Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age)

by Walter J. Boyne

  “And to the Cirrus boys.”

  October 11, 1995

  Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs,

  Colorado

  THERE WERE TWO lines passing in front of the Academy’s officers club. From left to right, a long series of three- and four-star generals were filing into the third Corona meeting of the year. From right to left, a handsome buck led four does on a gourmet tour of the Academy’s azalea plants. Both lines seemed to be enjoying the beneficence of the weather, dry and fifty-five degrees.

  The tri-annual meetings dated back to 1944, and had long since proved themselves to be the best conduit of upper-level information and insight. The series of presentations crossed all the command boundaries, and everyone had a chance to say their piece, on the spot, and in the presence of the Chief of Staff. For the Air Force, the Corona meetings were remarkably free of protocol, and everyone was encouraged to speak up, even if their opinion ran counter to the prevailing philosophies.

  Three hours later, just before the lunch break, Lieutenant General Harry Matarese had just concluded a compelling briefing on unmanned aerial vehicles.

  General Ron Yates, commander of Air Force Materiel Command, commented, “We’ve been able to resolve so many of the flight control issues with UAVs so that they are much more reliable now. I think it’s time that we really evaluate unmanned aerial vehicles as a combat system.”

  From the other side of the room, Lieutenant General Carl Berry spoke up. People turned to him, for Berry was usually somewhat reticient, but when he spoke it was always worth listening to. Berry was the deputy chief of staff for command, control, communications, and computers, the heart of the AWACS and JointSTARS programs.

  “We are now able to combine surveillance and reconnaissance very effectively into our command and control systems. I think we can link anything that develops in UAVs right into the existing architecture. No problem.”

  General Mike Loh, first commander of the new Air Combat Command, stood up. A big man, almost massive in impression if not in size, he was normally outspoken and occasionally boisterous. Now he stood for a moment before softly saying, “Given that we are getting new munitions—sensor fused, what-have-you—and that we have good lightweight missiles, the Hellfire for one, maybe it’s time we look at a combat UAV.”

  There was the dead silence that occurs when a really big idea pops up, and then the room erupted into a hotbed of noise, with everybody wanting to chime in.

  In the back of the room, sitting quietly, Steve O’Malley felt a glow of contentment. There is nothing like having a good idea confirmed by a roomful of three- and four-star generals.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE PASSING PARADE: Terrorists kill hundreds in Sri Lanka and in Israel; 110 killed in ValuJet crash in Florida; Ella Fitzgerald dies; terrorists kill 19 servicemen at U.S. base in Saudi Arabia; Yeltsin reelected Russian President; Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorce; Flight 800 crashes in mysterious circumstances off Long Island; Taliban capture Kabul; Clinton-Gore team decisively beats Dole-Kemp ticket; Madeleine Albright becomes first woman Secretary of State; UN picks Kofi Annan as Secretary-General; Israel agrees to give up much of city of Hebron; Deng Xiaoping dies at 92; first sighting of Comet Hale Bopp; Tiger Woods wins Masters golf tournament; exploration of Mars by remote spacecraft begins; Dolly the Sheep cloned; China takes over Hong Kong from British after 156 years; American terrorist Timothy J. McVeigh receives death sentence for Oklahoma City bombing; Mother Teresa dies at 87; FBI declares Flight 800 crash not caused by sabotage.

  August 10, 1996

  Mojave, California

  The thermometer in the shade by the trailer read 85, but to Harry Shannon it seemed like 110. In contrast, Bob Rodriquez, only about a decade his junior, was oblivious to the heat, running around the exterior of the partially completed building in a new sport coat, already oil-stained and torn at the pocket.

  Must be his years in the desert, Harry thought. He’s like a camel, drinks a huge quantity of water in the morning, then goes till noon without another taste. He took another hit on his bottle of Poland Spring and went back inside the completed office area where air-conditioning had dropped the temperature to a crisp seventy-two degrees. He sat in a leather chair, wondering why he had ever agreed to such a stupidly obvious name as RoboPlanes for their new company.

  There was a reason of course. Rodriquez had suggested it, and Harry was doing nothing to dampen the man’s overwhelming enthusiasm for their new project. Rodriquez’s trip with his son to the Cirrus plant had inspired them, and they plunged into two concurrent programs, either one of which would have been enough for ten people. They began designing a whole series of new remote-controlled aircraft, ranging from tiny models derived from Bob’s experience with Paul MacCready to huge drones that were to fly halfway around the world and remain on station for days. Simultaneously, they designed their new plant, contracting out the actual construction, but staying on top of it every minute of the day.

  This morning they were going to have an informal review of their progress for Harry, Dennis, and the newly retired Steve O’Malley, just back from his retirement ceremonies in Washington, and aching to go to work.

  O’Malley, a four-star general, had become the target of increasing attacks from the left wing, who knew of his antiterrorist feelings. They dug into his past and picked out any of his decisions that could possibly be construed as “conflict of interest.” Completely ignoring all his invaluable contributions, they pilloried him as the “revolving door general.” No one who knew him believed it, and the Armed Services Committee declined repeated requests for special hearings. Nonetheless, his effectiveness was diminished and to his wife Sally’s relief, Steve elected to retire. The administration immediately offered him an Assistant Secretary position in DOD, but he refused. Enough was enough.

