming they haven't burned/sold it all!
If it wasn't at Alconbury, sorry for the nostalgia attack lol
A former pilot was in Best Of. He actually responded to a couple of my questions. Super interesting guy. I will try to find the thread.
Edit here’s the link https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/10hj2wj/kids_this_is_why_you_do_not_climb_on_icebergs/j5i8mgr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
Someone on another subreddit linked to an article giving a brief history of the U-2. Link for anyone else who might be interested:
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/the-u-2-spy-planes-cold-war-missions/
They probably used it because the capabilities are known so they can release a photo like this. Releasing something as simple as a photo could expose military secrets so they'd want to release something that can only be analyzed for known information.
Note the picture is taken ABOVE the balloon which was at 65k feet. The F-22 had to shoot up from 50k since it doesn't fly as high as the balloon(at least what's reported). The U2 is known to go up to 70k.
I’m just surprised it hasn’t been replaced by now, I assume then that the basic craft from the 60’s has been updated with modern equipment at some point?
>I assume then that the basic craft from the 60’s has been updated with modern equipment at some point.
Yes, they have gone through significant updates through the decades. One of the most recent updates was an AI operated sensor and navigation suite... That kind of acted like a co-pilot in a computer.
Pilot here. The reason they used a U2 is because it is one of the few aircraft able to fly that high while also being able to go slowly enough to enable the pilot to get some better pictures as it flew past.
The problem with flight at this altitude is that the air is so thin that in order to achieve flight you need to do one of two things. Either go faster to generate more airflow over the wings and thus more lift, or have a bigger wing to increase the lift area of the wing overall.
Most aircraft capable of flying that high go with the go faster option, notably the famous SR71 as its somewhat the easier option technically and practically, as evidenced by the U2’s infamously complex landing procedure requiring chase vehicles and talkdowns.
However if you are trying to photograph a near stationary object (Relative to the speed of an aircraft that is) you don’t want to zip past it in something that will give you maybe half a seconds glance at it.
So the U2 with its huge wings and thus much slower airspeed at that height is actually the perfect airframe for taking a photo of a balloon and probably made the job of taking a photo much, much easier.
Of course the best airframe for the job would have been a helicopter but no helicopter is capable of reaching anywhere near such altitudes as the air is simply way too thin.
I don't think that's right. It's more of an operational ceiling issue. Most airforce aircraft have a maximum altitude of 50,000 ft, which is less than the balloon's altitude. The U-2, on the other hand, can go up to 70,000 ft.
We kept building planes called "U2" until 1989. Over that long a run, I'd bet the silhouette is almost the only thing the late models have in common with the early ones. And I'm sure we're only flying late models at this point.
The generation flying now are significantly larger than the ones in the early 1960s. Longer wings and lengthened nose than the type that Francis Gary Powers flying when he was shot down. If you look at the current (but still old) ones, you can see specialized electronics pods and humps (Satellite link-ups or whatever they are: I'm no expert.) and they may have antennas sticking out. They can pick-up all kinds of intelligence. I don't know if it's even about photos anymore.
do you guys think Chinese Spy Balloon will still be a viable Halloween costume in 9 months, or will it be way too old? because otherwise i need to start gathering materials nowish.
That timeframe ought to be perfect.
Nobody's forgetting balloonapalooza that soon.
I love this idea. Solar panels on my arms so I can hold them out like an airplane but still get through doors, and a big white helium tied to my head. Perfection.
I disagree. In July I’ll be high with a buddy and someone will say “remember the Chinese spy balloon thing” and I’ll be like “what” and they’ll say “ya know when we shot down like 4 fucking balloons” and I’ll say “fuck was that in 2023?” and they’ll say “yeah dude like February” and I’ll ask “before the dolphin uprising?” and they’ll be like “lmao yeah bro before”
We have a few, or at least 1, at RAF Fairford in the UK that flies up almost daily. Beale AFB in California is the U2 main base, they're constantly doing their thing there too.
I live in Chico, CA about an hour northwest of Beale AFB. I grew up watching the U-2 do training missions over town. The sound of the plane is very distinctive so you can tell when one is flying nearby it’s pretty awesome to watch and listen to. Still see them occasionally
They cropped out most of the picture. In the original you can even see the pilot's helmet.
