Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (15 page)

           
“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 moments. 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 1980s 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.
McLanahan’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 ldiaki
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 is off the flight line for a few months, so
this’ll work out perfectly. I’ve got a staff meeting with J. C. Powell and
McDonnell-Douglas in about an hour, and I’ll clear the desk and schedule an
afternoon staff meeting on this project. We’ll be back out here taking
measurements”— he paused, then gave Ormack a sly smile—“right after we get back
from lunch. Your treat, I believe?”

The Gold Room

Office of the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff

The Pentagon,
Washington
,
D.C.

Monday, 15 August 1994, 0800
hours local

           
“Good morning, sir,” Navy Captain
Rebecca Rodgers, senior staff officer, Pacific, of J-2, the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Intelligence Directorate, began. “Captain Rodgers with this morning’s
intelligence report. The briefing is classified top secret, sensitive sources
and methods involved, not releasable to foreign nationals; the room is secure.”
She paused to double-check that the thick mahogany double doors to the Pentagon’s
Joint Chiefs of Staff Conference Center, referred to as the “Tank” or the “Gold
Room,” were closed and locked and that the red “Top Secret” lights were on.
Rebecca “Becky” Rodgers could feel the tension of the men and women in the Tank
that morning, and her news was not going to help to cheer them up one bit.

           
Captain Rodgers was at the briefer’s
podium at the base of the Tank’s large, triangle-shaped conference table where
everyone could see her and the screen clearly. It was a most imposing and decidedly
uncomfortable spot—seven of the most senior, most powerful military men on the
planet watching her, waiting for her, no doubt evaluating her performance every
moment. The first few sessions in this room had been devastating for her. But
that was a half-dozen crises ago, and it seemed like old hat now. She didn’t
need the old trick of trying to imagine the Joint Chiefs naked to get through
her nervousness—the fact that she knew something that these powerful men and
women did
not
know was comfort enough.

           
Present for the briefing was JCS
Chairman General Wilbur Curtis; the Vice Chairman, Marine Corps General Mario
Lanuza; the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Randolph Cunningham; Commandant
of the Marine Corps General Robert Peterson; Air Force Chief of Staff General
William Falmouth; and Army Chief of Staff General John Bonneville, plus their
aides and representatives from the other J-staff directorates. Curtis insisted
on attendance by all Joint Staff members and directorates for these daily briefings—it
was probably the only opportunity for the staff to get together as a team
during their busy week.

           
The Chairman sat at the blunted apex
of the triangle, with seats available beside him at the head of the table for
the Secretary of Defense and the President of the
United States
if they chose to attend, although in his
two years of office, the President had never set foot in this place. The
four-star Joint Staff members and their aides and staffers sat on the
Chairman’s left, the J-staff directorate representatives on the right, and
guests and briefers at the base of the triangle near the back. Each seat had a
small communications console and computer/TV monitor embedded in the table,
which was fed from the giant Global Military Communications, Command, Control,
and Intelligence Network operations center on another level of the Pentagon.
The back wall of the Tank was a large rear-projection screen. Arranged above it
was a series of red LED digital clocks with various times, and several members
of the staff, by force of habit after long years aloft or at sea, gave
themselves a time hack from those ultra-precise clocks every morning.

           
“The number-one topic I have for you
today is the
Philippines
and
South China Sea
incidents,” Rodgers said after concluding her
routine force status briefings. “In response to the attack on an
oil-exploration barge a few months ago in the neutral zone in the
Spratly
Island
chain, both the
Philippines
and
China
have stepped up naval activity in the area.

           
“Specifically, the Chinese have not
added any new forces except for a few smaller shallow patrol boats. They have a
very strong contingent there, including the destroyer
Hong Lung,
which carries the Hong Qian-91 surface-to-air missile
system, the Fei Lung-7 and Fei Lung-9 antiship missile systems, and a good
complement of dual-purpose guns. Additionally, they have two frigates, four
patrol boats, some minesweepers, and other support vessels. They usually detach
into three smaller patrol groups, with a missile craft leading two groups and
Hong Lung
and its escorts comprising the
third. Vessels from the
South
Sea
fleet, headquartered at Jhanjiang, rotate
with the ships about once per month; however,
Hong Lung
rotates very seldom. Their base on
Spratly
Island
is very small, but they can land medium-
size cargo aircraft there to resupply their vessels.

           
“The Filipinos have substantially
increased their presence in the
Spratly
Islands
following the attack on the oil barge. They
have sent two of their three frigates into the disputed area and are now
patrolling their section vigorously with both sea and air assets.

           
“But despite the naval buildup, the
Philippine naval fleet is practically nonexistent,” Rodgers concluded. “All of
their major combatants are old, slow, and unreliable. The crews are generally
not well trained and rarely operate more than a day’s cruise away from their
home ports.”

           
“So without the
United States
forces to back them up, they’re sitting
ducks for the Chinese,” Admiral Cunningham said.

