“Go ahead. You can say what you want about Bob Rodriquez, but he’s a great role model for taking new businesses and turning them into profit makers. Go for it.”
Harry was delighted. This was exactly what Tom needed, a mission, something he could take on and claim for his own, something that hadn’t been set up for him to do by Nancy or, worse, by Rodriquez.
“OK, I’m on it. And let’s get back to those black programs that we know Lockheed and Northrop are working. What can we find out about them?”
Harry was on the spot. Lockheed had called him in five years before, when the Air Force held its competition for a new aircraft that would be difficult for radar to see. The problem was that it was so secret that he could not even tell Tom without violating his oath. He had never even told his father—it was just too hush-hush. The situation was ludicrous, Tom was perfectly reliable, yet Harry was so conscious of the importance of what he was doing that he could not bring himself to give the secret away, not even to his brother.
“Well, you know Lockheed had a soft spot in its heart for Dad. Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich were always concerned about how you were doing in Vietnam. If Creech has Lockheed working on something, it has to be in the Skunk Works. Let me talk to Kelly and see if I can get something for us.”
Tom nodded, and Harry felt another jerk of conscience. Even his last statement had been a bit of a lie. For some reason, Kelly was not a true believer in the new project, but Ben Rich was, and it was Ben who had hired him. Telling Tom he’d talk to Kelly was just a ruse, one he felt badly about.
Harry was about to walk out the door when he suddenly changed his mind. Tom was trustworthy, and this might be the sort of thing that would help bring him round.
“Tom, I’ve been bullshitting you. We’ve already got a handle on the project at Lockheed, and up to now, I haven’t told you about it because, naturally, I’m sworn to secrecy; it’s a black program. But if something happened to me, you’d need to know, and since you brought it up, I’m going to tell you. But you have to swear to me you’ll never tell a soul that I mentioned this to you, not even after I get you cleared at Lockheed to discuss it. You’ve got to let on that everything you learn is absolutely new to you. Otherwise Kelly and Ben would come down on me like a ton of bricks and we’d be shoved out the door of the Skunk Works. Nobody, absolutely nobody, can know that I’m telling you this.”
Tom was torn between being pissed off at being treated like an outsider and being elated to learn they already had an in on something he knew had to be important. He decided to roll gracefully with the news. “Of course. I’ll never say a word to anybody.”
Filled with guilty remorse, Harry came back to the desk and, in a low voice, said, “You know how the SR-71 is shaped. What you might not know is that its shape is not only for speed, it is also an attempt to reduce its radar signature. The shape, with the help of some of the radar-absorbing materials they used, succeeded in that. A B-52 has a radar cross section of more than a thousand square feet. Kelly cut that down to about eleven square feet in the SR-71. It was a tremendous achievement, especially at the speeds at which the SR-71 flies. By the time enemy radar picks the SR-71 up, it’s already gone past, out of range.”
“Yeah, but the enemy was always able to track the SR-71. They fired a lot of missiles at it. So it wasn’t perfect, even though they never hit it.”
“No, that’s right, and worse, the Soviets spent a lot of money improving their radar network, getting their SAMs faster firing, and so on, just because of the SR-71. So what the Air Force wants is an airplane that will be invisible to radar. But it also has to be invisible to infrared seekers, and to sound detection, too. That’s what we are working on. An airplane with a radar signature so low that it is virtually invisible electronically.”
Tom snorted. “That’s nuts. You’ll never be able to do it.”
“That’s what Kelly Johnson thinks, too. But Ben Rich is taking over from Kelly, and he’s staking his reputation on the idea. And back in 1973, the Air Force held a competition to see if a real stealth airplane was possible. They named the project ‘Have Blue.’ Northrop and some other companies competed for it, and Lockheed was not even invited to enter. But you know the Skunk Works, they never give up and they elbowed their way in. Lockheed and Northrop won. Then in the runoff for what they were calling the XST, the Lockheed entry was so much better than the Northrop entry that it was no contest. Northrop figured that it had to be stealthy from the front and below—Lockheed tried to make it stealthy from all angles—and they won the contest and built the prototypes. And just to give you an idea of how they regarded the airplane, the XST stood for ‘Experimental Survivable Test Bed’ meaning they thought it would be enough if the pilot survived flying it.”