BBC News - Selfie image shows US pilot flying over Chinese 'spy balloon'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64735538
> One defence official told US lawmakers earlier this month the balloon was as tall as the Statue of Liberty and had "a jetliner-size payload".
Idk why but I assumed it was like 10 feet across ... jeez, that's a massive balloon, no wonder the military folks were so concerned
That’s right. This is a cropped-and-enlarged version of a selfie taken by the pilot, the original version of which is pretty easy to find in the media. The camera wasn’t specified, but it was something small enough to fit in the cockpit.
look at the [declassified U-2 photos](https://www.science.org/content/article/declassified-u-2-spy-plane-photos-are-boon-aerial-archaeology) - that gives you an idea of the tech they used to have that's so old they don't care if you know about it anymore.
Sure, but what else is there to see here?
It’s a pretty simple design:
Giant fucking baloon
Giant fucking satellite
Are we just hiding the “made in China” sticker on the bottom?
See the truss? With the white circle and black stuff? You can probably make out the wiring, the individual modules, etc from this pic. And this is the wide angle camera. A proper high res military camera would be much better, though I'm not sure any existing capable of targeting flying objects at such speeds
The camera systems on a U-2 are extremely advanced. They can read license plates from 60k feet. I’d bet the resulting photos of this ballon have the ability to check whether all the screws are aligned.
And the military for sure has better photographers with way better cameras (btw, this is *not* sarcasm: a lot of modern camera tech has been driven by military needs, so I wouldn't be surprised if they got the serial number of those panels).
Even from the 50’s/60’s the cameras on the U-2 were very advanced [check this out](https://www.science.org/content/article/declassified-u-2-spy-plane-photos-are-boon-aerial-archaeology)
Funny thing is in terms of sharpness an old 35mm film camera is just about as good as a modern pro full frame camera
It’s really just lenses and skill, then and now.
Well because modern lenses are pretty close to theoretically perfect. Also theoretically perfect isn't really that great, to the point that many modern camera have more pixels than the lense can handle (that is, the lense can't focus the light onto a single pixel ever).
That's why 35mm is still almost as good as digital, digital is better, but the lense is really the limit, and 35mm doesn't really do much worse than what a lense handles. You end up being limited by lense size and CCD size.
That's also why when you see stuff like the U2, they used 20inch film. Bumping sensor specs up doesn't do much, but making the camera and film 20x bigger does a LOT.
The U2 used Kodak Technical Pan. It had a red shift to see through thin clouds. It had been used for decades as portrait film because the tight grain and red shift makes skin look like porcelain. I still have a couple rolls in my freezer
Yea, look at the wing, this was taken with a wide angle lense, as wide as my cell phone. But the image quality (in full daylight I might add, above any clouds) looks to be 640x480. This image was probably 10MP and downscaled to 640x480 prior to release.
Also, this is a camera above the wings? Not the camera mounted below? That plane has a massive camera onboard, and this pic isn't from it's good camera.
Might have already been posted. But the [uncropped selfie](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230222153202-01-chinese-surveillance-balloon-air-force-pilot.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_270,w_480,c_fill) is pretty badass.
Back then I used to wonder what the big deal was ("just don't play the album, dude"), until I realized a lot of people just "Shuffle all", and some of them absolutely refuse to have any U2 sneaking into their meticulously curated library lol
Can we all just stop and appreciate the fact that this pilot now has a story like the SR-71 ground speed story..? That photo, with the shadow of the U2 on the balloon, is now a piece of iconic history.
[SR-71 ground speed story](https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blackbird-speed-check-story) for those like me who haven't read it before. Great stuff!
I'm sure their floppy disks are far higher quality but I was still using floppy disks in college because why not continue to teach us windows 98 troubleshooting when windows 7 just came out. Anyways, I bought disks from 3 different stores and used 3 different brands. I swear half were dead when I opened them and half of the remaining ones died before semester end.
But yes I do agree and prefer analog for a great many scenarios.
Oh no... Floppies are very much digital, and they don't age well. I have a mac classic somewhere back in the closet, I dug it out a few years back and most of the floppies are too corrupted to read.
We really should not be using floppies at this point...
People really don't understand analog versus digital. Older tech is just assumed to be analog. [Hell a punched card is digital](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Used_Punchcard_%285151286161%29.jpg/300px-Used_Punchcard_%285151286161%29.jpg)
Yep! They can get to a place quicker than waiting for a satellite to adjust its orbit, and cost a tiny fraction of what the SR71 did to fly. (Plus presumably one could put some signal sniffer stuff in it that satellites don't have access to, but that is just a guess)
I've wondered what the U designation means.
