by Jim DeFelice
Collateral Damage
( Dreamland - 14 )
Jim Defelice
Dale Brown
The technology is perfect… until it's not
The fires still burn in Libya years after the fall of Gaddafi, forcing NATO to intervene in a new war that could have devastating consequences for the volatile region. But something has gone terribly wrong with a "foolproof" new superweapon, resulting in the shocking deaths of innocents.
The latest military miracle to come out of the Whiplash group was designed to eliminate any possibility of human error — yet civilians die when a computer-controlled UAV drone inexplicably goes rogue while the whole world watches. Now the entire Whiplash program is under fire, as the weapon's creator heads into the blistering heat of the conflict to discover if sabotage caused his infallible machine to fail. But there's an enemy waiting for him, determined to unleash more chaos and terror and death — which sends pilot Turk Mako to the skies once more to prove that, in the heat of battle, a skilled ace can do what no computer…
Dale Brown, Jim DeFelice
Collateral Damage
Dreamland: Duty Roster
Setting
Libya, Sicily (Italy)
Key Players
Americans
Breanna Stockard, director DoD Office of Special Technology (Whiplash supervisor)
Jonathon Reid, special assistant to CIA deputy director (Whiplash supervisor)
Colonel Danny Freah, commander, Whiplash
Captain Turk Mako, U.S. Air Force pilot, assigned to Office Special Technology/Whiplash
Chief Master Sergeant Ben “Boston” Rockland, senior NCO, Whiplash
Ray Rubeo, president and CEO, Applied Intelligence, key contractor to the Office of Special Technology
Colonel Ginella Ernesto, commander A–10E squadron “Shooters”
President Christine Todd
Senator Jeff “Zen” Stockard
The Rebels
Princess Idris al-Nussoi, leader of the rebel alliance
Others
Foma Mitreski, Russian chief of station, Libya and northern Africa
Neil Kharon, freelance technical operative employed by Russians
MALFUNCTION
1
Over Libya
The vision unfolding before Turk Mako’s eyes was one part natural beauty and one part high-tech phenomenon. Flying over central Libya at just under the speed of sound, he had a 360-degree view of the desert and scrubland that made up the country’s interior. He could see every detail — leaves on low bushes starting to droop from the lack of water as the season turned dry, tumbled rocks that had been placed thousands of millennia ago by tectonic displacement, the parched side of an irrigation ditch abandoned to nature.
There were other things as well — the hull of an antiaircraft gun abandoned two years before, the picked bones of a body — not human — at the edge of a paved road that seemingly ran for miles to nowhere.
That was the ground. Turk had a similarly long and clear view of the sky as well — light blue, freckled with white in the distance, black retreating above as the sun edged upward in the east.
Turk saw all these things on a visor in his helmet. Though the images looked absolutely real, what he saw was actually synthesized from six different optical cameras placed around the fuselage of his aircraft. The image was supplemented by other sensors — infrared, radar — and augmented by interpretations from the computer that helped him fly the Tigershark II. The computer could provide useful information instantly, whether it was simply identifying captions for the aircraft flying with him — four small unmanned fighter-bombers known as Sabres — or analysis of objects that could be weapons.
For Turk, an Air Force test pilot assigned to the CIA — Department of Defense Office of Special Projects, the synthesized reality portrayed in his helmet was real. It was what war looked like.
He checked his instruments — an old-school habit for the young pilot, still in his early twenties. The computer would alert him to the slightest problem in the plane, or in his escorts.
Everything was “in the green”—operating at prime spec.
The planes he was guiding were two minutes from the start of their bombing run. Turk gestured with his hand, and instantly had a visual of the target.
“Zoom,” he told the computer.
As the screen began to change, a warning blared in his ears.
“Four aircraft, taking off from government airfield marked as A–3,” declared the computer. “Located at Ghat.”
Turk’s first thought was that it was a false alarm. He’d been flying the Tigershark and its accompanying Sabre unmanned attack planes over Libya for more than a week. Never in that time had he even gotten any indications of ground radar, let alone airplanes being scrambled. The alliance helping the rebel forces had established a strict no-fly zone in the northern portion of the country, and a challenge area in the rest of the country. The Libyan government air force had responded by keeping its planes on the ground practically everywhere, fearing they would be shot down.
When he realized it wasn’t a mistake, Turk’s next thought was that the planes weren’t coming for him — the Tigershark and the four UAVs she was guiding were relatively stealthy aircraft, difficult to detect even with the most modern radar. The Libyan government, which had inherited most of its equipment from Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, mostly relied on gear two decades old.
But the long-range scan in his helmet visor showed that the four Mirages taking off from the airfield were in fact headed in his direction.
All presumed hostile, declared the computer. It had automatically queried the planes’ friend or foe ID system and failed to find friendly matches. But even if that information hadn’t been available, it didn’t take much silicon to guess whose side they were on.
“Weapons ID on Bandits One through Four,” said Turk.
