On Glorious Wings

by Stephen Coonts

  It was truly the badlands this day. Sixteen men had already been “killed” in Powder River in one day.

  Men were “dying” because the Happy Hooligans from Fargo, North Dakota, were having an exceptionally good day. The 119th Fighter Interceptor Group was out in force, with four F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon air-defense fighters and two F-23 Wildcat advanced tactical fighters rotating shifts, plus two KC-10 aerial refueling tankers, and they were running rampant through the wide-open expanse of sky under Powder River MOA (Military Operating Areas) A and B.

  The training sorties, which they had been running for the past several weeks, were all a part of General Calvin Jarrel’s Strategic Warfare Center program designed to train the aircrews that made up the newly integrated First Air Battle Wing.

  Late on this particular afternoon, two F-23 Wildcat fighters were patrolling the Powder River MOA. In the lead was Colonel Joseph Mirisch, the deputy commander of operations of the 119th Fighter Interceptor Squadron from Fargo; his wingman was a relatively low-time Wildcat fighter named Ed Milo. After checking his wingman in, Mirisch took him over to the tactical intercept frequency and keyed his mike: “TOPPER, this is raider Two-Zero flight of two, bogey-dope.”

  No reply.

  “TOPPER, how copy?” Still no response. They were within range—what was going on here?

  On interplane frequency, Mirisch said, “I’ve got negative contact with the GCI controllers. Looks like we might be on our own.”

  “Two,” was Milo’s response.

  Mirisch tried a few more times to raise TOPPER, the call sign of their ground radar intercept team in the Strategic Range Training Complex, at the same time steering the formation toward the entry point of the military operating area. When they were at the right spot, Mirisch called out on an interplane, “Raider flight, still negative contact with GCI. Go to CAP orbit . . . now.”

  “Two,” Milo said. On Mirisch’s order, Milo made a hard left bank and executed a full 180-degree turn until he was heading southeast toward the center of the MOA, while Mirisch continued heading toward the entry point of the MOA. They would continue to orbit the area in counter-rotating ovals, offset about twenty miles apart, so that their radars would scan a greater section of sky at one time. When radar or visual contact was made, the other plane would rendezvous and press the attack.

  There was only one more training sortie scheduled that day, call-sign Whisper One-Seven, that was not identified by type of aircraft. That didn’t matter, of course—it was a “bad guy,” it was invading the territory of the Happy Hooligans, and it was going to go down in flames.

  That is, as soon as they could find it.

  For some reason, both the VIPVO GCI radar sites at Lemmon and Belle Fourche had failed to report the position of any attackers—and now the sites were off the air, which in General Calvin Jarrel’s make-believe world on the Strategic Training Complex meant that the sites had been “destroyed.” But someone was out there, and the Happy Hooligans were going to find them. . . .

  ABOARD WHISPER ONE-SEVEN

  “Twenty minutes to first launch point, Henry,” Patrick McLanahan announced. “Awaiting final range clearance.”

  The B-2 Black Knight stealth bomber pilot, Major Henry Cobb, replied with a simple “Rog” on the interphone.

  Patrick McLanahan looked over at his pilot. Cobb was not young—he had spent nearly seventeen years in the Air Force, most of it as a B-52 or B-1 aircraft commander—and had been with the HAWC at Dreamland for only a year, specifically to fly HAWC’s B-2 bomber test article. Cobb was a most talented but, to McLanahan’s way of thinking, unusual pilot. Except to push a mode button on the main multi-function display, Cobb sat silently, unmoving, with one hand on the side-stick controller and the other on the throttles, from takeoff to landing. He flew the B-2 as if he, the human, were just another “black box,” as integral a part of the massive four-engine bomber as the wings. If he hadn’t been in a military aircraft with the threat of an “enemy” attack so imminent, Cobb seemed so calm and relaxed that it would have looked natural for him to cross his legs or recline in his seat and put his feet up.

