Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (23 page)

           
“All this... from a satellite that
weighs only four hundred pounds,” Wyatt said. “Amazing.”

           
“It looks like Colonel McLanahan is
getting ready to enter the low-level route, sir,” James pointed out. “When he
switches between his Super Multi Function Display modes, we’ll be able to watch
his entire run on this screen.”

Powder River MOA, near Belle
Creek, Montana

Same time

           
They called it
Powder River
. It was a pleasant-enough sounding name,
almost relaxing—completely out of place for a high-tech bombing, navigation,
and gunnery range.

           
The
Powder River
weapons complex encompassed the southeast
comer of
Montana
, a bit of the northeast comer of
Wyoming
, and an even smaller part of northwestern
South Dakota
. It was almost perfectly flat, with only a
few windswept rolling hills and gulleys to break up the awful monotony of the
terrain. In nearly eight thousand square miles of territory, there were only
six towns of any size, mostly along route 212 that ran between
Belle Fourche
,
South Dakota
, and
Crow Agency
,
Montana
. The northern edge of Powder River A
contained parts of Custer National Forest, while the very southern tip of
Powder River B claimed an even greater landmark—Devil’s Tower, the unusual
cylindrical rock spire made famous in the movie
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Other than Devil’s Tower,
however, there was almost nothing of interest—this was truly the “badlands,” as
depicted by writers of the Old West.

           
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-l6 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 counterrotating 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 VIP VO 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
JarrePs 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-l 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 computergenerated 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 comers 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 pre-programmed 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 comer 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.”