Battle Born

by Dale Brown

  "Go ahead." The TAO recognized the captain's voice.

  "We lost track of the missile debris, sir, so we're clearing all aircraft away from the missiles' flight paths and terminating all activity. We're done for the day."

  "Copy that. We'll form up and head back to the barn."

  "What did you see up there, sir?"

  "We saw . . ." There was a very long pause, then: "We don't quite know what we saw, Combat. We saw two good missile plumes heading toward each other, then . . , well, we're not sure after that. We saw a flash of light, and some of the lookouts say they saw a big silver globe. But we didn't hear or pick up anything. No explosion, no nothing."

  "Checks down here, sir," said the TAO.

  "What did it look like to you, Combat?"

  "About the same."

  "What about the cruise missile? Did it hit its target?"

  "Stand by," the TAO said. "Radar, what have you got on the second launch barge? Did the zoomies hit it?"

  "I ... I don't know, sir," the radar technician stammered. "It's like the ABM intercept. It looked normal, heading right for the target, then . . , gone."

  "Gone? The target? Gone like blew up? Gone like sunk?" "Gone like . . , gone, sir," the technician said. "I pick up nothing. The missile has disappeared . . , shit, and the barge disappeared too!"

  "What the hell are you talking about? Surface range thirty, high res," he demanded, and checked the short-range surface radar depiction. There was no sign of the barge.

  "I've got a good radar lock on the first launch barge, sir," the technician said, "but zilch on the second. It must've broke apart and sunk like a stone."

  "That barge was almost two hundred feet long, eighty feet wide, and weighed ninety tons. Those things do not just disappear," the TAO said aloud to no one in particular. Even the first launch barge, which was hit dead-on by the sensor-fused weapon dropped by the cruise missile, was still partially afloat. The TAO hit the intercom button: "Bridge, Combat. We don't have a fix on the second launch pad. It must've sunk. What kind of warhead did they have on that thing? It must've been a two-thousand-pounder at least."

  "Negative, Combat," the captain responded. "We didn't hear or see any explosion."

  The TAO looked at his CIC crew members in shock. "How is that possible, sir?" was all he could think to ask. "I don't know," the captain said, feeling the anger rise in his throat. He had a suspicion that the Air Force had pulled a fast one on him-that they had tested a new weapon in the wide-open daylight skies and seas, in a well-used military weapons range that belonged to the U.S. Navy. To the officer of the deck, the captain said, "How long for us to get to that second launch barge's last position?"

  "About thirty minutes at standard, sir."

  "Officer of the deck, plot a course to the second launch barge's position," the captain ordered. "All ahead full. I want a full investigation on what kind of weapon sunk that barge. Air, water, electromagnetic, debris analysis, the works." He paused, then added, "And have the corpsmen prepare to do a full radiation scan as well."

  The last order froze everyone on the bridge in their tracks. The captain was silent for a long moment, then said, "Get to it, gentlemen. Keep your damn eyes open."

  It took less than twenty minutes for the two Air Force jets to fly back to Elliott Air Force Base. The base, ninety miles northwest of Las Vegas, was situated near a dry lake bed named Groom Lake. Anyone who viewed the lake bed-which would have been both difficult and illegal, since the airspace for fifty miles around the base was restricted from ground level to infinity-would have seen a roughly five-mile sheet of hard, sunbaked sand. But seconds before the planes touched down, sprinklers popped on and highlighted a long strip of sand-colored concrete in the lake bed. Less than three minutes later Terrill Samson had turned off the runway and the sun evaporated the water. The runway disappeared once again.

  Bradley James Elliott Air Force Base was the name of the installation built next to the dry lake. It resembled a cross between a small, old, nearly abandoned air base and a modern industrial development facility. It had some old wooden buildings and many modern concrete buildings. Because it was so far from the nearest town, it had dormitory-style enlisted, officer, and civilian quarters. There were few amenities: a mess hall, only a small shopette instead of a full commissary and exchange, a little-used outdoor pool, and no base theater.