Tom laughed and Harry went on.
“It was the first plane designed by electrical engineers instead of aircraft designers; it had every stability sin in the book—longitudinal, directional, pitch-up, pitch-down, you name it. They joked that the only thing it didn’t do was tip back on its tail when it was parked.”
“How long have you been involved?”
“For about five years now. I’m running a very small subsection of the project, trying to speed up the construction of the test vehicles, mostly by selecting already manufactured parts for the prototypes, you know, picking the gear from a Northrop F-5, and the fly-by-wire system from the F-16, and so on. But I’ve put three carefully selected scientists on our staff at Palmdale, people who have tremendous math backgrounds, way beyond our capability. It takes people like that to understand what is going on.”
Harry watched Tom closely. This was the sort of thing that, properly handled, might put Tom back in the saddle, directing things and making projects happen.
It was working. There was a new light in Tom’s eyes as he asked, “Well, what’s the theory behind it? Am I smart enough to learn if you tell me, or you too dumb to make me understand it?”
“Both, Tom. But I’ll get someone in who can teach us both more about it. It won’t be fun, but it’s got to be done.”
“Who are you thinking of?”
Harry smiled. “This will floor you, Tom, but it’s V. R. He’s been working the test program, even doing a little flying.”
The old Tom surfaced, his face red with anger.
“Goddammit, my son and my brother in on a project, and nobody tells me! Sure, I’m just a shot-up old crock, but it looks like you could have given me a clue. How you two must have yakked it up behind my back.”
“Tom, you know V. R. loves you more than anything and respects you as much as he loves you. So do I. When you get the full story, you’ll see why we kept it quiet. And you’ll see that I’ve really stuck my neck out here, tonight. This whole thing is potentially bigger than the Manhattan Project in terms of its effect on warfare. It’s not something you can talk about lightly. Especially for V. R., just at the start of his career. Wait till he briefs you. You’ll see what I mean.”
Tom snorted, subsiding as he usually did when he realized he was making a jerk of himself.
“We’ll see if I see.”
December 31, 1978
Palos Verdes, California
JILL SHANNON TRIED to preserve the traditions that Vance had established, and every New Year’s Eve held the same sort of party where Vance enjoyed recounting the year’s events and the progress of his firm.
This year she decided to skip the business part. Nancy was still wounded from being forced out of the company’s management. And worse, it was already obvious that there had been a dramatic improvement since Harry had taken over the reins.
Jill was looking forward to meeting the newest member of the family, V. R.’s new wife, Ginny. Although she had firmly resisted marriage for three years, Ginny finally gave in and eloped with V. R. the previous February. Jill understood her reluctance to marry V. R. Anybody marrying a Shannon man was going to play second fiddle to flying, and Ginny was too strong-willed for that—or so she though
t. Even though V. R. was stationed somewhere in Nevada, in all the long months since the marriage he had not come home once with his bride.
So it was just as well that the Rodriquez family no longer attended, even though Mae worked for Nancy. Love of work, rather than flying, had broken up their marriage, and the last thing Ginny needed was another bad example of a ruined relationship. She had invited them all, but Bob, Sr., had not responded, and Mae had declined. Curiously, his son, Rod, accepted with obvious pleasure. He seemed determined to somehow build a bridge back between his father and the Shannons.
As always, she concentrated on the food and drink, serving Korbel champagne for those who drank and a nonalcoholic punch for Anna and Harry. This year she had started out with a Mexican theme, got overwhelmed making the tamales, and ended up having a caterer from San Diego’s Old Town come in to handle everything. As she watched them setting up, she knew that Vance was looking down, shaking his head at the choice of food and the expense of having a caterer.
