Patrick McLanahan Collection #1

by Dale Brown

  “Is that a problem?”

  “The Seventieth has a pretty good record of finding both missiles,” Griffin said. “The SS-24s mostly stay in their garrisons. The SS-25s are much harder, because they’re road-mobile and they have a fairly good off-road capability and can fire from just about anywhere on the road, thanks to an inertial-navigation system augmented with satellite positioning.”

  “We have several airborne sensors that can scan wide areas of all sorts of terrain for targets like this,” Patrick said. “The Megafortresses have synthetic-aperture radar that can pick out something as large as an SS-25 launcher from three hundred miles away—even concealed in a forest or under netting—and see inside a garage at one hundred miles.”

  “We can sure use them in treaty-compliance missions—not much chance of them authorizing us to fly a high-tech stealthy bomber over their missile-silo fields, though,” Griffin said. “Our imaging satellites do a pretty good job overall, and we correlate signals intelligence with vehicle movements to spot most movements—we keep the count up as high as eighty percent. Weather hampers their movements a bit, especially in the Far East theater, and many units traverse the same areas every time during routine deployments. The good thing is that for the past few years the SS-25s have stayed mostly in their storage areas.”

  “Reason?”

  “It’s four times as expensive to maintain the road-mobile missiles than it is the silo-based weapons,” Griffin explained. “In addition, the transporter-erector-launchers were built in Belarus, so the Russians have had a hard time getting spare parts and replacements after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The START II treaty limit of just one warhead on every land-launched missile means that the SS-25 has less ‘bang for the buck.’

  “Of course, its survivability gives it a big edge, and the missiles can be fired from their garages as well, so they all have to be monitored even while parked. We watch the garrison areas carefully for any sign of movement, and we use satellite-based visual, radiological, and thermal identification methods for tracking and identifying each convoy. We think there are only two regiments, a total of eighty missiles, actually deployed in the field at any one time.”

  “I think I need to get a status briefing from the Seventieth right away,” Patrick said. “What else does the Seventieth monitor?”

  “Test launches,” Griffin said. “There is a missile test-firing range north of Bratsk that has been used in the past to test-launch mobile missiles, so no one was surprised at that DSP detection warning. But Russia hasn’t fired a missile into the old Kazakh test ranges since shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union—they usually fire shorter-range missiles north to the Pol’kino instrumented target complex, and longer-range missiles east to the Petropavlovsk Pacific range complex. Kazakhstan hasn’t specifically banned use of their old target ranges, but they haven’t allowed it either.”

  Patrick nodded as he studied the DSP satellite data. After another few moments, he asked, “Can the DSP satellites give us the speed and direction of the missile?”

  “Not exactly,” Griffin replied. “Lots of folks say that DSP has a ‘tracking’ function, but in fact it’s just a series of detector activations. Certain users, like NORAD, can derive speed and ground track from the detectors, but DSP itself doesn’t provide that information. Since DSP is a warning-and-reporting system, not a target-tracking system—ground-based radars like BMEWS and the new National Missile Defense System are meant for tracking missiles—and since the system is designed to track missiles inbound to North America, not to Central Asia, we don’t have that info.”

  “I’d like to find out how fast that missile was going when it was first detected,” Patrick said.

  “It may not be a very accurate number,” Griffin warned. “In essence, DSP looks directly down at Earth when it spots a missile exhaust plume. Because most missiles go up awhile before heading down-range, the speed turns out to be zero for the first minute or two. That’s why we sometimes get excited even when we detect a forest fire or oil-well fire in Russia—they all look the same for the first couple minutes, which is why NORAD is usually quick to blow the Klaxon if it sees a hot dot anywhere in-country.”

  “Find out for me,” Patrick said.

  “Sure. What are you thinking about, Patrick?”

  “I’m thinking that uncorrelated target has something to do with the attack on Bukhara,” Patrick said. He drew an electronic line on the screen between the DSP target-track data points to plot a course—and they saw that the missile’s flight path took it directly to Bukhara.

