by Dale Brown
nuclear deterrent force was something that was not to be advertised or
bragged about. Certainly, the critics thought, SAC's twenty thousand
aircrew members had little to boast about and nothing to look forward to
for the next century-the fifty B-2s and one hundred rail-garrisoned
Peacekeeper ICBMs planned to be operational by then might very well be
the only nuclear-armed weapons in SAC's inventory. Virtually all of the
B-52s, B-1B bombers, cruise missiles, and reconnaissance aircraft were
rumored to be headed for conventionally armed tactical-support roles, in
the inactive reserves-or, worse, in the boneyard. It was a winding-down
period for SAC, which created questions about readiness, training, and
motivation. That's where Jarrel's Strategic Warfare Center School, and
the Air Battle Force, came in. "Seats, " General Cal Jarrel said in a
loud voice as he made his way to the stage. The aircrew members in the
room took their seats and restlessly murmured comments among themselves
as Jarrel stepped up to the podium. He was there to give the welcoming
speech to a new crop of aircrew members that were to begin an intensive
three-week course on strategic air combat-SAC's "graduate school" on how
to fly and fight. As was the case for the past year since becoming
director of the Strategic Warfare Center, he had to convince each and
every one of these men and women of the importance of what they were
about to learn-and, in a very real sense, to convince the rest of the
country and perhaps himself as well. Lieutenant Colonel McLanahan
listened to General Jarrel's comments, sitting on the edge of his
auditorium seat. All around him were stealth bomber crews, who, like
him, were there to attend the Strategic Warfare Center school. When
General Jarrel acknowledged the B-2 crews in his opening remarks, a
ripple of applause-and a few Bronx cheers-passed over the crowd for the
B-2 crews. This is where I belong, McLanahan thought: in a flight suit,
getting briefed with these other crew dogs. He had, he realized, been
isolated at Dreamland far too long. Sure, he was one of the most
dedicated and successful aircrew members and weapon-systems project
managers in the entire military. But where had that gotten him? Flying
a battle-scarred B-52 fully renovated with modern hardware deep into
Soviet airspace to knock out Russia's state-of-the-art armaments? It
should have been the most rewarding mission in his career. Instead it
had landed him at HAWC, where he'd been ever since. But flying was in
his blood. McLanahan knew the score-because of the highly classified
nature of his work he'd probably never get beyond 0-6 (Colonel), or if
he was lucky, 0-7 (Brigadier-General). But at least they were letting
him fly a dream plane. The only problem was he couldn't tell anyone
about it. His cover story was that he was "observing" the school for
the Pentagon. Still . . . he was here. And the real excitement was
coming. . General Jarrel was well into his talk. "SAC is being tasked
with much more than delivering nuclear weapons-we are being tasked with
providing many different elements of support for a wide variety of
conflict scenarios, " Jarrel went on, speaking without a script and from
his heart as well as from the numerous times he'd given this speech.
"The way we do it is through the Air Battle Force, " Jarrel continued.
"From this moment on, you are not members of any bomb squadron, or
fighter squadron, or airlift group-you are members of the First Air
Battle Wing. You will learn to fly and fight as a team. Each of you
will have knowledge of not only his or her own capabilities, but those
of your colleagues. The Air Battle Force marks the beginning of the
first truly integrated strike force-several different weapon systems,
several different tactical missions, training, deploying, and fighting
together as one. "Because the Air Battle Force concept is new and not
yet fully operational, we have to disband each task force class and
return you to your home units. When you leave this Center, you will
still belong to the Air Battle Force, and you are expected to continue
your studies and perfect your combat skills from within your own units.