“All bandit aircraft similarly configured,” declared the computer. “Carrying four Matra Super 530F antiair radar missiles. Carrying two Sidewinder missiles. Sidewinder type not identified. Computing.”
The Matra Super missiles were medium-range, radar-guided antiaircraft weapons; while it wouldn’t be fair to call them impotent, they were many years old. Similar to American Sparrows, the missiles used a semiactive radar system, taking their initial target data from their launch ship. The missiles would then continue to home in on the reflected signal, following the radar to the kill.
There were several limitations with such a system, starting with the fact that the launch ship had to lock on its target and then stay in a flight pattern that would keep it illuminated for a fair amount of time. The latter often meant that it was making itself a target.
There was no indication yet that the enemy planes even knew the Tigershark and her four escorts were there. Finding the planes, let alone locking them up for missiles, was not easy. The Tigershark and the Sabres had radar profiles smaller than an F–35. In fact, Turk had a hard time believing that the Mirages even knew his flight was in the air — right up until the moment he got a missile launch warning.
He double-checked with the computer. The Mirages had not locked onto the Tigershark or any of the four attack planes flying with him. Nonetheless, the four missiles — one from each Mirage — were all heading in their direction.
While ostensibly under his control, the four robot aircraft took evasive maneuvers without waiting for him to react. They dove toward the ground, making it even harder for the enemy to track them. They also altered course slightly, further diminishing the radar profile the enemy might see.
While each Sabre had ECM capabilities — electronic countermeasures that could be used to confuse th
e enemy missiles — these remained off. Under some circumstances, using the ECMs would be counterproductive, tipping an opponent off to their presence and even showing him where the target aircraft was.
The Tigershark’s computer, meanwhile, began suggesting strategy for countering the attack. For Turk, this was the most annoying and intrusive aspect of the advanced flight system. He felt he was being lectured on what to do.
The fact that the computer was inevitably right only heightened the pain.
The computer suggested that he take a hard right turn, snapping onto a flight vector that would put his aircraft at a right angle to the incoming fighters. It then suggested another hard turn into them, where he would fire four AMRAAM-pluses. Missiles away, he would head back toward the UAVs.
He couldn’t have drawn it up better himself.
But was he allowed to shoot them down? His ROEs — rules for engagement — directed that he not fire until he found himself or other nearby allies “in imminent danger.”
Did this situation meet that standard?
If these guys couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn, would any situation ever meet that standard?
Turk called in to the air controller aboard an AWACS over the Mediterranean. He was handed off immediately to his supervisor, the acting “air boss” for the allied command.
“Four hostile aircraft, they have fired,” said Turk. “Am I cleared to engage?”
“Cleared hot,” the controller replied. “We see the launch — you are in imminent danger.”
“Roger. Copy. Tigershark engaging.”
While keeping the missiles in mind, Turk cut west to begin his attack on the planes. The Mirages split into two groups, one staying close to the original course north and the other vectoring about thirty degrees farther east.
Turk told the controller that he was ready to fire. Before the man could answer, the Mirages suddenly accelerated and fired more missiles.
“No lock,” added the computer, telling him that the missiles had been fired. Turk guessed that the pilots in the Libyan jets had only a vague idea where he was, and were trying to bluff him away — a foolish strategy, though not entirely without precedent.
“Cleared hot to engage,” reiterated the controller, just in case Turk had any doubts.
He did — he’d never shot down a real plane before — but that concern was far from his mind. His training had taken hold.
“Lock targets Three and Four,” Turk told the computer. “Lock enemy missile one. Compute target course. Prepare to fire.”
“Targets are locked.” Red boxes closed in around each of the enemy aircraft depicted in his helmet. “Ready to fire.”
Lined up on Mirage Three, Turk pressed the trigger. Within a nanosecond the Tigershark’s rail gun threw a bolt at the lead Mirage.
The weapon emitted a high-pitched vwoop as it fired, and the aircraft shook like a platform when a high-speed train shot by. As soon as the shot was away, Turk moved the aircraft slightly, hitting the next mark lined up on his targeting screen, which was playing in the pseudo-HUD at the center of his helmet visor.
Vwoop!
He had to turn for the missile, but it was still an easy shot.
Vwoop!
All three shots were bull’s-eyes; the projectiles hit their targets with less than.0003 percent deviation.
The projectile fired by the gun was relatively small, with a mass of only.7 kilograms — approximately a pound and a half. But the gun accelerated it at something in excess of 5,000 meters per second, giving the tungsten slug an enormous amount of kinetic energy — more than enough, in fact, to whip through the armor of a main battle tank.
In a conventional air battle, the pilot of a targeted jet might have many seconds and even minutes to react to a missile shot. He might employ a range of evasive maneuvers and countermeasures to ward off the incoming blow. In a head-on encounter at high speed, he would have the added advantage of a wide margin of error — in other words, even luck would be on his side.