           
“Sir, the Chinese fleet is not that
much more advanced than the Philippine fleet, at least the vessels that operate
near the
Spratly
Islands
,” Rodgers said. “Most are small, lightly
armed patrol boats. The exception, of course, is the flagship,
Hong Lung
. It is without question the most
capable warship in the entire
South China Sea
, comparable in performance to
U.S.
Kidd-class destroyers but faster and
lighter. The frigates are heavily armed as well; most have HQ-61 SAM missiles,
which would be very effective against the Filipino helicopters and may even be
capable against the Sea Ray antiship missile. All are comparable in performance
to U.S. Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, except without helicopter decks or
the sophisticated electronics.

           
“The main Chinese offensive thrust
would obviously be their overwhelming ground forces—they could land several
hundred thousand troops in the
Philippines
in very short order,” Rodgers concluded.
“Although we generally classify the Chinese Navy as smaller and less capable
than ours, their naval forces are very capable of supporting and protecting
their ground troops. An amphibious assault on the
Philippines
by the Chinese would be concluded very
quickly, and it would push the necessary threshold of an American counterstrike
to very high levels—very much along the lines of our DESERT SHIELD deployment,
although without the advantage of forward basing.”

           
“So if the Chinese want to take the
Spratly
Islands
, there’s not much we could do about it,”
General Falmouth summarized.

           
“Sir, at the current force levels in
the area, if the Chinese wanted to take the
Philippines
, there would be little we could do about it
. . .”

           
There was a very animated murmur of
voices at that comment. Curtis was the first to raise his voice above the
others: “Wait one, Captain. Is this a J-2 assessment or an opinion?”

           
“It is not a directorate finding,
sir, but it is nevertheless a statement of fact,” Rodgers replied. “If they so
decided, it would take the People’s Liberation Army Navy less than a week . .

           
“Ridiculous. . .”

           
“They wouldn’t dare . . .”

           
“Absurd . . .”

           
“According to the directorate’s
preliminary report, sir,” Rodgers explained, getting their attention, “if the
Chinese captured five strategic military bases—the naval facilities at Subic
Bay and Zamboanga, the Air Force bases at Cavite and Cebu, and the Army base at
Cagayan de Oro—and if they defeated Second Vice President Samar’s militia at
Davao, they could secure the entire country.” She paused, then looked directly
at them. “Gentlemen, the New Philippine Army is nothing more than a
well-equipped police force, not a defense force. They have relied on the
United States
for its national defense—and obviously
would have to again, if the need arose. General Samar’s Commonwealth Defense
Force is a well-trained and well-organized guerrillafighting force, but they
cannot stand up against a massive invasion. The Chinese have a thirty-to-one
advantage in all areas.”

           
General Wilbur Curtis surveyed his
Chiefs of Staff with a look of concern—the information Captain Rodgers had just
conveyed had silenced them all. He had heard a lot of bad news during the past
six years that he’d chaired the Joint Chiefs. He had learned to quickly
decipher between isolated incidents and incidents that had a broader, far more
serious impact if left untended. He knew the implications of what Rodgers was
saying could be far more serious than any of them had previously thought.

           
“I think we all wanted to believe
this was just another skirmish. But with the
United States
out of the
Philippines
, there is a large power vacuum in the area.
We knew there’d be that danger. Still, I don’t think anyone believed the
Chinese would consider moving so soon—if they really are.” Curtis turned to
Captain Rodgers again and asked, “Are the Chinese likely to attempt an
invasion?”

           
“Sir, if the Joint Chiefs would like
a detailed briefing, I should get Central Intelligence involved,” Rodgers said.
“I had been concentrating on the military aspects and hadn’t prepared a full
briefing on the political situation. But J-2 does feel that the
Philippines
are ripe for the picking.” Curtis waited
for additional thoughts from the Joint Chiefs; when there appeared to be no
concrete suggestions, he said, “I’d like to review the current OPLANS for
dealing with a possible Chinese action in the
Philippines
, then. I need to know what plans we have
built already, and if they need to be updated. Captain Rodgers, I’d like
Central Intelligence to get involved, and I’d like Current Operations to draft
a response plan that I can present to the Secretary of Defense for his review.
Include a
Philippines
update in the daily briefings, including
satellite passes and a rundown on naval activity in the Spratlys and in the
Chinese South China Sea fleet. Let’s get on top of this thing and have a plan
of action
before
it threatens to blow
up in our faces.”

High
Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
(HAWC)

Dreamland,
Nevada

Wednesday, 17 August 1994,
0905 hours local

           
The phone line crackled. “Brad! How
the hell are you?”

           
Lieutenant General Brad Elliott
leaned back in his chair and smiled broadly as he recognized the caller. “I was
expecting you to send young Andy Wyatt out here to harass me again, sir, but
I’m glad to hear from you.”

           
“Can the ‘sir’ stuff with me, you
old warhorse,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Wilbur Curtis said over
the snaps and crackles in the scrambled phone fine. “You know better.

           
Besides, it’s been a long time since
we’ve spoken. When are we going to get together?”