  The retirement left Steve in a rough position. To avoid the very thing he had been accused of, conflict of interest, he had invested all of his substantial fortune in a blind trust, with instructions to purchase nothing but U.S. Treasury bonds regardless of the economy. He had missed the gradual rise in the stock market, and the bond return had varied over the years. Nonetheless he was still a wealthy man, and he was free now to invest as he chose. But he knew that if he went to work for an existing aerospace company, or even invested in one, the media hounds would be on his back. But pledging his assets to a start-up venture like RoboPlanes was relatively safe. It would be months, years maybe, before they attracted any attention, and by that time his retirement would be old hat. Despite his wealth, he absolutely could not stay idle, and he was willing to risk it all on the new project. His wife thought he was quite off his head, but she had thought that for all the years of their marriage and was content that it was so.

  Rod came up to him and said, “General, this is quite a difference from my old construction shack I used for AdVanceAir Leasing, isn’t it?”

  “It’s Steve to you and everybody else from now on, Rod. I had a great career, but I’m a civilian now, pure and simple.” Waving his hand at the building he said, “Catch me up on everything. You know I’ve stayed out of things until I was retired. How big is this thing going to be anyway?”

  “It’s going to be huge, maybe fifty thousand square feet, maybe bigger. We are designing it as we go along. Every new drone we’ve come up with has caused some changes, but because the building’s design is modular, we can accommodate it. We are going to build it as we go, sizing it to the aircraft we build. We’re going to do the whole thing under one roof, then roll them out the door to the runway. The only problem we have here is radio interference; there’s so much crazy stuff going on at this airfield that we’re probably going to have to find some remote spot, well away from Edwards and Mojave, to do the test flying.”

  “One thing—let’s stop calling them drones. The buzzword term now is ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’ and the acronym is UAV.”

  “UAV. Sort of rolls off the tongue. Drone does have a bad conn
otation. But what will the feminists say about using ‘unmanned’?”

  “We’ll hear from them, or the politically correctistas, that’s for sure. Do we have any contracts yet?”

  “It’s incredible. We have a seven-million-dollar backlog, and we’ve not officially opened the doors yet. Actually it’s a good thing we’re not ready, as most of the contracts are coming from foreign countries, and of course we have to clear them with DOD and State and God knows who else.”

  O’Malley’s eyes narrowed. “Which countries are buying?”

  “Our biggest order is from Israel, and that’s the one that will probably get approved first. But we have orders from the three P’s as we call it—Pakistan, Peru, and Poland.”

  “Well, you are going to have to be careful about selling to Islamic nations such as Pakistan. You don’t want the technology getting into the wrong hands.”

  Rodriquez sensed O’Malley’s anger.

  “The orders from Pakistan are for gunnery targets—not much more sophisticated than you can buy in a model shop. Poland wants some pretty fancy stuff, and it’s hard to understand.”

  “Well, they’ve been a battlefield through the centuries—can’t blame them for wanting new technology. And it’s affordable. What are they buying?”

  “We’ve got some beautiful designs for their infantry and armored divisions to use. You shoulder-launch them, and they have television and infrared cameras. They fly out maybe ten or fifteen miles, survey the landscape, and point out any troop concentrations, tank parks, or what have you. Peru has a different requirement, they want to suppress the drug trade on its eastern border. They want big, long-range aircraft, able to clear the Andes at relatively high altitudes and then have a very long loiter time over the lowlands to the east and the Altiplano to the southeast. They have a huge frontier, hitting Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile. We’ve got the designs down, but no prototypes built.”

  The younger Rodriquez went on: “Here is what has amazed us. There is an emerging civil market that has fantastic potential. The country is so well trained now on computers and video games that high technology can be embraced at the local level. We’re getting inquiries from police and sheriff’s departments, search and rescue outfits, health departments, fire departments, forestry agencies, and so on for all sorts of UAVs. The beauty is that we can customize our basic products at very little cost to whatever the customer needs. In ten years, I predict we’ll be doing 50 percent, maybe 80 percent, of our business with non-military customers.”

  As O’Malley paused to digest this, Bob Rodriquez, Sr., walked up and put his arm around his son’s shoulder, his common practice. O’Malley and Harry often speculated that he was trying to make up for all the years he had been gone.

  “Harry’s inside—the heat gets to him, and I think he remembers how it took its toll on Tom. He said he wanted to talk to us about the Ranger. Let’s go see what he’s got for us.”

  The Ranger was the latest in the series of RoboPlanes designs that Rodriquez had created in the last year. Almost as a joke, they were following the practice of the old line aircraft manufacturers in Great Britain who used the first letter of the name of their companies as the first letter of the aircraft they built—Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, Handley Page Halifax. For RoboPlanes, they had already designed and flown the Rocket and Rascal. Now they were at the RoboPlanes Ranger, and beginning to see that alliteration was not all it was cracked up to be.

  Steve nodded, saying, “I’m worried about Harry. He seemed depressed earlier, and that’s not like him, not even after all he’s been through.”