  “That could be a coincidence,” Griffin said. “The track also goes through the Kazakh missile ranges. We don’t know where the missile went after its motor burned out….”

  “But you said the Russians haven’t been shooting missiles into Kazakhstan—which makes sense,” Patrick said. “Kazakhstan cooperates as much with the U.S. as it does with Russia. And we don’t exactly know where the missile or its payload impacted—we’re assuming it was the missile test ranges in Kazakhstan. Maybe it really hit in Bukhara. But if there are no silos and the Russians have never shot a missile from Bratsk before, maybe it wasn’t a ground-launched missile.”

  “What else could it be?”

  “An air-launched missile,” Patrick responded. “Ever hear of anything like that before?”

  “An air-launched Mach-eight missile that can fly almost eighteen hundred miles? I seem to recall something like that, but it’s better to ask the expert.” Griffin picked up Patrick’s secure phone. “This is Colonel Griffin. Get Chief Master Sergeant Saks secure at NAIC, ASAP,” he asked Patrick’s clerk. To Patrick he said, “Don Saks is one of our ‘old heads’—he’s been around longer than just about everyone. He’s the NCOIC at the National Air Intelligence Center at Wright-Pat, which collects and disseminates information on enemy air-and-space weaponry. If it exists, ever existed, or was once on the drawing board, he’ll know all about it.” A few moments later, Griffin punched the speakerphone button on the phone and returned the receiver to its hook. “Chief? Tagger here, secure. I’m here at Lackland with General McLanahan.”

  “Saks, secure. Hello, sirs. What can I do you for?”

  “You’re the walking Russian threat encyclopedia and the Air Intelligence Agency’s Jeopardy! champ, so here goes: It’s a Russian long-range air-launched hypersonic attack missile.”

  “Easy. What is the AS-X-19 ‘Koala’?” Saks answered immediately. “A combination of the obsolete AS-3 ’Kangaroo’ air-to-surface missile and the naval SS-N-24 long-range hypersonic ship-launched antiship missile. Russian designation Kh-90 or BL-10. First test-launched in 1988. Rocket-boosted to Mach two, then ramjet-powered, speed in excess of Mach eight, range in excess of fifteen hundred miles, cruises at seventy thousand feet altitude. Too big to fit inside a Blackjack bomber, but the Tupolev-95 Bear could carry two externally. The Tupolev-22M Backfire could carry three, although over very short distances—the suckers were supposed to be more than thirty feet long and weigh in excess of eight thousand pounds. The program was canceled in 1992, but rumors persisted that the Russians were going to build a shorter-range conventional-warhead version.”

  “You mean, this AS-X-19 was supposed to have a nuclear warhead, Chief?” Patrick remarked.

  “Every Russian air-launched weapon designed before 1991 was supposed to be able to carry a nuke, and the Koala was no exception, sir,” Saks replied. “The Koala was inertially guided, but the Russians had terrible inertial nav systems back then—the missile needed a nuke in order to destroy anything. They were experimenting with GLONASS-navigating ultraprecise missiles when the program was canceled. Why, sir?”

  “We’re looking into a recent Russian missile launch to see if it was an air-or ground-launched bird.”

  “Got radar data on it, sir?” Saks asked.

  “Negative.”

  “Any data on it? DSP perhaps?”

  “That we got.”

  “Get Space Command to give you
the plume-illumination-rate levels from the satellite detectors,” Saks recommended. “They’ll squawk and say you’re not cleared for that info, but tell them you need it anyway. A ground-launched missile will have a huge and sustained first-stage plume, followed by a medium-size second-stage plume, followed by a long unpowered-coast phase. Air-launched missiles like the Kh-90 have a relatively small first stage—the carrier aircraft is actually considered the missile’s first stage—followed by a whopping big and sustained second stage, which sometimes continues through reentry and even to impact.”

  “Would DSP be able to track the Koala during its ramjet-cruise phase?” Patrick asked.

