by Dale Brown
“It’ll work fine,” Patrick said.
“There is an army of engineers and test pilots at Edwards whose job it is to test stuff like this, Patrick,” she said. “Why don’t we let them do their damned jobs?”
“Rebecca, if you feel so strongly about this, why are you going along?”
“The same reason you’re going—because it’s our plan and our program, and we don’t put others in harm’s way unless we’re willing to take the lead and do it ourselves,” Rebecca replied. “Besides, they’re my planes, and if you crash one, it’s my ass. We have some skilled fliers in our unit, but they’re newborns compared to us. They’ve never been in a B-1 bomber that’s trying to kill them. But there are a dozen crewdogs at Edwards or Dreamland who would give a month’s pay to fly some test missions for us. Why don’t we just take the bird down there and let them do it?”
“You know why—because no one at Edwards or anywhere else will waste one gallon of jet fuel or spare one man-hour to work this project without a fully authorized budget.”
“Except me. Me and my budget are the expendable ones, right?”
“I’ve given you lots of opportunities to back out of this project, Rebecca,” Patrick said. He stopped and looked at her seriously. “You and John Long seem to delight in busting my ass and branding me as the bad guy, the one that breaks the rules but gets away with it every time. Fair enough—I’ll accept that criticism. But both of you can put the brakes on this at any time with one phone call to General Magness at Eighth Air Force or General Craig at Air Reserve Forces Command. You haven’t done it. You’ve chewed me out in front of every officer on this base. Long steps right up to the brink of insubordination without even blinking. He’s done everything but put an ad in the Reno Gazette-Journal.
“But you never made the call, and I think I know the reason: You’re hoping this works. Every new wing commander wants two things: for no one to screw up too badly, and to make a name for him- or herself in order to stand out above all the other commanders. In relative peacetime it’s even more important to shine. Long wants his first star so badly it hurts, and you can trade on your reputation as the first female combat pilot only so long.”
“That’s not true, General,” Rebecca said—but her voice had no force, no authority behind it. She knew he was right.
“We can debate this all day, but it won’t make any difference,” Patrick went on. “We have the skill and knowledge to make this work. But you’re the aircraft commander, the final authority. If you disagree, call a stop to it.” He waited, hands on hips. When she turned her flashlight up at the emergency landing gear blowdown bottle gauges, continuing the preflight, he nodded and said, “All right then, let’s do it.”
They finished their walk-around inspection, then climbed the steep entry ladder behind the tall nose-gear strut and made their way to the cockpit. After preflighting his ejection seat and strapping himself in, Patrick quickly “built his nest,” then waited for the action to start.
Rebecca joined him a few moments later. After strapping herself in, she pulled out her checklist, strapped it onto her right leg, flipped to the before apu start page, and began—then stopped herself. She ignored the checklist and sat back, crossing her arms on her chest in exasperation—and maybe a little bit of fear.
“Pretty bizarre way to go to war,” she muttered.
“Pretty bizarre way to go to war,” Dean “Zane” Grey muttered. He was seated at a metal desk inside the VC—virtual-cockpit—trailer, staring at two blank flat-panel LCD computer monitors. It was a tight squeeze inside the trailer. In the center of the interior were two seats in front of the metal desk; flanking them were two more seats with full computer keyboards, a trackball, and large flat-panel LCD monitors. On Daren Mace’s side, he had a “supercockpit” display—a twelve-by-twenty-four-inch full-color plasma screen on which he could call up thousands of pieces of data—everything from engine readouts to laser-radar images to satellite images—and display them on Windows- or Macintosh-like panes on the display. All other room inside the trailer was taken up by electronics racks, air-conditioning units, power supplies, and wiring. It was stuffy and confining, far worse than the real airplane ever was. It made Grey a little anxious—no, a lot anxious.
“Well, this is very cool,” Zane said, “but I’m ready to get going. So where is everything? Flight controls? Gauges?”