  In contrast to Cobb, Patrick McLanahan’s hands and body seemed in an almost constant state of motion, due mostly to the high-tech cockpit layout in the right-seat mission commander’s area. Dominating the entire right instrument panel was a single four-color multi-function display, called an SMFD, or Super Multi Function Display, measuring three feet across and eighteen inches wide, surrounded by function switchlights. The massive monitor had adjustable shades that could block out most of the light in the cockpit and reduce glare, but the big screen was so bright and had such sharp high-resolution images that glare shields were generally unnecessary—McLanahan kept them retracted so Cobb could easily see the big screen. The right-side cockpit had several metal bars around the SMFD that acted as handholds or arm-steadying devices so the screen could still be accurately manipulated even during radical flight maneuvers.

  The main display on the huge SMFD was a three-dimensional view of the terrain surrounding the Black Knight, along with an undulating ribbon that depicted the bomber’s planned course. The B-2 was depicted riding the flight-path ribbon like a car on a roller coaster. The ribbon had “walls” on it, depicting the minimum and maximum suggested altitudes they should fly to avoid terrain or enemy threats—as long as they stayed within the confines of the computer-generated track, they could be on course, safe from all known or radar-detected obstructions and avoiding all known threats. Messages flashed on the screen in various places, several timers were running in a couple of corners of the screen, and “signposts” along the undulating flight-plan route ribbon flashed to warn McLanahan of upcoming events. The “landscape” in the God’s-eye view display was checkered with colored boxes, each depicting one square nautical mile, and small diamonds occasionally flashed on the screen to highlight radar aimpoints or visual navigation checkpoints.

  To General John Ormack, the deputy commander of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, seated in the instructor pilot’s seat between the two cockpit crew members, it seemed like a completely incomprehensible jumble of information flitting across the big screen. Ormack was along to observe this very important test of the Sky Masters NIRTSat reconnaissance system interface on an Air Battle Force bombing exercise, but for most of this incredible mission he had been hard-pressed to keep up with the flurry of data. Patrick McLanahan, the B-2’s mission commander, seemed to drink it all in with ease.

  McLanahan was using three different methods to change the display or call up information. The two primary methods were eye-pointing and voice-recognition commands. Tiny sensors in McLanahan’s helmet tracked his eye movements and could tell a computer exactly where his eyes were focused. When his eyes were on the SMFD, McLanahan could call up information simply by looking at something and speaking a command—the computer would correlate the position of his eyes, the image on the screen, a set of commands associated with that image, then compare the digitized spoken command with the preprogrammed set of allowable commands and execute the proper one. All this would occur in less than a second. McLanahan could also point to the SMFD and touch a symbol or image to get more information or move the image where he wanted it.

  It was actually funny for Ormack to watch and listen to McLanahan as he worked—his interphone sounded like a series of unintelligible grunts and incomplete sentences. Ormack would see a cursor zip across the big screen, and he would hear a guttural “Pick.” A submenu would appear, and Patrick would read the information, then utter a quick “Close” to erase the display and return it to the main God’s-eye display. Every second was like that. McLanahan would be manipulating several different windows on the SMFD at once, zooming around each window, calling up streams of data that would be visible for only seconds at a time, and all while letting fly with a stream of seemingly random words: “Radar . . . pick . . . close . . . zoom . . . zoom . . . close . . . one . . . five . . . close . . . pick . . .
pick one . . . close . . . track . . . one . . . left . . . close . . .”

  Weapon-status information was arranged along the bottom of the display so both crew members could check their weapon status instantly. McLanahan could resize any display, move displays around the SMFD, and even program certain displays to appear or disappear when a timer expired or when he switched in or out of certain modes. He was getting very adept at using his left index finger to move or change displays while his right hand worked a keyboard or hit the voice-command button mounted on the control stick on the side instrument panel.

