by F X Holden
“Who do you have on station?” Bruning asked.
Racine checked his screen, looking for patrolling fighters. “Filial 3 and Filial 4, about twenty minutes from an intercept. Sooner if they light their asses.”
Bruning looked up from his work, “No rush son, sounds like a civilian flight, probably hunters or trappers that didn’t file a plan.”
Another chime sounded in his ears and Racine looked down at his screen. The unidentified aircraft was descending now, moving through nine thousand nine to nine thousand eight. “It seems to be descending slowly now sir, moving through nine eight zero to nine seven.”
Bruning was tempted to give the guy an earful, but it was only his second week and he needed him sharp and motivated in about an hour when that C130 was coming in. He put on a patient tone, “Do the math Airman. On that heading, at that airspeed and rate of descent, where might it be landing?”
Racine frowned. It was still a hundred miles out, so it could be making for FAI, Fairbanks’ civilian airfield. Racine zoomed his screen out and started looking for commercial airfields on the bearing of the UI aircraft. FAI was the logical destination for sure, but it was too far to the north-east. So on a hunch, he called up national park cabins that had dirt airstrips alongside them. Bam. He put his finger on the screen. “I got the Harding Birch River Cabin strip right about where that glide slope would bottom out Sir,” Racine announced.
“Poachers,” Bruning spat. Bruning was a hunter too, but he was one of the dumb ones who paid his license. “Cheeky sons of bitches, think they can just sneak in at dawn, bag a moose or bear, get out again at dusk and no one will know. Make me sick.” A thought suddenly crossed his mind. “Those fighters doing anything critical?”
Racine called up the mission orders for Filial 3 and 4. “Night flight instrument checks sir,” he said.
“Good, let’s give them something more interesting to do. Tell them there is an unauthorized civilian flight approaching Eielson and give them an intercept. Once they get eyeballs on it, I want them to scare the shit out of whoever is in that plane.”
“Sir?”
“Tell them to turn it around Racine,” Bruning explained. “Back to wherever it came from. With prejudice.”
Rodriguez checked her watch. It was go time. There wasn’t anything more she could do to get her people ready to recover the drone when it splashed down, so she walked over to the trailer and opened the door, stepping into a tight atmosphere of sweat and adrenaline.
Listening, she soon heard why.
O’Hare wasn’t the one sweating, even though she was flying both as pilot and systems operator. What made US drone tactics possible were the huge advances in data compression of the last few years, which had reduced satellite comms lag from seconds to milliseconds, while also increasing a hundredfold the volume of data that could be flung through the ether. But even a lag time of milliseconds meant leaving most of the actual flying to the drone AI once it was out of ‘line of sight’, and Bunny still had a half-dozen screens to watch as they fed her tracking and targeting data, plus a hundred combat software routines at her fingertips ready to feed down the line. It troubled her not at all. As a child of the ‘continuous partial attention generation’ she had mental bandwidth she hadn’t even tapped yet.
“Being painted by long-distance ground-based radar again sir,” Bunny said.
“Those fighters still closing?” Halifax asked.
“Yes sir. Can’t be precise with passive array sir but I’d say 110 to 120 miles out. Still only at cruising speed, they’re not in any hurry. They’ll be in weapons range in five minutes.”
“Damn,” Halifax said. “They’re onto you.”
Rodriguez smiled. Halifax was worried he was about to get 80 million dollars’ worth of drone shot out of the sky but to Rodriguez it sounded like Bunny’s mission was going exactly to plan.
“Light your IFF as soon as those F-35s get into weapons range,” Halifax told Bunny, referring to the Identify Friend or Foe system that told the US and NATO aircraft and ground defense systems they were looking at an ally, not an enemy.
“But then we lose, Eielson wins sir,” O’Hare said. “With respect, I got this.”
Halifax ignored her. He was leaning over O’Hare’s shoulder, looking intently at a screen, “One minute ten to missile launch point,” he said.
“Yes sir,” O’Hare replied.
“Those F-35s are three minutes from weapons range,” Halifax said.