  The roads were well maintained and the sidewalks were lined with cactus and Joshua trees. The roads had typical Air Force base names, honoring Air Force legends: military aviation pioneers like Rickenbacker and Mitchell, leaders like Spaatz and LeMay, Air Force Medal of Honor recipients like Loring and Sijan, and air combat aces like Bong and DeBellevue. Other streets had names that most people new at the base might not immediately recognize, like Ormack and Powell names of dead test pilots who had been assigned to the base. About two thousand men and women worked at the base, typically four days on, three days off. They were either bused in in convoys of air-conditioned Greyhound buses, making the 110-mile drive in under two hours, or flown in on unmarked jet airliners from Nellis Air Force Base north of Las Vegas in a matter of minutes.

  The one difference between this base and dozens of other military bases resembling it around the world: Elliott Air Force Base did not appear on any map. There were no signs for it. It was not on any listing of active Air Force bases. No one could ask for an assignment there, and if someone did, he or she would be likely to come under secret investigation as to why the request had been made. Every person assigned there swore an oath never to reveal any details about the base or its activities. Most people took that oath very, very seriously-not because of the substantial legal penalties, but because they really believed that keeping their activities secret contributed to the strength and security of their homeland. By almost every conventional measure except physical presence, Elliott Air Force Base did not exist.

  The base was the home of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, under Terrill Samson's command. HAWC was officially Detachment One of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center headquartered at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Before any new aircraft or air-launched weapon began unclassified operational testing at any of the Air Force's test facilities prior to full-scale production and deployment, it flew at HAWC first. HAWC's pilots and engineers worked with aircraft and weapons years before the rest of the world ever saw them, and in many instances worked with weapon systems the world would never see. What would seem like the stuff of science fiction novels were commonplace devices at HAWC. The secrecy and the weird sightings reported in the deserts of southern Nevada led many to believe the secluded area was harboring aliens from outer space and their spacecraft.

  In reality, HAWC was simply a site for innovative, creative aerospace engineers. Although the days of unlimited "black" budgets were gone, free thinking-by engineers, pilots, scientists, and even the commanders was encouraged and rewarded here.

  Terrill Samson taxied the F-111 toward a row of twelve low hangars, all painted to blend in with the sand-colored desert landscape around them. As the plane approached, a hangar door slid open, and it taxied directly inside without stopping or even slowing down much. The hangar doors started to close long before the plane was fully inside-the less time the doors were open, the less chance that snooping eyes could catch a glimpse of whatever was inside. It had been preceded minutes before by the bomber that it had stayed with over the Pacific Ocean just a short while earlier, and parked next to it.

  As soon as the F-111's engines were shut down, the crew chief and his assistant brought boarding ladders over to its side. But General Victor Hayes was still too stunned to remove his helmet and unstrap himself, let alone climb out of the cockpit. Samson took off his own helmet and released his straps, then sat in the cockpit, amused, quietly watching the Air Force chief of staff. A dozen heavily armed security policemen, maintenance crews, and engineers had descended on both aircraft on arrival, prepared to swarm over them and to gather
electronically recorded information about the test launches. Now they all waited for Hayes and Samson to step out, perplexed but wisely keeping out of earshot.

  "Well, sir?" Samson asked. "What do you think?"

  The hangar was air-conditioned, but long before entering it Hayes felt a chill-especially when he thought about what he had witnessed that morning. "What do I think?" he echoed. "I can't believe it. That warhead is incredible. Talk to me, Earthmover. What the hell else have you got here? Whatever you're selling, I'm buying. I don't know how we're going to pay for it, but I'm for damned sure in the market."

  "What I've got, sir, is a bunch of concepts and demo models," Samson said. "All a leftover of Brad Elliott's vision and leadership. He's got stuff here that would make James Bond shit his pants. I'm sorry I blew the poor son of a bitch off for so many years. We all thought he was just certifiable. It turns out he was a certifiable genius." "The antiballistic missile stuff, Earthmover. Lancelot," Hayes said. "That's what Congress wants to field right now. What is it, how much, how fast can we get it in the field?"

