Fatal Terrain
Page 6
Red."
"One-Two," replied his fellow hunter, Captain Andrea
Mills. She had a slight twinge of sarcasm already in her voice,
and Mauer almost regretted calling her-he knew she knew
he was having trouble.
"Come give me a hand with this bandit," Mauer said.
"Roger, I'm on my way,- Mills replied, the sarcasm gone.
Mills looked for every opportunity to rub her fellow fighter
jocks' noses in the macho hunter-killer game they all relished,
but when it came time to get down to business, she was seri-
ous, focused, and as deadly as any swinging dick.
Mauer switched his heads-down SuPercockpit screen to a
God's-eye view and expanded it until Mills's fighter symbol
aPPeared-good, she was off to the north, racing southwest-
bound to cut off the bandit from the other major ground target
in the area, the fighter base and Patriot missile emplacements.
Mills was staying high, establishing a high patrol, so Mauer
pushed his stick forward and zoomed down lower, closer to
the bandit's altitude. He had two missiles -left, both heat-
seekers with a max range of only seven miles, and he had to
make them count. If the bomber got the airfield and the Patriot
site, their forces would be left wide open to attack, the airborne
fighters would have to find someplace else to land, and the
fighters on the ground were sitting ducks and wouldn't be able
to depart.
At 3,000 feet above the ground, the hills and buttes looked
close enough to scrape the bottom of Mauer's fighter. He kept the
power up at full military power, speeding westbound at Mach
1.5, searching for the bomber ... but Mills's radar locked on
first. The JTIDS datalink transferred the bandit's position to
Mauer's attack computer, and he again I ked onto the m r
oc bo be
and began his pursuit-twelve o'clock, nine miles ...
eight ...
HIGH TERRAIN, HIGH TERRAIN! Sharon cried into the inter-
___36 DALE BROWN
corn. Mauer yanked back on the stick to crest a sharply rising
razorback ridgeline directly ahead. Jesus, this was nuts-trying
to concentrate on the pursuit while dodging hills and ridges
was going to get him killed. But as soon as he lowered the
nose again, the bandit was dead in his sights, straight ahead.
"Arm Sidewinder," Mauer ordered. "Open weapon
doors."
ROGER, AIM-9 ARMED, WARNING, MISSILE ARMED ...
WARNING, WEAPON DOORS' OPENING. As soon as the door
opened, the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile's seeker head slaved to
the attack computer's steering signal, saw the hot dot from the
bandit's exhaust, and locked onto it, matching its seeker azi-
muth exactly with the attack computer's target bearing. AIM-9
LOCKED ON, Sharon reported.
-AIM-9 shoot," Mauer ordered.
AIM-9 SHOOT, AIM-9 SHOOT, AIM-9 AWAY. The smaller, fas-
ter Sidewinder fired from the weapons bay in a flash, wobbled
a bit as it stabilized itself in the air, then homed straight and
true....
Flares! Mauer saw them immediately-a line of white dots
hanging in the sky, hot and very bright even over six miles
away. The radar-lock square jutted sharply left as the bandit
made its customary first left break, but the decoy flares hung
in the sky straight ahead for several seconds before winking
out. The Sidewinder wobbled as if it were trying to decide
between locking onto the decoys or turning to chase the
bomber. It decided on the decoys, then changed its mind as
the decoys began to extinguish. But just as it made a sharp
left turn to pursue, the bomber ejected more flares and jinked
right, and the Sidewinder locked solidly on the new, brighter,
closer decoys and would not let go. The Sidewinder exploded
harmlessly a full five miles behind the bomber.
One missile to go, Mauer reminded himself, as he turned to
pursue. He had closed to within four miles of the bandit, and
now he was straining hard to see what in hell it was. The
virtual display made it easy to focus on where the target was,
no matter which way it jinked. It was small, probably an F-
16, judging by its size and its maneuverability, or maybe some
experimental job....
A cruise missile! Mauer got a good look at it as it made
another hard right turn, heading right for the airfield-a god-
FATAL TERRAIN 37
damn cruise missile! No wonder it was so maneuverable-
there was no pilot on board to get knocked unconscious by
hard G turns. It was the first cruise missile he had ever heard
of that ejected decoy flares, could obviously detect enemy
fighters' and missiles' radars, and could attack multiple targets
and even reattack targets it missed the first time around! It was
a little bit bigger than a Tomahawk or standard Air-Launched
Cruise Missile, but it had no wings-it was almost like a big
fat flying surfboard. When it was straight and level, it was
almost impossible to see.
"One-One, bogeydope," Mills radioed.
"One-One has a single cruise missile, and it's haulin' ass,"
Mauer said, grunting against the G-forces as he turned hard
left again to stay behind the missile. "I got one heater left.
my
C'mon in and nail this bastard if ' last shot misses." The
time for being macho was over, Mauer thought-this cruise
missile had beat him pretty good, and it looked as if it was
going to take both of the F-22s working together to nail it.
