Read Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 Online
Authors: Wings of Fire (v1.1)
Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (2 page)
To the memory of the victims of the
terrorist
attacks on
September 11, 2001
,
and
to the men and women who have answered
the call to arms in the war on terror.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
This
is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real- world persons, places, events,
or organizations is coincidental.
Your
comments are welcome! Please visit
http:// www.megafortress.com
on the
World Wide Web to leave your comments and to learn about upcoming works,
projects, appearances, or events. I read every comment.
REAL-WORLD NEWS EXCERPTS
waiting on
Cairo
—STRATFOR Intelligence Update,
www.
stratfor.com
.
13 October 2000
—Within the Arab world, the Egyptians occupy
a unique position, the very reason that they have been propelled to the center
of the situation. Although it wields one of the largest Arab militaries,
Cairo
is also the largest Arab state to continue
ties with
Israel
; even
Morocco
has called its diplomatic representative home for consultation . ..
...
Arab nations—even those that have signed peace agreements with
Israel
—are under intense pressure to join together
and take a unified stand against
Israel
. ..
U.S.
AID FUELING THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN
EGYPT---------------
The
Washington Post
,
December
26, 2000
—
Egypt
, a preoccupation of
U.S.
foreign policy for the last
quarter-century, has been the second-largest recipient of American foreign aid
during that period. The $52 billion program, so far, has rebuilt mosques,
constructed new schools, promoted family planning and transferred high-tech
weapons like F-16 warplanes and Ml-Al tanks at a $2-billion-a-year clip . ..
CONSEQUENCES OF A NEW
U.S.
DEFENSE STRATEGY--------- STRATFOR
Global
Intelligence Update,
www.stratfor.com
. 1 March 2001—In Washington, an
internal Pentagon review of American defense strategy is likely to call for a
dramatic reduction in U.S. troops deployed overseas . . . Such a historic shift
would reduce the vulnerability of U.S. forces to attack and lower the profile
of a seemingly imperial military presence. Over the long term, however, such a
strategy may force allies and adversaries alike to build new regional alliances
or adopt independent, antagonistic defense strategies ...
LIBYA
:
GAINING LEVERAGE IN
CENTRAL AFRICA---------
STRATFOR, 5
June
2001—
Chad
and
Libya
reportedly deployed several hundred troops, attack helicopters and other
military equipment to the
Central African Republic
on May 30, the BBC reported.
.
.. The unsuccessful uprising has opened the door for Libyan leader Muammar
Qadhafi to send Libyan troops into central
Africa
and closer to
Chad
’s southern oil fields . ..
AIR FORCE TURNS 747 INTO HOLSTER FOR GIANT
LASER
—The
Washington Post
,
July
22, 2001
—USAF plans
to shoot down a Scud-type missile with a giant laser fired from a modified 747
within two years. That test would be to prove the feasibility of destroying an
attacking missile in the “boost” phase shortly after launch.
3 STUDIES FOCUS ON CUTTING OVERSEAS
DEPLOYMENTS
—The
Washington Times
, July 25,
2001—Secretary Rumsfeld ordered three Pentagon reviews of foreign troop
engagements in order to determine how best to reduce the type of overseas
deployments that mushroomed during the Clinton era.
Contents
PROLOGUE
OVER
CENTRAL LIBYA
“This
has got to be the most insane idea in the history of aviation,” retired Navy
commander John “Bud” Franken muttered. “Let it go and let’s get this over
with.”
Retired
Air Force brigadier general Patrick McLanahan smiled, then fastened his oxygen
visor in place with a snap. “That’s the spirit, AC,” he said happily. “It only
seems insane because no one’s ever done it before.”
“Yeah,
right. Just unzip your pants over there and let’s go home.”
“Here
it comes,” Patrick said. He hit a small stud on his computer trackball and
spoke: “Deploy array.” The computer acknowledged the command, and the attack was
under way:
Far
behind them, in a fairing between their aircraft’s twin V-tails, a small oblong
cylinder detached itself from its mounting and began to trail behind the
aircraft on a thin carbon-fiber-reinforced fiber-optic cable. The tiny object,
soon trailing several hundred feet behind the AL-52, was an ALE-50-towed
electronic countermeasures decoy. Just three feet long and six inches in
diameter, it was invisible to the Libyan air defense radars that surrounded
them at that moment.