“Said I got it sir,” O’Hare said calmly.
“The window is too tight, Lieutenant,” Halifax said through gritted teeth. “Pull up your wheels, light your tail and start squawking, this mission is a bust.”
“Still seeing daylight sir,” Bunny said, not at all phased by having her senior CO riding shotgun on her. “I’m entering max range. It will be so much more convincing inside the 90 percent certainty zone.”
“Best leave the pilot to do her work sir,” Rodriguez interjected gently.
Rodriguez could see Halifax wanted to say more, but he bit his lip and turned to Rodriguez, looking worried, “I really wanted this scalp Air Boss.”
Rodriguez winked at him. “Fat lady hasn’t sung yet sir.”
“Who you calling fat, ma’am?” Right on cue, Bunny started a running commentary. “GPS and inertial targeting locked. Twenty seconds to air-ground standoff missile release,” Bunny’s fingers danced across her keyboard like a pianist playing an arpeggio as she cued up a simulated hypersonic High Speed Strike Weapon, or HSSW. “Cudas in passive mode, also locked on targets. Ten seconds.” Her hands lifted from her flight keyboard to her weapons system console. “Get ready on the comms sir,” she said over her shoulder to Halifax. “Opening bay doors.”
Rodriguez noticed for the first time that Halifax had a hand-held comms unit in his hand and he held it up to his mouth. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see it shaking a little, with the amount of tension there was in the room.
“Three-two-one … HSSW away,” Bunny said coolly, punching some keys. “Initiating egress. Wheels and flaps up, going to Mach speed. Engaging red fighters!” The screen in front of her, her simulated cockpit, was completely dark, no horizon, not even a star showing to help her orient herself. But the ghostly green circle of her heads-up instruments display spun giddily as she ordered the drone to come around and pointed it at the incoming fighter patrol.
Bunny’s virtual-reality heads-up display was made possible by a combination of quantum computation and AI imputation. The advances in data compression technology in the last ten years had enabled drones like the F-47 to squirt an almost real-time video and data feed from their onboard cameras and instruments up to a lurking satellite or airborne control aircraft and down to their ground station. This technological leap had been coupled with advances in data processing and imaging which meant that the F-47 could take what its cameras were seeing and then based on the inputs sent to it by the pilot on the ground, project the effect of those inputs onto the cockpit virtual reality simulation the pilot was working with and show them what the F-47 would be seeing and doing when their control inputs were acted on. It was a little like low tech time travel but it meant that for all intents and purposes the control system lag introduced by pilot and drone being hundreds of miles apart was ‘virtually’ eliminated. Not enough for real-time air combat, but more than enough for recon or ground attack work. It also meant that for observers not sitting with their heads inside a virtual-reality helmet, seeing what the pilot was seeing, a 2D tactical view of any engagement could be projected onto a screen showing low-rez simulated recon imagery, targeting video, battlefield events and friendly and enemy dispositions in near real time.
“Light them up Lieutenant,” Rodriguez ordered, giving O’Hare permission to engage the two F-35s on an intercept course for what they probably still thought was a civilian light plane.
“Yes ma’am, lighting up active targeting radar. I have a lock on two targets. I have tone. Permission to
fire?”
“Kill them dead Bunny,” Rodriguez said grimly.
“Fox one through four … Cudas away! Bugging out,” O’Hare said. “Turning on IFF. IFF squawking.” On the tactical screens they watched the simulated missiles track and then wink out as they reached their silicon designated targets and kill probabilities were calculated. Bunny couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of her voice as numbers flashed on the screen. “Ground target kill confirmed, air target kills confirmed. All yours sir!” Bunny said to Halifax.
Rodriguez watched Bunny’s heads-up display spin again as she rolled her drone on its back and bullied it down to treetop height at a speed sure to rip the crowns off the trees it was blasting over.
Halifax sucked a big breath through his cheeks, then winked at Rodriguez.
