This high-flying aircraft discovered China’s spy balloon. Now Biden’s Pentagon wants to kill it

The Eisenhower era U-2 has proven its versatility, from its days as a spy aircraft during the Cold War to identifying Chinese surveillance ballons over the U.S. this year.

Beginning in 1956, Eisenhower sent the U-2 on high-altitude (up to 70,000 feet) missions over the USSR and learned, contrary to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s bluster, that Russia was making "missiles like sausages," that his factories were producing not tanks, but tractors. With that intelligence, Eisenhower concluded an arms buildup, and potential war, were unnecessary.