"One-Two has a judy."
"Take the shot," Mauer said. "I'll try to nail it in the ass
while you shoot it in the face."
Mills didn't reply-she let her AMRAAMs do the talking.
The JTIDS datalink showed Mills launching her first AIM-
120, followed by her second AMRAAM five seconds later.
The cruise missile made its usual left break-Mauer was close
enough now to see that it was ejecting chaff decoys, trying to
get the radar-guided missile to lock onto the tinsel-like chaff!
But Mauer anticipated that left break, and at the exact right
moment, Mauer launched his last Sidewinder, then began a
right turning climb to clear the area. The Sidewinder would
get a good, solid look at the missile's entire profile, and it
couldn't miss.
But as he turned, he looked to the west and saw three bright
explosions and another cloud of smoke-the airfield was hit,
this time with some kind of binary weapon, a fuel-air explosive
or a chemical weapon. No one was going to be landing or
taking off from that airfield for a long, long time.
Mauer got visual contact on Mills's F-22 high and heading
in the opposite direction. Just as he began his climbing left
turn to join up, he heard Mills report, "Splash one bandit-
but I think he got the Patriot site and the airfield first."
38 DALE BROWN
Good job, Scottie, Mauer told himself angrily-the F-22
Lightning, the best fighter ever to leave the ground, beat out
by a robot plane. Shit, shit, Shit!
He saw Mills wag her F-22's t
ail back and forth, clearing
him into right fingertip formation. Might as well let Andrea
lead for a while until he got his composure back, he was too
angry right now to make any decisions as flight lead.
Just then, Mauer's heads-down display blinked-another in-
bound bandit had been detected by the AWACS. Mills rocked
her wings up and down, the signal to move out to combat
spread formation to get set up for the intercept, then started a
thirty-degree bank turn to the left toward the new bandit. She
was the only one with missiles now, Mauer thought forlornly,
so he slid out to wide-line-abreast formation and got ready to
back up his leader on this intercept. He was backup now, he
thought, just backup. The bad guys were three for fucking
three....
"Three for three, General," Patrick McLanahan said matter-
of-factly. "The Wolverine autonomously located four prepro-
grammed targets, attacked three, reattacked one, and was on
its way to nail the fourth one before the F-22s got it. Pretty
good hunting, I'd say."
"Unbelievable," Samson finally muttered. "I don't believe
what I just saw." Even in the EB-52B Megafortress bomber's
wide cockpit, Lieutenant General Terrill Samson's big frame
barely seemed to fit-his shoulders were slightly slumped, his
knees high up on the instrument panel. Terrill "Earthmover"
Samson, a former B-52 and B- I B bomber pilot and wing com-
mander, was commander of U. Air Force's Eighth Air Force,
in charge of training and equipping all of the Air Force's heavy
and medium bomber units. The Air Force general was in the
modified B-52's left seat, piloting the experimental bomber.
Copiloting the EB-52 Megafortress was Air Force Colonel
Kelvin Carter, a veteran bomber pilot and a former EB-52 test
pilot at HAWC, the High Technology Aerospace Weapons
Center. Retired Air Force Colonel Patrick McLanahan was
seated behind and to the right of Samson in the aft section of
the upper crew compartment in the OSO, or offensive systems
officer's, console, and to McLanahan's left in the DSO's, or
defensive systems officer's, seat was Dr. Jon Masters, presi-
FATAL TERRAIN 39
dent of a small high-tech satellite and weapons contractor from
Arkansas.
The EB-52B Megafortress was a radically modified B-52
bomber, changed so extensively from tip to tail that now its
size was the only sure point of comparison. It had a long,
pointed, streamlined nose that smoothly melded into sharply
raked cockpit windows and a thin, glass-smooth fuselage. Un-
like a line B-52, the Megafortress's wingtips did not curl up-
ward while in flight-the plane's all-composite fibersteel
skeleton and skin, as strong as steel but many times lighter,
maintained an aerodynamically perfect airfoil no matter how
heavily it was loaded or what flight condition it was in. A
long, low, canoe-shaped fairing sat atop the fuselage, housing
long-range surveillance radars for scanning the sea, land, or
skies for enemy targets in all directions, as well as active laser
antimissile countermeasures equipment and communications
antennae. The large vertical and horizontal stabilizers on the
tail were replaced by low, curving V-shaped ruddervators. A
large aft-facing radar mounted between the ruddervators
searched and tracked enemy targets in the rear quadrant; and
instead of a 20-millimeter Gatling tail gun, the Megafortress
had a single long cannon muzzle that looked far more sinister,
far more deadly, than any machine gun. The cannon fired small
guided missiles, called "airmines," that would fly toward an
oncoming enemy fighter, then explode and scatter thousands
of BB-like titanium projectiles directly in the fighter's flight
path, shelling jet engines and piercing thin aircraft skin or
cockpit canopies.
