by Dale Brown
software to do so. "It'll make a great battleship escort, " McLanahan
said. "I think the boss is right-it's a waste to have these babies
sitting on the sidelines with nukes on board while we're getting
hammered in some non-nuclear dogfight. Air Force talks about 'global
reach, global power, ' but they don't talk much about how long-range
bombers can defend themselves in a hostile environment without an
initial nuclear laydown. They talk about sending B-52s from Guam, Diego
Garcia, or Loring to anywhere else in the world in twelve hours, but
they don't explain how the bomber is supposed to survive its attack.
With the Black Knight configured as a counterradar escort, it can do it.
It has the range to fly just as deep as the strike bombers, and it
carries as much firepower as a B-52. We'll put that new PACER SKY
satellite data stuff on it, maybe an ISAR radar, smart bombs..." "We've
tested every possible weapon on a B-2, " Ormack acknowledged, "from
AGM-130 Striker glide-bombs-your personal favorite, I know-Harpoon
antiship missiles, sea mines, MK 82 iron bombs, AMRAAM missiles,
Sidewinder missiles, the TACIT RAINBOW antiradar cruise missiles,
Durandal runaway-cratering bombs, AGM-84 SLAM TV-guided missiles, hell,
even photoreconnaissance pods. At half a billion dollars a pop,
Congress didn't want to buy a nuclear-only plane, so we're going to
demonstrate that the B-2 could be flexible enough for any mission."
Ormack shrugged, then added, "I'm not convinced myself that the B-2 can
make a good defensive escort plane. If a fighter or ground missile site
gets a visual on this thing, you're dead."
"I don't know about that, " Patrick said. "I think it'd be tough to
kill in a tactical battle." "Yeah? Most of the Air Force would
disagree, " Ormack replied. "Look at these wingsthis thing is huge, even
when seen from several thousand feet up. It's subsonic, which makes it
a more inviting target and less elusive. No, I think the Air Force
would forgo risking B-2 on a conventional raid." He looked at McLanahan
for feedback and was surprised when the young navigator gave him an
unsure shrug in reply. "You still disagree?"
"I haven't flown fighters as long as you, sir, " McLanahan said, "but I
have a tough time finding an airport from five thousand feet in the air,
much less a single plane. At five thousand feet, a pilot is looking at
almost four hundred square miles of ground. If he's flying, say, eight
miles per minute on a low combat-air patrol, forty square miles zip
under his wings every ten seconds-twenty on each side of his cockpit. If
he can't use a radar to at least get himself in the vicinity, his
detection problem is pretty complicated."
"If a combat air patrol always had that wide an area to search, I might
agree with you, " Ormack said. "But the field of battle narrows down
rapidly. One lucky sighting, one squeak of a radar detector or one blip
on a radar screen, and suddenly the whole pack's on top of you."
"But I might have my missiles in the air by then, " Patrick said. "If
not, I sure as heck will not stay high over a target area. I've got an
infrared camera that can see the ground, and the pilots have
windows-those boys better be flying in the dirt with fighters on my
tail. Even the F-23 advanced tactical fighter can't fight close to the
ground-they have to rely on taking 'look-down' shots from higher
altitudes. That's where a stealthy plane has the advantage." Ormack
didn't have a reply right away-he was thinking hard about McLanahan's
arguments. "You bring up a few good points, Patrick, " Ormack admitted.
"You know what this calls for, don't you?"
"RED FLAG, " McLanahan replied. "No-better yet, the Strategic Warfare
Center. General Jarrel's little playland up in South Dakota."
"You got it, " Ormack said. "We'll have to put an EB-2 up against a few
fighters on Jarrel's range and see what happens. Maybe even have them
fly along with other aircraft on the range to see if our escorts can be
effective with other strike aircraft." He smiled at McLanahan and
added, "I think that can be arranged. We can send you out to the
Strategic Warfare Center for some operational test flights when the
393rd Bomb Squadron goes to the SWC in a few months. I'll bring it up
to General Elliott, but I think he'll go for it. You might have just
found yourself a new job, Patrick-developing penetration and attack
techniques for Black Knight stealth escort crews."
"Throw me in the briar patch, " McLanahan said as they moved forward to
the entry hatch. McLanahan's new bird was AF SAC 90-007, the seventh B-2
bomber built. He found the plane's nickname, "License to Kill, "
stenciled on the entry hatch as he and Ormack walked to it and opened it
up to climb inside-it was a perfect nickname. Patrick checked that the
"Alert Start" switch was off and safed-the B-2 had a button in the entry
hatch that would start the bomber's internal power unit and turn on
power and air before the pilots reached the cockpit. With this system,
the B-2 could have engine started, the inertial navigation system
aligned, and the plane taxiing for takeoff in less than three minutes,
without any external power carts or crew chiefs standing by. Ormack did
activate the "Int Power" switch in the entryway, which activated
internal power on the plane. Unlike the B- 1 bomber, whose offensive and
defensive stations seemed to have been put in reluctantly, almost haphaz
ardly, the B-2's cockpit was massive. There was almost enough room for
McLanahan to stand up straight as he slid into the right seat and began
to strap in. Ormack looked at the young navigator with amusement as he
set his seat and even put on a pair of flying gloves. "Going
somewhere?"
