LOCKHEED SHOWS OFF MODIFIED SPY PLANE.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Against a backdrop of a giant American flag, Lockheed Martin rolled out the first U-2S reconnaissance aircraft equipped with modern cockpit gauges and controls.

For the first time in a decade, Lockheed Martin and the Air Force opened U.S. Air Force Plant 42's high-security Site 2 plant to news media for Monday's delivery ceremony, attended by a two-star general.

``One of the world's oldest (reconnaissance) programs, the premiere, has just gotten better,'' Maj. Gen. Robert Behler, commander of the Air Force Command Control Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance Center, said of the U-2S. ``We have a (aircraft) here that has a lot of life left in it. We've invested wisely.''

Lockheed Martin has about 210 employees in Palmdale at work on the cockpit display modifications, which cost about $3.5 million per aircraft. An additional 215 people are at work in Palmdale on other U-2 programs. The Palmdale plant has close to 4,000 workers in all.

``It's a pretty big piece of the work here,'' said Rick Baker, vice president and site general manager for Lockheed Martin in Palmdale.

All 35 Air Force U-2S aircraft are due to be modified by 2007.

The modifications installed three 6-inch by 8-inch liquid-crystal display screens, which look similar to video screens and which replace more than 20 round analog gauges. A keypad replaces switches that in some instances were hard to reach and manipulate for a pilot wearing a high-altitude pressure suit.

``In the past you had to reach behind the seat for some switches, and you're in a space suit,'' Behler said.

The cockpit modernization caps about $1.4 billion worth of improvements to the U-2 fleet since the 1990s. The planes got lighter, more fuel-efficient engines that give them larger payload and longer-range, better cameras and radar, and better communications gear.

``This is really just one part of the upgrade program that's been going on on the U-2,'' Lockheed Martin U-2S Program Manager Frank Mauro said.

The U-2S aircraft in service today are newer versions of a plane created when Dwight Eisenhower was president - when they were operated in secret until one was shot down over the Soviet Union, creating an international incident.

The U-2S planes are larger, heavier versions of the original U-2A and all but four were built in the 1980s when Lockheed restarted its Burbank production line. Some were originally designated TR-1, and others U-2R, but all bear the U-2S designation now.

While the newer unmanned GlobalHawk and Predator spy planes have gotten more attention recently, the U-2 is playing an important role over Afghanistan, Behler said.

The U-2 is larger and more powerful than the unmanned craft, carrying equipment for eavesdropping on enemy communications as well as radar and infrared cameras for spying on troops and installations, the general said.

Based at Beale Air Force Base in Northern California, U-2s have made more than 265 reconnaissance flights over Afghanistan since October. For security reasons, the general said, he cannot say where the U-2s are flown from, or what percentage of reconnaissance missions they are responsible for.

The Air Force has tested over Afghanistan a new broadband satellite communications link that lets a U-2 over enemy territory transmit images and other data at 274 megabits a second to an orbiting satellite, the general said.

Without the system, called Extended Tether, a U-2 either must land to unload its data or fly to within range of a special ground station, Behler said.

The U-2 satellite link gives military commanders ``eyes and ears over the target without being tethered to a ground station,'' Behler said.

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(ran in AV and SAC editions only) Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert Behler speaks to the media Monday with a U-2S plane as his backdrop at Plant 42 in Palmdale.