A bipartisan quartet of Senators has written to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin criticizing the Air Force’s plan to retire airborne ISR platforms including the U-2. They fear that the service cannot replace their capabilities with satellites fast enough to avoid unacceptable risk. Recent disclosures about the Air Force’s mostly-classified plans for ISR from space appear to justify the lawmakers’ concerns.

The letter was the initiative of Sen Kevin Cramer; he and the other three signatories are all on the Senate Armed Service Committee (SASC). They note that in addition to the Dragon Lady, the Air Force has or is retiring the MC-12 Liberty, E-8C JSTARS, RQ-4 Global Hawk, MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper Block 1. “Is it in our best interest to vacate the airborne ISR domain and rely solely on space-based assets?” they ask. “To successfully address our near peer threats and Combatant Commanders’ mission needs, investments in both air and space capability is necessary,” they said. “The Air Force has a history of cutting ISR in order to meet other aspirations,” they added.

In recent hearings before the committee, combatant commanders have admitted that the demand for airborne ISR exceeds the supply, and that a mix of air and spaceborne assets is desirable. Gen Charles Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted to Sen Cramer that “ISR is one of the more contentious issues that we have across the joint force.”

In partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the US Space Force (USSF) is building a constellation of small satellites primarily for Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI). Risk reduction studies started in 2018, and prototypes have been orbited. But as the USSC’s FY2025 budget request makes clear, operational capability is still some time distant. Production contracts were only due to be placed in the current fiscal year. Space Command plans to spend around $250 million annually on what is formally titled the “Long Range Kill Chains” program.

In the meantime, the NRO has been embracing commercial ISR satellite providers. Ten companies are now providing electro-optical and SAR imagery for defense purposes. I discussed some of the sophisticated capabilities that they now offer here. But their “revisit rates” cannot match those provided by airborne ISR platforms, which is presumably why the NRO and the USSF is investing in government-owned satellites, especially for the time-critical GMTI tracking task. They are apparently being launched by commercial providers such as SpaceX.

Nothing much has emerged recently on the other piece of the U-2 replacement puzzle, namely stealthy UAVs. I have described the Northrop Grumman Penetrating-ISR vehicle in previous posts, including here and here. But in the recent SASC hearing Sen Cramer told Gen Brown that not only was he concerned about the elimination of legacy and current ISR assets, “but (also) now future ISR assets” This could be a reference to a supersonic UAV with reconnaissance capabilities that has been developed by Lockheed Martin at The Skunk Works.

Meanwhile, the run-down of the U-2 fleet has continued. Two more jets have been retired in recent weeks, and the last group of new pilots are now in training. But there is no word yet on when the operational squadrons will be deactivated.