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

by Walter J. Boyne

  O’Malley spoke in a soft, measured voice, most unusual for him. “You know that there are already some R&D contracts out there. Boeing is working on hypersonic stuff.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly new. Lockheed built hypersonic projects back in the fifties—called it the X-17.”

  “They used rockets. They also built the X-7 back in 1951, using ramjets. We’ll probably have to use rockets, too, for test and for launch, but I think Harry’s talking about air-breathing engines.”

  Bob Rodriquez, Sr., stood up, flushed with excitement and suddenly looking younger than his son.

  “You’re damn right he’s talking air-breathing, and he may not realize it, but he’s talking manned, too. There’s enough of this unmanned crap for everybody, but if we do it, let’s do it with a functional hypersonic aircraft, one that can do a mission with a man flying it.”

  O’Malley chortled, saying, “That sounds exactly like Kelly Johnson talking. He hated building experimental aircraft; he wanted a mission for everything they built. And so do we. Let me get on my soapbox for a minute.”

  The noise level had risen a little, but it got quiet in a hurry. Steve O’Malley liked to joke, but they could tell this was deadly serious. He said, “Gents, we’ve done a lot of flying and fighting—old Harry here flew B-17s in the great war. His brother Tom was an ace in two wars and maybe in three; Bob was a top ace in Korea; V. R. has done his bit, some of which he can’t tell us about. But all the past wars and all the future wars and all military affairs, including airpower, involve height, reach, and speed. Height gives you the view, the view gives you awareness, and awareness lets you capitalize on speed, giving you opportunities.

  “Reach enables you to hold an opponent at a distance, so you can hurt him, and he can’t hurt you. This goes back to David and Goliath, and you remember, David used an aerospace weapon, a missile, to win his fight.

  “Speed enables you to take action quickly. Sun Tzu said, ‘Rapidity is the essence of war,’ and it still is. Aviation combines height, reach, and speed, and hypersonic aviation involves all three to an absolute optimum. With hypersonic vehicles, especially manned hypersonic vehicles, a handful of assets will be able to control combat anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice. It is the perfect addition to the use of our command and control systems, the perfect instrument for our satellite systems.”

  There was a general silence as everyone digested O’Malley’s comments.

  Rodriquez asked, “What are we talking about when we say hypersonic? Do we mean like the X-15, maybe Mach 6.0 tops? Or the Space Shuttle, orbiting at 17,500 miles an hour or so? Or in between?”

  There was no response and he went on. “Let me look at it. More than Mach 3.0, for sure, at least Mach 6.0, maybe Mach 8.0; I think that will be about the limit, but let me take a look at it.”

  The numbers didn’t really mean anything to them yet. They would not until they translated into dollars and schedules and capabilities. As they sat there, mutually stunned, O’Malley suddenly bounded up, grinning, and said, “One last word. This setup is perfect for me. No conflict of interest with anybody. We can start out here with a blank slate, and do it all right here on our brains and our guts.”

  The always soft-spoken Dennis Jenkins said, “And our money. Count me in.”

  August 1, 1997

  Long Beach, California

  AS AN AIR Force officer, Steve O’Malley had systematically disguised his wealth, driving the same kind of cars and living in the same style homes that his peers did, trying to avoid making anyone working just for the adequate but less than sterling Air Force salary feel jealous. Now, as a civilian, he tossed his money around with reckless abandon. He gave Sally free rein to build and outfit a home in La Jolla and she was already talking about another one in Colorado. His only demand was a seven-car garage to house his exotic and antique automobiles. The jewels of his collection were Vance Shannon’s 1937 Cord and an F355 Ferrari. The Cord had been a gift from the Shannons, a thank-you for the extra effort he had gone to in arranging Vance’s funeral at Arlington. He paid almost 50 percent more than the sticker price to get the Ferrari. Both cars were Sunday drivers. He called his new Mercedes S600 his “beater,” something to get him to work and back.

  “You know, Roberto, it was just seventeen years and about one month ago that you and I were sitting right here in your filthy rental car, watching the first flight of the KC-10. Now we’re sitting in this little jewel—twelve cylinders, no less—in air-conditioned comfort, watching one of the saddest scenes in aviation history.”