  "Let me show you what we've got, sir," Samson said. Hayes removed his straps at last and followed Samson out of the chase plane and over to the B-l beside it. After their IDs were checked and verified by thumb and retina prints, they began a walkaround of the big, sleek bomber. "We call it the EB-1C Megafortress-2, sir," said Samson. "Prime-time example of taking a good strike aircraft and making it better. You won't notice too many changes outside, but Brad transformed this thing into a real tactical strike machine."

  Hayes touched the big bomber, and his eyes narrowed in surprise. He was trying to identify what he felt. "That's not steel," he said.

  "Fibersteel," Samson explained. "Same stuff as RAM-radar-absorbent material-but fibersteel is structural-strength. We've reduced the weight and the radar cross section and increased the durability by at least fifteen percent just by reskinning with fibersteel. A stock B-l has ten times the radar cross section of a B-2 stealth bomber. This one has only three times the RCS."

  He pointed to the bomber's broad, flat underside, between the nosewheel well and forward bomb bay. "There are the external weapons and fuel hardpoints. Best move we made was to bring those back. We can launch any weapon in the arsenal, including air-to-air missiles. Each external hardpoint can hold three AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missiles, two AGM-88 HARM antiradar missiles, four AGM-65 Maverick missiles, one AGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile, one Wolverine cruise missile, even one AGM-142 Have Nap TV-guided missile. We've even modified Lancelot as a low earth-orbit satellite killer."

  "What?"

  "Brad Elliott revived and perfected the old ASAT antisatellite program," Samson said proudly. "The B-l can get a datalink from Space Command or use the LADAR, wait until an enemy satellite passes overhead, then fire an ASAT from an external hardpoint straight up. With a plasma-yield warhead installed, it'll kill a satellite up to two hundred miles in orbit; with a conventional explosive warhead, about one hundred miles. We haven't tested it, but all the computer models say it will work. And we can do it all now, sir." "Amazing!" Hayes exclaimed. "I want to see that tested. Killing satellites two hundred miles in space, my God, what a capability that'll give us." He motioned to the long, pointed nose and asked, "That nose cone looks weird-almost like glass instead of fibersteel. What kind of radar did you put in this thing? Still the stock one, or did you soup it up too?"

  "The EB-1 Megafortress uses LADAR-laser radar," Samson replied. "It's what I told you about just before the launch, when you were looking at the display. The emitters are tiny. They're in the nose, fuselage, and tail. They scan electronically in any direction, up or down, out to about fifty miles. In effect, the laser 'draws' a picture of everything it sees in a fraction of a second, in three dimensions and with terrific precision and definition. The system 'draws' a picture about twenty times a second, so the 'drawing' is updated as the bomber moves through the sky and the objects in each image become three-dimensional. The images are transmitted to the crew via helmet-mounted visors, and they change when the crew members move their heads-in essence, the crew can 'see' what the radar sees just by looking outside, even if the image is behind or underneath them. To the crew, it'll feel as if they're floating in midair but able to see up to fifty miles all around them.

  "Laser radar is not only more precise than standard radar, it can't be jammed, it can't be detected by standard radar detectors, and it's not affected by weather. We use LADAR for navigation, bombing, tracking-it's even precise enough for night formation flying. We retain all radar attack modes, including automatic terrain-following and radar bombing capabilities, and we've added long-range air target search, track, and weapons uplink."

  "This thing's like a really big Strike Eagle or an F/A-18 Hornet," Hayes commented.

  "But it has four times the weapons load, five times the loiter time, and six times the range of any other tactical strike aircraft in the world," Samson said. "The B-52 was number one until Congress made the decision to send 'em all to the boneyard. Now the B-l is the most powerful bomber in the fleet. But we're changing the mission of the heavy bomber. We want big bombers to be able to do tactical missions-precision-kill, close air-support, 'tank-plinking,' even air superiority, as well as antiship and saturation bombing."

  They climbed the tall nose landing-gear strut entry ladder up into the Megafortress. Samson started to crawl forward, but Hayes immediately noticed the big change inside: "Okay, Earthmover," he called, "where are the systems officer positions?"

