US secret 'Dragon Lady' U-2 spy plane spotted flying at 60,000ft over Scotland
A top-secret American spy plane has been spotted soaring at a height of 60,000ft over Scotland. The Lockheed U-2S 'Dragon Lady', utilised for intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance, was tracked flying about twice as high as commercial airliners.
The aircraft operates round the clock to ensure global security, delivering high-level intelligence data for the US Air Force, CIA and NASA.
Its Dragon Lady nickname originates from a 1930s' comic strip character from Terry and the Pirates. Plane enthusiasts across the UK identified the spy plane on global flight tracking service Flightradar24 as it flew over the Rosneath Peninsula in Argyll and Bute.
The aircraft is typically stationed at the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, Beale Air Force Base in California, but is deployed on worldwide operations. The fleet regularly operates from RAF airbases, RAF Fairford in the UK and further afield from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus.
It was built during the Cold War to gather reconnaissance info on Soviet military operations through imagery, taking its maiden flight in July 1956, reports the Express.
The aircraft is one of the longest-serving in the US military, flying from allied bases around the globe, including the aforementioned UK and Cyprus as well as France, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Pakistan, South Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, Thailand and South Korea.
The Dragon Lady is capable of reaching heights of 70,000 feet, with pilots donning full-pressure suits akin to astronauts to shield them from the harsh conditions at such high altitudes.
Earlier this year in January, the craft was spotted soaring at 60,000ft above the Ayrshire coast en route to RAF Fairford.
The U-2 found itself at the heart of one of the most fraught periods between the US and the Soviet Union when, in the 1960s, the spy plane was shot down over Russia.
President Dwight Eisenhower, under the impression that pilot Gary Powers could not have survived, approved a cover story claiming it was a NASA aircraft that had gone astray.
However, much to their embarrassment, the Soviets later disclosed that Powers was alive and had admitted to espionage (pilots were instructed if captured "to tell them everything that they knew", as they were given minimal information about their missions other than targets on maps).
The wreckage of Powers's aircraft was utilised to create a replica named the Beriev S-13. This was subsequently abandoned in favour of the MiG-25R and reconnaissance satellites.
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