  Harry was waiting by the model of the Ranger, a sleek, saucer-shaped, jet-powered aircraft, thinking, It’s going to be stealthy—except for that jet engine.

  They all grabbed comfortable seats and Harry said, “Gents, I wanted to get you together today because I received some bad news last night. Our old friend Hans von Ohain called me from Dayton. He’d just received word that Sir Frank Whittle had passed away.”

  No one said anything. All of them knew Ohain quite well, but Frank was older and had not been as accessible as Hans.

  “What I’m going to tell you is obvious, but most of you, save Bob Sr. here, are too young to really grasp it. Life goes by so swiftly! Frank Whittle—what a man. The only time I remembered to call him Sir Frank was when I was in his presence—best not forget it then. But Frank crammed two or three lifetimes into his eighty-nine years, and still life went by too swiftly for him.”

  Harry paused, seeming to search for the words.

  “I remember in 1978, when Tom and I went to a symposium put on at Wright Patterson; they brought in Whittle and Ohain to tour the base, and then talk to the engineers. It was incredible. Both men get credit for inventing the jet engine, and Ohain’s flew first, but Hans deferred to Frank all the time, and Frank not only enjoyed it, he expected it. They both gave short talks, just reminiscences, but then they had a question and answer session. In about ten minutes, they were not talking about how they invented the jet engine, and instead were engaged in heated discussions on the latest topics in the field, disagreeing with each other, disagreeing with the engineers, but totally absorbed in the process. Both men realized that they had revolutionized the world of flight and that was not enough for either one, they wanted to press on, to carry their ideas out to the maximum extent.”

  Harry waited again, watching their faces.

  “Let me give you a little history lesson. There’ve been three major phases so far to what people are going to call ‘the jet age.’ The first came from Ohain and Whittle inventing the jet engine, of course. That started a wild run on ever newer jet engines, as power, reliability, fuel consumption, everything improved. That lasted for about a decade, but then came the second phase, when aerodynamics began to catch up. The engineers accepted that they were going to get new generations of more powerful engines, so they turned to fine-tuning aerodynamics so that the power could be used. Thus we saw Whitcomb’s area rule come into play, working just on decreasing drag through efficient design and making full use of the power. They came up with ever more drastically swept wings, and then swing wings, to have the best of both worlds. To accommodate the speed range, they engineered sophisticated engine inlets. Airfoils were improved, and they found ways to have slots and flaps unfold from a wing so that it turned from a narrow blade into an umbrella. Nobody knows better than this group how the computer helped, bringing in the fly-by-wire era. Some things didn’t work out—they tried to reduce laminar flow with slots in the wing that sucked in the boundary layer. It worked, but it was too expensive. And all the time, engines kept improving, too, particularly in thrust and reliability.

  “Then the very things they had done in the past, sophisticated engines and airframes, meant that aircraft were much more expensive and had to be used longer, and operators began looking at aircraft as platforms and not as replaceable bits of hardware. So the third phase began, keeping aircraft flying longer by improving the onboard equipment. That’s why we still have B-52s flying as first-line aircraft, and why we can use 707 airframes for everything from command and control to the NECAP aircraft, with their ultimate nuclear authority on board.”

  He was quiet for a moment. Nothing he was telling them was new, but he knew they had probably not considered things in the light he presented the ideas.

  “Now we have a chance to ride the crest of the fourth phase, the unmanned era. I want to see us get so involved in this new crazy science of unmanned vehicles that we ignore the rest that’s going on with our bigger companies. We’ve got good managers running things, the backlogs are huge, we’re making a profit—but I for one am getting stale. RoboPlanes—and we’ve got to change that stupid name sometime—is the future, not only here on Earth, but for planetary exploration. There’s no point in putting a man on Mars until we’ve got all the information we can by using unmanned vehicles. But that’s just part of it.”

  Harry was rarely emotiona
l, but he was clearly moved, and his friends leaned forward, wondering if he was going to reveal some illness or some other bad news.

  “I’m an old crock, I realize it. But you’ve got to listen to me here. Don’t reject this because it’s coming from a geezer. I’ve thought this through, and I’m going to tell you that we have a chance here to go way beyond anything anyone has done so far with unmanned vehicles. We have a chance here to be pioneers in hypersonic flight. We can lead the industry, if we get started on it, invest in the research, and spend the money on facilities. I think RoboPlanes is going to be a gold mine, turning out aircraft and licensing other people to build them. But RoboPlanes can lead the way in hypersonic aircraft if we make up our minds to do it. It means a hell of a lot of experimentation, it means getting involved in scramjet engines, it means waiting maybe fifteen or twenty years to get a return on investment. But we are the ones to do it, and I say we get started now.”

  He sat down heavily in a chair and busily drank from his water bottle while surreptitiously wiping his eyes with his fingers.

  No one said anything. This was a totally new direction, different in every way from all that they had been planning for months. This was not starting a new venture or spinning off a company. This meant a total shift in their efforts from almost everything they had done in the past. It was risk-filled—no one knew what either the commercial or the military prospects might be. And here was old, conservative Harry, throwing them out the challenge of a lifetime.