A US Air Force general
has revealed that pilots of
the service’s U-2 spy planes
carry navigational watches
capable of finding their way
by using Chinese and Russian
satellite networks if access
to the US GPS network is
interrupted.
When the Air Force’s U-2
“Dragon Lady” spy plane
pilots fly on their
dizzying, high-altitude
missions around the globe,
they take with them
equipment capable of
hijacking the navigational
networks of the very
countries they’re spying on,
a leading US general has
revealed.
“My U-2 guys fly with a
watch now that ties into
GPS, but also BeiDou and the
Russian [GLONASS] system and
the European [Galileo]
system so that if somebody
jams GPS, they still get the
others,” said Air Combat
Command chief Gen. James M.
Holmes on Wednesday at a
conference in Washington,
DC. The remarks were made in
response to a question about
the Pentagon’s addition of
redundancies into its
equipment,
Defense One reported.
Holmes was short on
details, but Defense One
noted the Air Force bought
100 Garmin D2 Charlie
navigational watches for its
U-2 pilots in 2018.
“Designed with pilots of
varying backgrounds and
missions, the D2 Charlie aviator
watch features a colorful,
dynamic moving map which depicts
airports, navaids, roads, bodies
of water, cities and more,
offering greater situational
awareness,” the company said.
“When the D2 Charlie is paired
with Garmin Connect on a
connected mobile device, pilots
can view weather radar on top of
the map display relative to
flight plan information.”
However, interest in the
ability to tap into different
navigational satellite networks
is hardly restricted to the
Pentagon: studies in 2010 and
2012
noted the practical benefits of
being able to reference Russia’s
24 GLONASS satellites and
the European Union’s 30 Galileo
satellites for quicker and more
accurate location data in the
event that a direct line of
sight to a GPS satellite is
blocked, as can happen in urban
environments The US operates 31
GPS satellites under the purview
of the US Space Force.
