Signaling a major leap forward for national defense in the digital age, the Air Force flew with artificial intelligence as a working aircrew member onboard a military aircraft for the first time Dec. 15.

The AI algorithm, known as ARTUµ, flew with the pilot, U.S. Air Force Maj. “Vudu”, on a U-2 Dragon Lady assigned to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base. Air Combat Command’s U-2 Federal Laboratory researchers developed ARTUµ and trained it to execute specific in-flight tasks that otherwise would be done by the pilot.

The test flight was the result of years of concerted effort within the Air Force to apply cutting-edge technology to military operations as it competes with other world powers in the digital age.

“ARTUµ’s groundbreaking flight culminates our three-year journey to becoming a digital force,” said Dr. William Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics. “Putting AI safely in command of a U.S. military system for the first time ushers in a new age of human-machine teaming and algorithmic competition. Failing to realize AI’s full potential will mean ceding decision advantage to our adversaries.”

During this flight, ARTUµ was responsible for sensor employment and tactical navigation, while the pilot flew the aircraft and coordinated with the AI on sensor operation. Together, they flew a reconnaissance mission during a simulated missile strike. ARTUµ’s primary responsibility was finding enemy launchers while the pilot was on the lookout for threatening aircraft, both sharing the U-2’s radar.

The flight was part of a precisely constructed scenario which pitted the AI against another dynamic computer algorithm in order to prove the new technology.

“We know that in order to fight and win in a future conflict with a peer adversary, we must have a decisive digital advantage,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. “AI will play a critical role in achieving that edge, so I’m incredibly proud of what the team accomplished. We must accelerate change and that only happens when our Airmen push the limits of what we thought was possible.”

After takeoff, the sensor control was positively handed-off to ARTUµ who then manipulated the sensor, based on insight previously learned from over a half-million computer simulated training iterations. The pilot and AI successfully teamed to share the sensor and achieve the mission objectives.

The U-2 Federal Laboratory designed this AI technology to be easily transferable to other systems and plan to further refine the technology. Today’s flight provided invaluable data for not only the team to learn from, but also ARTUµ.

“Blending expertise of a pilot with capabilities of machine learning, this historic flight directly answers the National Defense Strategy’s call to invest in autonomous systems,” said Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett. “Innovations in artificial intelligence will transform both the air and space domains.”

The U-2 Federal Laboratory is a 15 U.S.C. compliant organization established to bring together a “confluence of warfighter, developer, and acquirer” vertically-integrated under the same operational roof. The lab has developed and been approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish the 20th Laboratory Accreditation Program in the federal government. It promotes “edge development” – a concept to develop new software integration on operational systems in a bounded, safe environment.

The historic flight with AI comes just two months after the U-2 Federal Laboratory team updated inflight software for the first time during a U-2 training mission. The team leveraged the open-source container-orchestration software Kubernetes, another military first.

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The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed “Dragon Lady”, is a single-engine, high-altitude aircraft flown by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency. It provides day and night, high-altitude (70,000 feet/21,000 metres), all-weather surveillance. The aircraft is also used for electronic sensor research and development, satellite calibration, and satellite data validation.

The U-2 Flight Manual

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

 U-2 Utility Flight Handbook, March 1, 1959 [259 Pages, 15.1MB]

United States Air Force (USAF)

In October of 2016, I filed a FOIA Request to the United States Air Force (USAF) for a copy of the most current U-2 Flight Manual. During the course of the request, I was asked if I would like “clearly releasable” portions of the document, or if I wanted to document reviewed in-depth. I respectfully declined, and I asked for all information (releasable) to be released, with redactions (the blacked-out parts) properly cited with FOIA Exemptions.  Although I agree often to such requests to save a bit of time for the agency, and the FOIA process, I did not in this case.

I was denied access to the document in full. Based on the release by the CIA of a similar document from the past (see above), I appealed.  This, too, was denied. They claim not a single portion of the record can be released.

 Appeal Denial for U-2 Manual, May 9, 2017 [2 Pages, 0.6MB]

Document Archive

 The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974 [269 Pages, 12.4MB]

Remembering CIA’s Heroes: Agency Pilots in the U-2 Program

This article is part of our series about the CIA employees who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Here we will look at the lives of the men and women who have died while serving their country.

Currently, there are 87 stars carved into the marble of the CIA Memorial Wall. The wall stands as a silent, simple memorial to those employees “who gave their lives in the service of their country.” The CIA has released the names of 54 employees; the names of the remaining 33 officers must remain secret, even in death.

The U-2 was one of the CIA’s greatest intelligence achievements. Its deployment in 1956 signaled the Central Intelligence Agency’s entry into the world of overhead reconnaissance.

In response to the Soviet Union’s growing military strength and the perceived danger of the Soviet Union attacking the continental United States, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the construction of a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. The aircraft would be designed specifically to fly over the Soviet Union and collect strategic intelligence. To reduce the danger of conflict, the president entrusted this mission not to the armed forces but to a civilian agency – the CIA. From 1954-1974, overhead reconnaissance was one of CIA’s most important missions.

