its mounting and began to trail behind the aircraft on a thin carbon-fiber-reinforced fiber-optic cable. The tiny object, soon trailing several hundred feet behind the AL-52, was an ALE-50-towed electronic countermeasures decpy. Just three feet long and six inches in diameter, it was invisible to the Libyan air defense radars that surrounded them at that moment.
The aircraft was a modified B-52 Stratofortress bomber not a U.S. Air Force warplane, but an experimental aircraft modified by Patrick's company, Sky Masters Inc., called an AL-52 Dragon. The warplane he was sitting in was so advanced that even Patrick, who had been involved in its development both in and out of the Air Force for years, was truly amazed. What he was really sitting in, he realized with a mixture of awe and glee, was… the future. 'Star Wars' was no longer a Reagan-era pipe dream or the name of a hugely successful science-fiction motion picture series-it was right here, right now. The AL-52 Dragon combined the absolute state-of-the-art in laser technology, high-speed computers, miniaturization, stealth systems, and systems integration to produce the world's first true twenty-first century weapon system, using technology that had never been deployed on an aircraft before.
The airframe itself was based on the EB-52 Megafortress modification of the B-52H Stratofortress bomber, with stealthy composite fibersteel skin and frame, four powerful turbofan engines replacing the original eight turbofans, a Vtail stabilator replacing the big cruciform tail, and an advanced self-protection suite, including radar and infrared jammers, towed arrays, decoys, and Stinger aerial land mines. The original six-person crew had been replaced by enough state-of-the-art computers and artificial intelligence systems that now only two crew members, an aircraft commander and a mission commander, were required to be on board-and, in an extreme emergency, either could bring the plane home alone.
The Megafortress was designed as a stealthy flying battleship, able to penetrate heavily defended targets deep behind enemy lines and employ every air-launched weapon in the American arsenal-and a few that had been dreamed up just for it-with great precision. The Dragon variant of the Megafortress battleship retained the conventional attack capabilities-it could carry up to twelve thousand pounds of ordnance on wing hardpoints, including cruise missiles, air-to-air missiles, and even antisatellite and antimissile weapons. Patrick knew all about the devastating warfighting capabilities of the EB-52 Megafortress-he had spent more than fifteen years of his life working on it. Sky Masters Inc. still flew several versions of the EB-52 for flight test and research purposes, still hoping that the Air Force would someday take the roughly one hundred B-52H Stratofortress bombers in flyable storage out of mothballs and have the company convert them to either EB-52 Megafortresses or AL-52 Dragons.
'Here we go, Bud,' Patrick said. To the computer, he said, 'Activate array.' In an instant, the towed array, which normally was all but invisible to radar, blossomed to the electromagnetic equivalent of a Boeing 747.
That move had its desired and expected effect: All of the Libyan air defense radars, which had just been searching the skies seconds before, almost immediately locked on to the towed decoy. Now instead of peaceful search and air traffic control radars, Patrick's threat scope was suddenly alive with dozens of antiaircraft threats- surface-toair missile sites, antiaircraft artillery, and fighter-intercept radars. 'Warning, SA-10 acquisition mode, ten o'clock, twenty miles,' the computer responded. 'Warning, SA-9 acquisition mode, two o'clock, ten miles…' The warnings kept coming, until: 'Warning, missile launch, SA-10, ten o 'clock, nineteen miles.. warning, missile launch, SA-10, ten o'clock, nineteen miles..'-the SA-10 missiles always launched in pairs. 'Countermeasures not activated.'
'Commit Dragon,' Patrick spoke. He had to consciously bring his breathing and voice under control. In all the times he had been on an attack run, this was the first time he did not react when a threat came up. If this didn't work, they'd be dead in fifteen seconds.
'Caution, Dragon activated… caution, Dragon engaging,' the computer responded. Patrick watched in fascination as the newest and most sophisticated computer system ever placed aboard any aircraft automatically began prosecuting the attack and activating the most devastating airborne weapon ever produced: the AL-52 Dragon's LADARs, or laser radar arrays, which electronically scanned hundred of thousands of cubic miles of space in every direction thirty times per second, tracked the Soviet-made SA-10 missile with millimeter precision. At the same time the LADAR also instantly measured the dimensions of the rocket, determining where its motor section was. Tracking computers then began measuring the rocket's speed, altitude, and directioneven predicting its probable impact point and relaying the data to friendly forces downrange.