The most striking changes in the Megafortress were under
its long, thin wings. Instead of eight Pratt & Whitney T33
turbofan engines, the EB-52 Megafortress sported just four air-
liner-style General Electric CF6 fanjet engines, modified for
use on this experimental aircraft. The CF6 engines were qui-
eter, less smoky, and gave the Megafortress over 60 percent
more thrust than did the old turbofans, but with 30 percent
greater fuel economy. At nearly a half-million pounds gross
weight, the Megafortress could fly nearly halfway around the
world at altitudes of over 50,000 feet-unrefueled!
The Megafortress was so highly computerized that the nor-
mal B-52 crew complement of six had been reduced down to
four-a pilot and copilot; a defensive systems officer, who was
in charge of bomber defense; and an offensive systems officer,
40 DALE BROWN
charge of employing, the ground and anti-radar
who was in also acted as the reconnaissance, sur-
attack weapons and who er. The OSO's and DSO's
veillance, and air intelligence offic EB-52, facing
stations were now on the upper deck of the
forward; the lower deck was now configured as an expanded
avionics bay and also included a galley, lavatory, and seats
and bunk area for extra crew members who might be taken
aboard for long missions.
"Jon's only intervention was to redesignate the first target
again so the Wolverine could reattack," McLanahan pointed
out. McLanahan was not nearly as tall as Terrill Samson, but
he, too, was broad-shouldered and powerfully built-he just
seemed to fit perfectly in the EB-52 bomber's OSO's seat, as
if that's where he always belonged: it was as if McLanahan
had been born to fly in that seat, or as if the controls and
displays had been sized and positioned precisely to fit him and
him alone-which, in fact, they had. "The upgraded missile
has a rearward sensor capability for autonomous bomb damage
assessment. With a satellite datalink, an operatOr--either on
the carrier aircraft, on any other JTIDS-equipped aircraft in
the area, or eventually from a ground command station
thousands of miles away-could command the Wolverine to
reattack. " I I Samson re-
AMRAAM ,
"That twenty-G turn, evading the
marked, his voice still quivering with excitement, I%. . it was
breathtaking. it looked like a cartoon, some kind of science-
fiction-movie thing." fact," McLanahan said.
"Not science fiction-science I jets instead of
"The Wolverine has thrust-vectored contro
conventional wings and tail surfaces, and a mission-adaptive
fuselage controlled by microhydraulics-the entire body of the
missile changes shape, allowing it to use lifting-body aerodY-
namics to turn faster. In fact, the faster it goes, the tighter it
_just the opposite of most aircraft. All moving parts
can turn
on the missile are driven by microhydraulic devices, so a sim-
wristwatch can
ple five-hundred-psi pump the size of my
over ten thousand psi-the-
power three hundred actuators at
<
br /> oretically we can maintain control at up to thirty Gs, but at
that speed the missile would probably snap in half or the pres-
arheads. But no
sure might cook off the explosives in the w
uilt can keep up with the Wolverine."
fighter or missile yet b
Samson fell silent again in amazement. McLanahan turned
FATAL T ER RAI N 41
to his left and looked at the man seated eside him and a ded,
"Good job, Jon. I think you watered his eyes."
"Of course we did," Masters said. "What did you expect?"
He tried to say it as casually and as coolly as McLanahan, but
the excitement bubbling in his voice could not be disguised.
Unlike the other two men in the cockpit with him, Jon Masters
shared only their dancing, energetic eyes and boundless en-
thusiasm-he was as thin as they were broad, with a boyish,
almost goofy-looking face. Jon Masters, the designer of the
incredible AGM-177 Wolverine cruise missile along with doz-
ens of other high-tech military weapons and satellites, was
aboard to watch his missile do its stuff, in case anything went
wrong, he could also abort the missile's flight, if necessary.
That was also a Jon Masters hallmark-rarely, if ever, did the
first operational test of one of his missiles or satellites work
properly. This test appeared to be a welcome exception.
McLanahan commanded the EB-52 bomber into a right turn
back toward the exit point to the RED FLAG range. "A little
professional modesty might help sell a few Wolverines to the
Air Force, Jon," McLanahan pointed out. McLanahan, retired
as a colonel from the Air Force after sixteen years in service,
was now a paid consultant to Sky Masters, for which he per-
formed a number of tasks, from test-pilot duties to product
design.
"Trust me on this one, Patrick," Masters said, slouching in
his ejection seat and taking a big swig out of his ever-present
squeeze bottle of Pepsi. "When it comes to the military,
you've got to yell it to sell it. Talk to Helen in marketing-
her budget is almost as big as the research-and-development