by Dale Brown
“V-one, seven thousand to go, continue,” Patrick said, using the runway length remaining and their airspeed to determine the go/no-go decision point in the takeoff roll—even though the Excalibur’s flight computers automatically calculated that, the human backup kept the crew ready for emergencies. There were two such V-speeds, one to determine the time to abort if there was an engine failure and the other to determine if the plane should continue the takeoff in case of engine failure. “Coming up on Vr . . . now.” A third reference speed told the pilot when to begin takeoff rotation. Cuthbert smoothly pulled back on the control stick, and seconds later the Excalibur bomber fairly leaped off the runway. They were climbing at over five thousand feet per minute just seconds later and going faster every second. “Clear of the runway, I got the gear.” He raised the landing gear handle, and moments later he raised the flaps and slats as well. “Flaps and slats up, clear on wing sweep.”
“Roger. Wings coming to thirty.” Cuthbert moved the large wing-sweep handle on his left side back to the thirty-degree setting. He nodded happily. “Wow, this baby really likes those wings swept back. It felt like a B-52 on takeoff with the wings forward, but with them back the controls feel a hell of a lot lighter.”
Within the restricted Naval Air Station Fallon bombing and gunnery ranges, they climbed up to thirty thousand feet, and Patrick demonstrated some basic airwork maneuvers—slow flight, stalls, and steep turns—followed by more advanced maneuvers—lazy-eights and chandelles—and finally some simple aerobatics—inverted flight, barrel rolls, and aileron rolls. The Excalibur performed all of them without difficulty, which gave Cuthbert enough confidence to try them on his own. Patrick was pleased to see Cuthbert grinning like a young kid on a Ferris wheel after he was done.
“What do you think, Cutlass?” Patrick asked after the Air Force colonel finished his second aileron roll.
“She handles like a great big fighter jet,” Cuthbert said, still grinning. “Just fantastic.”
“Of course, we can’t do most of this with weapons aboard—but I wanted to show you that this bird is still very solid and has plenty of power to do advanced maneuvering,” Patrick said. “But now it’s time to show you what the original B-1 was made for.” He called up a flight plan on his MFD, and a serpentine corridor drew itself on the moving map, while Cuthbert’s MFD showed a series of squares on the synthetic-vision display that they were passing through. He then called up the “Before TFR Flight” checklist. “Now we’re going to have some real fun,” he said. “Terrain-following system checks, radar configured, one-thousand-foot clearance plane set. Engage when ready, Cutlass.” Cuthbert pressed the “TFR ENGAGE” button on his MFD, and the Excalibur nosed over into a fifteen-thousand-foot-per-minute descent. “Wing sweep to sixty-seven,” Patrick said. “Throttles to keep us from going past the Mach—we have the Rod Pod on, and we haven’t tested it beyond point nine five Mach.” The AN/AAQ-33 Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod, nicknamed “Rod Pod,” was a device mounted underneath the fuselage that allowed the crew to search for and laser-designate targets on the ground from long range and at night for precision bombing. The pod could laser-designate targets for the Excalibur, “buddy laze” targets for other bombers, or spot targets, measure coordinates, and transmit images and data via satellite to other commanders around the world. “If you want to hand-fly the course, just keep the plane inside the squares on your screen and let the TFR control pitch.”
In two minutes they had descended to just one thousand feet aboveground. They performed another system check, then stepped the altitude down to just two hundred feet aboveground, traveling over six hundred miles an hour. Cuthbert let the terrain-following radar and computers control their roller-coaster ride over the terrain while turning the bomber to keep inside the squares that depicted their flight-planned course, sometimes having to bank at almost ninety degrees to stay on course because his attention drifted away at the wrong moment. He finally engaged the autopilot so he didn’t have to concentrate so hard on flying and get a chance to experience terrain-following flight in the Excalibur. “This is fantastic, Patrick, just incredible,” he said. “She feels rock-solid.”
“We were happy that the ship’s original Stability and Control Augmentation System interfaced so well with the new Active Electronically Scanned Array radar,” Patrick said. “But SCAS was ahead of its time. We could also do away with some of the other systems such as the radar altimeter and bank angle fail-safes on the TFR, because AESA performs well at any bank or pitch angle or in situations such as over water, whereas the original radar had severe limitations.” They were coming to the end of the low-level route on the flight plan, and the squares on the synthetic-vision display were starting to indicate a climbout. “Want to go through the route again?”
