aboard the USS Lake Champlain, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser escorting the USS George H. W. Bush. The cruiser’s AN/SPY-1B multifunction Aegis radar system detected the missile launches moments before the frantic radio call from the F/A-18 Hornet pilot was received.
Because they had been closely monitoring the Hornet intercept of the Chinese aircraft, both the ship’s captain and the tactical action officer were at their stations in the Lake Champlain’s Combat Direction Center. Each had two large screens providing them composite information gathered not just from their AN/SPY-1 radar but also from all the other sensors in the battle group via the Cooperative Engagement Capability, which allowed any ship in the battle group to use any radar to attack a target. The Hawkeye radar plane’s data feed was also giving them a look at the intercept beyond their horizon, and the Air Force space station was feeding information from almost anywhere else on the planet.
One glance at the display and it was immediately obvious that this was going to be close, because the new targets were accelerating past Mach 2 very quickly, going hypersonic, and they were descending to wave-top height. “Change engagement mode to auto special,” the captain shouted.
“Changing engagement mode from semiauto to auto special,” the TAO repeated. “Sir, engagement mode is set to auto special.”
The speed of the missiles had already increased to over Mach 3-the Hawkeye radar’s mechanical sweep could hardly keep up with the speed, and the Aegis system had to predict where the next return would appear based on last speed and track. At sea-skimming altitudes, the Lake Champlain ’s electronically scanned phased-array radar would only have a few seconds’ look in horizon-search mode.
In automatic-special mode, Aegis controlled almost all aspects of ship defense. It activated electronic radar jammers, dispensed decoy chaff and flares, slewed the Mk 45 five-inch gun and provided initial target azimuth to the Phalanx close-in weapon systems, steered the SPG-62 target illuminator, and finally issued firing and target- tracking commands to the cruiser’s vertical-launch SM-2 Standard antiaircraft missiles and Evolved Sea Sparrow defensive missiles.
Using data from the E-2 Hawkeye, the Lake Champlain ’s first SM-2 missile fired before its own SPY-1 radar locked onto the incoming sea-skimmers. The smoke from the vertical-launch SM-2 missile’s exhaust motor covered the entire forward section of the cruiser as it lifted off. It climbed quickly, then dove for the ocean at a steep angle to reach its computed intercept point. Another SM-2 fired from the aft vertical launcher, followed seconds later by a volley of four Sea Sparrow missiles from the forward launcher.
“Jesus!” the captain shouted. The Chinese missiles shot past Mach 4, then past Mach 5. “Sound collision! Brace for impact!”
The first Chinese missile had locked onto the Lake Champlain, switching radar frequencies in order to maintain lock. The first SM-2 missile exploded behind and above it, unable to keep up with the acceleration. The second SM-2 also exploded behind the Chinese missile, but close enough to disrupt its flight path, and it crashed and skittered across the ocean surface like a flat stone. The Sea Sparrow missiles hit next. The antiship missile’s inertia kept its disintegrating fuselage flailing toward the cruiser, close enough for the Phalanx’s radar to lock on at two miles and open fire at one mile with a cloud of twenty-millimeter shells firing at three thousand rounds per minute at the mass.
The second Chinese missile locked onto the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush. The Lake Champlain continued to fire missiles, assisted by missile launches from the USS Monterey patrolling behind the carrier, but by now the Chinese sea-skimmer had exceeded Mach 7 and completely outran the missiles. The Bush’s last hope was its own Phalanx cannon, which opened fire at one and a quarter miles. Even the Phalanx’s high-speed Gatling gun was only able to release a total of just five rounds at the hypersonic sea-skimmer in the time it took to lock on and open fire…
…but it was enough. One tungsten shell blew through the Chinese missile’s nose cap, destroying the guidance system, and a second shell hit the air inlet, deforming it just enough to disrupt the air entering the engine, blasting the engine with superheated hypersonic air that instantly tore the missile apart. The red-hot exploding engine ignited the remaining fuel, creating a massive fireball that engulfed the entire aft section of the carrier. Although the ship didn’t suffer a direct hit, the hypersonic debris and fireball that slammed into it killed several crewmen on deck, injured dozens more, instantly destroyed several aircraft chained to the aft deck, and damaged others chained on the opposite side.
OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN
THAT SAME TIME
He said it half aloud to himself, with a feeling of joy that bordered on childlike giddiness: “I’m back. I’m freakin’ back.”
“Are you talking to yourself again, SC?” the mission commander, or MC, on this flight, Navy Commander Scott Bream, asked, shaking his head and smiling. Bream, twenty years older than the SC, or spacecraft commander, was a twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Navy and a ten-year veteran of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but he could still remember his first space flight as if it was yesterday-he knew exactly how excited the young spacecraft commander was.
“Damn straight, MC,” the SC, Hunter Noble, replied happily. “It’s been wayyy too long.”
The two crewmembers sat side by side in the cockpit of a XS-19A “Midnight,” a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft, the larger sibling of the S-9 “Black Stallion” spacecraft, the first conventional takeoff and landing aircraft able to propel itself into Earth orbit. Able to carry 50 percent more payload than the S-9 and more fuel for longer and higher-altitude missions, the XS-19 went into advanced design and development as soon as the Black Stallion proved its worth. Born of the revolutionary SR-71 Blackbird supersonic and XR-A1 Aurora hypersonic reconnaissance planes, the S-series aircraft were sleek, elegantly sculpted blended-wing designs built of advanced heat-resistant carbon-carbon composites. Instead of being nearly hand-built like the Space Shuttle, Aurora, and Black Stallion, the Midnight was able to be assembly-line-manufactured, albeit by robots working inside massive autoclaves and vacuum chambers.
Although just twenty-six years old, Hunter Noble wasn’t giddy because this was his first space flight-he was a veteran of dozens more of them than Bream, thanks to his own creation, which he had first conceived as a freshman engineering student: the Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System, or “leopards.” Leopards were the hybrid turbojet-scramjet-rocket engine that allowed lightweight aircraft like the Midnight and Black Stallion to take off and land like conventional aircraft but achieve low Earth orbit without the need of massive vertical-launch boosters or rocket launchpads.
Former U.S. Air Force captain Hunter Noble (nicknamed “Boomer” because of what usually happened to his early engine designs during testing) could have left the service and become a multibillionaire from his engine design, but he gave it all to the Air Force in exchange for just one thing: being allowed to fly the final product. It was an easy exchange. But now Boomer had left the Air Force and was a vice president of design and engineering for a small high-tech research-and-development company called Sky Masters Inc., which developed a range of military and commercial aircraft, weapons, communications systems, satellites, and aircraft, and he was making the money he dreamed of and still getting to fly his creations.
The Midnight had four larger leopard engines under the wings. For takeoff and landing, the engines performed like standard aircraft engines. The aircraft performed an aerial refueling with a specially modified tanker that topped off fuel and also loaded hydrogen-peroxide rocket-fuel oxidizer before the craft made its dash into space. This refueling was in essence the spacecraft’s “first stage,” since at thirty thousand feet, over half of the Earth’s atmosphere was below it and the push into space was that much easier.
After the final refueling and positioning in the proper location and direction for orbit, the craft accelerated to Mach 3 on its turbofan engines. Spikes in the engine inlets diverted incoming supersonic air around the turbines to specially shaped ducts that compressed the air hundreds of times greater than the jet turbines before mixing jet fuel and ignition, quickly resulting in speeds in excess of Mach 10 and climb rates approaching that of the Space Shuttle. As the aircraft approached the edge of space, the spikes eventually closed completely and the engines converted into pure rocket engines, using hydrogen peroxide as the jet-fuel oxidizer. Laser igniters burned the fuel more efficiently, giving the engines enormous power, but the lasers had to be “pulsed” several hundred times a second to achieve maximum combustion without blowing the engines apart. As speed increased to Mach 25, the spaceplane reached orbital velocity.