Jill was ill at ease for another reason. Earlier in the day, Harry had appeared with a strange little man who had a lot of electronic gear and proceeded to “sweep” the house. Harry explained to her that he was having a briefing later for Tom and V. R., and that he had to be sure the house wasn’t “bugged.” The term wasn’t new to her, but she associated it more with spiders than spies.
The evening went well until about nine o’clock, with Ginny—five foot four, blond, and with a great sense of humor—charming everyone, particularly Tom, who seemed quite smitten with her. The only awkward moment came when Harry said that they had some business to take care of in Vance’s private study, a little room off the library where he had a safe and kept his most confidential papers. He looked apologetically at Rod and said, “I’m sure you understand this is a business matter—I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t invite you in with us.”
“Harry, don’t think a thing about it. I’m just going to talk to Ginny, drink some champagne, and have another run at the buffet.”
It was apparent that he didn’t mind, that he had a mission other than business there tonight, and that mission was reconciliation.
Harry went in, followed by Tom and V. R., and shut the door.
“He’s a nice kid; I hope he can talk some sense into his dad.”
Tom snorted and Harry went on. “As I told you, Tom, I went to Ben Rich to ask if V. R. could brief you on stealth. He told me to go to it.”
V. R. was hesitant at first, not wishing to sound like a know-it-all in front of his father, an ace in two—and maybe three—wars, and a hero for surviving every nasty thing the North Vietnamese could do to a prisoner of war. But he had done the scariest flying of his life in the Lockheed Have Blue prototype, and the subject fascinated him.
“First of all, I’ll give you a nonmathematician’s point of view. There have been half a dozen people involved in creating a stealth aircraft. It all started with the work of a brilliant Russian mathematician who came up with the original formulas, and has no idea how we are using them. Then a genius named Denys Overholser was the first guy to understand what the Russian scientist paper signified as it applied to aircraft. He worked with Bill Schroeder, a Lockheed retiree who came up with the computer program to use the Russian’s math.
“Schroeder figured out that a three-dimensional aircraft could be constructed by ‘faceting,’ using a series of flat panels placed so that they reflected radar waves away from the aircraft.”
V. R. could tell by Tom’s blank expression that he wasn’t being understood. He glanced at Harry imploringly, and Harry said, “It turns out that if you build an aircraft out of flat plates that are always at thirty degrees to any incoming radar beam, you’ll get a stealth aircraft.”
Tom replied, “Yeah, but how the hell do you get an airplane built like that to fly?”
“That’s been the problem, Dad. They came up with what looks like a paper airplane, but in three dimensions, and it would be impossible to fly it without the modern computers that react faster than a pilot can.”
Harry broke in. “This is where Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich disagreed. Kelly just didn’t believe you could get an operational aircraft shaped like the drawings they were using to fly. And he didn’t believe the idea would work. But Ben put his neck on the line. This is his first big program on his own; if he makes it, it will be a cash cow for Lockheed for decades. But if he fails—he will be out on his ear.”
V. R. went on. “And remember, it’s not just the shape of the aircraft. They cover it with radar absorbent material they call ‘RAM,’ and it absorbs the radar energy that is not reflected away.”
Tom nodded. “OK, give me a break. If all this works, how big is the airplane on the radar screens?”
“You mean how much of a radar signature does it have? Let me tell you a story. Ben Rich went into a briefing at the Pentagon, knowing he’d be asked that question. Now, he’s not talking the prototypes anymore, not the ‘Have Blues’ as we’ve called them. Instead he’s talking about a full-fledged fighter-bomber, equipped with missiles, bombs, whatever. When the general asked him, ‘How big a radar signature does your airplane have,’ Ben rolled a ball bearing the size of a marble on his desk and said, ‘Here’s the observability of our airplane on your radar.’ Naturally, they didn’t believe him. But he was right, and testing proved it. Faceting and RAM gets the whole airplane’s radar signature down to the size of a marble. It’s incredible.”