“I’d like to, Patrick, but I’ve got a flight back to Hickam to catch,” Cuthbert said. “But you definitely watered my eyes today. Thanks for an incredible demonstration.”
As they were climbing out of the low-level route, with Cuthbert hand-flying the aircraft again as he liked to do, they heard on the Fallon range control frequency: “Masters One, Fallon Range Control.”
“Go ahead, Control,” Patrick replied.
“Masters One, we have a couple Hornets scheduled for the range in fifteen minutes after you exit, but they’re already airborne, and they requested some formation flying for pics. They’ve never seen a B-1 before except in museums. I can approve MARSA with them if you approve.” MARSA stood for Military Assumes Responsibility for Separation of Aircraft and was commonly used for operations such as air-to-air dogfighting practice and aerial refueling.
Patrick looked over at Cuthbert, who nodded with a big smile on his face. “Sure, Control, Masters One welcomes them in.”
“Roger that, sir. Masters One, Welder One-Seven flight of two, Fallon Range Control approves MARSA while in the ranges. Maintain block altitudes angels fifteen to angels twenty-one. Report canceling MARSA on this frequency. Masters One, your traffic is at eight o’clock, forty-eight miles and closing.”
“One copies,” Patrick responded. He switched one of his MFDs to a radar-warning defensive systems display. Moments later, an icon of a friendly aircraft appeared at the clock position called out by the controller.
“Masters One, Welder flight of two, we’re tied on radar, moving in,” the lead pilot of the approaching F/A-18 Super Hornets radioed.
“Masters One, roger,” Patrick responded.
A few minutes later the Hornet pilot radioed, “Masters, we’re tied on visual, splitting up, one on each side for a better shot.”
“Masters One, roger.”
A few moments later, the Navy-gray Hornet two-seat fighter-bombers appeared out their side windscreens, and they could see the Navy backseaters snapping pictures of the XB-1 with their wingman on the other side.
“She’s a big mutha,” one of the Hornet pilots radioed.
“Show us what she can do,” another said. Cuthbert started a left turn, getting steeper and steeper until they were at ninety degrees bank. The Hornet pilots remained in tight formation as if they were airshow performers.
“Not bad, not bad—for a big ol’ dinosaur,” another crewmember radioed. “What else does the old girl got?”
Cuthbert glanced at Patrick. “What do you think, General?” he asked.
“I think they want to play.” Patrick called up the low-level flight plan again, and Cuthbert kept the turn in until they were headed for the entry point again. Patrick ran the “Before TFR Flight” checklist again, then shook his control stick and said, “I’ve got the aircraft.”
Cuthbert shook his stick in response. “You’ve got the aircraft.”
“How about it, momma?” a Hornet pilot radioed. “Got anything else to show us?”
“They’re probably afraid it’s going to break if they G it up too much,” another chimed in.
“No, we’re just waiting for the right spot,” Patrick radioed back. “Ready, Cutlass?”
/> “Go fry their butts, sir,” Cuthbert replied, his wide grin hidden by his oxygen mask.
“Here we go,” Patrick said. He swept the wings full aft and moved the throttles up to full military power.
“Well, sweeping the wings is cool, like a great big F-14 Tomcat,” one of the Navy pilots radioed, “and I see she still has a little oompf left in her . . .”
. . . and Patrick hit the “ENGAGE” button on his MFD and started a hard right turn into the low-level corridor.
“Hey! Watch it!” one of the Hornet pilots radioed. “Where in hell are you going?”
“Catch us if you can, girls,” Patrick radioed. The two Hornets had disappeared from sight as the Excalibur began its dramatic plunge toward Earth.
“No sweat, momma,” a Hornet pilot said. “Welder Two, you’re at my three o’clock; join on me in loose fingertip.”
“Two,” the wingman responded.
The two icons on the defensive systems display showed the Hornets merging and moving higher and farther away. Patrick reluctantly had to pull the throttles back to avoid going supersonic in the steep descent. In less than a minute they had descended to two hundred feet aboveground and were again riding the ridges, now traveling closer to seven hundred miles an hour.
“Hornets at seven o’clock high,” Patrick said, scanning his checklist and defensive displays. “TFR system checks.” He strained to check out both side windscreens for terrain. “Hang on, Cutlass,” he said, and he threw the Excalibur in a steep right turn.
