“bandits.”
He definitely had the feeling he was looking at a bandit right now.
“Don’t send the kids to the showers before you’ve seen them play, sir,” Terrill Samson responded, his deep, booming voice amplified over the intercom system. The two men were sitting side by side in the cockpit of an F-111 fighter-bomber, used by the Air Force as a photo “chase plane” on flight tests. They were flying a few hundred yards off the right wing of a black B-1B Lancer bomber, at an altitude of only two thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean off the southern California coast. Victor Hayes found it hard to believe Samson had managed to squeeze himself inside the F-111’s rather small cockpit, but now that they were both strapped in, he was clearly right at home there.
“I usually don’t go on a flight test without knowing more about what I’m getting into,” Hayes said. In truth, he was enjoying the hell out of this flight — he got to fly so seldom these days. “You mind filling me in?”
“I was just going to get to that, sir,” Samson said. His formation flying skills were excellent, Hayes had noted — he had chosen to hand-fly the big supersonic bomber the entire flight so far, and they might as well have been welded to the B-1’s right wingtip. Very impressive — even with over ten thousand hours of flying time in over a dozen different military warplanes, Hayes doubted that he could fly as well, especially given all the years since he’d been operational in any tactical unit. “We’ve got about five minutes to go.
“As you know, sir,” Samson went on, “my group at Dreamland helped test the Army’s THAAD system. In fact, we launched some targets from that same B-1…”
“I know,” Hayes said. “Looks like THAAD is turning into a money pit. You find a way to fix it?”
“Not exactly,” Samson said. “THAAD’s supposed to be an improved Patriot system — to destroy ballistic missiles in the upper atmosphere, or in near-space, at least twice as high as Patriot. It’s supposed to keep the warhead and critical pieces of the missile away from defended territory while staying as far away from the forward edge of the battle area as possible. But as you know from the Senate hearing, the technology to place a small antimissile missile close enough to a high-altitude, fast-moving target still isn’t fully matured — it’s literally a ‘bullet hitting a bullet’ from hundreds of miles apart. The problem is hitting a target in the midcourse or reentry phase of flight. THAAD can’t do it except with the plasma-yield warhead, which increases the cost of the system tremendously. Well, I had my guys start trying some things…”
Beneath his oxygen mask and sun visor, Hayes winced. HAWC’s first commander, Lieutenant General Bradley James Elliott, was famous throughout the Pentagon for “trying some things,” mostly with exotic aircraft and weapons being secretly developed at Dreamland. Elliott had this knack for taking a weapons development program and turning it into a military marvel — or monstrosity. The truth was, his inventions were often successfully — and secretly — used in real emergencies all around the world to try to avert conflicts before they escalated into major shooting wars.
The problem was, Elliott sometimes sent his monstrosities off to war without letting certain key folks know about it — like anyone in the Pentagon, Congress, or even the White House. A conflict would be brewing somewhere in the world — China, Ukraine, Russia, the Baltics, the Philippines — and almost before anyone could react, Elliott’s “creations” were on their way. He had been slapped down many times, even forced into retirement, yet he kept on coming back. As Hayes saw it, the curse of Brad Elliott now seemed to have fallen on Terrill Samson, former commander of Eighth Air Force, the command in charge of the Air Force’s dwindling fleet of heavy bombers. There was no doubt that Samson was a protege of Brad Elliott, especially in the development and deployment of the heavy bomber — and it certainly looked as though he was pulling some of the same tricks.
“So you built Lancelot — illegally, I might add,” Hayes said. “You built it with money and equipment you didn’t have, and now your ass is in a sling. I realize the fate of HAWC is tied up in this test, but what makes you think that Lancelot is going to be better than THAAD? You’re using the same technology.”
“Yes, it’s the same technology, because no one has the money to build new stuff,” Samson said. “But we attacked the problem from a different angle. We solved one major, fundamental problem with THAAD. My guys thought, ‘If THAAD is too far away from the bad guys to intercept a target in the boost phase, why don’t we bring THAAD closer?’”
“Closer to what?”
