There Will Be War Volume IV

by Jerry Pournelle

  MULTIPLE HOSTILES AT HEADING 079. SUBSURFACE ACOUSTIC SENSORS INDICATE VELOCITY VECTOR OF 1450 KNOTS, AT 500 FEET, ON FLEET INTERCEPT BEARING WEAPONS. FREE DOCTRINE NOW IN EFFECT. ENGAGE AND DESTROY

  This was more like it! This is what he was waiting for—he punched the red button again to acknowledge the message, and the audio tone cue changed to a rhythmic six-kilohertz pulse, with a period of one-half second. The GPS would watch for surface-launched missiles directed at Red Striker Five and warn the warrior by modulating the pulse rate, intensity, and tone frequency in each ear.

  He put the radar in its high-power burn-through-jam, track-while-scan mode, five degrees around both sides of 079, from Sea level to 1,000 feet. Eleven flashing red spots appeared on the radar screen in a vee pointed back toward the fleet. They were 620 miles from the warrior’s home ship and 215 from Red Striker Five, to his left. The warrior pushed the HOARSE GOOSE button. There was little doubt: the attack pattern was characteristic of the enemy, and no friendlies would roar into the fleet in such a clearly provocative, hostile way. But he was going to kill them, and he had time to be sure. Red crosses appeared, superimposed over the flashing hostiles! They had replied to HOARSE GOOSE, thinking they were being normally interrogated. Too bad for them, thought the warrior. Let’s go get’m, baby! The warrior snapped on the power switch for his heads-up display. Normally a clear plastic shield extending from the top of his instrument panel to just below the canopy, it now became a remote projection output of the fire-control computer. Once combat started, there was no time to keep moving eyes and head between instrument display and cockpit windshield. The HUD showed the warrior the radar-screen image, Red Striker Five’s gun-cannon status, and projections of the proper launch envelope for the Eagle-Six missiles against all tracked enemy targets.

  The warrior looked at the computed intercept course and saw that he was already within attack range. He elected to go in closer. That was his only mistake.

  Hitting the afterburner switch, he lit the tail of Red Striker Five and went into a sixty-degree banking turn-dive. As he passed through 20,000, he was hitting 1,900 knots and accelerating. The titanium/boron fiber skin of Red Striker Five was a dim, yet visible cherry glow. The projected intercept course, computed by the dedicated radar computer operating at a memory-cycle time of forty-three nanoseconds, kept pace easily.

  The warrior flipped the red plastic cover off the missile arming/firing switches with his left thumb and threw the leftmost of three exposed toggles. He couldn’t hear the cryogenic pumps, but he knew the infrared sensors on the missile-seeker heads were now rapidly cooling down to the ten degrees Kelvin, where they operated optimally for the terminal-attack phase. He asked for a launch countdown from fire control to achieve missile intercept at approximately seventy miles’ range, and large numerals projected on the HUD. As the numbers flickered by, he flipped the middle target-attack toggle to designate all displayed radar tracks as hostiles. When the flashing red zero appeared on the HUD, he threw the rightmost toggle on the missile switches, and the Eagle-Six weapons came off their wing pods, two at a time, from each side.

  Fump! The first double pair streaked off, each missile locked onto its own target. Guided by control signals from Red Striker Five’s radar computer, they would fly their own way in on the last 2,000 meters of intercept with the infrared seekers.

  Fump! The second double pair raced out and away, their exhaust trails leaving a crazy, swiftly dispersed pattern. Each missile quickly accelerated to 4,000 knots, its body glowing red-hot with the air friction. The warrior loved night-attack missions; the blazing missile skins looking like jewels. But even in the daylight he could follow them for a few split seconds. Then they were gone.

  Fump! The last three missiles launched, two from the right wing, the eleventh from the left.