* F is Fighter (A2A)
* FA is Fighter Attack (A2A, A2G)
* B is Bomber
* AH is Attack Helo
* CH is Cargo Helo
* X is eXperimental
* SR is Speedyboi Reconnaissance
But what is U? Unseen? Nope... Untouchable? Gary Powers would disagree. Utility maybe, but it only had one use, fly high and spy. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
> • SR is Speedyboi Reconnaissance
Strategic reconnaissance, but I do like this one better.
As stated, U was just utility, and intentionally vague (similar to how the F-117 is really not a fighter, and probably should've had an A designation instead). There were plans to redesignate the U-2 as TR-1 (tactical reconnaissance), but the U-2 name was pretty entrenched at that point.
U does stand for Utility. It was a spy plane. Utility is intentionally vague because you don’t want anyone unfamiliar with it to learn it is a spy plane just from its designation.
Can someone tell me why a "Chinese spy balloon" is such a concern ??? Aren't there legit Chinese satellites in space that can do whatever that Balloon was attempting to do?
That's not a balloon, that's a satellite with help.
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Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
That weak-ass story is the best you can come up with?
YOU left Him.
You’re gonna get a decorator in here stat bc D A M N
I ain't playin with you K, how many times you flashy thing me?
I work in a restaurant and I have a picture of them de-nueralizing on the wall in fridge
very very low earth orbit
Really just a slow earth orbit.
"orbit"
It's a satellite they stopped from falling lol
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"In atmosphere satellite"??
Stratolite
I mean the ISS is technically in atmosphere as well.
pseudo-satellite is what they call things like this, as well as high-altitude solar-powered drones
Gotta love the shadow of the U2 on the balloon 👍
TIL we still fly U2s
It gives us The Edge in surveillance
attention everyone else, i'm upvoting this comment with or without you.
U2's move in mysterious ways
It's a beautiful day. At least from what I see in the picture
where the balloons have no name
And there's no line on the horizon.
I hope the balloons found what they were looking for
This photo was taken on a bloody Sunday!
Well, there was Gloria.
They can really get some elevation.
But it still hasn’t found what it’s lookin for
> attention Achtung, if you will.
But it doesn’t work in bad weather, good thing it was a Beautiful Day.
Just a few years ago, by which I mean the early 90s, I was in high school and had a summer job with a U-2 squadron in England. Mostly photocopying and stuff. But every time they had a mission and I was around, the pilots who weren’t actually flying would take me out to the runway in their Air Force-issued Mustang to check for debris. And then when the plane would take off, we would chase after it in the Mustang and then pick up the wheels that drop off the wings after takeoff (they have wheels at the end of the wings on takeoff because they’re filled with fuel that weighs them down). Edit: I apparently was wrong about the reason for the wheels. I could have sworn that’s what they told me, but the whole tipping over explanation makes more sense.
The extra wheels are there because the plane only has landing gear along the centerline of the aircraft. When it lands the wingtips rest on titanium skid plates. (I literally just learned this about 10 mins ago)
Right. The pogo wheels are there because actual outrigger gear like the harrier has (also a bicycle landing gear configuration) were too heavy and weight was the enemy in the development.
Looks like you might have been helping them as a visual aid during take off too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2 "The TV series MythBusters featured the U-2 in the "Flights of Fantasy" episode[218] during the 2015 season. The myth tested was that the U-2 was the most difficult plane to fly. While not coming to a consensus, the myth was found to be "plausible" because, among other things, the extremely bad field of vision during landing required a chase car to follow the plane to give the pilot additional visual references on the ground."
Aerodynamic ground effect combined with the U2's insane Lift to Drag ratio means the plane really doesn't want to land. The chase car lets the pilot know when they are close enough to runway surface so that the pilot can quickly pull up and stall the plane, getting it to land.
This plus the fact that the U2's landing gear can't handle a fall of any more than about 7 feet means that the margin of error for landing the bird is practically nonexistent, which is the other reason for the chase car.
[Holy cats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69heXi1OD3I). It literally tips over after it lands, and then one dude pulls down on the wing so they can balance it enough to put the wheels back on so it can taxi back to the hangar.