  To Ormack, it was like watching a kid play six different video games at once. McLanahan was flashing the different screens around the SMFD at an astounding rate. He was calling up radar images, scanning for fighters, setting up his bombing systems, talking on the radio, monitoring terrain, and sending messages on SATCOM, all with incredible speed and without missing one bit of information. “Wait a minute, Patrick, wait a minute,” Ormack said over the interphone in absolute frustration. “You had the radar screen up for just a few seconds and then you took it down. Why?”

  McLanahan put the radar image back on the left side of the SMFD so Ormack could see it clearly and explained, “Because all I need to check on that screen is whether or not the crosshairs fell close to the offset aimpoint—here . . .” He pointed to the screen.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  McLanahan touched the circular crosshairs on the radar display and a menu appeared. He slid his finger down to a legend that read, 1/10 MRES. The screen instantly changed to show a tiny white dot near a cluster of buildings. A circular cursor was superimposed over the dot, with a set of thin crosshairs lying right on it. “Here’s the offset, a grain storage bin.” He motioned to a set of numbers in a corner of the enlarged display. “Crosshairs are within a hundred feet of the offset, so I know the system is good. I also check for terrain, but since we’re VFR and heads out of the cockpit, and it’s so flat around here anyway, I don’t have to spend too much time worrying about the terrain—the nearest high terrain is Devil’s Tower, over fifty miles away.”

  “I get it,” Ormack said. “You also don’t want to be transmitting that long either, right? The fighters can pick up your radar emissions . . .”

  “I was transmitting for about three seconds,” McLanahan explained. “I was in ‘Radiate’ on the radar long enough to get this image, then shut down. But the bombing computer digitizes the radar image and stores it in screen memory until I release it. I can complete the rest of the bomb run with a radar image that’s over two minutes old, and aim on it right up to release. When we get closer to the target I’ll start fine-aiming on the release offsets, which are much more precise, but right now I’m trying to find those fighters.”

  “How does that compare with the satellite data you received?”

  “There is no comparison,” McLanahan said with true enthusiasm in his voice. “The NIRTSat stuff is incredible—and I thought, sitting here in the most incredible machine I’ve ever seen, that I’d seen it all. I can’t wait to see the data from the Philippines that we’re supposed to be collecting as well.”

  He punched instructions into a keyboard, and the graphic display of the terrain and symbols on the SMFD changed—it was as if he had switched from a fuzzy turn-of-the-century snapshot to a high-resolution color laser photo. The image was slightly different from the main SMFD display, but it still showed the ribbon “highway” of the pre-planned route, the timing and mileage icons, and target markers throughout the area. “The strike computer has already redrawn the route to real-time data—our route of flight goes farther west, and the launch point for the SLAM missile is earlier than before.”

  McLanahan zoomed in on the target area and switched from a bird’s-eye view to a God’s-eye view, which showed the target area from directly above but enhanced to show objects in three dimensions. “There’s a whole row of simulated mobile-missile launchers out here . . .?” McLanahan touched the screen and zoomed in closer to rows of cylinders on flatbed trailers. “They all look the same, but I think we can break out the real ones on the next NIRTSat pass. We should be receiving the new data in a few minutes.

  “Watch this, John—with the NIRTSat data, I’ve already seen what the bomb run and missile launch will look like.” McLanahan changed the screen again to show a photograph-quality view of the same cylinders. “Here’s what the computer thinks the SLAM missile will see a few seconds before impact—the computer doesn’t know which one is the real one, so it’s aiming for the middle one in the group.” He changed screens again, this time to a more conventional-looking green and white high-res radar image. “Here’s the computer’s predictions for the target-area radar-release offsets, based on the NIRTSat data. Here’s the mountain peak and grain-storage bins I was just using . . . here are the two release offsets. I can start aiming on these offsets and not touch anything until release.”

  “Amazing,” Ormack said. “Friggin’ amazing. The NIRTSat system does away with shadow graphs, year-old intelligence data, hand-drawn predictions, even charts—you have everything you need to do a bomb run right here . . .”