  The warrior watched, fascinated, as thin, spidery purple lines, marking the missile paths, weaved their way on his HUD toward the flashing-red, hostile symbols. At first the enemy vee stayed on course, but then their electronic warning systems picked up the inbound missiles. The vee started to break up, the pattern spreading apart. The warrior knew that some were diving, others climbing, but all were being flown by men as good as dead. An Eagle-Six missile could pull thirty-seven gees in a chase-down maneuver; greater even than Red Striker Five could take without disintegrating. And the enemy platforms were inferior to Red Striker Five. But the doomed men tried. And the warrior had no pity. They were the enemy!

  One after the other, the purple filaments reached out and touched a desperately twisting, whipping, spinning red dot. And then they both slowly faded from the display. The searing explosion, the vaporizing metal, the carbonized flesh—all were reduced to a quiet decay of glowing colored light reflected in the cold eyes of the warrior. The tracking radar computer performed an automatic-kill assessment of each strike, looking for the highly characteristic fragmentation pattern of a successful intercept. As a backup, for attempted kills at ranges under 100 miles, a spectrum analyzer also examined the radiation from the explosion fireball, looking for a suddenly enhanced carbon line. The last blaze of glory of an enemy warrior before the mist that was once a man’s body dispersed forever. A low-level kill assessment would bring a secondary missile attack, but none was needed. All eleven hostile markers had vanished. He flicked off the afterburners and let his machine coast down to 1,000 knots. No need to waste fuel.

  And then the warrior felt Red Striker Five shudder, and his surprise was unbounded as he saw fireballs bigger than his fist stream by his cockpit above and to the right of his head. He’d been jumped from the rear and was taking high-cyclic 37mm cannon fire! With his attention diverted to the earlier attack, a twelfth enemy aircraft had somehow avoided detection. The bastards must have learned how to defeat LINK Ninety-nine! Maybe those were decoys I just took out!

  As he realized his peril, the right wing took two hits: one on the tip and one on the trailing edge near the wing root. Red-hot, searing metal fragments tore through Red Striker Five’s body, and one, the size of a man’s thumb, ripped into the warrior’s right leg, just below the knee. Muscle tissue, bone, and arterial fragments, mixed with shreds of flight-suit fabric, splattered the cockpit, and blood gushed from the wound. Instrument-glass splinters ripped into his body. Blinding pain tore at the warrior, and he would have screamed but for the paralyzing shock.

  The warrior knew, just before he passed out, that his survival was out of his control. He retained enough strength to slap the emergency combat palm switch at the side of his seat, and then he rapidly slid into unconsciousness. It was up to Red Striker Five to get them both home.

  The palm switch activated the autonomous-combat program in the flight computer. Immediately Red Striker Five examined all biosensor outputs on the warrior’s body, determined the presence and location of blood loss, and pumped compressed air to the proper imbedded circular tube in the right suit leg to create a tourniquet. The blood flow slowed to a seeping.

  Simultaneously Red Striker Five lit her afterburners, blew away all external weapons pods, and dove for the deck. The enemy war plane followed her down, too close for a missile attack but well within gun range. It was the enemy’s mistake.

  Red Striker Five leveled out at two hundred feet, moving at 1,500 knots, weaving, jinking, humping in a manner determined by a random-number generator in the computer software. Desperately trying to keep those 37mm fireballs away from her warrior!

  The enemy pilot was good—but Red Striker Five was better. Hurt by the loss of streamlining from the ragged metal edges where she’d been hit, Red Striker Five was melting at 1,500 knots. The enemy was 1,000 meters behind and closing at 1,600 knots. Red Striker Five dropped to twenty feet above the ocean, letting her surface-following radar keep her at altitude. The enemy stayed on her tail. The enemy pilot was very good, rough-riding through the near-surface thermals on an attack run.

  The two screaming metal bullets raced over the water, cannon bursts rocking Red Striker Five viole
ntly. The acoustic shock wave each was dragging along was incredible, and a boiling wake of dead fish bobbed to the surface long after the hunter and the hunted had passed. And then Red Striker Five fought back.