“Right here,” Daren Mace said. He handed Zane a thin, lightweight helmet resembling a bicyclist’s safety helmet, with an integrated headset and wraparound semitransparent visor encircling the front. Daren then handed him a pair of thin gloves. They all took seats. Putting on the helmets helped to kill the noise of electronics-cooling fans and air-conditioning compressors.
“How cool is this!” Zane repeated. A few moments after turning on the system, he saw a three-dimensional electronic image of an ultramodern B-1 bomber cockpit. No conventional instruments—everything was voice-controlled and monitored via large, full-color, multifunctional electronics displays. He was able to reach out and “touch” the MFDs and move the control stick. “Man, this is unbelievable!”
“We can shift the view to anything you’d like to see—charts, satellite imagery, tech orders, sensor information—anything,” Daren said. “Calling up info and ‘talking’ to the plane is easy—just preface every command with ‘Vampire.’ Voice commands are easy and intuitive. We have a catalog of abbreviated commands, but for most commands just a simple order will do. Try to use the same tone of voice, with no inflections. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”
“Very nice,” Zane exclaimed as he got settled in. “It’s like a fancy video game, only a lot noisier. Almost as noisy as the plane, I think.”
“General McLanahan wants to build a nicer command-and-control facility here at Battle Mountain,” Daren said, “but we have to prove this thing can work first.” He spent several minutes explaining how to enter commands into the system—voice commands, touching floating buttons or menus, touching the screen with virtual fingers, or using eye-pointing techniques to activate virtual buttons and switches on the instrument panel.
“You almost don’t need arms and legs to fly this thing,” Zane commented.
“It was designed at Dreamland by a guy who lost the use of his legs in a plane crash,” Daren responded. “Zen Stockard. He’s a buddy of mine. There was a phase where everything designed there was based on virtual-reality or advanced neural-transfer technology, simply because that was the best way for paraplegics to be able to use the gear. You don’t need to be an aviator to fly them either—the computers do most of the flying, even the air refueling. We use crew chiefs and techs to fly Global Hawk all the time. Let’s report in and get the show on the road.”
“I’m ready, boss,” Zane said excitedly. “VAC is up,” he said on intercom, addressing himself as the “virtual aircraft commander.”
“VMC is up,” Daren reported as the “virtual mission commander.”
“The guinea pigs are in place,” Rebecca responded. “I mean, AC is up.”
“MC is up,” Patrick said. “The guinea pigs here resent that.”
“VE ready,” replied Jon Masters from the seat beside Patrick, reporting in as the “virtual engineer.” Dr. Jon Masters, a boyish-looking man in his mid-thirties who had several hundred patents to his name long before most kids his age had graduated from high school, was the chief engineer and CEO of Sky Masters Inc., a small high-tech engineering firm that developed state-of-the-art communications, weapons, and satellite technology, including the virtual cockpit. Patrick McLanahan had known Jon Masters for many years and had been a vice president of Sky Masters Inc. after he had been involuntarily separated from the Air Force.
“Okay, folks, here we go,” Daren said. “VAC, you have the aircraft.”
“Oh, shit, here we go,” Zane muttered. In a shaky but loud voice, he commanded, “Vampire, battery power on.” Instantly the lights inside the EB-1C Vampire’s cockpit came on. He tuned in se
veral radios and got permission to start the plane’s APU, or auxiliary power unit; then: “Vampire, before-APU-start checklist.”
In the cockpit, Rebecca barely noticed the response. All the checklist items—eleven steps, which normally took about a minute to perform—were done with a rapid flicker of warning and caution lights. Within three seconds the computer responded, “Vampire ready for APU start.”
“Wow” was all Rebecca could say.
“Shit-hot,” Zane exclaimed. “Vampire, get me a double cheeseburger, no pickles.”
“Would you like fries with that?” the computer responded.
“What?”
“You youngsters are so predictable. That was one of the first responses I programmed into the voice-recognition software,” Jon Masters said gleefully. Jon was only a few years older than the “youngsters,” so he knew them very well.
“Can we get on with it?” Rebecca asked. “This thing is giving me the creeps.”
“Roger,” Zane said happily. “Vampire, APU start.”