  “And I received it only thirty minutes ago,” McLanahan added. “You can launch NIRTSat-equipped bombers on a mission with no pre-planned targets whatsoever. You no longer need to build a sortie package, brief crews, schedule simulator missions, or get intelligence briefings. You just load up a bomber with gas and bombs and send it off. One NIRTSat pass later, the crew gets all its charts, all its intelligence, all its weapon-release aimpoints, all its terrain data, and all its threat data in one instant—and the computer will plot out a strike route based on the new data, build a flight plan, then fly the flight plan with the autopilot plugged into the strike computers. The crew can replay the satellite data from the point of view of the flight plan and can even dry-run the bomb run hours before the real bomb run begins.”

  McLanahan then switched the SMFD screen back to the original tactical display, but this time with NIRTSat data inserted into it. “Unfortunately, you can’t search for fighters with the NIRTSat data,” he said, “and it takes a few seconds of radar time to update the screen . . .”

  Suddenly several symbols popped onto the right side of the big screen, resembling bat’s wings, far to the west of the B-2’s position. Each bat-wing symbol had a small column of numerals near it, along with a two-colored wedge-shaped symbol on the front. The wider edge of the outer yellow-colored portion of the wedge seemed to be aimed right for the symbol of the B-2 in the center of the SMFD, while the red inner portion of the wedge seemed to be undulating in and out as if trying to decide whether to touch the B-2 icon.

  “And there they are,” McLanahan announced. “Fighters at two o’clock. Two F-23s. Doppler frequency shift processing estimates they’re twenty miles out and above us. Signal strength is increasing—their search radar might pick us up any second. I don’t think they got a radar lock on us yet, Henry . . . their flight path is taking them behind us, but that could be a feint.”

  Cobb seemed not to have heard McLanahan—he remained as motionless as ever, as if frozen in place with his hands on the throttles and control stick and his eyes riveted forward—but he asked, “Got jammers set up?”

  “Not yet,” McLanahan said, double-checking the SMFD display of the fighter’s radar signal. The colored portions of the fighter’s radar wedges, which represented the sweep area, detection range, and estimated kill range of the fighters, was still not solidly covering the B-2’s icon, which meant that the stealth characteristics of the B-2 were allowing it to continue toward the target without using active transmitting jammers. He selected the ECM display and put it on the right side of the SMFD, ready to activate the electronic jammers at the proper time. “PRF is still in search range, and power level is too weak. If we buzz them too early, they can get a bearing on us.”

  “If you buzz them too late, they’ll get a visual on us.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” McLanahan s
aid. “In any case, they’re too late.” He brought the communications screen forward and activated a pre-programmed SATCOM message, then transmitted it. “Sending range-clearance request in now,” he said. Sent by SATCOM and coded like normal SAC message traffic, the message or its response would not alert the fighters searching for them.

  The reply came thirty seconds later: “Range clearance received, all targets clear,” McLanahan reported. “Less than fifteen minutes to first launch point.”

  He enlarged the weapons screen and brought it higher up on the large SMFD screen so Cobb could check it as well. The B-2 carried one AGM-84E SLAM conventional standoff missile in the left bomb bay and a three-thousand-pound concrete shape, which simulated a second SLAM missile but was not intended to be released. With its turbojet engine, the AGM-84E SLAM, the acronym for the Standoff Land Attack Missile, could carry a one-thousand-pound warhead over sixty miles. It had an imaging infrared camera in the nose that transmitted pictures back to its carrier aircraft, and it could be flown and locked on target with pinpoint precision. It was designed to give SAC’s bombers a precision, high-powered, long-range conventional bombing capability without exposing the bomber to stiff target-area defenses. The right bomb bay carried two AGM-130 Striker rocket-powered glide bombs, which had a range of only fifteen miles but carried a two-thousand-pound bomb with the same precision as the SLAM. Striker worked in conjunction with SLAM to destroy area defenses and strike hardened targets with one bomber—and with the B-2 stealth bomber, which could penetrate closer to heavily defended targets than any other bomber in the world, it was a lethal combination.