The aircraft was a modified B-52
Stratofortress bomber— not a U.S. Air Force warplane, but an experimental
aircraft modified by Patrick’s company, Sky Masters Inc., called an AL-52
Dragon. The warplane he was sitting in was so advanced that even Patrick, who
had been involved in its development both in and out of the Air Force for
years, was truly amazed. What he was really sitting in, he realized with a
mixture of awe and glee, was ... the future. “Star Wars” was no longer a
Reagan-era pipe dream or the name of a hugely successful science-fiction motion
picture series—it was right here, right now. The AL-52 Dragon combined the
absolute state-of-the-art in laser technology, high-speed computers,
miniaturization, stealth systems, and systems integration to produce the world’s
first true twenty-first-century weapon system, using technology that had never
been deployed on an aircraft before.
The
airframe itself was based on the EB-52 Megafortress modification of the B-52H
Stratofortress bomber, with stealthy composite fibersteel skin and frame, four
powerful turbofan engines replacing the original eight turbofans, a V- tail
stabilator replacing the big cruciform tail, and an advanced self-protection
suite, including radar and infrared jammers, towed arrays, decoys, and Stinger
aerial land mines. The original six-person crew had been replaced by enough
state-of-the-art computers and artificial intelligence systems that now only
two crew members, an aircraft commander and a mission commander, were required
to be on board—and, in an extreme emergency, either could bring the plane home
alone.
The
Megafortress was designed as a stealthy flying battleship, able to penetrate
heavily defended targets deep behind enemy lines and employ every air-launched
weapon in the American arsenal—and a few that had been dreamed up just for
it—with great precision. The Dragon variant of the Megafortress battleship
retained the conventional attack capabilities—it could carry up to twelve
thousand pounds of ordnance on wing hardpoints, including cruise missiles,
air-to-air missiles, and even antisatellite and antimissile weapons. Patrick
knew all about the devastating warfighting capabilities of the EB-52
Megafortress—he had spent more than fifteen years of his life working on it.
Sky Masters Inc. still flew several versions of the EB-52 for flight test and
research purposes, still hoping that the Air Force would someday take the
roughly one hundred B- 52H Stratofortress bombers in flyable storage out of
mothballs and have the company convert them to either EB-52 Megafortresses or
AL-52 Dragons.
“Here
we go, Bud,” Patrick said. To the computer, he said, “Activate array.” In an
instant, the towed array, which normally was all but invisible to radar,
blossomed to the electromagnetic equivalent of a Boeing 747.
That
move had its desired and expected effect: All of the Libyan air defense radars,
which had just been searching the skies seconds before, almost immediately
locked on to the towed decoy. Now instead of peaceful search and air traffic
control radars, Patrick’s threat scope was suddenly alive with dozens of
antiaircraft threats—surface-to- air missile sites, antiaircraft artillery, and
fighter-intercept radars.
“Warning, SA-10
acquisition mode,
ten
o'clock
, twenty miles,"
the computer responded.
“Warning, SA-9 acquisition mode,
two o'clock
,
ten miles
...” The warnings
kept coming, until:
“Warning, missile
launch, SA-10,
ten o'clock
,
nineteen miles
. ..
warning, missile launch, SA-10,
ten o'clock
,
nineteen miles
...”—the
SA-10 missiles always launched in pairs.
“Countermeasures
not activated."
“Commit
Dragon,” Patrick spoke. He had to consciously bring his breathing and voice
under control. In all the times he had been on an attack run, this was the
first time he did not react when a threat came up. If this didn’t work, they’d
be dead in fifteen seconds.
“Caution, Dragon activated
.. .
caution, Dragon engaging,"
the
computer responded. Patrick watched in fascination as the newest and most
sophisticated computer system ever placed aboard any aircraft automatically
began prosecuting the attack and activating the most devastating airborne
weapon ever produced:
The
AL-52 Dragon’s LADARs, or laser radar arrays, which electronically scanned
hundred of thousands of cubic miles of space in every direction thirty times
per second, tracked the Soviet-made SA-10 missile with millimeter precision. At
the same time the LADAR also instantly measured the dimensions of the rocket,
determining where its motor section was. Tracking computers then began
measuring the rocket’s speed, altitude, and direction— even predicting its
probable impact point and relaying the data to friendly forces downrange.
At
the same moment, the Dragon itself came to life.
Turbopumps
in the belly of the AL-52 Dragon immediately began pressurizing hydrogen
peroxide and potassium hydroxide inside a reaction chamber. Chlorine gas and
helium from storage tanks in the cargo section of the modified B-52 bomber were
then sprayed under pressure into the chamber, forming an energized substance called
singlet delta-oxygen. In another reaction chamber, iodine and helium were
injected into the substance, which released the high-energy photons from the
gas, creating laser light.