At the same moment, the Dragon itself came to life.
Turbopumps in the belly of the AL-52 Dragon immediately began pressurizing hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide inside a reaction chamber. Chlorine gas and helium from storage tanks in the cargo section of the modified B-52 bomber were then sprayed under pressure into the chamber, forming an energized substance called singlet delta-oxygen. In another reaction chamber, iodine and helium were injected into the substance, which released the high-energy photons from the gas, creating laser light.
At the same time, the AL-52's laser radar locked onto the rocket rising through the atmosphere and immediately began to send target airspeed, altitude, direction, acceleration, and flight path data to targeting computers. The computers immediately fed the data to the gimbaled turret in the nose of the AL-52, and the turret unstowed itself from inside the bomber's nose and turned and swiveled until the laser's telescope and four-foot- diameter mirror were aimed at the rocket. The pilots could feel a slight rumbling under their toes as the huge fifteen-foot-high turret slewed toward the target, but otherwise it did not affect the flight characteristics of the heavy bomber.
When all this information was received, processed, analyzed, and instructions sent-eight seconds after target detection-Patrick received a simple 'LASER READY' computerized voice in his headphones. 'Cockpit's ready for launch.'
'Roger. COIL in attack mode… now.'
The attack was purely automatic-there was no big red 'FIRE' button anywhere on the plane. The laser radar system instantaneously measured the exact size of the SS-12 rocket and aimed the laser at the rocket motor section, the point of maximum pressure on the missile. The laser radar also provided an atmospheric correction to the laser telescope's deformable mirror to adjust for temperature gradients from the Dragon to the target. Finally, the big COIL, or chlorine-oxygen-iodine laser, fired. A four-foot-diameter beam of high-energy laser light shot from the nose of the AL-52 and was focused by the deformable mirror down to a spot the size of a basketball on the motor section of the first rocket. The beam was completely invisible to the cockpit crew-they could see the mirror turret moving slightly, tracking the target, but nothing else.
Patrick switched the large full-color supercockpit display on the right-side instrument panel to the telescope view. He was now looking right down the barrel of the laser, watching an optical presentation of what the laser attack computer was looking at. The SA-10 missile was clearly visible, tracked and illuminated by the laser radar arrays and focused to razor-sharp clarity by the deformable mirror. The crosshairs in the center of the display were dead on the rear one-third of the missile-the center of the SA-10's rocket motor. Patrick increased the magnification and was even able to read markings on the side of the missile.
As the missile flew higher and higher in the sky, its thermodynamic pressures were building as well-pressure from the force of the engines, pressure from the atmosphere, pressure from gravity, pressure from building speed, and pressure created by the guidance system acting through the rocket's fins and gyros. Finally, the heat from the laser burned through the missile's skin enough that the skin surrounding the motor section couldn't contain the immense internal pressures or structurally hold the outside air pressures, and the missile ripped apart like a rotten banana and exploded.
'Missile destroyed!' Patrick shouted. 'We got it!'
The attack computer immediately shifted to the Second SA-10 missile, launched seconds after the first, and the result was just as successful and just as spectacular. 'Missile two destroyed! Towed array in standby… laser's ready to shoot again, all threats down. Hot damn!'
Sky Masters Inc. needed a realistic real-world test of its airborne laser technology, so Patrick McLanahan, overseeing the program, thought of the easiest and fastest way to test it out-fly over a country that liked to shoot missiles without warning and see if it worked. Libya filled the bill nicely. Libya had the best military hardware its oil money could buy, and they were notorious for firing on stray aircraft without warning. Plus, most of Libya south of Tripoli was open desert, so there was little risk of anyone being hurt by falling debris or misses-or, if the test didn't work, falling pieces of the AL-52 Dragon.
'Have we had enough, boss?' Franken asked. 'I sure have.'
