Terralliance's globetrotting CEO may have been an oil industry neophyte, but he had spent like a Saudi prince. His shopping list ran the gamut from oil wells in Turkey and Mozambique to demilitarized Soviet fighter jets.

Olson decided that Terralliance needed to make its own maps rather than rely on purchased satellite data. So the company bought an airplane and a helicopter, each fitted with custom-designed sensors. For Olson, this "low and slow" approach was a half-measure. He craved the "high and fast" capability of U-2 spy planes that NASA uses for research.
U-2s aren't available for commercial use, however, so Olson arranged to buy two surplus Sukhoi SU-27 "Flanker" fighter jets, stars of the Cold War-era Soviet air force, from the Ukrainian government. Terralliance paid $22 million for the pair of jets, as well as more than $4 million for an option to purchase two others.
Olson says the planes cost more than conventional, slower aircraft but are more effective because they can cover more ground. "It was like a NASA platform but better," he says. "I got the blue-collar version of the U2."

The Soviet fighter jets seemed a flamboyant purchase; some people involved with the company even doubted their existence. Whether or not they were a good idea, the planes were real. The same month that the auditors completed their work and Fredriksen sued Passport, the jets arrived unassembled at a commercial hangar in Rockford, Ill. The planes remain there and are for sale for $5 million apiece.

According to Pride Aircraft, which is marketing the planes, the twin fighter jets were "painted in the standard Russian air-superiority blue/gray camouflage scheme by the Ukrainian overhaul facility" that outfitted them for commercial use. The SU-27s never flew a mission for Terralliance.