  That meeting, so many years ago, had affected the lives of both men and their families. Rather than participate in the hostile takeover that Rodriquez was proposing, O’Malley decided on the spot to get out of the industry and somehow wangle his way back into the Air Force. Rodriquez, after a spectacular confrontation with Vance Shannon, Incorporated, and an equally spectacular failure, had left the industry as well, going off to a still-unreported career in the black world of covert intelligence.

  Obviously moved, Rodriquez intently watched the activity going on at the huge factory building. Workmen had already dismantled the old McDonnell Douglas sign, and still in plastic wrapping, the new Boeing sign was ready to be installed.

  Rodriquez said, “I think Boeing’s making a mistake, just absorbing the McDonnell Douglas company, erasing its name like this. McDonnell and Douglas were two of the greatest names in the industry, and when they merged, they combined them.”

  “I guess Boeing-McDonnell-Douglas is too big a mouthful. In any event, that’s the decision. The funny thing is that so many of the top spots are going to MacDac people that it looks like McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing, using Boeing money.” O’Malley had a set of insider connections throughout the industry and always had “the word” even before Aviation Week or The Wall Street Journal.

  “Well, it may not be as good a fit as Lockheed Martin, but Boeing’s civil line and McDonnell Douglas’s military line are good complements. I’m sort of surprised it got past the Justice Department.”

  “No, I read the decision on it. It said that McDonnell Douglas’s civil business was down the tubes, and there was no prospect of reviving it. Apparently their production problems kept them from spending what they needed to on research. There was no way they could win in the wide-body market and the DC-10 crashes hurt them badly. They just couldn’t compete with Boeing on the civil side, and losing the F-22 competition killed them on the military side.”

  Rodriquez reached into the Mercedes’s glove box and pulled out the thick owner’s manual, flipping through it.

  “You know this is sad, too. The Cadillac used to be the pinnacle of cars, and now it’s the Mercedes. I wonder if the same thing is going to happen with airliners.”

  “You talking about Airbus Industries?”

  “Of course. Their A330 is cleaning up on Boeing’s 757s and 767s. I’d never have believed it, but the operators see advantages in an all Airbus fleet that Boeing isn’t providing.”

  “Well, at least there is plenty of business to go around. Everyone is predicting the need for maybe fifteen thousand new airliners over the next twenty years, and neither company will expand to build them all—too risky. But Boeing’s chips are riding on the 777 now. If they cannot reestablish themselves in the market with it—you’ll see Airbus as number one in the industry.”

  “An infamia! We ought to be number one in everything, cars, planes, whatever!” Rodriquez realized instantly that he had made a mistake—this would set O’Malley off on a terrorist rant.

  “You’re right, Bob, but the way we are handling the terrorist threat, it looks like we’ve lost our national will. They are plotting to destroy us—they want to kill every one of us, for God’s sake—and we are just going along, being politically correct, afraid to call a spade a spade.”

  Rodriquez scrunched down in his seat, knowing he was in for at least a fifteen-minute diatribe. He listened for a word that would enable him to break in
, to get O’Malley back on track. Finally it came as O’Malley went on, saying, “. . . and another thing. We’ve got to fight them asymmetrically, just as they are fighting us, we’ve—”

  Rodriquez broke in. “We’re starting that, with our UAVs. But it will be the hypersonic manned vehicle that will be the key weapon. We’ll have to be able to shut down everything from potential truck bombers to missile launches, using UAVs as spotters and a manned hypersonic vehicle to kill them.”

  It was enough. Embarrassed, O’Malley realized he was ranting and flushed.

  “Sorry, Bob. I know this is an obsession with me. And I know I’ve gotten to V. R., too. I’ve got to put a lid on it, especially around people who’ve heard me out a half-dozen times.”

  “Steve, don’t worry about guys like me, but you’ve got to cap it when you are with people you don’t know. I happen to agree with you—I’ve lived in the Muslim world, and I believe in the threat you are talking about. But for doing business, even with the military, you’ve got to keep it more balanced. Otherwise they write you off as a kook—and our ideas with it.”

