Senior Spur is a large radome on top of the aft fuselage of the U-2R, along with associated datalink equipment carried by U-2R, used to relay data through satellites to ground processing stations. SENIOR SPUR Data Link deliveries occured in 1QFY96 and 1QFY97 under the DARO Common Data Link (CDL) program, which has the objective of defining an interoperable command, control and
communications capability for intelligence and reconnaissance assets
to include both manned and unmanned platforms. CDL will achieve its
goal of an interoperable communications path by employing an
architecture based on developed hardware and software to promote
commonality among the Services.