  “Probably not, sir,” Saks responded. “DSP needs a good hot flame, as from a chemical-reaction motor, versus an air-fuel motor like a ramjet. A ramjet is basically an air-breathing engine, like a turbojet, except it uses the Venturi shape of the combustion chamber, rather than vanes and rotating blades, to compress incoming air. Because there’s no moving parts that stall in supersonic air, the ramjet vehicle can fly several times faster than most turbojets or turboramjets. NORAD can tune DSP to pick up cooler heat sources such as from a ramjet engine, but then it’s more prone to false alarms, so they probably wouldn’t do it unless they had a really compelling reason. The HAVE GAZE and SLOW WALKER satellites—designed to detect and track stealth aircraft—might be able to pick them up, but they need a pretty solid aimpoint to start with.”

  “Speed of a ballistic missile, range of a cruise missile—and a nuclear warhead to boot,” Griffin summarized. “Did you get the data on the antiradar missiles fired against Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan yesterday?”

  “Yes, sir. Most certainly AS-17 ‘Krypton’ antiradar missiles, what the Russkies call the Kh-31P. It’s a knockoff of the French ANS supersonic antiship and antiradar missile. We’ve never seen them on Backfires before, but it makes total sense. It’s a pretty awesome threat. But if the Russians are flying Koalas now, that’s an even greater threat. The Russians practiced launching Koalas from everything from fighters to cargo planes, and even from airliners back in the eighties. Even a Patriot missile can’t catch up to it—it’s a hypersonic missile almost right up to impact.”

  “Any more good news for us, Don?” Patrick asked wryly.

  “Two things, sir: The Russians know superramjet technology,” Saks responded seriously. “If you think you saw a Koala test-fired lately, chances are they’ve got a bunch of them ready to go.”

  “What’s the other thing, Don?”

  “The Koala was originally designed to carry two independently targetable reentry vehicles,” Saks added. “They’d deploy at seventy to eighty thousand feet, which meant the two targets could be as far as sixty to seventy miles apart. Their accuracy back then was one to two hundred meters—but now, with GPS or GLONASS steering, they could have ten-to twenty-meter accuracy. Just thought you should know.”

  Those words stayed with Patrick long after he hung up. “Tagger, we’re going to need to look at those uncorrelated contacts in Siberia,” he said finally. “We know that Backfire bombers were involved in that attack on Bukhara, and we know that they can carry both AS-17 and AS-19 missiles. The boss wants to know where that Backfire came from—but I want to know who launched that AS-19, and I want to know what else the Russians are doing with their bomber fleet. If this was some isolated incident, or if this was a prelude to some sort of bigger offensive in Turkmenistan or somewhere else, I want to find out about it.”

  “I’ll get the ball rolling, Patrick,” Griffin said. “What’s your guess?”

  “My guess is that this attack on Bukhara was an operational test mission,” Patrick said. “I’ve flown many of them myself with planes from Dreamland and from Battle Mountain. I think the Russians are getting ready to roll out a whole new attack system, based on long-range bombers. The addition of the Koala missile is the scariest part—with it they can hold thousands of targets in North America at risk.”

  Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, Nevada

  Later that morning

  David Luger snatched up the secure telephone receiver as soon as he was told who was on the line. “Muck!” he exclaimed after logging in secure. “How are you, sir?”

  “I’m fine, and I’m not ‘sir’ to you anymore,” Patrick responded.

  “You’ll always be ‘sir’ to me, Muck,” Dave said. “How’s the Nine-sixty-sixth treating you?”

  “Just fine,” Patrick responded. “Good bunch of guys. Some of the civilian contractors need a bath and a haircut, though.”

  “Sounds like our kind of guys. And what’s it like to be hobnobbing with the numbered air force brass?”

  “Remember the old saying about not wanting to watch how sausage is made?”

  “Got it.”

  “How are things out there?”

  “Quiet and busy at the same time,” Dave replied. “Our tanker guys are getting plenty of work, but the bomber guys and UCAV operators are going stir-crazy. We had to fly the AL-52s back to the lake.” Even on a secure line, both parties hesitated to mention Dreamland or HAWC.