Kelly Johnson at Lockheed’s “Skunkworks” designed the U-2 to be flown by a single pilot, at altitudes of 65,000 to 70,000 feet at subsonic speed. To reach the altitude, the aircraft was stripped down to ensure a lighter weight. The aircraft had an extraordinary gliding ability and could stay aloft for more than eight hours.

Several dangers faced the U-2’s pilots. Because of the high speed and altitude, pilots had to keep the aircraft at a slightly nose-up position. A slight drop in the nose position (even as slight as a degree) could cause the plane to gain speed dramatically, which could ultimately lead to the aircraft breaking apart.

The plane’s challenging flight characteristics and fragility resulted in the deaths of four Agency pilots. Here we look at the lives of these pilots: Wilburn S. Rose, Frank G. Grace, Howard Carey, and Eugene “Buster” Edens.

Wilburn S. Rose

The first of four fatal U-2 crashes occurred on May 15, 1956, when pilot Wilburn S. Rose had trouble dropping the aircraft’s “pogos,” the outrigger wheels that kept the wings parallel to the ground during takeoff. The crash occurred during a training flight.

Once airborne, Rose made a low-level pass over the airstrip and succeeded in shaking loose the left-hand pogo. When he tried another maneuver to shake loose the remaining pogo, the U-2 stalled and plunged to earth. The aircraft disintegrated over a wide area, killing Rose instantly.

Frank G. Grace

Approximately three months later, a second crash occurred during a night-time training exercise. On Aug. 31, 1956, during a nighttime training flight, Frank G. Grace stalled his U-2 at an altitude of 50 feet when he tried to climb too steeply during take off.

The aircraft fell to earth, cartwheeled on its left wing, and struck a power pole near the runway. Grace died in the crash. He was 30 years old, married, and the father of four children.

Howard Carey

Before 1956 came to a close, two more U-2s piloted by Agency test pilots on contract crashed during test flights. One of these crashes was fatal.

On Sept. 17, 1956, pilot Howard Carey took off from Lindsey Air Force Base in Wiesbaden, Germany. His U-2 mysteriously disintegrated in mid-air, perhaps caused by the jet wash from four fighter aircraft nearby. Carey was less than three weeks shy of his 34th birthday when he died.

Eugene “Buster” Edens

Nearly a decade later, Eugene “Buster” Edens one of the original U-2 pilots, was killed when his U-2 spiraled to the ground near Edwards Air Force Base in California. Edens had dodged death in an earlier incident when he crash-landed a U-2 at Edwards in 1961. In this first incident, the plane – while on final approach – stalled 50 feet short of the runway and slammed into the ground. The plane caught fire. Another pilot – who happened to be nearby – pulled the semiconscious Edens out of the aircraft moments before it exploded.

In April 1965, however, Edens did not have the same fortune. As he made his approach to the runway, he had a problem with a wing. He applied power and climbed. The aircraft began a spiraling descent at 3,000 feet from which it could not recover. Edens ejected at 400 feet, not high enough to permit his chute to fully deploy, and was killed when he hit the ground.

Remembering the Men

The CIA honored Rose, Grace, Carey, and Edens with stars on the CIA Memorial Wall in 1974. All four men served in the CIA’s Directorate of Plans*. They are remembered for their bravery and dedication. Their names are included in the CIA Book of Honor.

*The Directorate of Plans (DDP) was established in August 1952, when the Office of Special Operations and the Office of Policy Coordination were merged. The DDP became the Directorate of Operations (DO) on March 1, 1973. In October 2005, the DO was renamed the National Clandestine Service (NCS).

The post The U-2 Program first appeared on The Black Vault.

In the 1960s, U-2s could not reach certain remote targets because political difficulties prevented basing the aircraft in some foreign nations. The CIA and U.S. Navy, therefore, studied the idea of launching U-2s from aircraft carriers.

Project Whale Tale fitted a few U-2s with arresting hooks like the one on display here. The hooks would snag cables strung across aircraft carrier decks and “capture” aircraft, bringing them to a quick stop. The small black plate on the shaft shows that this hook was used in five landings, and could be used up to 20 times.

To withstand rough carrier landings, Project Whale Tale U-2s were given stronger landing gear, and also wing spoilers to overcome the U-2’s tendency to glide instead of landing on the carrier deck. Some later U-2s had folding wings to take up less storage room on the ship.

The first U-2 takeoff from a carrier took place on Aug. 5, 1963, from the USS Kitty Hawk, off San Diego, Calif. The first U-2 carrier landing occurred on March 2, 1964, aboard the USS Ranger. Carrier operations were limited, however, because of the expense and slowness of deploying ships to areas from which information was urgently needed.

“Q-tip”
Condensation on the U-2’s windshield was an early problem. Pilots could not reach the windshield wearing bulky pressure suits, and this convenient homemade device, a wooden stick with a cloth pad, allowed them to wipe the window in flight.

The condensation problem was later solved by windshield electrical heating and small defogging fans, though the Q-tip could also be used to clean the windshield if oil vapor leaked into the defogging system.

The notch in the Q-tip handle has used to pull rudder pedals back to their normal position after pilots had moved them forward for greater comfort when flying long missions.

Declassified Documents

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Documents

 Declassified CIA Documents on Project Whale Tale [345 Pages, 62MB]

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