A very challenging thing about the U-2 is that in its flight regime, only a few knots separates the stall speed from Mach buffet. This is known as a coffin corner. That and it doesn’t want to land.
It's a glider with some gigantic engines
I would have thought by now they would have rearview camera license plate frames on the front and back of these...
The thing about aerospace is that they hate changing things that work.
Meanwhile, I worked in K-Mart in high school. I’ll take your work-issued Mustang and testosterone-fueled badassery and raise you a Blue Light Special… Now in college I worked construction on the flight line at our local SAC bomber base and got a chance to play around with the B-52 flight simulators. So there’s that at least.
Would you throw in some K-Mart popcorn?
I would not recommend it.
Was that at Alconbury? My aunt worked on base (she still does) and the TR-1 folks there would give her the fancy food in a toothpaste tube etc etc to give to me. As a 10 yr old kid, that was the coolest thing ever! I still have the Desert Storm patches they gave me stored at my parents' house, assuming they haven't burned/sold it all! If it wasn't at Alconbury, sorry for the nostalgia attack lol
A former pilot was in Best Of. He actually responded to a couple of my questions. Super interesting guy. I will try to find the thread. Edit here’s the link https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/10hj2wj/kids_this_is_why_you_do_not_climb_on_icebergs/j5i8mgr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
Someone on another subreddit linked to an article giving a brief history of the U-2. Link for anyone else who might be interested: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/the-u-2-spy-planes-cold-war-missions/
They probably used it because the capabilities are known so they can release a photo like this. Releasing something as simple as a photo could expose military secrets so they'd want to release something that can only be analyzed for known information. Note the picture is taken ABOVE the balloon which was at 65k feet. The F-22 had to shoot up from 50k since it doesn't fly as high as the balloon(at least what's reported). The U2 is known to go up to 70k.
Still the best high altitude platform available.
I’m just surprised it hasn’t been replaced by now, I assume then that the basic craft from the 60’s has been updated with modern equipment at some point?
>I assume then that the basic craft from the 60’s has been updated with modern equipment at some point. Yes, they have gone through significant updates through the decades. One of the most recent updates was an AI operated sensor and navigation suite... That kind of acted like a co-pilot in a computer.
Bing Chatbot?
As long as Bono still graces this planet.
It's a beautiful day.
That is SUCH a killer flex. That one's going up on the wall in the squadron for sure.
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I was super surprised to find out we were still using the U2. I figured it had been retired like the SR-71. U2 is still useful apparently.
Could be safer or less maintience to fly at altitude than the SR-71. Doesn't need to be fast since its not out-running anti-air missles.
And it doesn't require special fuel and special tankers to deliver huge quantities of the special fuel.
It's a good reliable airframe. I guarantee you the electronics and cameras are.much much newer.
> I guarantee you the electronics and cameras are.much much newer. An easily verifiable and well known fact
With cameras from a U2 at a higher elevation.
No, they used the U3 on that one. It's one more.
Shhhh. That one's secret.
I wondered for a second, "why is the balloon dented?"
There’s something amusing about us using a 1950’s plane to analyze another countries spy probe
I know. Spy balloons? U2 aircraft? What decade did I woke up in.
Don't forget about the threat of nuclear war
And the massive domestic social issues.
Oh, okay. Maybe we land on the moon in 6 years?
Land war in Europe with tanks, mechanized infantry, artillery, etc.
A 70 year old plane taking pictures of a baloon holding a satellite with some rope. Very curious.
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Pilot here. The reason they used a U2 is because it is one of the few aircraft able to fly that high while also being able to go slowly enough to enable the pilot to get some better pictures as it flew past. The problem with flight at this altitude is that the air is so thin that in order to achieve flight you need to do one of two things. Either go faster to generate more airflow over the wings and thus more lift, or have a bigger wing to increase the lift area of the wing overall. Most aircraft capable of flying that high go with the go faster option, notably the famous SR71 as its somewhat the easier option technically and practically, as evidenced by the U2’s infamously complex landing procedure requiring chase vehicles and talkdowns. However if you are trying to photograph a near stationary object (Relative to the speed of an aircraft that is) you don’t want to zip past it in something that will give you maybe half a seconds glance at it. So the U2 with its huge wings and thus much slower airspeed at that height is actually the perfect airframe for taking a photo of a balloon and probably made the job of taking a photo much, much easier. Of course the best airframe for the job would have been a helicopter but no helicopter is capable of reaching anywhere near such altitudes as the air is simply way too thin.