"You want a redesigned cockpit, sir, then you gotta do it with the crew
dog strapped into position, " McLanahan re plied. "The reach is much
different. If I had a helmet, I'd put it on." Ormack nodded his
agreement and smiled-as usual, McLanahan was getting right down to
business. The bomber's left instrument panel was like a television
director's console. Four color MFDs, or multi-function displays,
dominated the instrument panel; each MFD was encircled with buttons that
would change the screen's function, allowing hundreds of different
displays on each screen. The bomber used small sidestick controllers,
like a fighter plane, with throttle quadrants to the left of each seat
and the buttonfestooned control stick to the right. Each seat also had
a wide, oval-shaped heads-up display, or HUD, that would project flight
and attack information on the windscreen. "Where're all the
instruments?" McLanahan exclaimed with obvious surprise. "There's
hardly anything installed in here. Did they give us a stripped-down
test article or what?"
"This is a fully functional production model, Patrick, " Ormack replied.
"Everything is done on the MFDs or using switches on the throttles and
control stick. The screens show menu choices for selecting options for
each piece of equipment, and you just push a butt
on to select it or use
the set button on the stick."
"But I don't see any flight-control system switches, " McLanahan
persisted. "What about a flap lever? Gear handle? How do you raise
the landing gear-haul it up with a rope?"
"This is almost the twenty-first century, my friend, " Ormack replied.
"We don't move levers-we tell the plane what to do and it takes care of
it." He pointed to the right-hand MFD at each station, which showed a
simple five-line menu: BATT POWER, APU POWER, ALERT START, NORMAL START,
and EMER START. Each item was located next to a corresponding button on
the screen. "To start engines, you simply press the button and advance
the throttles to idle, " Ormack explained. "The computer takes care of
everything else. Start engines, and up comes a different menu of items.
Select TAKEOFF. The computer configures the plane for takeoff and
continues to configure the plane during the climbout and all the way to
level off-it'll raise the gear and flaps, monitor the power settings,
everything. Once at cruise altitude, you select CRUISE and it'll fly
the plane, manage the fuel, and report any errors. It has several
different modes, including LANDING, LOW LEVEL, GUST for bad weather
conditions, GO AROUND, and ATTACK modes."
"Computerized flying, huh?" McLanahan muttered. "Pretty slick. You
almost think they could do away with the pilot and nav. "It's advance
hardware, but not totally foolproof, " Ormack said. "The pilot in the
loop is still important."
"And the nav in the loop as well, " McLanahan said with a smile,
examining the right-hand seat. "Or should I say, 'mission commander'? I
like the sound of that." The right-hand instrument panel had boles and
slots for the same size and number of color MFDs as the pilot's side,
but technicians had already removed the monitors themselves. "This
looks like a duplicate of the pilot's side, " McLanahan observed. "I
think it is, " Ormack said. "The original idea was to have two pilots,
remember. They decided it-" As Ormack watched, Patrick suddenly reached
down to an awkwardly mounted keyboard on the right bulkhead and pulled
it out of its slot. "Hey-!"
"Sir, having these nice color MFDs on the right side for the nav would
be fine, " McLanahan said, "but it would also be a huge waste. Small
MFDs are nice, but they're old technology... "Old technology? These
MFDs are the latest thing-highresolution, high-speed, one twenty-eight K
RAM per pixel, the whole nine yards... "Compare it with pilot's side, "
McLanahan said. "Look here. The pilot can sit back, set up a scan, and
fly his plane with complete ease and confidence. What does the nav
have? The nav has got to focus on one screen at a time to do his job.
His eyes lock on one screen-they have to, because you got one screen
that displays only one set of information. What happens then? He loses
track of what's going on around him. He loses situational awareness.
Something important might be happening on one of the other screens, but
he doesn't know that because he's got to stare at this screen for
several seconds. The setup forces him to divert his attention in
several different directions at once, and by doing so you make him less
effective, not more. "These are the best MFDs available, " Ormack said
wryly. "You can swap displays around on each screen, split the screens
and have two displays on one screen, even have the computer shift
displays for you-sort of an autoscan. What's wrong with all that?"
"They're great, but they're outdated, " McLanahan repeated. "We can get
something better." He shook the keyboard at Ormack, then tossed it over
his shoulder. "And no important keyboards on the side instrument
panels. If the nav has to take his eyes off the scope on the bomb run,
it's no good and it shouldn't be in the plane. That's what gets crews
killed."