At
the same time, the AL-52’s laser radar locked onto the rocket rising through
the atmosphere and immediately began to send target airspeed, altitude,
direction, acceleration, and flight path data to targeting computers. The
computers immediately fed the data to the gimbaled turret in the nose of the
AL-52, and the turret unstowed itself from inside the bomber’s nose and turned
and swiveled until the laser’s telescope and four-foot-diameter mirror were
aimed at the rocket. The pilots could feel a slight rumbling under their toes
as the huge fifteen-foot-high turret slewed toward the target, but otherwise it
did not affect the flight characteristics of the heavy bomber.
When
all this information was received, processed, analyzed, and instructions
sent—eight seconds after target detection—Patrick received a simple “LASER
READY” computerized voice in his headphones. “Cockpit’s ready for launch.”
“Roger.
COIL in attack mode ... now.”
The
attack was purely automatic—there was no big red “FIRE” button anywhere on the
plane. The laser radar system instantaneously measured the exact size of the
SS-12 rocket and aimed the laser at the rocket motor section, the point of
maximum pressure on the missile. The laser radar also provided an atmospheric
correction to the laser telescope’s deformable mirror to adjust for temperature
gradients from the Dragon to the target. Finally, the big COIL, or
chlorine-oxygen-iodine laser, fired. A four-foot-diameter beam of high-energy
laser light shot from the nose of the AL-52 and was focused by the deformable
mirror down to a spot the size of a basketball on the motor section of the
first rocket. The beam was completely invisible to the cockpit crew—they could
see the mirror turret moving slightly, tracking the target, but nothing else.
Patrick
switched the large full-color supercockpit display on the right-side instrument
panel to the telescope view. He was now looking right down the barrel of the
laser, watching an optical presentation of what the laser attack computer was
looking at. The SA-10 missile was clearly visible, tracked and illuminated by
the laser radar arrays and focused to razor-sharp clarity by the deformable
mirror. The crosshairs in the center of the display were dead on the rear
one-third of the missile—the center of the SA- 10’s rocket motor. Patrick
increased the magnification and was even able to read markings on the side of
the missile.
As
the missile flew higher and higher in the sky, its thermodynamic pressures were
building as well—pressure from the force of the engines, pressure from the
atmosphere, pressure from gravity, pressure from building speed, and pressure
created by the guidance system acting through the rocket’s fins and gyros.
Finally, the heat from the laser burned through the missile’s skin enough that
the skin surrounding the motor section couldn’t contain the immense internal
pressures or structurally hold the outside air pressures, and the missile
ripped apart like a rotten banana and exploded.
“Missile
destroyed!” Patrick shouted. “We got it!”
The
attack computer immediately shifted to the second SA-10 missile, launched seconds
after the first, and the result was just as successful and just as spectacular.
“Missile two destroyed! Towed array in standby . .. laser’s ready to shoot
again, all threats down. Hot damn!”
Sky
Masters Inc. needed a realistic real-world test of its airborne laser
technology, so Patrick McLanahan, overseeing the program, thought of the
easiest and fastest way to test it out—fly over a country that liked to shoot
missiles without warning and see if it worked.
Libya
filled the bill nicely.
Libya
had the best military hardware its oil
money could buy, and they were notorious for firing on stray aircraft without
warning. Plus, most of
Libya
south of
Tripoli
was open desert, so there was little risk
of anyone being hurt by falling debris or misses—or, if the test didn’t work,
falling pieces of the AL-52 Dragon.
“Have
we had enough, boss?” Franken asked. “I sure have.”
“I
don’t want to hang around here any more than I have to, Bud,” Patrick said.
“But I’d sure like to wring the laser out a little more.” At that moment, both
crew members received a warning message on their threat receiver, one of the
multifunction displays in the center of the Dragon’s instrument panel. “Just
got swept by fighter radar,” Patrick said. “I think it might be time to head
home.”
“Good
deal,” Franken said. He started a slow left turn to the north, mindful of the
towed array still extended behind them—they could easily turn quickly enough to
wrap themselves up in their own array’s cable. “Just keep those puppies off
us.”
“LADAR
coming on,” Patrick said. He activated the laser radar for only a few seconds,
but the laser radar’s power and tight resolution drew an amazingly detailed
picture of all air targets within a hundred miles. “We’ve got a flight of two MiG-29
interceptors, coming from
Tripoli
,” Patrick said. “When you roll out, they’ll be at your nine- thirty
position, sixty-one miles, high. Heading zero-one- zero will put them at your
nine o’clock
.” The pulse-Doppler radar on the MiG-29,
another Libyan purchase from the Russians, could not detect a target with a
closure rate equal to the aircraft airspeed.