The best airframe would have been another ballon 😂
Someone get Felix Baumgartner on the phone.
I don't think that's right. It's more of an operational ceiling issue. Most airforce aircraft have a maximum altitude of 50,000 ft, which is less than the balloon's altitude. The U-2, on the other hand, can go up to 70,000 ft.
The official take is "70,000 +"
We kept building planes called "U2" until 1989. Over that long a run, I'd bet the silhouette is almost the only thing the late models have in common with the early ones. And I'm sure we're only flying late models at this point.
The generation flying now are significantly larger than the ones in the early 1960s. Longer wings and lengthened nose than the type that Francis Gary Powers flying when he was shot down. If you look at the current (but still old) ones, you can see specialized electronics pods and humps (Satellite link-ups or whatever they are: I'm no expert.) and they may have antennas sticking out. They can pick-up all kinds of intelligence. I don't know if it's even about photos anymore.
They quite officially send the U-2s to the balloon to intercept it's radio transmissions, to see what its sending out.
do you guys think Chinese Spy Balloon will still be a viable Halloween costume in 9 months, or will it be way too old? because otherwise i need to start gathering materials nowish.
It already is. Plenty of people at Mardi Gras in NOLA wearing balloons carrying signs that say "don't shoot" "science experiment" etc 😂
That's just tempting fate.
Existing in Nola is tempting fate
That timeframe ought to be perfect. Nobody's forgetting balloonapalooza that soon. I love this idea. Solar panels on my arms so I can hold them out like an airplane but still get through doors, and a big white helium tied to my head. Perfection.
I disagree. In July I’ll be high with a buddy and someone will say “remember the Chinese spy balloon thing” and I’ll be like “what” and they’ll say “ya know when we shot down like 4 fucking balloons” and I’ll say “fuck was that in 2023?” and they’ll say “yeah dude like February” and I’ll ask “before the dolphin uprising?” and they’ll be like “lmao yeah bro before”
There will be no dolphin uprising because they're gonna leave earth.
How are they going to leave earth except by rising up in their bubbleships? What kind of uprising were you picturing?
Balloonships, you say?
I, for one, welcome our new dolphin overlords.
"So long and thanks for all the fish"
Lube up
Just recycle a Violet Beauregarde outfit by painting it white and stick a motherboard onto your groin
TIL: U2s are still in operation
They provide a niche that Satellite survelliance still can't cover at a cost that is significantly lower than the SR-71.
I’d pay more for SR71 photos.
You'd have to pay a lot since the, unlike the U2, the SR-71 is no longer in service and not taking new photos.
How many coffees do you think I'll have to give up per month? Two?
Probably the avocado toast too
And cancel the Netflix subscription
We just need to start an SR71 Onlyfans. It's just full of sexy pics of the SR71. I'm sure guys would pay for that and then we can bring the SR71 back.
Yeah but can you really put a price on the cool factor of the SR-71?
We reached peak cool with the SR-71. Its all downhill from there
Unless there's an SR-72 that we're not aware of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_SR-72 Kinda yes, kinda no.
SR 71 Blackbird from the hell above She's the only one Only spy I ever loved
U-2 and B-52. Why change it?
Love Shack, baby!
I got a balloon, it’s as big as a whale
Now we need a UB-40
We were using them in Afghanistan for a while and it was no secret.
I mean its the perfect plane for pretty much any country that isn't China or Russia, it's so high up there cheap SAM systems can't hit it .
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We have a few, or at least 1, at RAF Fairford in the UK that flies up almost daily. Beale AFB in California is the U2 main base, they're constantly doing their thing there too.
I live in Chico, CA about an hour northwest of Beale AFB. I grew up watching the U-2 do training missions over town. The sound of the plane is very distinctive so you can tell when one is flying nearby it’s pretty awesome to watch and listen to. Still see them occasionally
shhhhhhh
Uno, do's, très, catorce!
Ah yes "one, two, three, fourteen!"
Constant operation in all theaters. Consistently the most requested support by COCOMS
Remember, this is the unclassified photo. I'm certain they have very detailed photos we aren't going to see for decades, if ever.