The checklists ran quickly and smoothly, and in a fraction of the time it normally took to get ready for engine start, the Vampire bomber was ready. They had to wait for Long and Pogue to finish their checklists, done in a more conventional manner. The bombers were then towed to an elevator and hoisted to the second level, where they started the engines and performed a before-takeoff check; shortly thereafter the two bombers were raised to the surface.
“So how do I taxi this thing, boss?” Zane asked.
“You don’t. The computer does,” Daren replied.
“O-kay. Vampire, taxi for takeoff,” Zane spoke.
“Laser radar is on and radiating, very low power, short range,” Patrick reported. Just then the Vampire bomber’s throttles slowly advanced, and the plane crept forward.
It was slow going, but eventually the Vampire taxied itself out of the hammerhead and onto the end of the runway. “Vampire in takeoff position, eleven thousand four hundred feet remaining,” the computer reported. “Partial power takeoff performance okay.”
“The LADAR maps out the edges of the runway and automatically puts you on the centerline, then measures the distance to the first set of obstacles—in this case, the edge of the overrun,” Jon Masters explained. “The laser radar also measures nearby terrain and samples the atmosphere and plugs the information into the air-data computer for takeoff-performance computations.”
“So what the heck do I do?” Zane asked.
“You get to choose the type of takeoff,” Patrick McLanahan said.
“Can’t I make my own takeoff?”
“The computer can make about a dozen different takeoffs: max performance, minimum interval, unimproved field, max altitude, partial power, noise abatement—you name it,” Masters said. “You just tell it which one and it’ll do it.”
“So can I, Doc, so can I,” Zane said. “How do I work this thing?”
“Rest your arm on the armrest,” Daren said. Grey did. “Vampire, cockpit adjust,” Daren spoke. In an instant the cockpit flight controls rearranged themselves to fit Grey’s hands. “In the virtual cockpit, the controls come to you—not the other way around.”
“I love it!” Zane exclaimed happily. The rudder pedals did the same, and when it came time to flip a switch or punch a button, all he had to do was extend a finger. The control panel came to his finger, then moved again so he could clearly see the display, then moved out of the way so he could “look” out the window or “see” other instruments. Zane experimentally “stirred the pot”—moved the control stick in a wide circle to check the flight-control surfaces—and watched the control-surface indicators move.
“Not so hard,” Rebecca said. “You’re banging the control surfaces around too much.”
“Keep in mind that you don’t have any control-stick feel,” Daren pointed out. “You have to use the indicators and the flight instruments to tell you how you’re doing—no ‘seat of the pants’ flying. Use your cameras on the takeoff roll, but if you go into the clouds, transition quickly to your instruments.” Daren got takeoff clearance from the air base’s robot “control tower”: “You’re cleared for takeoff, VAC.”
“Here we go, boys and girls,” Zane said. He put his hands on the “throttles” and slowly pushed them forward—too fast. He moved them more slowly, stopping just as he advanced into zone-one afterburner, then released brakes as he slowly advanced them further into zone five.
He felt as if nothing were happening—and then, before he realized it, the computer said, “Vampire, rotate speed, ready, ready, now.” Zane wasn’t ready for it. He pulled back on the stick—nothing happened. He pulled back more . . . still nothing—and then suddenly the nose shot skyward.
“Get the nose down, Lieutenant,” Rebecca warned. “You overrotated.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Zane said. He released some of the back pressure.
“Too much!” Rebecca shouted. “Nose up!” They were less than fifty feet aboveground. Zane pulled back on the stick—and started another PIO, or “pilot-induced oscillation.” Rebecca cried out, “I’ve got it!”
“Let Zane fix it, Rebecca,” Daren said calmly. “Nice and easy with the controls, Zane,” he said softly. “There’s a slight delay in the datalink—be ready for it. Put in a control movement, then keep an eye on it. Everything you see is delayed slightly from what the plane’s doing. Use your instruments, but be aware of the delay.”
“Vampire, configuration warning,” the computer announced.
“You wanted to do the takeoff, Zane. You’re the one who has to remember to clean up the plane,” Daren said.