“Hornets at six o’clock . . . five . . . four . . . coming back to five o’clock . . .”
“Not for long,” Patrick said. Just before reaching a peak, he threw the Excalibur into a very steep left turn, hugging the peak so closely Cuthbert could see individual cracks on the rocks below.
“You got the dirt, Patrick?” Cuthbert asked a little worriedly.
“I’ve got the dirt, I’ve got the dirt,” Patrick said.
“Hornets at nine o’clock, eight o’clock, moving away . . . now turning back, still at eight o’clock . . .”
“No fair using radar, chums,” Patrick said. He called up another checklist page, this time to activate the Excalibur’s defensive ALQ-293 SPEAR system, then made another tight right-hand turn and skimmed over another rocky ridge. “I’ll just scramble their radars and radios, not take them out completely,” Patrick said. Moments later the icons representing the Hornets disappeared. “Take that, squids.”
“Welder flight, knock it off, knock it off,” the lead Hornet pilot radioed a few moments later, his voice a combination of anxiety and anger. The radio was a mess of squeals, pops, and static—the pilot’s voice was barely recognizable. “Lead is climbing to angels seventeen. Fallon Range Control, Welder One-Seven is canceling MARSA at this time.”
“Welder One-Seven, repeat,” the range controller replied through the jamming. “Did not copy.”
“Fallon Range Control, Welder One-Seven canceling MARSA,” the pilot repeated through the haze of static. Then he said, “Hey, Masters, shut the damned jamming off, dickheads.” Patrick shut down the defensive suite, and the squealing stopped. “Fallon Range Control, how do you copy now?”
“Loud and clear now, Welder,” the controller responded.
“We’re canceling MARSA, squawking normal.”
“Roger, Welder One-Seven. Radar contact, five-seven miles northwest of the field, passing angels thirteen. Your wingman is at your seven o’clock position, four miles, passing through angels eleven. I have negative radar contact on Masters One.”
“That’s because the bastard went low-level while we were in formation!” the lead Hornet pilot replied angrily, “and then he turned on his jammers and shut every radar and radio down for fifty miles in every freakin’ direction!”
“I copy, Welder,” the controller said. “Masters One, are you on frequency?”
“Affirmative, Fallon Control,” Patrick replied. “We’re ten miles south of waypoint Tango on IR-7, passing six thousand climbing to one-six thousand, on the way to range control point JASPER.”
“Still negative radar contact,” the controller said. “You were directed to remain MARSA with Welder flight in the block angels one-seven to two-one.”
“We still own the range and the IR-7 low-level route for another five minutes, Fallon,” Patrick said. “We simply reentered IR-7 and resumed our test flight. If the Hornets couldn’t remain MARSA with us, they should’ve reported that to you and stayed in the block.”
There was a long pause on the frequency, then: “Masters One, contact Fallon Range Operations after landing. You are cleared to point JASPER, climb and maintain angels one-six. Upon reaching JASPER, you are cleared direct to Battle Mountain Airport. Contact Battle Mountain Approach upon reaching JASPER, and after arriving at Battle Mountain, contact Fallon Range Control by telephone,” and the controller read off a phone number.
“Masters One copies all,” Patrick said, adding, “Have a nice day, Welders.”
“Bite me,” came the reply, and the frequency remained silent until they exited the range and switched to civilian air traffic control.
“So, what do you think, Cutlass?” Patrick asked.
“It was awesome!” Cuthbert replied, pulling off his oxygen mask, squirming excitedly in his seat, and clapping his hands. “Man, I’d forgotten how exciting low-level flying is—the heavies haven’t done it in years. Sounds like you might get a spanking from the Navy after you get back for turning on that SPEAR jammer thingy and shutting everything down.”
“They’ll get over it—I’ll let the legal beagles sort it out,” Patrick said, completely unconcerned. “Feel like making the landing, Cutlass?”
“Damn right I do, sir, damn right I do!” Cuthbert said happily. “I feel like a young butter-bar bomber jock again. I’ve got the airplane!” He shook the control stick to indicate he had control of the aircraft, and Patrick shook his stick to acknowledge. “I might miss my flight back to Hawaii, but it was damn well worth it!”