If a crisis should develop, you can be brought back here to be placed
back within the Air Battle Force system, ready to form the Second or
Third Air Battle Wings. Eventually, Air Battle Wings will be formed on
a fulltime basis for extended tours." Jarrel talked for several more
minutes, giving the history of the Strategic Warfare Center's mission,
which since 1989 had conducted strategic combat training exercises
through sorties that were spread over three thousand miles of low- and
highaltitude military training routes over nine Midwestern states. When
he had finished, he said, "All right, ladies and gentlemen, get out
there and show us how a strategic battle can be fought by America's best
and brightest!" The auditorium erupted in cheers, and somewhere in the
middle of the crowd, Patrick McLanahan was cheering the loudest. Late
one night a couple of days after General Jarrel's Strategic Warfare
Training Program was under way, Brigadier General John Ormack, who had
come with Cobb, McLanahan, the EB-52 and B-2 bombers, and the rest of
the support crew from HAWC, found Patrick McLanahan sitting in the
cockpit of his Black Knight. External power and air had been hooked up,
and McLanahan was reclining in the mission commander's seat with a
computer-generated chart of the Strategic Training Range Complex on the
three-by-two-foot Super Multi Function Display before him. Patrick had
a headset on and was issuing commands to the B-2's sophisticated
voice-recognition computer; he was so engrossed in his work-or so deep
in daydream, Ormack couldn't quite tell which-that the HAWC vice
commander was able to spend a few moments watching his junior chief
officer from just behind the pilot's seat. The guy had always been like
this, Ormack remembered-a little spacy, quiet, introverted, always
preferring to work alone even though it was a genuine pleasure being
around him and he seemed to enjoy working with others. He had the
ability to tune out all sound and activity around him and to focus all
his attention and brainpower on the matter at hand, whether that was a
mission-planning chart, a bomb run at Mach one and a hundred feet off
the ground, or a Voltron cartoon on television. But ever since arriving
here at Ellsworth, McLanahan had become even more hardworking, even more
focused, even more tuned out-to everything else but the task at hand,
which was completing the curriculum at the Strategic Warfare Center and
the Air Battle Force with the highest possible grade. Even though
McLanahan himself was not being "graded" because the HAWC crews were not
official participants, he was slamming away at the session as if he were
a young captain getting ready to meet a promotion board. It was hard to
tell if Patrick was working this hard because he enjoyed it or because
he was trying to prove to himself and others that he could still do the
job.
. But that was Patrick McLanahan. Ormack stepped over the center
console and into the leftside pilot's seat. McLanahan noticed him,
straightened himself up in his seat, and slid the headsets off. "Hey,
sir, " McLanahan greeted him. "What brings you here this evening?"
"Looking for you, " Ormack said. He motioned to the SMFD. "Route
study?"
"A little mission planning with the PACER SKY processor, " McLanahan
said. "I fed the STRC attack route through the system to see what it
might come up with, and it turns out if we attack this target here from
the west instead of from the northeast, the MUTES in Powder River MOA
site won't see us for an extra twenty-one seconds. We've got to gain
sixty seconds after the Baker bomb site to get the extra time to get
around to the west, so we'll lose a few points on timing, but if this
works we'll gain even more points on bomber defense." He shook his head
as he flipped through the computer-generated graphics on the big screen.
"The rest of the crews in the Air Battle Force would kill me if they
knew I had something like PACER SKY doing my mission planning." "That
reminds me, " Ormack said. "General Elliott got a tasking for NIRTSat
time for a Joint Chiefs surveillance operation. Something to do with
what's going on in the Philippines. You might get tapped to show your
stuff for the J-staff."
"Fine. I'll water their eyes. "The guard said you've been up here for
three hours working on this, " Ormack said. "You spent three hours just
to save twenty seconds on one bomb run?" "Twenty seconds-and maybe I
take down a target without getting 'shot' at." He motioned to the SMFD
and issued a command, which caused the scene to go into motion. A B-2
symbol on the bottom of the screen began reading along an undulating
ribbon over low hills and dry valleys. Dead ahead was a small pyramid
symbol of a target complex-small "signposts' on the ribbon marked off
seconds and miles to go to weapon release. Off to the right of the
screen, a yellow dome suddenly appeared. "There's the threat site at
one o'clock, but this hillock blocks me out from the west-whoever
surveyed the site for positioning this MUTES site obviously didn't think
crews would deviate this far west." The computerized mission "preview"
continued as the yellow dome began to grow, eventually engulfing the B-2
bomber icon and turning red. McLanahan pointed to a countdown readout.
"Bingo-I release weapons ten seconds after I come under lethal range of
the MUTES site. If I carry antiradar missiles, I can pick him off right
now, or I just turn westbound around the hillock to escape. Ormack
nodded in fascination at the presentation, but he was more interested in
studying McLanahan than watching the computer. "There's quite a party at
the 0-Club, Patrick, " he said. "This is your last night of partying
before the weekend, and a lot of your old cronies from Ford Air Force
Base asked about you. Why don't you knock off and join us?" McLanahan
shrugged and began reconfiguring the SMFD for another replay. "Crew
rest starts in about an hour . "One beer won't hurt. I'll buy."
McLanahan hesitated, then glanced at Ormack and shook his head. "I
don't think so, sir... "Something wrong, Patrick? Something you're not
telling me?"
"No . . . nothing's wrong." Patrick hesitated, then issued voice
commands to the computer to shut down the system. "I just. . . I
don't really feel part of them, you know?" "No, I don't."
"These guys are the real crew dogs, the real aviators, " Patrick said.
"They're young, they're talented, they're so cocky they think they can
take on the whole world."
"Just like you were when I first met you, " Ormack said with a laugh.
"We used to think you had an attitude, but that was before we knew how
good you really were." He looked at McLanahan with a hint of concern.