  O’Malley started the car, backed up slowly, then drove away in silence. “Dammit, Bob, seventeen years ago you and I had our falling out here. Then I thought you were the nutcase. Now here we are, seventeen years later, and I’m the nutcase.”

  “No, my friend, when it comes to nutcases, you are not in my class. I was fighting an ego problem. All of you think it was Mae’s rejecting me. That was part of it, but a lot of it was the Air Force sending me home, and keeping me from being the top ace in Korea. At least that’s what I thought then. It was a nervous breakdown, I guess, just too much work and too little self-esteem. But you are different. You see what’s in the future. You just have to control your passion, and you’ve got to help V. R. control his, too. His obsession with the subject comes from his wife’s death in the Lockerbie explosion. Yours is more reasoned, so you have to help him sort things out.”

  O’Malley nodded, realizing it was strange that unlike either Rodriquez or Shannon, he had a stable married life, and that was due solely to Sally’s common sense. Being married was tough anytime; being married to an aviator was virtually impossible. He decided he’d give her the OK on the Colorado house just to compensate for all she had put up with during the Air Force years.

  March 15, 1998

  Palos Verdes, California

  “WELL, WHAT’S THE bad news?”

  Steve O’Malley strode into the room, filling it up as he always did with sheer personality, dismayed to see Bob Rodriquez and Dennis Jenkins looking so downcast.

  “We got all varieties for you, Steve. First, have you heard that our old friend Hans von Ohain died two days ago?”

  “No, I’m sorry to hear that. What a guy! I knew he wasn’t well, but hadn’t heard from his wife Hanny for weeks. Hans was the finest gentleman you’d ever meet. Everybody who knew him just loved him. He’ll be missed by all.”

  “It’s been a bad year for heroes—Tony LeVier last month, who knows who next month.”

  “It’s just a factor of aviation’s aging. It’s been ninety-five years since the Wright Brothers flew so it’s not surprising that the pioneers are going. Twenty years from now, it will be the space pioneers, the astronauts, turning up their toes. But something else is bothering you or you wouldn’t have sent me the ‘get here or else’ message.”

  “Steve, I don’t know how I’m going to break this to Harry, but our big meeting back in August of 1996, when we decided to go into not only unmanned vehicles but to begin dabbling in hypersonics, has about blown up in our face.”

  Rodriquez spoke up. “We were naïve, pure and simple. I’ve been doing a ton of research and just came back from a week in D.C., talking to the guy they call ‘Dr. Hypersonic,’ Dick Hallion. He gave me a briefing that curled my hair.”

  Jenkins looked at O’Malley and shrugged. They both knew that Rodriquez always talked in a pessimistic way, even when he was feeling optimistic about something. It was the way he covered his bets and kept his enthusiasm from swaying somebody else.

  “Well, we’ve all been looking into it, we all know a bit about it, but what did Dr. Hallion say that has you ready to throw in the towel?”

  Rodriquez shook his head. “I’m not talking about throwing in the towel, but I am talking about getting all of us, especially Harry, to recognize the risk. We are behind the power curve in making UAVs of any size. We can compete in the smaller, hand-launched area, but the bigger stuff, like the Predator or the Global Hawk, is way beyond our capability. They have too much of a head start on us. I’ve been able to get us some subcontracting work from the primes on both of those projects, and I think we’ll have to be satisfied for the time being with that. Between that and the little airplanes, we’ll about cover our operating costs at Mojave. But the hypersonic field—I’m not sure we can compete anywhere.”

  “What did Hallion have to say?”

  “Let me get to that—first let me take you through the history of hypersonic flight, it’s a lot more intensive than we thought. He gave me a slide show and I’d like to run it for you.”

  As Rodriquez reached over to start the slide show he said, “The first thing that we have to grasp is so damn obvious that I’m amazed we all didn’t just know it intuitively. Hallion showed me that there have been two long-term sets of experience in hypersonic flight—one in air and one in space. It wasn’t till he laid out this chart that I grasped the full implications of hypersonic history for the first time. I felt so stupid!”

  A colorful chart popped up starting with 1940 at the base line and stretching out until 2010 on the right. Midway up the chart, a series of fifteen hypersonic test vehicles was listed, some hypothetical, some hardware, and ranging from the Sänger-Bredt through the X-15, and all the way out to some projected experimental projects that were just black asterisks, indicating they were classified.

