Reconnaissance aircraft

The category, explained

Reconnaissance aircraft solve one problem: get a sensor over a place that does not want it there, and come back. Two answers emerged, and they could not be more different.

The U-2 goes high and slow on a 31 m glider wing, loitering at the edge of the atmosphere. The SR-71 goes high and very fast, outrunning anything fired at it — Mach 3.2 at 26,000 m, in an airframe that leaked fuel on the ground because its panels only sealed once heat expansion closed them in flight.

Neither was ever shot down in the role. The SR-71 remains the fastest air-breathing crewed aircraft ever flown, nearly thirty years after its retirement.

Every reconnaissance aircraft here

Silhouettes are sized by real wingspan — bigger aircraft draw bigger.

Ranked by length