Surrender Aurora

by W. Strawn Douglas

  She spun on her heel and headed out to get Henderson. Ten minutes later a balding, 60-year-old Caucasian man with a paunch belly and a white shirt and tie under white lab coat walked into the antiseptic, tiled room that housed James.

  “Mr. McGregor. I am Dr. Henderson. I see you’re awake and you just met Amy. She will be your on-call nurse. She’s very good so treat her well.”

  “I shall. Do I have a choice?”

  “Well, you’re just a civilian so I can’t give you orders but I highly recommend it. You should be out of here by tomorrow. You will be out on the flight line by the end of the week. Usually they give these jobs to old battleaxes who have lost an arm. You are something of an anomaly. How did you get the job, might I ask?”

  “I learn languages quickly and I had a security clearance.”

  “Don’t pull out your IVs just yet. You are being fed a cocktail of very special medications to ease your brain’s transition to the sixteen filaments over your left ear. You will be able to test out the connection in five days. Getting an implant like this is no small feat. I hope it works for you. You can eat now. Be careful chewing. Your mandible muscles have been traumatized but eating should be no problem. Just go easy with it. Call Amy if you need her and she can get me if you notice any complications.”

  * * *

  Thursday morning came and the bandages came off. The implant was a small disk about as big around as a ballpoint pen but flat. A connector magnetically attached to it.

  He was jacked-in.

  The first tests he did were basic. A video monitor flat-screen was attached to the cable which fed out of the implant disk. He could feel the points in his skull that had been drilled. They told him to let the wounds heal and not tamper with them. “Don’t mess with government property,” they joked.

  Soon, though, they watched as James was able to make the video screen change from red to blue and back again. Eventually he could create shapes and different color blotches.

  Then Tanner walked into the room.

  “How’s it going, James? I got here yesterday and they already have you with the screen. You’re making progress, I see,” said Matthew.

  “It’s just like video games but I am a beginner.”

  “Me too. We both have a lot to learn. Come by the shop soon. People to meet. Later, dude,” Matthew said as he turned and left.

  “What’s he mean by the shop?” said James to the technician doing the video test.

  “You’ll see soon. One more hour of this and you can go see the shop.”

  * * *

  Tanner was having fun on the flight line with the other “gimps.” He had met seven amputees with military backgrounds, including two Afghanistan vets in similar circumstances. He was trading war stories and tales of medals and combat operations. Nothing classified but many adventures.

  He was shown the “shop.” It was a building with workstations for drone piloting. Unmanned remotely-piloted aerial vehicles were the norm at the shop.

  Inside the sedate office-looking four-story building was a large room 40 feet long with eight drone workstations. Tanner had been briefed on their use.

  They worked in pairs. One pilot and one missileer. The pilot guided the weapon in close and countered any evasive maneuvers the enemy could concoct. Then as the pilot brought the Aurora in close, the missileer would fire a rocket and shoot out a heat-seeker rocket at close range.

  A civilian in a blue shirt and khaki trousers walked into the crowd. “Welcome, Tanner. I see you have met the other missileers. We are going to run through several combat drills. We will cover enemy flat-plating, half scissors, and high-G barrel roll,” he said.

  “When do we get the real thing, Mr. Harlow?” asked a tall amputee, an African in descent.

  “We expect to get the equipment in next week. But keep your mouths shut. This is still a black project. We don’t go public until the President has a successful mission to give to the press.”

  Harlow guided Tanner to look over the shoulder of one of the workstations. The drone missileer took the left seat. Today the pilot’s chair, on the right side, went empty.

  First the missileer reached up above his left ear and clipped a cable to an implant cord into place on the shiny, small disk. A lightweight cord ran from the implant to a small black plastic box that hung from the missileer’s neck. It was a wireless setup.

  Then the missileer reached down on his left and picked up what looked like a standard flight helmet. After placing it on his head, he flipped down the darker lens.