  When the enemy was only 700 meters behind, Red Striker Five popped her air brakes and lost 300 knots almost immediately. Simultaneously she pulled into a climb and did a full inside loop, coming down behind and on the tail of the snookered enemy aircraft. The defeated foe had a few milliseconds to realize his fatal error, and then Red Striker Five ripped him apart with two dozen strikes from her dual 20mm cannons. The flaming enemy debris flared out along a ten-mile track, but by then Red Striker Five, bearing her dying warrior home, was gone.

  Racing for altitude, she climbed to 5,000 feet and started squawking on all clear broadcast channels:

  EMERGENCY-EMERGENCY-EMERGENCY. RED STRIKER FIVE CAP WOUNDED PILOT ABOARD. REQUEST PRIORITY LANDING. REQUIRE FLIGHT-DECK MEDICAL.

  Over and over she transmitted her urgent message as she bore in toward the fleet with her burden. The warrior flickered in and out of consciousness, but knew neither where he was nor what his fate would be. He put his trust in Red Striker Five and passed out.

  She didn’t fail him. The flight deck was cleared, and with guidance signals from CIC’s computer, Red Striker Five made a perfect landing. The Navy medical personnel gently lifted the warrior’s torn body from the shattered cockpit and placed him carefully on the deck. After emergency aid, as they prepared to take him below for permanent surgery, he temporarily regained his senses once more.

  “Take it easy, son,” said the medic. “You’re hurt pretty bad, but you’ll be okay. I saw it all on the radar screen—that’s some aircraft you got there. She fought her way out and back like nothin’ I ever seen!”

  The warrior smiled weakly through a pale white face lined with pain and shock. He looked up at Red Striker Five and saw not a technological marvel of electronics, armament, metallurgy, and computer programs. He saw both a warm and loving creature, and a being that had killed to save him. Killed with savagery and intelligence. His body filled with emotion, a feeling of passion that only later he would just barely begin to understand.

  He looked at the battle-ravaged Red Striker Five, and just before he slipped into darkness again, he knew. He knew she’d be there when he came back. She’d wait for him, and he loved her.

  And he knew she loved him too.

  Editor's Introduction to:

  REAGAN VS. THE SCIENTISTS

  by Robert Jastrow

  Robert Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Institute for Space Studies and was its director until his retirement in 1981. He has taught astronomy and geology at Columbia, is co-author of a standard astronomy text, and is now professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth. Dr. Jastrow was chairman of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee and received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.

  Strategic Defense is probably the most important issue to face the United States in this decade.

  REAGAN VS. THE SCIENTISTS

  by Robert Jastrow

  1. The Threat

  When President Reagan announced his proposal last spring for defending the United States against Soviet missiles, the reaction from scientists, politicians, and journalists was almost uniformly hostile. Dr. Richard Garwin, who has had a great deal of experience in defense technology, said, “It won’t work.” Former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara called the plan “pie in the sky,” former National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy described it as “astonishing,” and Senator Edward Kennedy said it was “misleading” and “reckless.” Anthony Lewis wrote in his column in the New York Times that President Reagan was indulging in “a dangerous fantasy” and James Reston entitled his Times column on the President’s speech, “The April Fool.”

  This was pretty strong language. Why was everyone so irritated by President Reagan’s suggestion? There were two reasons. First of all, missiles travel at very high speeds and are difficult to shoot down in full flight. As a consequence, no defense against missiles is likely to be 100-percent effective; in any full-scale attack, one or two missiles are bound to get through. Since each one carries enough nuclear explosives to destroy an entire city and kill a million people, the President’s critics accused him of misleading the public when he spoke of a defense that could “intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reach our own soil.”

  The other reason for opposition to the plan stemmed from the fact that many defense advisers believe the best way to defend yourself against a missile attack is to have no defense against missiles. Although this idea seems to be contrary to common sense, there is a certain logic to it. If both superpowers leave themselves entirely undefended, the Soviets will know that if they launch a missile attack against us, our own missiles will lay waste their homeland in reprisal. And, of course, we will know that if we attack the Soviet Union, our nation will be destroyed by Soviet missiles. This knowledge will deter both countries from starting a war, and will make for a very stable situation.