  "Oh yeah. Missing, aren't they?" Samson grinned. "C'mon up to the front office and I'll show you."

  Hayes crawled forward through the tunnel to the cockpit and slid into the open aircraft commander's seat on the left side. This looked very much the way he remembered a Bone's cockpit-but not the right side. Instead of the copilot's side being almost identical to the pilot's, it was now a sleek, uncluttered array of six large multifunction displays, with almost no analog round or tape instruments. "Made some changes, I see," he remarked.

  "The Bone now joins the ranks of the rest of the bombers in the fleet that only have two crew members," Samson explained. "Meet the new automated Bone. I'd always heard that a B-l is nothing more than a really big F-111 bomber-well, we took that description to heart and built exactly that. Like the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, we combined the copilot and navigator bombardier into the mission commander's position, sitting in the right cockpit seat. The big exception is, we use a pilot-trained bombardier as mission commander, instead of a bombardier-trained pilot."

  "Why'd you decide that?"

  "Mostly because of my deputy commander, chief program director, and chief of flight operations-a navigator, of course," Samson responded.

  "McLanahan."

  "The very one," Samson said proudly. "He's the one who conducted today's tests and dropped the weapons you saw. He knows what he's talking about, and when he talks, everyone listens." Victor Hayes merely nodded. Samson's deputy commander was indeed well known and highly respected within the Air Force and throughout the U.S, government. Patrick McLanahan had almost attained the status of legend, like HAWC's first commander, Brad Elliott.

  "The mission commander controls everything with voice and touch-screen commands and a trackball," Samson went on. "Two CD-ROMs have the entire mission, weapons ballistics, and computer software, along with maps and terrain features for the entire planet, and it's all fed into the strike computers before launch. Everything's completely automatic, from preflight to shutdown. "But we went one step further, sir," Samson continued. "The two-person crew isn't exactly alone. We use real-time high-speed satellite communications and datalink technology to create a 'virtual crew' onboard the EB-1C Megafortress . . ."

  "A what? You mean, a robot crew, like an autopilot or computer?"

  "Not exactly," Samson said. "The bomber crew and the plane are tied into a ground-based cockpit by satellite. We have a pilot, an engineer, a weapons officer, and a tactics officer on duty, linked to t
he crew. They see and hear everything the crew does. They have access to all the bomber's systems and can spot problems and take corrective action if necessary. They can advise the crew on tactics, keep an eye on systems, and sort of look over the crew's shoulder all the time-even fly the plane for them if absolutely necessary, although the system probably can't react fast enough to survive while under attack.

  "What's more, this 'virtual cockpit' is transportable by cargo plane and can be set up in remote locations and run off a standard jet aircraft's power cart. It's the same technology we've been using for decades on manned spacecraft-we've just adapted the concept to manned bombers. And for bomber defense, we've replaced the ALQ-161 defensive management suite with the new ALR-56M and ALE-50 systems . . ."

  "Speak English, techno-geek."

  "Yes, sir. Bottom line: fully automated, more maintainable, and overall a better electronic jamming and self-protection system, with a towed decoy system," Samson said. "Antennas on the bomber still pick up enemy radar signals and process them, but now jamming signals are sent out via a robot emitter that's towed several hundred feet behind the bomber. It's a target decoy. It's only a foot long and three inches in diameter, but it has an electronically adjustable radar and infrared cross section. The system automatically changes the electronic 'size,' depending on the threat. If the bomber's just being scanned, the towed emitter is almost invisible. But if the enemy gets a lock-on and fires, its radar and infrared cross section can be changed to hundreds of times larger than the bomber.

  "The B-l carries eight decoys on tail fairings. It can still transmit jamming signals and drop expendables if the towed decoys all get shot down, but the system makes it more survivable in a high-threat environment. We've replaced the standard chaff and flare expendables with tactical air-launched decoys, or TALDs, which are tiny electromagnetic emitters that work far better than chaff or flares in decoying enemy missiles. And since the new system is fully automatic, we simply eliminated the DSO's station."