  Tanner looked at it twice, as if there was something wrong. The lens was not the imposingly dark lens used by pilots in bright sun at 30,000 feet altitude. The lens was a thin gray. He could still see the missileer’s facial features through the lens.

  When the missileer began, he was on a sort of recorded synthetic mission where the drone aircraft was sneaking up on an enemy fighter jet and the last quarter mile would be traversed by the missile. The missileers all called it “the package.” They called themselves UPS or Federal Express. Their talent was package delivery.

  In the recorded mission there were many versions of a good and bad mission. Only on very rare occasions were the missileers not able to deliver the package.

  Usually it shot out from the Aurora and followed the enemy in tight turns and rolls. On rare and special occasions the fighter would try to turn back and get the package to lock onto the host aircraft. Most of the time this ended in calamity for the fighter as the package moved quickly, at up to Mach 3. But it did show some creativity on the part of the enemy pilot. At least the programmers had created the teaching videos that way.

  * * *

  James took a break at noon. He had been tested on pattern recognition software since 9 a.m. Banker’s hours to these people. They have been up since 6 a.m., he thought. Always starting the day with a blood draw. Needles in his arm.

  The videos were as simple as Sesame Street but all of the quizzes were done with brain power and not just verbal or pointing with a finger. He had to actually use his mind to control the patterns on the video screen.

  But now it was noon and time for a spot of tobacco. He found a coffee bar attached to a dining hall and got himself a tall dark with cream.

  There he sat, outside in the Las Vegas sun. It was February of 2016 and James was deeply submerged in a black-op. That meant a secret operation of the type that does not get mentioned in the press. So much for CNN and Fox.

  * * *

  The Aurora dropped from the wing pylon of the B-52 bomber high above Edwards Air Force Base. The jet engine fired up on cue. The tiny shrunken head of a fighter jet moved forward from 300 miles per hour to just under the speed of sound.

  It carried an explosive warhead and a live rocket motor for that cargo.

  The Aurora cruised easily to Mach 1 and when the operator was given approval, he took it beyond and into supersonic speed.

  On this day the Aurora was not testing the conformal extra fuel tanks. It still had six hours of loiter time.

  The operator, Major Davis, tried maneuver after maneuver. Split-S, flat-plate, barrel roll, half scissors.

  After the “gadget” and its little brother, the “package,” came into the final part of testing, a QF-4C was brought up to 30,000 feet altitude.

  The Aurora began to track this remotely piloted F-4 Phantom jet. Left over from Vietnam, the older jet now served as a target drone for the testing of the Aurora.

  Edwards AFB had a small missile test range, and the Aurora followed the QF-4 into the designated territory.

  The F-4 was made to turn and use its afterburners. The Aurora moved in close behind the QF-4. It was not difficult to keep up with the Vietnam-era old warrior.

  On the ground Major Davis gave his missileer the final approval to launch his missile. The package launched with appropriate shock and violence. Smoke filled the viewscreen that Davis was using to guide the Aurora.

  Cavanaugh took control of the package for a whole ten
seconds as the television-equipped warhead slammed into the aft section of the aging fighter. The warhead exploded and ripped off the back one-third of the Phantom. What was left of the fuselage and wings spun uselessly to the ground.

  Scratch one Phantom.

  * * *

  Monahan collected his papers and put them into his briefcase. The X-47 drone looked good.

  These pilots are a cost benefit loss for the whole Pentagon. The job can be done much better with robots. Eighty million dollars per pilot per 2,000 flight hours is money better spent on a force that is more reliable. All we have to do is frontload the budget and get ourselves some more reliable robots and our performance criteria will speak for itself. A robot will cost as much as a fighter jet and be a thousand times more efficient. Get rid of that so-called human factor and we will see some results. This “Boyd in a box” looks promising.

  Pilots are ruining a decent strike force. Too expensive. We can get robots to do the job at a tenth of the price. And what of this Aurora project? A fully roboticized force can do the job better at an expense suited more for a job done by scientists.