  If, however, either side acquires an effective defense against enemy missiles, it can attack the other side with impunity, secure in the knowledge that this defense will protect it from retaliation. Therefore, runs the reasoning, the best way to avoid a war is for both sides to leave themselves entirely undefended.

  In other words, a watertight defense against missiles would upset the nuclear balance between the two superpowers. In the language of the nuclear strategists, seeking to defend your country against the enemy’s missiles is “destabilizing.”

  On the basis of this reasoning, American arms-control experts pressed the Soviets, during the SALT talks, to sign an agreement outlawing any large-scale defense against ballistic missiles. The Soviets accepted this, and the result was the ABM treaty of 1972—ABM meaning anti-ballistic missile—in which the U.S. and the USSR agreed that neither country would undertake to protect itself from a missile attack by the other. In this way, it became the official policy of the United States to keep its people undefended against nuclear attack.

  Most Americans do not know that this has been our government’s policy for the last twelve years. If they did, I believe they would be astounded. As Henry Kissinger has said: “It cannot often have occurred in history that it was considered an advantageous military doctrine to make your own country deliberately vulnerable.”

  * * *

  It takes a person with an idealized view of the world to think up something like the ABM treaty. The logic of the arms-control experts was impeccable, but if you are not an arms-control expert you see the weakness in the idea right away. Suppose one side cheats on the treaty, and secretly builds up its defenses against missiles anyway. Now it can launch its own missiles without fear of retaliation. The country that continues to honor the treaty is then vulnerable to a nuclear attack. This is exactly what happened to the United States.

  Starting almost immediately after the ABM treaty was signed, reports began to come in that the Soviets were testing their surface-to-air missiles at altitudes close to 100,000 feet. Some 50 to 60 tests of this kind were carried out between 1973 and 1975. Surface-to-air missiles are supposed to be used for defense against aircraft, but aircraft do not travel at an altitude of 100,000 feet. However, missiles do. The Soviets were testing their air-defense missiles in what is called an “ABM mode.” Such tests are specifically outlawed by the ABM treaty.

  The first Soviet ABM tests used a surface-to-air missile called the SA-5, which is not very powerful. However, the Soviets continued to work away at improving their ABM system, and a few years ago they began to test a better surface-to-air missile, the SA-12, which can accelerate to the speed of an ICBM—about 12,000 miles an hour—from a standing start in a matter of seconds. The SA-12, used as an anti-ballistic missile, is a serious threat to the security of the United States because it has the potential for shooting down our submarine missiles, which are the mainstay of the American nuclear deterrent.

&
nbsp; All this added up to a clear Soviet violation of the ABM treaty and the SALT I agreement. Several Senators complained about this, but nothing happened.

  Last summer, evidence came to light of Soviet cheating so blatant that even cautious State Department officials were ruffled. One said bluntly about the Soviets, “They’ve busted the SALT agreement!” The new evidence was provided by Big Bird, one of our best reconnaissance satellites. Big Bird had discovered a radar of a special type called “phased-array,” deep in the interior of the Soviet Union, near the village of Abalakova in south-central Siberia.

  A phased-array radar, which consists of thousands of little radars connected so that they sweep the sky electronically, is a major improvement over the rotating radars which can be seen at airports. This kind of radar is particularly useful in shooting down enemy missiles because it can create a highly detailed and accurate picture of a missile attack. One phased-array radar, backed up by a large computer, can keep track of hundreds of separate attacking missiles, figure out their paths, and assign defending missiles to intercept and destroy them.

  Phased-array radars are also useful in providing warning of a missile attack. We have several of these so-called “early-warning” radars on the East and West Coasts of the United States. To be useful in giving warning of a missile attack, a radar must be located where it can pick up reflections from the attacking missile at the earliest possible moment. In other words, it has to be placed on a country’s borders. The ABM treaty, recognizing this fact, says that each country is permitted to have large phased-array radars provided they are located “along the periphery of its national territory,” and are therefore usable for early warning. However, the treaty forbids locating such radars in the interior of the U.S. or the USSR.