Tom shook his head. “V. R., how dangerous is this? I don’t want you getting killed flying some crazy invisible airplane.”
“It’s no joke, Dad. Flying these Have Blue prototypes is dangerous, no question about it. We’ve lost one already; Bill Park was the pilot, and he didn’t get hurt, thank God. They don’t have the computer capability of the full-size airplane, and there were a lot of shortcuts taken to get them in the air. But the real fighter bomber that Ben has planned won’t be much more dangerous than any modern fighter. And in combat, it will be a lot safer, because the radar and the SAMs won’t be able to see it. Anybody flying in to bomb an enemy will have a free ride.”
V. R. laughed and said, “Actually, I’m in more danger of getting hurt by Ginny, for being away from her all the time. This thing is so secret, Dad, that they keep the remaining Have Blue inside its hangar almost all the time. When they know a Soviet spy satellite is making a pass, they keep it covered. And when they do roll it out for a flight, everyone on the field not cleared for the program has to go into a windowless mess hall and wait until we take off. Same for when we come back to land.”
Tom pressed V. R. for some more details on his experiences flying the Have Blue prototypes, but they had reached a point where V. R. finally had to say, “Dad, I’ve told you all I can tell you. You’ll learn more in a few years when all this is unclassified, but right now, I’ve got to stop.”
With that, Tom turned to Harry and asked, “Where’s the money in this? How can we profit out of this program?”
“That’s the name of the game, isn’t it? Right now it looks like they won’t buy too many of the new fighter-bomber. It’s just too expensive, and still unproven. But the ones they do buy will need lots of maintenance, particularly keeping their radar signature down. Any little thing—a gap in the landing-gear door covers, a crack in the RAM, and all of a sudden it shows up on the radar screen like a full-size airplane. So they will take lots of tender loving care between missions. I don’t think the Air Force can afford to set up a full maintenance program for so small a number of airplanes, and that’s where I think we can cash in. We’ll subcontract to Lockheed to do the maintenance on the airplanes, wherever they are in the world. We can charge an arm and a leg, and it will still be cheaper to the Air Force than fielding its own specialized maintenance people.”
Tom was still dubious. “A, the new plane has to fly. B, we have to get the contracts.”
“We’ll get from A to B, don’t you worry, Tom. It’s C, I’m worrying about.”
“What’s ‘C’?”
“There’s another stealth aircraft in the works, a bigger airplane, a bomber. And guess who’s competing this time? Lockheed and Northrop again. We have to get our share of that contract, too, when the time comes.”
Tom shook his head.
“I’d give anything to have Dad listening in on this, and telling us what to do.”
March 12, 1979
The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
DENNIS JENKINS WALKED slowly for a change, glad to submerge himself in the milling throng that crowded the Pentagon’s mini-mall, a collection of stores that sold everything from aspirin (in big demand) to books (less so) to a wide selection of fast but not very good foods. Like the Pentagon’s inner courtyard, it wasn’t really away from the Pentagon, but it was different enough to offer a little escape from the long fluorescent lit corridors all jammed with uniformed figures running from one meeting to the next.
Steve O’Malley was waiting for him, wolfing down a hot dog and holding a cardboard cup of soda in his hand. Between O’Malley and his other boss, Bob Rodriquez, they kept Jenkins on the run across the country and around the world. ActOn was no longer a small company, but O’Malley and Rodriquez still ran it as if it were a mom and pop store, with their eyes on every detail.
“You heard the news about GPS, Dennis?”
Jenkins nodded. A Navy Lockheed P-3B Orion had flown from Hawaii to Moffett Field in six hours the day before, using the new NAVSTAR GPS satellite system. GPS revolutionized navigation—all the old techniques from the sextant to LORAN were now obsolete.
“It’s the first olive out of the bottle, Steve. Pretty soon everybody will be using GPS. Why, they’ll be sticking GPS in dog collars so you can tell where your mutt is when he runs away. Wives will be slipping GPS into their husbands’ cars, so they’ll know where they go at night.”
Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age) Page 9