"We can rig up a swivel arm for the keyboard.. ." Ormack began, but
McLanahan was clearly unimpressed. "I don't know exactly what you have
in mind, Patrick, but I don't think you can just decide to replace the
entire avionics suite . "You want my recommendations, you'll get them, "
McLanahan said. "You didn't mention any restrictions or specifications,
so I'll build you the best cockpit I can think of." He paused for a
moment, then said, "And we'll start with the Armstrong Aerospace Medical
Research Laboratory at Wright-Pat."
"Armstrong? What... ?" And then he realized what Patrick was getting
at: "The Super Cockpit program? You want to put one of those big
six-square-foot screens in the B-2?"
"Sir, it's tailor-made for the Black Knight, " McLanahan said excitedly.
"The screen would fit perfectly in this big cockpit, and they can
rewrite the software in a matter of months. We can bring it in within a
few weeks and have a demo flight within four months, I guarantee it." He
paused for a moment, then added, "And once we get Super Cockpit
installed, we can install that Sky Masters PACER SKY system General
Elliott is working on-real-time satellite target reconnaissance. That'd
be awesome. A satellite sending you real-time pictures of a target
area, a computer drawing your route of flight, and having it displayed
on a huge mother Super Multi-Function Display? Oh, man, this is gonna
be great!" John Ormack thought about the idea for several long mo ments.
He knew McLanahan was nothing if not a walking idea machine, but he
never expected him to devise two such radical ideas in so short a time.
It was an interesting combination: Super Cockpit was a 1 980s technology
demonstration program that had never been implemented in any tactical
aircraft, and PACER SKY was a brand-new idea that was just now being
operationally tested. Ormack knew Sky Masters' NIRTSats could make
combined synthetic radar, infrared, and visual photographs of a
geographic area in one pass, uplink it to a satellite, then download it.
But uplinking it to a TDRS satellite (Tactical Information Distribution
System used by the Army and Air Force) then downloading it to a
targeting computer on a strike aircraft was brilliant. The computer
would be able to classify each return with known or suspected targets,
measure the precise target coordinates, and load them into the crew's
bombing computers. The crews could then call up each target, evaluate
the information and direct a strike against the targets in virtually
real-time. It would be the first time crews would have access to virtual
real-time imagery during a conflict. Leave it to McLanahan, Ormack
thought proudly. "Jesus, Patrick, " Ormack said, "you've already come
up with six months' worth of work and you haven't been in the seat five
minutes-and you've probably busted the bank as well."
"Well, we can eliminate a lot of this stuff, then, " McLanahan said,
gesturing to a small shelf under the glare shield. "We can ditch this
attempt at a work desk-with the Super Cockpit installed, we won't need
charts and books out cluttering the cockpit-but we'll need coffee-cup
holders, of course "Coffee-cup holders!" Ormack cried. Mc
Lanahan's
extraordinary capacity for coffee was well known throughout Dreamland.
"On a B-2? Get outta here!"
"You think I'm kidding, sir?" McLanahan replied. "I'll bet you lunch
for a week that there's not only coffee-cup holders for the pilot over
there, but a pencil-holder and maybe even an approach-plate holder. How
about it?"
"You're on, buddy, " Ormack said. "Coffee-cup holders on
multimillion-dollar warplanes went out with khaki uniforms and nose art.
Besides, everything on this plane is computerized-why would the pilots
need pencils and approach plates when everything's on the multi-function
displays in living color?" Ormack searched the aircraft commander's
station for a moment as McLanahan confidently sat back in his seat and
waited. A few moments later he heard a muttered, "Well, I'll be
damned..."
"Find something, General?"
"I don't believe it!" Ormack shouted. "Chart holders, pencil holders,
coffee-cup holders-no ashtray, hotshot... unbelievable."
"Let me guess, " McLanahan teased, "there's a space up there for an
inflight lunch box?"
"Box lunches and even a stopwatch holder. I just don't believe it.
There are twenty systems on this plane that'll give you a countdown. The
plane practically flies itself, for God's sake! If you want, a female
electronic voice'll even give you a countdown over interphone. But they
went ahead and put in a black rubber stopwatch holder anyway. "The Air
Force probably paid a thousand dollars for it, too, " McLanahan added
dryly. "The more things change, the more they stay the same. We'll
have developed a hypersonic bomber that can circumnavigate the globe in
one hour, and someone'll still put a stopwatch holder in the cockpit."
Ormack tried to ignore McLanahan's smug smile. "Well, you've got your
work cut out for you over here, that's for sure, but you've made a
terrific start. When can you get to work?"
"Right away, General, " McLanahan replied. "The F-15F Cheetah project