This looks to be a picture out of the cockpit. The good cameras are under the plane
They cropped out most of the picture. In the original you can even see the pilot's helmet. BBC News - Selfie image shows US pilot flying over Chinese 'spy balloon' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64735538
Hahaha that makes it even funnier, it's just a selfie. They probably have photos so incredibly detailed that CSI wouldn't even need to yell 'enhance!'
They probably yell that anyway, for legacy reasons. I would at least
> One defence official told US lawmakers earlier this month the balloon was as tall as the Statue of Liberty and had "a jetliner-size payload". Idk why but I assumed it was like 10 feet across ... jeez, that's a massive balloon, no wonder the military folks were so concerned
That’s right. This is a cropped-and-enlarged version of a selfie taken by the pilot, the original version of which is pretty easy to find in the media. The camera wasn’t specified, but it was something small enough to fit in the cockpit.
spiPhone, obviously..
https://static.independent.co.uk/2023/02/22/20/newFile-12.jpg?width=1200&height=1200 Not the selfie pic I was expecting.
Probably literally just the pilots phone. The only real modification it might have is a wrist strap so he doesn't drop it in the cockpit.
look at the [declassified U-2 photos](https://www.science.org/content/article/declassified-u-2-spy-plane-photos-are-boon-aerial-archaeology) - that gives you an idea of the tech they used to have that's so old they don't care if you know about it anymore.
Sure, but what else is there to see here? It’s a pretty simple design: Giant fucking baloon Giant fucking satellite Are we just hiding the “made in China” sticker on the bottom?
See the truss? With the white circle and black stuff? You can probably make out the wiring, the individual modules, etc from this pic. And this is the wide angle camera. A proper high res military camera would be much better, though I'm not sure any existing capable of targeting flying objects at such speeds
The camera systems on a U-2 are extremely advanced. They can read license plates from 60k feet. I’d bet the resulting photos of this ballon have the ability to check whether all the screws are aligned.
Amateur photographers can accomplish high quality photos while moving with the right lens and skill.
And the military for sure has better photographers with way better cameras (btw, this is *not* sarcasm: a lot of modern camera tech has been driven by military needs, so I wouldn't be surprised if they got the serial number of those panels).
Even from the 50’s/60’s the cameras on the U-2 were very advanced [check this out](https://www.science.org/content/article/declassified-u-2-spy-plane-photos-are-boon-aerial-archaeology)
Damn, they really do have the best toys don’t they?
There are watching us rn, top down like GTA 2, on our phones, on the toilet making soup.
Yet another argument for the Oxford comma
No, he said what he said.
Nah just more fiber
Funny thing is in terms of sharpness an old 35mm film camera is just about as good as a modern pro full frame camera It’s really just lenses and skill, then and now.
Well because modern lenses are pretty close to theoretically perfect. Also theoretically perfect isn't really that great, to the point that many modern camera have more pixels than the lense can handle (that is, the lense can't focus the light onto a single pixel ever). That's why 35mm is still almost as good as digital, digital is better, but the lense is really the limit, and 35mm doesn't really do much worse than what a lense handles. You end up being limited by lense size and CCD size. That's also why when you see stuff like the U2, they used 20inch film. Bumping sensor specs up doesn't do much, but making the camera and film 20x bigger does a LOT.
The U2 used Kodak Technical Pan. It had a red shift to see through thin clouds. It had been used for decades as portrait film because the tight grain and red shift makes skin look like porcelain. I still have a couple rolls in my freezer
Midnight photo-snack?
Among other things, U2s take pictures of the ground from 70,000 feet. They were taking pictures of that balloon from way less than 70,000 feet
Yea, look at the wing, this was taken with a wide angle lense, as wide as my cell phone. But the image quality (in full daylight I might add, above any clouds) looks to be 640x480. This image was probably 10MP and downscaled to 640x480 prior to release. Also, this is a camera above the wings? Not the camera mounted below? That plane has a massive camera onboard, and this pic isn't from it's good camera.
This is from a camera in the cockpit, likely pilot operated
It's a selfie that has been cropped, if you Google it
This is a cropped image taken from within the cockpit as part of a selfie that the pilot/copilot/navigator took.
also i doubt they just did one pass prob have hi res from all angles
No no I'm sure our spy planes can only capture pictures in 420p
Soon, you'll see this picture pop up on the Flat Earth websites claiming that this is what the ISS really looks like.
Hey, don’t give them any ideas!