“Eielson tower, this is US Navy Commander Justin Halifax of Navy unit NCTAMS-A4. You have just been put through a Pentagon authorized exercise. My F-47 Fantom strike fighter just successfully fired a nuclear-armed hypersonic missile at your control tower. You are dead. Everyone within a twenty-mile radius of your base is dead. The two pilots wandering through the sky toward an intercept with my Fantom, wondering what the hell just happened, are also dead. I’m terribly sorry Eielson. I have a hard time imagining what s-hole they might post you to that’s worse than Eielson Air Force base, so let’s just agree I did you a favor. Please acknowledge.”
“This is Eielson tower. Message received. Screw you Navy.”
“Confirmed Eielson, my respects to your commanding officer. Rest in Peace. Halifax out.” He grinned and patted Bunny on her shoulder. “Nice job officers. I’m going topside. The fun is just starting.”
Airman Racine, like everyone around him, was staring dumbfounded at the grey dawn sky as if it had answers for him.
He was still trying to process what had happened. It had seemed like everything had happened at once, so trying to remember it was like trying to recreate a crime scene.
First, the screaming warning tone coming out of his command console. He had taken a second to realize what it was, before he half stood and turned to Bruning with a frown. “Missile inbound?” He looked back at his screen. “Simulation, Sir!”
“Oh shit,” Bruning said, going pale. His tablet fell from his fingers.
“Attack Radar!” the voice of the flight leader of the F-35 patrol screamed over the tower audio system. “Eielson we are being actively tracked by radar. Missiles inbound! Filial 4, deploy countermeasures! Break low!”
Racine bent to his screen, looking for the missile tracks on his monitor. There! “Simulated Sir!” he yelled. “It’s all a simulation!”
Bruning put his hand to his forehead and reached for the comms button at his throat.
On the screen in front of him, nothing made sense to Airman Racine. He watched as the blip designating the civilian light aircraft suddenly changed color and flashed a US Navy IFF code, accelerated to mach 1.5 and then… disappeared.
“Filial leader, stand down, I repeat stand down, you are seeing simulated launches,” Bruning said. “I repeat, this is Eielson Tower, you have been subjected to a simulated attack.”
“Sir?” Racine asked, looking from Bruning to the other Airman at his console and not seeing any answers. He heard heavy breathing over the tower audio from the fighter pilots as they regained control of their aircraft and their composure. “That civilian flight, it was a Navy…” Racine tried to explain.
“Eielson, you better explain,” came the tight voice of the F-35 flight leader.
Bruning almost spat the words, “Eielson Tower to Filial Leader; an unknown Navy aircraft just fired an air-to-ground missile at us, and then attacked you with air-to-air missiles. Our systems show all launches were executed in simulation mode. That is all I know at this point Captain.”
There was a moment of silence then the voice of the F-35 flight leader came through again, “Give me a vector for an intercept Eielson,” he demanded. “We owe this prick some payback.”
Bruning clicked his fingers at Racine but he just shrugged. “I have nothing sir,” he said. He looked back at his monitor to be sure, but it was gone. “Can’t even confirm an aircraft type, only that it was stealth. It launched, flashed a Navy IFF code, went Mach 1 and then disappeared.”
“Eielson tower to Filial leader, no business for you sir,” Bruning said, sitting down at his keyboard and screen. “The attacking aircraft has gone dark. Got nothing on radar. I’m pulling satellite infrared but that will take time.”
They never heard the fighter pilot’s acerbic response because right then a voice came over the encrypted interservice channel.
“Eielson tower, this is US Navy Commander Justin Halifax…”
In their trailer, Rodriguez watched as Bunny used terrain-following radar to pick her way out of the target area and head for the coast. It would soon be light enough for optical satellites to pick her up and track her using high-speed motion detection algorithms but she no longer cared. The main reason she was trying to stay low and stealthy was to make sure she didn’t get two extremely pissed off Air Force F35s on her tail. She had nothing on her passive sensors, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She had a suspicion those Air Force jet jockeys could be so mad they would even consider putting a missile up the tailpipe of her drone and claim fog of war later.
Once her kite went ‘feet wet’ south of Anchorage she turned it back up the coast toward Little Diomede and gave the AI autonomous control. She leaned back, pulled up her virtual-reality visor and blew air out of her cheeks.