  Below the line of test vehicles were listed, in chronological order, aircraft that had gone supersonic or hypersonic, and ranging from Yeager’s X-1 through Lockheed’s X-7 to the XB-70 to the Space Shuttle.

  Above the line of test vehicles were the hypersonic vehicles that had operated in space, from von Braun’s V-2 through the ICBMs through a whole series of experimental efforts, with the last of these being black asterisks. Two sweeping lines served to bring the hypersonic air and space efforts together.

  “Hallion says that we’re at the point where we can integrate all the air and space experience of the past into a new series of vehicles that will give us global hypersonic flight.”

  O’Malley studied the chart and said, “I’m familiar with most of these, but what is the Sänger-Bredt?”

  “Eugen Sänger was married to Irene Bredt. Both were Austrians and both were fantastic mathematicians. They conceived of a plane they called the Silbervogel—Silverbird—in 1938, for Christ’s sake! They saw it as a space transport or as a global strike aircraft, launched from a monorail. Launched by a rocket, it would use its own rocket engine to gain enough speed to enter orbit. When its speed decayed, it would glide down and ‘bounce’ off the atmosphere, to gain altitude again. They calculated a fifteen-thousand-mile range with an eight-thousand-pound bomb load.”

  O’Malley whistled. “That’s just like the Dyna-Soar concept, the X-20!”

  “Exactly; there was a lot of Sänger-Bredt inspiration in the Dyna-Soar, but not too many people picked up on it. I certainly didn’t. Too bad that neither one was ever built.”

  Rodriquez went on through the slides, each one a bit more complex than the preceding one. He didn’t have to do much explaining, the slides spoke for themselves, and they said that hundreds of millions of dollars had been invested in developing hypersonic flight, and that on balance, many of the experiments had achieved remarkable success.

  When he had finished he said, “Hallion told me that the very wealth of data gained in all these experiments is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is invaluable to anybody r
esearching hypersonic vehicles. On the other, the number of experiments has blunted enthusiasm, and led most people to think that there’s no point in pursuing hypersonic flight for the present. This is despite the fact that the Space Shuttle goes hypersonic every flight.”

  Rodriquez pressed the advance button and another chart came up. It was titled “The Culture of Complacency” and showed a brief saying, “Hypersonics?? But there’s no customer demand! No requirement! No market need!”

  Rodriquez said, “That’s what we are faced with, gents: a project that’s been through the mill for seventy years, if you go back to the Sänger-Bredt, and an unfavorable climate of opinion. Even among the military, there are only a few forward-thinking guys who want to spend money on hypersonic aircraft. From the financial side, that is perfectly understandable. From the scientific side, it is inexplicable!”

  O’Malley had been uncharacteristically quiet, but now said, “That’s bullshit. Maybe that’s so now, in the United States, but do you think America is the only one interested? Do you have any idea what a hypersonic cruise missile, a stealthy hypersonic cruise missile, in the hands of a rogue state, would do to the Navy? It would move it out of littoral waters, and maybe right out of the ocean. We couldn’t even enter the Mediterranean! We’d have to back off from Taiwan and from North Korea. Just the threat of a hypersonic cruise missile would destroy our credibility overseas. They aren’t dumb. They know a hypersonic cruise missile would do to us what the threat of stealth and precision guided munitions did to the Soviet Union—just dry up our military capability.”

  He paused, breathing heavily, and said, “There’s no way we’ll get a program through Congress, not with all the staffers trying to parcel out jobs to their own constituents. And if it goes to the services, we’ll be dead in the water. The Navy won’t want to hear of it because it won’t want to spend the money on a defense system. The Army won’t be interested, period. And the Air Force, my beloved old Air Force, would hobby shop it for twenty years before it got the hardware delivered. This is something we’re going to have to do ourselves. We’ll have to present the government with a fait accompli, just do the design, test and manufacture, and hand them workable weapons, hypersonic UAVs and manned hypersonic strike aircraft. We can make it happen, no matter what the eggheads say about the prospects.”