  These pilots are ruining the Defense Department. It’s time to draw back the reins and get some control in this environment of “command and control, he thought.

  He walked out of the briefing with a sense of pride. “We will take these pilots out of the equation once and for all,” he said under his breath.

  He walked confidently from the “E ring” of the Pentagon and prepared for his lunch with Senator Quenton. “Now there is a man with real vision.” The luncheon was to be hosted by a representative of the “First Republic” contractors.

  Tanks and artillery would still be used for police actions but this whole atmosphere of pilots determining the fate of the defense community has to stop and I will be at its vanguard. The tip of the spear. There has to be a way to tame these hotshots and the arrogance they ooze, he thought as he walked out the door to his waiting limousine.

  * * *

  James had been introduced to “the helmet” back in Minnesota. He had seen it tested in Grand Forks. Now, with his implant, he was getting used to its screen.

  Five minutes was all the time the “package” had to nail a target. Once the Aurora gave up its payload, it could take no more than 300 seconds to get the bad guy.

  He began on learning of all the aerial maneuvers. The jink was a quick dodge left or right. It had been pioneered in World War Two as a way to move away from an area targeted by ground-to-air cannon fire.

  The flat plate was a move to pull back on the stick and radically reduce speed. The pursuing aircraft would shoot forward and become the new prey.

  The high-G barrel roll did the same thing but brought the new pursuer in back of the old pursuer without the loss of speed and energy of the flat plate. It dumped energy but not as radically as the flat plate.

  When the pilot pulled back on the stick in the flat plate, the aerodynamic of the jet would go from slipping forward to a nose-up position with the whole airplane functioning as one huge air brake. The downside of this was a total loss in speed. The airplane would be like a plate lifted up and catching all of the aerodynamic force of the wing used like a parachute. The plate would catch the air rather than slipping through it.

  James knew that the package would never be able to dogfight. That was up to the Aurora. The package had a fully articulating nozzle on its rocket motor. It was a one-shot deal and the bad guy could turn or flat plate and leave the package to shoot forward uselessly. He learned in the simulator to stay back and assess the situation. There would be no second chances.

  James worked with the other missileers to apply all of the patterns Boyd had used as a fighter pilot. Immelmann climbs and quick dodges were the defender’s only options. With the television screen viewing every move from the front of the package, he could see all the defender’s moves.

  A special note was the new Sukhoi-35, which had vectored thrust. The exhaust nozzles of the jet engines could be directed left or right. This gave the plane an unprecedented short turning radius. Harrier pilots in Britain’s Royal Air Force found this out by directing the hover capability when in a turn. This was called a “vector in forward flight,” or VIFF for short.

  The Harrier could take off vertically and hover like a helicopter. By turning the jet nozzles halfway, the turn could be very tight. In spite of being subsonic, the Harrier proved to have talents unpredicted and a quality that made it an accidental dogfighter.

  The F-15 was a good aircraft while the F-16 turned out to be the best. F-16s had been the mainstay of Europe’s fighter forces. The British and others had built the Panavia Tornado, which was also good, but the F-16 was the best.

  James trained on the helmet. It provided fighter-style heads-up displays on how to vector the exhaust nozzle on the package. It showed all potential arcs between the target and the package.

  The package used a mixture of hydrazine and alcohol for its rocket motor. Ordinarily dangerous, it proved to be flexible and responsive to changes of speed. A solid-rocket-fueled missile like the Sparrow, Phoenix, or Sidewinder could only move forward at top speed. The package needed to be flexible. It needed to counter the jink, barrel roll, and flat plating of an enemy.

  The “Boyd in a box” could calculate but it relied on an operator who could select which arc of trajectory to use. The Boyd in a box could only offer three or four arcs to the operator’s helmet. It was up to the operator to select the one that worked the best.

