range attack missiles, ” Ormack replied. “Sixteen SRAM missiles-it packs quite a wallop. Putting B61 or B83 gravity nuclear bombs on board is still possible as well, although using standoff-type weapons instead of gravity bombs makes the B-2 a much greater threat. The Black Knight can only carry four cruise missiles, so there are no plans to include AGM-129A cruise missiles although we modified the weapon-delivery software to do so. “It’ll make a great battleship escort, ” McLanahan said. “I think the boss is right-it’s a waste to have these babies sitting on the sidelines with nukes on board while we’re getting hammered in some non-nuclear dogfight. Air Force talks about ‘global reach, global power, ‘ but they don’t talk much about how long-range bombers can defend themselves in a hostile environment without an initial nuclear laydown. They talk about sending B-52s from Guam, Diego Garcia, or Loring to anywhere else in the world in twelve hours, but they don’t explain how the bomber is supposed to survive its attack. With the Black Knight configured as a counterradar escort, it can do it. It has the range to fly just as deep as the strike bombers, and it carries as much firepower as a B-52. We’ll put that new PACER SKY satellite data stuff on it, maybe an ISAR radar, smart bombs…” “We’ve tested every possible weapon on a B-2, ” Ormack acknowledged, “from AGM-130 Striker glide-bombs-your personal favorite, I know-Harpoon antiship missiles, sea mines, MK 82 iron bombs, AMRAAM missiles, Sidewinder missiles, the TACIT RAINBOW antiradar cruise missiles, Durandal runaway-cratering bombs, AGM-84 SLAM TV-guided missiles, hell, even photoreconnaissance pods. At half a billion dollars a pop, Congress didn’t want to buy a nuclear-only plane, so we’re going to demonstrate that the B-2 could be flexible enough for any mission.” Ormack shrugged, then added, “I’m not convinced myself that the B-2 can make a good defensive escort plane. If a fighter or ground missile site gets a visual on this thing, you’re dead.”
“I don’t know about that, ” Patrick said. “I think it’d be tough to kill in a tactical battle.” “Yeah? Most of the Air Force would disagree, ” Ormack replied. “Look at these wingsthis thing is huge, even when seen from several thousand feet up. It’s subsonic, which makes it a more inviting target and less elusive. No, I think the Air Force would forgo risking B-2 on a conventional raid.” He looked at McLanahan for feedback and was surprised when the young navigator gave him an unsure shrug in reply. “You still disagree?”
“I haven’t flown fighters as long as you, sir, ” McLanahan said, “but I have a tough time finding an airport from five thousand feet in the air, much less a single plane. At five thousand feet, a pilot is looking at almost four hundred square miles of ground. If he’s flying, say, eight miles per minute on a low combat-air patrol, forty square miles zip under his wings every ten seconds-twenty on each side of his cockpit. If he can’t use a radar to at least get himself in the vicinity, his detection problem is pretty complicated.”
“If a combat air patrol always had that wide an area to search, I might agree with you, ” Ormack said. “But the field of battle narrows down rapidly. One lucky sighting, one squeak of a radar detector or one blip on a radar screen, and suddenly the whole pack’s on top of you.”
“But I might have my missiles in the air by then, ” Patrick said. “If not, I sure as heck will not stay high over a target area. I’ve got an infrared camera that can see the ground, and the pilots have windows-those boys better be flying in the dirt with fighters on my tail. Even the F-23 advanced tactical fighter can’t fight close to the ground-they have to rely on taking ‘look-down’ shots from higher altitudes. That’s where a stealthy plane has the advantage.” Ormack didn’t have a reply right away-he was thinking hard about McLanahan’s arguments. “You bring up a few good points, Patrick, ” Ormack admitted. “You know what this calls for, don’t you?”
“RED FLAG, ” McLanahan replied. “No-better yet, the Strategic Warfare Center. General Jarrel’s little playland up in South Dakota.”
“You got it, ” Ormack said. “We’ll have to put an EB-2 up against a few fighters on Jarrel’s range and see what happens. Maybe even have them fly along with other aircraft on the range to see if our escorts can be effective with other strike aircraft.” He smiled at McLanahan and added, “I think that can be arranged. We can send you out to the Strategic Warfare Center for some operational test flights when the 393rd Bomb Squadron goes to the SWC in a few months. I’ll bring it up to General Elliott, but I think he’ll go for it. You might have just found yourself a new job, Patrick-developing penetration and attack techniques for Black Knight stealth escort crews.”
