Jun 1, 2026 · 47 min · 8 segments
During the Cold War, the Lockheed U-2 gave the United States the ability to peer deep inside denied territory from altitudes once thought unreachable. But after the Francis Gary Powers shootdown and…
Vincent AielloGuest
Chris PocockGuestTucker HamiltonHost
For a decade smack in the middle of the Cold War, one of the most fragile military aircraft ever built landed on one of the most unforgiving runways ever imagined.
An aircraft designed to fly higher than any fighter or surface-to-air missile, even higher than most weather.
The Central Intelligence Agency, who flew it to keep tabs on both adversaries and allies alike, refer to it as The Article.
I'm talking of course about the Lockheed U-2, an airplane notoriously difficult to land on a 10,000-foot concrete runway.
And yet from the early 1960s through the mid-'70s, the CIA demonstrated the U-2's ability to operate from U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, not just because it could, but because the intelligence community felt it had to.
[upbeat music] This is the story of why the CIA's Article went to sea, and what that decision says about how far the United States was willing to push when the intelligence stakes were high, as they often were during the Cold War's fevered pitch.
To understand how strange this really is, let's start with the problem Lockheed sought to solve.
Western intelligence had virtually no reliable insight into Soviet nuclear capabilities, bomber strength, missile development, or basic industrial capacity.
Signals intelligence was limited and, worse, often ambiguous, and the consequences of guessing wrong were existential.
To understand what drove the U.S. to build the U-2 in the first place, you have to understand the geopolitical landscape and how terrifying the blindness that the U.S. had into the Soviet Union.
This is Dr. Lance Lewis, call sign Boyle, a retired U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot with a PhD in war studies.
Because the Soviet Union wasn't just a closed society, it was now a closed society that had an atomic bomb, was building long-range bombers, and had absorbed the secrets of our own Manhattan Project through espionage, and this we knew, but beyond that, we had no reliable window into what they were gonna do next.
Yeah, there were defectors, there were signals and radio intelligence, some aerial photography, you know, snipping at the outer edges of the Soviet Union, but no unified picture of what was happening deep inside of Russia with the Russian testing.
And when the Joint Chiefs and the intelligence community went to the president to let them know or give their assessments of what was happening, the answer was often, "Mr.
President, we simply don't know," which is deeply unsatisfying, and the stakes for guessing wrong were unlike anything anybody had ever heard of before.
Because this wasn't about losing a battle, this was about potentially losing a nuclear war and losing American cities.
And so the context of this in which President Eisenhower found himself was now whatever system could be made up, he would approve overflights of the Soviet Union.
Now, this is incredibly politically risky for the United States because if whatever aircraft is shot down, the diplomatic consequences would be absolutely severe.
The Berlin Airlift had just finished right before the 1950s, but he approved missions anyway because to him, the risk of not knowing what was going on was way greater than the risk of getting caught.
For a decade smack in the middle of the Cold War, one of the most fragile military aircraft ever built landed on one of the most unforgiving runways ever imagined.
An aircraft designed to fly higher than any fighter or surface-to-air missile, even higher than most weather.
The Central Intelligence Agency, who flew it to keep tabs on both adversaries and allies alike, refer to it as The Article.
I'm talking of course about the Lockheed U-2, an airplane notoriously difficult to land on a 10,000-foot concrete runway.
And yet from the early 1960s through the mid-'70s, the CIA demonstrated the U-2's ability to operate from U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, not just because it could, but because the intelligence community felt it had to.
[upbeat music] This is the story of why the CIA's Article went to sea, and what that decision says about how far the United States was willing to push when the intelligence stakes were high, as they often were during the Cold War's fevered pitch.
To understand how strange this really is, let's start with the problem Lockheed sought to solve.
Western intelligence had virtually no reliable insight into Soviet nuclear capabilities, bomber strength, missile development, or basic industrial capacity.
Signals intelligence was limited and, worse, often ambiguous, and the consequences of guessing wrong were existential.
To understand what drove the U.S. to build the U-2 in the first place, you have to understand the geopolitical landscape and how terrifying the blindness that the U.S. had into the Soviet Union.
This is Dr. Lance Lewis, call sign Boyle, a retired U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot with a PhD in war studies.
Because the Soviet Union wasn't just a closed society, it was now a closed society that had an atomic bomb, was building long-range bombers, and had absorbed the secrets of our own Manhattan Project through espionage, and this we knew, but beyond that, we had no reliable window into what they were gonna do next.
Yeah, there were defectors, there were signals and radio intelligence, some aerial photography, you know, snipping at the outer edges of the Soviet Union, but no unified picture of what was happening deep inside of Russia with the Russian testing.
And when the Joint Chiefs and the intelligence community went to the president to let them know or give their assessments of what was happening, the answer was often, "Mr.
President, we simply don't know," which is deeply unsatisfying, and the stakes for guessing wrong were unlike anything anybody had ever heard of before.
Because this wasn't about losing a battle, this was about potentially losing a nuclear war and losing American cities.
And so the context of this in which President Eisenhower found himself was now whatever system could be made up, he would approve overflights of the Soviet Union.
Now, this is incredibly politically risky for the United States because if whatever aircraft is shot down, the diplomatic consequences would be absolutely severe.
The Berlin Airlift had just finished right before the 1950s, but he approved missions anyway because to him, the risk of not knowing what was going on was way greater than the risk of getting caught.
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