“Shit, yeah,” Zane muttered. “Vampire, after-takeoff checklist.” Immediately the landing gear started retracting, lights turned themselves off, the air-traffic-control transponder activated, and the mission-adaptive flight controls changed from takeoff to en route climb configuration.
“After-takeoff check complete,” the computer reported seconds later.
“This is totally cool,” Zane said. He experimentally turned the plane side to side. “Once you get used to the delay, it’s not bad at all.”
“Speak for yourself,” Rebecca said nervously as she watched her bomber do its random gyrations. “It figures you young kids would enjoy it—it’s like playing a big video game, right, Zane?”
“Yes, ma’am. How about we see if it’ll do a roll?”
“You do and I’ll court-martial you—and then I’ll kill you.”
“Enough fun. Let’s fly this thing like it was meant to be flown,” Daren said. “Vampire, activate flight plan one, standard en route climb.”
“Vampire, flight plan one activated,” the computer responded.
Zane released his grip on the stick, and the autopilot took over, immediately reducing the throttles out of afterburner, reducing the climb rate, and turning to the first waypoint.
“Two’s airborne, tied on radar,” John Long reported.
Daren watched in utter amazement. “I simply can’t believe this,” Daren said incredulously. “I’m sitting here flying a three-hundred-thousand-pound supersonic attack bomber from a trailer on the ground in the middle of nowhere in northern Nevada. It’s unbelievable.”
“It’s totally cool from here,” Jon Masters said. “It’s better than a video game. It’s hard to believe that’s a real machine out there. We should—” Just then he noticed a flashing message on a computer screen. “We got a fault in the primary datalink computer,” Masters said.
“What happened?” Patrick asked.
“Master computer fault. It automatically shifted control to the secondary computer,” Jon replied. “We got an automatic reboot of the primary computer. It’ll take a couple minutes to come up.”
“How about we put this thing on the ground now, boys?” Rebecca asked. “We’ll let the wingman take over.”
“We’ve got four redundant, independent operating computers driving the datalink and aircraft controls, plus an emergency system that wi
ll force the aircraft to execute a direct return to base, no matter what systems are damaged,” Masters said. “The system did exactly what it was supposed to do—hand off control to another good computer, restart itself, and then, if it checks out, wait in line for a handoff.”
“Another handoff? You mean we could lose more computers?”
“We plan on the worst and hope for the best, General,” Masters said. “Aha . . . the first computer came back up, so we’ve got four good computers again. We’re back in business.”
“Doctor, you’re not exactly filling me with confidence,” Rebecca said. “Everyone remember: This is my wing’s bird. I signed for it, and I decide when this test mission ends.”
“Roger, ma’am,” Zane said. “Now, just sit back and relax and enjoy the ride.”
KARA KUM DESERT, EASTERN TURKMENISTAN
That evening
Only his tracked vehicles had the capability to go across the open desert, so Jalaluddin Turabi had no choice but to split up his force. He divided his group into three: Two would encamp along the Kizyl-Tabadkan highway, divided by fifteen kilometers, ready to move toward each other if trouble appeared; the third force, led by Turabi himself, would trek across the desert to the crash site. Because of weather and their upcoming battle at Gaurdak, helicopter support would not be available until dawn—Turabi was effectively on his own. He had some working night-vision goggles, and the weather was improving, so he decided to start out in the relative coolness and cover of night and head toward the crash site, using only a compass and prayers to guide him.
It took an hour to travel the first twenty kilometers, driving an old Soviet-era MT-LB multipurpose tracked vehicle they’d captured in Kerki. He deployed an even older GSh-575 tracked vehicle—actually a ZSU-23/4 self-propelled antiaircraft-gun system, with the antiaircraft guns unusable and deactivated long ago—out three hundred meters ahead of the MT-LB as a scout; this vehicle managed to throw a track every five to ten kilometers, which made for even slower going. Several times Turabi ordered his men to abandon the vehicle and hide when his scout heard jet aircraft nearby, but they were never able to pinpoint its location after the echo of the roar of their own engines faded away. Nerves were on edge.