  “I expected that to happen,” Patrick said. “We were spending their money but not keeping up with the test schedule.” The AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser anti-ballistic-missile aircraft was a test program initially begun at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, or HAWC, the supersecret flight-test facility in south-central Nevada known as Dreamland. Patrick McLanahan brought the Dragons, the first operational aircraft to use a laser as their primary attack weapon, to Battle Mountain and created a combat unit based around these amazing planes. They were used over both Libya and Turkmenistan with outstanding results, against both air and ground targets and on targets as small as a heat-seeking missile and as large as a Russian MiG-29 supersonic fighter. But technically the planes still belonged to Dreamland, because Patrick didn’t have an official budget. “Too bad. Are they going to continue the program?”

  “Hard to tell. The Cobra program is doing well—they should deploy their first operational aircraft ahead of schedule.” The YAL-1A Cobra was an airborne chemical-oxygen-iodine laser set in a Boeing 747 airframe. While the AL-52 Dragon airborne laser had actually been used in combat, the technology used in the YAL-1A was less expensive and far less risky, and so it had much more political and military support than HAWC’s version.

  “Who’s the project officer assigned to the AL-52?”

  “There wasn’t one when we brought the planes in,” David said. “The director of flight ops signed for the birds himself.”

  “That’s not good.” If there was no project officer assigned to the flight-test program, there was a very good chance the AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser program would languish—or, more likely, be canceled. “I’ll see what I can do from here.”

  “Good. Hey, we got the word that the Seventh Bomb Wing is down for their ORI. We put in a request to cover their sorties. Any word on that?”

  “It was discussed. They’re going to gin up some fly-stores instead.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. We’re ready to go now. We can do everything the Seventh can do, plus the SEAD stuff.”

  “I know. General Hollister stood up for us, but Zoltrane and Samson wanted fly-stores.”

  “Hmph. Well, it’s kind of a moot point anyway—we still need to be certified by Eighth Air Force before we cover sorties. Any word on when we’re going to recert?”

  “After this Russia thing cools down, I’m sure they’ll be out there to get you recertified.”

  “I hope so—we’re definitely ready. The sooner, the better. So what’s up, Muck?”

  “Dave, I’ve got a request for you,” Patrick said. “Do you have any NIRTSats handy?”

  “Sure,” Luger replied. NIRTSat stood for “Need It Right This Second” satellite. Up to four of the different types of the small oven-size NIRTSats—reconnaissance, communications, or weapon targeting—were loaded aboard a winged rocket-powered booster, taken up to thirty or forty thousand feet, then dr
opped from a launch aircraft such as Battle Mountain’s EB-52s or EB-1C bombers or from other carrier aircraft, such as Sky Masters Inc.’s DC-10 launch/tanker aircraft. After launch, the booster’s first-stage solid rocket motor shot the aircraft to the top of the stratosphere, where the second-and third-stage motors would kick in and propel the booster into low Earth orbit, anywhere from fifty to three hundred miles’ altitude. After ejecting its satellites in the proper sequence and spacing, the booster would then fly itself back to Earth for reuse.

  Although the NIRTSats carried very little fuel and therefore could not be easily repositioned and could stay in orbit only a short time, they gave a wide range of users—field commanders, aircrews, even small-unit commando forces—their own specialized satellite constellation. But the cost per pound was high; and although Dreamland and the 111th Bomb Wing had launched many NIRTSats over the years, it was still considered an experimental system. “Who’s the customer?” Dave asked.

  “The Nine-sixty-sixth Wing.”

  “Air Intelligence Agency? You own every other satellite in the Air Force inventory already, and you control several others I’m sure I don’t want to know about. What do you need NIRTSats for?”

  “I need a look at some Russian bomber bases to set some baseline database imagery.”

  “Hold on a sec.” David Luger began entering commands into his desktop computer, pulling up a complex grid of lines surrounding the globe at various different levels, then studying the results. “I assume you’ve looked at your current taskings? You’ve got them pretty well covered.”