Spy plane pilot lives on the edge of danger and space - Albuquerque Journal
David Brill squeezes into a bulky yellow spacesuit, lowers a fishbowl-size helmet onto his head and readies himself for a flight into the stratosphere. In an hour, he will roar aloft in a U-2, the iconic single-seat spy plane – capable of flying to 70,000 feet, or more than 13 miles high – first built in the early Cold War. The curving Earth appears like a ghostly vision below and the blackness of outer space looms overhead. “There are these moments when I can see the sun over my left shoulder and the moon over my right,” said Brill, 36. “There aren’t a lot of people that get to experience that. A van takes Brill to the flight line, where he steps into the summer sun, clambers up a stair ladder and stuffs himself into the snug cockpit. He looks down the runaway and sees the inexorable future looming to one side: two of the Global Hawk drones that are scheduled to replace America’s fleet of 33 U-2s. The U. S. military has spent the last decade amassing more than 7,000... With robotic surveillance power like this, the military decided to retire U-2s after more than 60 years in service. The spy planes will be phased out starting in 2018. Despite this, U-2s are being flown more hours than they have since the end of the Cold War. Source: www.abqjournal.com