  E-Systems had created the black box called the Boyd in a box. It was a promising device with half a million dollars in Cray-designed computer chips. Cray had designed the chips for its famous supercomputers.

  That meant the robots that Monahan at the Pentagon so clearly loved were only a small slice of the supercomputer pie. Monahan wanted supercomputers to direct entire battles.

  James knew nothing of Monahan or “First Republic.” James was learning to trust his equipment.

  * * *

  All eight of the one-armed men had been given 25 hours each in two-seat trainer aircraft. The “one-armed bandits,” they called themselves. It was a joke as the coin-operated gambling machines in nearby Las Vegas used the same nickname.

  Each implant-equipped missileer had a pilot assigned to him and that seemed to be a winning team. James was about to be surprised.

  Harlow was flanked by a woman in combat-green battle dress. She was blonde and stocky. Her rank was a major and her demeanor was like her body, stout and outside of the Barbie-doll envelope.

  She reached out her right hand and James felt obligated to reach out his in an obvious token of courtesy.

  “James McGregor, Major.” Her name on her uniform said “Kohl.”

  “My name is Barbara Kohl. I will be facilitating your training on the TF-16. I understand you’re a Marine veteran.”

  “Mop-up after Desert Storm in ’91. I got the security clearance because I could speak some Arabic and type. I play video games too. This is sort of a dream come true for me. I am just a civilian consultant. Let’s hope it’s a dream and not a nightmare.”

  “Call me Barb, or Major. We suit up at 0600. We need to catch the desert sun. It may be a fortuitous training experience. Targets of the day include the Middle East and the desert sun comes up early there.”

  “Are we going to war in Iraq again?”

  “Israel is interested in the options opened by the Aurora program. They employ a strike force of mostly American equipment. They are an ideal test venue for this new technology. They fight the same bad guys that we do. You will need to get ready by five a.m. I hope you remember military etiquette, Corporal.”

  “You’re the boss.” He motioned his right hand to his mouth and said, “Brief me,” in his best Marine Corps clipped English.

  “Right on, soldier,” she said with a laughing smile.

  * * *

  Barb Kohl took the instructor’s seat in the TF-16; T for “trainer.” She taxied out to the
runway and checked in with the control tower. She knew this was a big thrill for James.

  She applied thrust to the engine and let go of the brakes and was soon at 120 knots as the plane rolled down the runway.

  They lifted off and climbed. James had the visor up. They traveled for 15 minutes and Barbara said, “Try the helmet now.”

  James lowered the visor and could see airspeed at 410 knots. A menu appeared with a list of target blips on his visor screen.

  “It’s working fine, Major.”

  “Then let’s take it through some maneuvers. Time to show you what this baby can do,” she said in her clipped voice.

  She showed him climbs up in a loop upside down rectified by a quick roll taking them right side up again. She took James through flat plating and barrel rolls. She taught him how to jink and how to climb.

  Then she told James to put the visor up and try some basic maneuvers. He took control of the stick in the student’s role and did some basic turns. He asked her if he got it right.

  “Fine so far, McGregor. You need to learn more aggressive technique. Try a little more oomph.”

  James did the same moves she had been teaching him but quicker and with more power. They worked. He was amazed at the 360 degrees of visibility in the cockpit. The heads-up display on his canopy glass showed him airspeed, G-force, fuel status, and altitude. Other numbers appeared that gave him no clue as to what they pertained to. He could split-S, jink, and barrel roll but he knew he was no fighter pilot. All he wanted to do was direct the package to its destination. Leave the flying to somebody like Barb.

  The view was beautiful. He could see Las Vegas on the horizon and the base with its runways in between him and the city.

  “Put your visor into gear and do some practice deployments of your weapon.”

  “Aye-aye, Major.” He pulled the visor down and saw his fictional target, just like a video game. Just like she said, the target came into view and he selected, from three arcs, the best one. He shot down three targets and lost another.

  Barbara guided the TF-16 into a climb up to a flight of four F-15s cruising above them.