Only six female pilots have occupied the controls of the U-2 Dragon Lady in its more than fifty years of flight. Three of those six are currently serving in the US Air Force, and two of them are flying combat missions with the only U-2 squadron operating over Iraq—the 99th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, currently operating in Southwest Asia.

The U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, though designed and developed in great secrecy five decades ago, has somehow never fully emerged from the shadows even though it has outlasted one successor, the SR-71 Blackbird, and its production line has been re-opened twice.