"You were pretty excited about coming to the Strategic Warfare Center,
about getting back to the 'real world' . "But I'm not back, " Patrick
said. "I'm farther from them than I ever thought I'd be. I feel like
I've abandoned them. I feel like I should be out there pulling a crew
or running a bomb-nav shop, but instead I'm.. ." He shrugged again,
then concluded, "Like I'm playing around with gadgets that probably
won't have anything to do with the 'real world'. "That's not what you're
down about, " Ormack said. "I know you better than that. You're down
because you somehow don't think you deserve what you've got. I see you
around your buddies out there: they're old captains or majors, and
you're a lieutenant colonel; they're still on line crews, flying dawn
patrols and red eyes and pulling alert, doing the same thing they did
ten years ago, while you're flying starships that most of those guys
will never see in their careers, let alone flythey're talking about
their last bomb-competition mission or their last Operational Readiness
Inspection, while your job is so classified that you can't talk about it
at all. You're down because you can't share what you have with them, so
you hole yourself up in here thinking that maybe you don't really have
what it takes to be a good crew dog. "Patrick, you're where you are
because you're the best. You did more than be chosen for a job: you
excelled, you never gave up, you survived, and you saved others. Then
when we stuck you in Dreamland to keep you quiet, you didn't just
vegetate until completing your twenty years-you excelled again and made
yourself invaluable to the organization. "You deserve what you have. You
earned it. You should go out and enjoy it. And you should also buy
your boss a beer before he drags your ass out of this cockpit. Now move
it, Colonel." NEAR PHU QUI ISLAND, IN THE SPRATLY ISLAND CHAIN SOUTH
CHINA SEA THURSDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 1994, 2344 HOURS LOCAL The number-two
task force of Admiral Yin Po L'un's Spratly Island flotilla was again
cruising within radar range of Phu Qui Island, the large rock and coral
formation in the disputed neutral zone between the Philippine-occupied
islands to the north and the Chinese-held islands to the south. Unlike
the more powerful ten-ship task force that surrounded Admiral Yin's
flagship, this one had only four ships-two Hainan-class patrol boats, a
Lienyun-class minesweeper, and a Huangfen-class fast attack missile
craft, the Chagda, which acted as the command vessel for this faster,
shallow-draft patrol group. Commander Chow Ti U, skipper of the Chagda,
felt uneasy with his latest series of orders. It had been over three
months since the attack on the Philippine oil-drilling barge, and the
tension in the region had been escalating on a weekly basis. Now it was
so thick one could cut it with a knife-and much of the heightened
tensions could be directly attributed to the way Admiral Yin had handled
the entire affair. Despite what was originally and officially reported,
Yin had departed the area after attacking the oil barges; his contention
that the seas were too rough to begin rescue operations did not sit well
with anyone. When the weather cleared, it was found that Yin had
>
steamed back to the Chinese side of the neutral zone, well away from Phu
Qui Island-again, his contention that he was concerned about retaliatory
attacks from Philippine warships did not explain why he did not offer to
assist in rescue operations. Chow would never say so to anyone, but
Yin's actions could be characterized as unprofessional, exhibiting a
total disregard for the rules of naval warfare, international law, and
common decency between sailors. Chow felt that the Admiral had every
right to confront the illegally placed oil-drilling rig, and he was well
within his responsibilities when he returned fire-even such devastating
return fire as he used. But to sim ply slink away from the area without
offering any help or without radioing for help was very suspicious.
Since then, while there'd been no skirmishes, there had been a few close
calls. Everyone was on edge, looking, waiting, wondering. ... Chow and
his fellow Chinese crewmen privately felt it was only a matter of time
before something else happened, and after witnessing the way Admiral Yin
had handled the first skirmish, everyone was skittish about how he would
proceed in an escalated conflict. "Range to Phu Qui Island, navigator, "
Chow called out. His crewmen were obviously keeping very close track
themselves, for the answer was almost instantaneous: "Sir... we are
presently twenty-five kilometers southwest of Phu Qui Island. We will
be in radar range within minutes."
"Very well, " Chow grunted. Twenty-five kilometers-they were right on
the edge of the neutral zone-perhaps inside it by no more than a
kilometer. Unlike Admiral Yin, Chow had no intention of tempting fate
by openly cruising the neutral zone. Pearson Reef was indisputably the
property of the People's Republic of China, so he would stay close to
it. His radar could survey enough of the neutral zone to check for any
other intruders. Still... he was uneasy. Perhaps because Admiral Yin
chose not to continue operating his larger, more powerful task force
along the border as before-but had instead chosen to operate farther
south, well in undisputed Chinese waters. The first explanation was, of
course, that Yin had been ordered to keep away from the neutral zone,