“Closer to the bad guys,” Samson said. “The problem with THAAD is that it still relies on hitting a missile in the midcourse or reentry phase, when it’s maneuvering, it’s small, it’s fast, it’s probably over friendly territory, and it’s high. Those are the two worst phases of flight if you want to do an intercept. The best time is during the boost phase — it’s flying slowly, it doesn’t try any evasive maneuvers, its propellants and airframe are under intense chemical and aerodynamic pressure, it has that big rocket plume behind it, it’s still over enemy territory, and the warhead hasn’t armed. But of course, getting an antiballistic missile close enough to the missile to destroy it during the boost phase was the problem — a big one.
“The aircraft-based ABL and space-based Skybolt laser systems were designed to kill missiles in all phases of flight, including boost phase, but they’re still a few years from full deployment. So we’ve combined THAAD with ABL. We’re going to launch an antiballistic missile weapon from a penetrating bomber.”
“
“Fireman flight, this is Neptune, two minutes,” the warning message said.
“Fireman flight, roger, two minutes, check,” the pilot of the B-1 responded.
“Two,” Samson responded on the command frequency.
“Fireman flight, take spacing.”
Again, the B-1 pilot acknowledged and Samson responded with “Two.” Then he said to Hayes, “I’ve got the airplane,” and took the F-111’s control stick, giving it a shake to verify that he had control, then maneuvered the plane a few hundred yards away. “The launch is coming up. The Navy is going to launch one of several short-range Pershing test ballistic missiles from launch barges on and around San Clemente Island. We don’t know which one.”
Hayes motioned to the large multicolor display on his side of the cockpit. “So explain what I’m looking at,” he said. “This is a great-looking display — pretty sharp. Where’s it coming from? An observation plane?”
“We’re looking at what the B-1’s sensors are looking at,” Samson explained. “We would ordinarily know through intelligence reports where the enemy’s ballistic missiles are set up. If we don’t, our system can integrate sensor information from many different sources through the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System — we can hook into AWACS or Joint STARS radar planes, satellites, other strike aircraft, or naval or ground forces. But for today’s demonstration, we’ll operate independently, using only sensors mounted on the B-1 itself.
“This is the first bomber to use LADAR — laser radar,” Samson continued. “You’re looking at a LADAR image. The smaller wavelengths mean a more high-resolution image. In addition, the LADAR emitters are so small, much smaller than a big radar dish, they can be mounted almost anywhere on the plane. That B-1 can look in all directions because it has LADAR emitters on the belly, on the fuselage, even in the tail.”
“But you told the Senate committee you’d only used off-the-shelf components for Lancelot. If this is the first bomber to use LADAR, how can it be off-the-shelf?”
“LADAR has been in use in active-homing missiles and in artillery ranging and counterfire systems for years,” Samson replied. “We just stuck it on a Bone, that’s all. It has relatively low range for the amount of power it uses, but for attacking ballistic missiles, it’s perfect.”
“And the missile itself is off-the-shelf too?”
“Yep,” Samson replied proudly. “We revived the old second-generation short-range attack missile and gave it the combined infrared and active radar terminal guidance system from the AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missile. We then put a fifty-pound high-explosive fragmentation warhead on it. That’s Lancelot. We actually resurrected a project that Brad Elliott started eight years ago, after the SRAMs were taken off strategic alert.”
The B-1 started a turn away from the launch area; a minute later it was heading the opposite direction from San Clemente Island. “All units, stand by,” said the voice of the Navy range master.
A few moments later a warning tone sounded in their headphones. “Missile launch detection,” Samson said. “The launch pad is on a barge out on the ocean. We’re seventy-eight miles from the launch pad…”
“But SRAM-II had a range of… what? A hundred miles max? Aren’t we a little far away?”
“Lifting our missile up to altitude with a carrier aircraft acts like an extra rocket motor, so we’ve effectively doubled the missile’s range,” Samson said. “Plus, by putting the uplink sensors aloft and closer to the target, we can provide our missile with more precise steering signals.”
“Stand by,” they heard the B-1’s bombardier call. “Safe in range… missile counting down… doors coming
