Editing Lockheed U-2 (section)

====Restructuring====
The U-2 shootdown in 1960 paralyzed the U.S. reconnaissance community and forced changes in policy, procedures, and security protocol. The United States also had to move swiftly to protect its allies: for example after the Soviets announced that Powers was alive, the CIA evacuated the British pilots from Detachment B as Turkey did not know of their presence in the country.<ref name="lashmar19970126">Lashmar, Paul. [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-the-rafs-secret-cold-war-heroes-1285189.html "Revealed: the RAF's secret Cold War heroes."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180206190256/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-the-rafs-secret-cold-war-heroes-1285189.html |date=6 February 2018 }} ''The Independent'', 26 January 1997. Retrieved: 17 August 2013.</ref> The end of Soviet overflights meant that Detachment B itself soon left Turkey, and in July Detachment C left Japan following a Japanese governmental request. Both detachments merged into Detachment G, under the command of Lt. Col. William Gregory, at [[Edwards Air Force Base]], California where the CIA had relocated the U-2 program after nuclear testing forced it to abandon Groom Lake in 1957.{{citation needed|date=April 2020}}

The CIA sought to determine if the U-2 could, from a fixed base at North Edwards, rapidly deploy to an advanced American base and complete reconnaissance flights on a largely self-sustaining basis. A proving exercise was arranged with Gregory and the new Detachment G unit to simulate deploying a U-2 unit overseas, taking two or three aircraft, and conducting three reconnaissance missions with no resupply. The exercise was critical to continued CIA operation of the U-2, since basing the aircraft in a foreign country was no longer an option. The exercise was completed with excellent results, and actual reconnaissance missions began to be scheduled immediately.<ref>Robert Richardson, Spying from the Sky, 2020, pp. 186–187.</ref>

On 4 January 1961, the CIA U-2 reconnaissance effort, which was formerly known as CHALICE, was redesignated IDEALIST.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP63-00313A000600070037-9.pdf|title=Redesignation of CIA Project for U-2 for Reconnaissance Purposes Aircraft PROJECT IDEALIST, January 4, 1961, CIA-RDP63-00313A000600070037-9, Central Intelligence Agency.|access-date=26 July 2022|archive-date=23 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170123141949/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP63-00313A000600070037-9.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> This program codeword by the end of the decade was being used to describe the U.S. reconnaissance along the Chinese coastline, while Taiwanese missions into the Chinese country would be known as the IDEALIST program<ref name="cia1969"/>

By the next U-2 flight, in October 1960 over Cuba, the previously informal procedure in which the president personally approved or disapproved each flight after discussion with advisors was replaced by the [[National Security Council (United States)|National Security Council]] Special Group. The expansion of [[satellite intelligence]] partly compensated for the overflights' end but, because U-2 photographs remained superior to satellite imagery, future administrations considered resumption at times, such as during the [[Berlin Crisis of 1961]].{{sfn|Pedlow|Welzenbach|1992|pp=181–182, 187–188, 195–197}}