THREE
SOUTH CHINA SEA
THAT SAME TIME
“Who said it looks ugly? I think it’s cute,” U.S. Navy Lieutenant Paula “Cowgirl” Caraway commented as she studied the image on her multifunction display from her station in the aviation warfare section of the P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance plane, based in Hawaii but temporarily deployed to Taiwan. Caraway, a trim, athletic blonde with an almost perpetual smile, was the patrol plane navigator/communications officer, or NAVCOM, aboard the aircraft. The P-8A Poseidon was a naval variant of the Boeing 737–800 airliner outfitted with extended-range fuel tanks, a small bomb bay for torpedoes or cruise missiles—they were currently unarmed—electronic intelligence-gathering and antisubmarine warfare equipment, and sonobuoys for detecting and tracking submarines.
“It’s kinda sleek,” Caraway went on, “with its upturned nose, like a supermodel. Graceful.” She had switched one of her digital radar displays so she could see the high-resolution inverse synthetic-aperture radar image from the Poseidon’s AN/APY-10 multimode radar. Even at a range of almost forty miles, the APY-10 produced an image as sharp as a black-and-white photograph—she could easily count and identify the aircraft sitting on her deck. “A little princess.”
“I was the one who said it was ugly, and it is,” her partner seated beside her, Lieutenant Commander Richard “Beastie” Sykes, said. Sykes, a veteran maritime patrol plane officer with almost fifteen years of service in P-3 Orion and S-3 Viking patrol planes, was the patrol plane tactical coordinator, or TACCO, directing the activities of the P-8’s naval warfare crew. “So they slapped some paint on it and gave it some interesting new bulges. It’s still an antiquated pig.”
Sykes and Caraway were talking about the main subject of the day’s surveillance mission over the South China Sea: the Zhenyuan, the People’s Republic of China Navy’s first aircraft carrier. Formerly the Kuznetsov-class Russian carrier Varyag, it had first been transferred to Ukraine after the fall o
f the Soviet Union. It was purchased by Iran purportedly to be used as a work platform for offshore oil rigs, but it had been secretly made operational and based in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman as the carrier Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the first aircraft carrier operated by a Middle East nation. After a brief skirmish with American Air Force bombers, where the ship was severely damaged, the carrier was stripped of all its weapons and sensors and sold to China, again purportedly to be used as a floating hotel and casino near Hong Kong. It appeared briefly as the aircraft carrier Mao Zedong and was involved in the conflict between mainland China and Taiwan after the island nation declared independence, and then retired once again after being severely damaged. The Chinese announced it was an environmental hazard and transferred to the northern port of Dalian to be scrapped.
Instead, several years later, the ship emerged from dry dock with newer, more powerful engines and improved digital sensors. It successfully completed sea trials in 2011. According to the Chinese navy, the carrier, renamed the Zhenyuan, would only be used for “experimentation, training, and research,” and stay near the Chinese mainland. The world was surprised when it appeared in the Gulf of Aden a year later as part of an eight-ship carrier battle group that at first drilled with the Russian aircraft carrier Vladimir Putin battle group, then attacked the Yemeni port city of Aden and participated in attacks against pirates in Somalia, using advanced JH-37N fighter-bombers flying off its decks. Few analysts in the world would have guessed that the Chinese would have an aircraft carrier battle group operational before the year 2020, let alone actually use one in combat. When China agreed to withdraw its troops from Somalia in 2013, the Zhenyuan and its escorts returned to home waters and rarely left the South China Sea. The Chinese navy began intensive carrier flight operations training aboard the Zhenyuan in anticipation of outfitting its second aircraft carrier, the Zheng He, planned for 2015.
Although more than twenty miles away, the Poseidon’s synthetic-aperture radar provided very detailed images of the Zhenyuan. Like British Invincible-class carriers, instead of aircraft-launching steam catapults, the Chinese carrier used an up-sloped forward deck called a “ski jump” to throw fixed-wing aircraft far enough into the sky for them to accelerate to flying speed before they descended and hit the water. It had a very large island superstructure on the starboard side, with light-colored smoke billowing from stacks in the rear. The island bristled with antennas and electronics domes, as well as phased-array radar panels and self-defense missile launchers and gun emplacements; there were more missile launchers and gun turrets midships on both sides along the gunwales. There were six arresting gear wires aft to recover fixed-wing aircraft. Four very large twin-tailed aircraft were parked forward of the island and six more smaller jets aft on the starboard side, plus two large helicopters parked on the port-side elevator and an aircraft waiting to launch from the ski jump. The sensor measured the Zhenyuan’s forward speed as twenty-five knots.