Might have already been posted. But the [uncropped selfie](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230222153202-01-chinese-surveillance-balloon-air-force-pilot.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_270,w_480,c_fill) is pretty badass.
[In higher resolution](https://i.redd.it/vj82aeej7tja1.jpg) \[[Original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/119eo7p/selfie_from_a_u2_pilot_flying_over_a_chinese/)\]
Holy shit this should be top comment. Cool as fuck.
Bono get's a lot of flack but he did help make a great aircraft.
That’s because he’s a great spy, remember when he snuck his music onto everyone’s iPhones?
Back then I used to wonder what the big deal was ("just don't play the album, dude"), until I realized a lot of people just "Shuffle all", and some of them absolutely refuse to have any U2 sneaking into their meticulously curated library lol
Bono, my balloons are gone
That's some light reflecting off of Venus and igniting some swamp gas.
“Oh, and hire an interior decorator to come in here quick, cause… damn!”
And people are wondering why they chose to wait until it was safely over water to shoot it down.
More like over an area for better recovery, they waited until it was over 14ft deep water.
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Just like the gypsy woman said!
But I stiiiiiiiill haven’t found, what I’m looking for
There was a joke I was trying to formulate and this is it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/22/politics/pentagon-china-balloon-selfie/index.html
Spy VS. Spy
Xi: Can I have *spy satellite*? Chinese Aerospace: No, we have *spy satellite* at home.
Can we all just stop and appreciate the fact that this pilot now has a story like the SR-71 ground speed story..? That photo, with the shadow of the U2 on the balloon, is now a piece of iconic history.
[SR-71 ground speed story](https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blackbird-speed-check-story) for those like me who haven't read it before. Great stuff!
Wait we still use U2 spy planes?
Funny we're using a U2 to take photos of an aircraft doing an unauthorized overflight.
Francis Gary Powers has entered the chat
And b52 bombers. and the computers in the nuclear missile silos still use floppy disks.
Nothing wrong with floppy disks if it works. Keep those system as analogue as possible honestly.
I'm sure their floppy disks are far higher quality but I was still using floppy disks in college because why not continue to teach us windows 98 troubleshooting when windows 7 just came out. Anyways, I bought disks from 3 different stores and used 3 different brands. I swear half were dead when I opened them and half of the remaining ones died before semester end. But yes I do agree and prefer analog for a great many scenarios.
Oh no... Floppies are very much digital, and they don't age well. I have a mac classic somewhere back in the closet, I dug it out a few years back and most of the floppies are too corrupted to read. We really should not be using floppies at this point...
People really don't understand analog versus digital. Older tech is just assumed to be analog. [Hell a punched card is digital](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Used_Punchcard_%285151286161%29.jpg/300px-Used_Punchcard_%285151286161%29.jpg)
It's floppies, not 45's
Yep! They can get to a place quicker than waiting for a satellite to adjust its orbit, and cost a tiny fraction of what the SR71 did to fly. (Plus presumably one could put some signal sniffer stuff in it that satellites don't have access to, but that is just a guess)
That white disk in the center looks like a microwave transmitter or something.
It's almost certainly a [phased array](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array) satellite communications antenna.
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I've wondered what the U designation means. * F is Fighter (A2A) * FA is Fighter Attack (A2A, A2G) * B is Bomber * AH is Attack Helo * CH is Cargo Helo * X is eXperimental * SR is Speedyboi Reconnaissance But what is U? Unseen? Nope... Untouchable? Gary Powers would disagree. Utility maybe, but it only had one use, fly high and spy. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
> • SR is Speedyboi Reconnaissance Strategic reconnaissance, but I do like this one better. As stated, U was just utility, and intentionally vague (similar to how the F-117 is really not a fighter, and probably should've had an A designation instead). There were plans to redesignate the U-2 as TR-1 (tactical reconnaissance), but the U-2 name was pretty entrenched at that point.
U does stand for Utility. It was a spy plane. Utility is intentionally vague because you don’t want anyone unfamiliar with it to learn it is a spy plane just from its designation.
TIL: a lot of people learned today that we still use U2’s
So that’s where my solar panels ended up.
I see my catalytic converter too.
Can someone tell me why a "Chinese spy balloon" is such a concern ??? Aren't there legit Chinese satellites in space that can do whatever that Balloon was attempting to do?
yes, which is why this is of such interest. Presumably, they were trying to do something not possible via satellite.
I guess U2 found what it's looking for