“Throw me in the briar patch, ” McLanahan said as they moved forward to the entry hatch. McLanahan’s new bird was AF SAC 90-007, the seventh B-2 bomber built. He found the plane’s nickname, “License to Kill, ” stenciled on the entry hatch as he and Ormack walked to it and opened it up to climb inside-it was a perfect nickname. Patrick checked that the “Alert Start” switch was off and safed-the B-2 had a button in the entry hatch that would start the bomber’s internal power unit and turn on power and air before the pilots reached the cockpit. With this system, the B-2 could have engine started, the inertial navigation system aligned, and the plane taxiing for takeoff in less than three minutes, without any external power carts or crew chiefs standing by. Ormack did activate the “Int Power” switch in the entryway, which activated internal power on the plane. Unlike the B- 1 bomber, whose offensive and defensive stations seemed to have been put in reluctantly, almost haphaz ardly, the B-2’s cockpit was massive. There was almost enough room for McLanahan to stand up straight as he slid into the right seat and began to strap in. Ormack looked at the young navigator with amusement as he set his seat and even put on a pair of flying gloves. “Going somewhere?”
“You want a redesigned cockpit, sir, then you gotta do it with the crew dog strapped into position, ” McLanahan re plied. “The reach is much different. If I had a helmet, I’d put it on.” Ormack nodded his agreement and smiled-as usual, McLanahan was getting right down to business. The bomber’s left instrument panel was like a television director’s console. Four color MFDs, or multi-function displays, dominated the instrument panel; each MFD was encircled with buttons that would change the screen’s function, allowing hundreds of different displays on each screen. The bomber used small sidestick controllers, like a fighter plane, with throttle quadrants to the left of each seat and the buttonfestooned control stick to the right. Each seat also had a wide, oval-shaped heads-up display, or HUD, that would project flight and attack information on the windscreen. “Where’re all the instruments?” McLanahan exclaimed with obvious surprise. “There’s hardly anything installed in here. Did they give us a stripped- down test article or what?”
“This is a fully functional production model, Patrick, ” Ormack replied. “Everything is done on the MFDs or using switches on the throttles and control stick. The screens show menu choices for selecting options for each piece of equipment, and you just push a button to select it or use the set button on the stick.”
“But I don’t see any flight-control system switches, ” McLanahan persisted. “What about a flap lever? Gear handle? How do you raise the landing gear-haul it up with a rope?”
“This is almost the twenty-first century, my friend, ” Ormack replied. “We don’t move levers-we tell the plane what to do and it takes care of it.” He pointed to the right-hand MFD at each station, which showed a simple five- line menu: BATT POWER, APU POWER, ALERT START, NORMAL START, and EMER START. Each item was located next to a corresponding button on the screen. “To start engines, you simply press the button and advance the throttles to idle, ” Ormack explained. “The computer takes care of everything else. Start engines, and up comes a different menu of items. Select TAKEOFF. The computer configures the plane for takeoff and continues to configure the plane during the climbout and all the way to level off-it’ll raise the gear and flaps, monitor the power settings, everything. Once at cruise altitude, you select CRUISE and it’ll fly the plane, manage the fuel, and report any errors. It has several different modes, including LANDING, LOW LEVEL, GUST for bad weather conditions, GO AROUND, and ATTACK modes.”
“Computerized flying, huh?” McLanahan muttered. “Pretty slick. You almost think they could do away with the pilot and nav. “It’s advance hardware, but not totally foolproof, ” Ormack said. “The pilot in the loop is still important.”
“And the nav in the loop as well, ” McLanahan said with a smile, examining the right-hand seat. “Or should I say, ‘mission commander’? I like the sound of that.” The right-hand instrument panel had boles and slots for the same size and number of color MFDs as the pilot’s side, but technicians had already removed the monitors themselves. “This looks like a duplicate of the pilot’s side, ” McLanahan observed. “I think it is, ” Ormack said. “The original idea was to have two pilots, remember. They decided it-” As Ormack watched, Patrick suddenly reached down to an awkwardly mounted keyboard on the right bulkhead and pulled it out of its slot. “Hey-!”
“Sir, having these nice color MFDs on the right side for the nav would be fine, ” McLanahan said, “but it would also be a huge waste. Small MFDs are nice, but they’re old technology… “Old technology? These MFDs are the latest thing-highresolution, high-speed, one twenty-eight K RAM per pixel, the whole nine yards… “Compare it with pilot’s side, ” McLanahan said. “Look here. The pilot can sit back, set up a scan, and fly his plane with complete ease and confidence. What does the nav have? The nav has got to focus on one screen at a time to do his job. His eyes lock on one screen-they have to, because you got one screen that displays only one set of information. What happens then? He loses track of what’s going on around him. He loses situational awareness. Something important