“Are all Australians as crazy as you O’Hare?” Rodriguez asked, letting a little admiration leak into her voice.
“Oh yeah, comes from growing up swimming with sharks, ma’am,” O’Hare grinned.
“If the Russians don’t find this base and wipe it out, then the damn Air Force will, you just made sure of that.”
“They can try ma’am,” Bunny said. “But by then you’ll have twenty Fantoms online for me, right?”
Her adrenaline-fueled smile was infectious and Rodriguez let her enjoy it. “We’ll do our best to keep up, pilot.”
Bunny reached her arms above her head and cracked her fingers, “Thank you ma’am. But that was the easy part. I still have to fly that bugger through a hole in a cliff the size of a carpark entrance and land it in a Pond smaller than the lake in Central Park. There’s no A.I. alive that will fly itself straight at a hole in a wall.”
“My newly won admiration will be sorely tried if you break one of my Fantoms,” Rodriguez warned.
“Define ‘break’ for me Boss,” Bunny quipped.
The recovery was almost as nerve-wracking for Rodriguez as the attack had been for Halifax. Using the low energy radio array buried in the sea floor off Little Diomede, O’Hare could assume manual control of the drone as it made its final approach toward the island. For the last mile the autopilot voice kept intoning, Terrain warning, pull up! Terrain warning, pull up!
“Can’t you shut that off?” Rodriguez asked her.
“You stop hearing it after the first hundred times,” Bunny replied. The virtual-reality visor in front of her eyes had her full focus. Through the nose camera on the drone and the picture it was throwing up on Rodriguez’s 2D tactical screen, the cave entrance looked impossibly small.
The main reason Bunny was co-located under the Rock was to teach the drone AI how to take off, but more importantly, how to land a Fantom at sea level through a hole in a cliff face. It wasn’t a flight maneuver you could code, in fact, the act of flying straight at a hole in a solid wall at sea level was something the AI had been taught specifically not to do. The Fantom’s prototype AI was a learning system, but it needed to be taught and Bunny was the teacher.
The engineers had looked at various ways to try to hide the water level cave entrance, but in the end, they decided that as it had been there for hundreds of years, it would arouse more suspicion if it suddenly disappeared. So they had made do with widening the diameter enough t
hat it was two Fantom wingspans, or about 120 feet wide. They had blasted away about four feet of the floor at the mouth of the cave but they were worried about the integrity of the rock above if they went too hard, so the water at the cave entrance was too shallow to take the impact of a Fantom landing on skis.
So what Bunny had to do, what she’d spent all that simulator time practicing and had managed to do for real on a couple of test flights before the Cat was taken off line, was to glide the Fantom into the maw of the cave, float it over the rock ledge at the entrance to the Slot just above a stall, and then drop it hard into the water so that it had almost as much downward velocity as forward, and hope it wouldn’t dig in a ski and go cartwheeling across the Pond to explode in a hydrogen-fuelled fireball. The drone automatically dropped a small drogue into the water on landing to stop it from yawing and to provide extra drag - so if she did it right, the two hundred feet of water in the Pond should be more than enough to pull up in. She had reverse thrusters if she needed to pull up fast, but they were just as likely to send the Fantom ass-first to the bottom if she hit them too hard.
This would be her fourth real-life landing. The software engineers had told her the AI would need to sample from a hundred landings in order to be able to take over the job itself. And the occasional non-terminal screw-up would actually also be useful, so they didn’t want her being too careful. Which was another thing that made Bunny just perfect for her job.
As the Slot loomed closer on Bunny’s simulated cockpit view, Rodriguez knew better than to disturb her again. Even if it did look like she was bringing the Fantom in a little…
“Low and slow dammit,” Bunny said to herself, her left hand pushing forward a little on the throttle. “Come on baby. Time to come home.” She hit a key combination. “Skis down and locked.”
Rodriguez pulled her eyes away from the screens inside the trailer and fixed them on the grey-white Slot on the other side of the Pond through which the Fantom was about to appear.