In this case, luck wasn’t part of the equation. The pilots had no warning that the weapon had been fired; there was no signal from the Tigershark or the missile for the Mirages to detect. Traveling at close to two miles per second, the projectile reached the closest plane in a little more than ten seconds.
In a conventional air fight, a pilot hit by a missile would generally have several seconds to react and eject; under the best circumstances, he might even have time to try and wrestle some sort of control over the aircraft. But the rail gun’s bullet took that away. Under optimum conditions, which these were, the targeting computer fired at the most sensitive part of the airplane — the pilot himself.
Turk’s first shot struck through the canopy, went through the pilot, his ejection seat, and the floor of the jet.
The second plane was dealt a similar blow. The missile was hit head-on as well, igniting it.
Turk had no time to celebrate, and in fact was only vaguely aware of the cues that showed his bullets had hit home. Aiming for the two surviving Mirages, he corrected his course twenty-eight degrees, following the dotted line marked on the display. This took him another eight seconds, an eternity in combat, but he knew from training that the key was to move as gently and deliberately as possible; rushing to the firing solution often made things take far longer.
He got a tone and saw the red boxes closing around the two Mirages. He was shooting these from behind, though the gun computer was still able to aim at the canopies and pilots because he had an altitude advantage.
“Lock targets One and Two,” he told the computer.
“Targets locked.”
He pushed his trigger for target One. The gun flashed. The rail gun generated enormous heat, and its dissipation presented a number of engineering problems for the men and women who had designed the Tigershark. These were complicated problems of math and physics, so complex that the solutions were still being refined and perfected — the rail gun could only be fired a limited number of times before it needed to be stripped down and overhauled.
Turk’s presence here was part of the shakedown process. As part of the safety protocol, he was only allowed to fire the weapon two dozen times within a five-minute interval, and the safety precautions built into the weapon overrode any commands he might give.
The protocols weren’t a problem now. He lined up for his second shot, and pressed the trigger.
Turk felt a twinge of regret for his opponents. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, he assumed they were brave men and skilled pilots; they had no idea what kind of power and enemy they were facing. From their perspective, the sky ahead was clear. Then suddenly their companions exploded. Before they could react, their own worlds turned painfully black.
“All enemy aircraft destroyed.”
In the space of some forty-eight seconds, Turk had shot down four enemy planes, and a missile for good measure. Few if any pilots could make a claim even close.
Not bad for his first encounter with manned planes, ever.
He had a few seconds to savor the victory. Then three different voices began talking over one another in his radio, all asking essentially the same thing — what was the situation?
The voices belonged to the AWACS controller, the flight boss, and the French leader of an interceptor squadron charged with providing air cover for any airplanes in the sector.
The flight boss took precedence, though Turk in effect addressed them all, calmly giving his perspective on what had happened. The French flight, which had been vectored to meet the threat, changed course and flew toward the airfield the Mirages had launched from, just in case any other planes came up to avenge their comrades.
An Italian flight of Harrier jump jets was diverted from another mission farther west and tasked to bomb the control tower and hangars at the airfield, partly in retaliation and partly to make it more difficult for other jets to join the fray. Lastly, the controller ordered an American Predator and a British reconnaissance flight to att
empt to locate any survivors of the planes Turk had just shot out of the sky.
Turk asked the AWACS controller if he knew why the Mirages had scrambled in the first place. The controller’s supervisor, an American squadron leader who had rotated into the position from the combat line, indicated that the aircraft might have been spotted visually as they came south, something that had happened often in the very first week of the war. It was also possible they had been seen by a radar at sea, or by a supposedly neutral ship — the Russians had several in the Mediterranean that weren’t really neutral at all.
It was also possible, he added, that it was just bad luck — the planes took off, then happened to see an enemy.
Turk had his own theory: spies were watching the Sicily base and sending information back to Libya when different planes took off. It wouldn’t be too much more difficult for a spy to infiltrate the allied command responsible for targeting or scheduling the aircraft.
He had other worries at the moment. While he was engaging the Mirages, the Sabres had begun their programmed attack. Unlike older UAVs such as Predators and Raptors, or even the Dreamland-designed Flighthawks, the Sabres featured what the geeks called “distributed autonomous intelligence.” That actually involved two different features: first, the Sabres pooled resources (“distributed”), sharing not only their sensor data but their processing power; second, the Sabres were allowed to make their own battle decisions (“autonomous”). Not only did they decide the best route to battle, but they could pick their own targets.
This was highly controversial, even within the military. Robots were used all the time in battle, but a man ultimately pulled the trigger. While the aircraft were under Turk’s command and he could override at any point, they were every bit as capable a human pilot of fighting on their own.
The aircraft were targeting a government tank formation near Wadi al-Hayat. Located at the north side of a small cluster of hills, the camp looked out over a wide expanse of desert. There were several towns and villages in the area. These were claimed as loyal to the government, but that status was in doubt. If recent history was a guide, the inhabitants would join the rebels as soon as a sizable force got close. And that would happen once the tanks were destroyed.