like that in front of the entire ground crew, but he didn’t want to quash debate, no matter how unprofessionally it was initiated. Instead he only glanced at Long, nodded, and said, “John, we’ve discussed this decision for two days now. We’ve staffed it up and down as best we could.”
“General, we had no choice but to meet your arbitrary deadline,” Long insisted. “I’m concerned that
“You’ve made your view very clear,” Patrick said. “I’m taking full responsibility for this test. Your career won’t suffer if it fails.”
“I’m concerned about this wing, not about my career.”
“Then that will be a
“Yes,
Rebecca and Patrick finished their Form 781 logbook review and crew briefing, then began a walk-around inspection of the aircraft. The forward bomb bay held a rotary launcher carrying four AIM-150 Anaconda long-range, radar-guided, air-to-air missiles and four AIM-120 medium-range, radar-guided missiles. The aft bomb bay held a rotary launcher with eight AGM-165 Longhorn TV- and imaging-infrared-guided attack missiles. The center bomb bay held two AGM-177 Wolverine attack missiles loaded into air-retrieval baskets. Patrick knew that the Wolverines’ bomb bays each held four AGM-211 mini-Maverick guided missiles.
“I hate to say it, General, but Long is right — this is crazy,” Rebecca said to Patrick once they were out of earshot of the ground crew.
“It’ll work fine,” Patrick said.
“There is an army of engineers and test pilots at Edwards whose job it is to test stuff like this, Patrick,” she said. “Why don’t we let them do their damned jobs?”
“Rebecca, if you feel so strongly about this, why are you going along?”
“The same reason you’re going — because it’s
“You know why — because no one at Edwards or anywhere else will waste one gallon of jet fuel or spare one man-hour to work this project without a fully authorized budget.”
“Except me. Me and my budget are the expendable ones, right?”
“I’ve given you lots of opportunities to back out of this project, Rebecca,” Patrick said. He stopped and looked at her seriously. “You and John Long seem to delight in busting my ass and branding me as the bad guy, the one that breaks the rules but gets away with it every time. Fair enough — I’ll accept that criticism. But both of you can put the brakes on this at any time with one phone call to General Magness at Eighth Air Force or General Craig at Air Reserve Forces Command. You haven’t done it. You’ve chewed me out in front of every officer on this base. Long steps right up to the brink of insubordination without even blinking. He’s done everything but put an ad in the
“But you never made the call, and I think I know the reason: You’re hoping this works. Every new wing commander wants two things: for no one to screw up too badly, and to make a name for him- or herself in order to stand out above all the other commanders. In relative peacetime it’s even more important to shine. Long wants his first star so badly it hurts, and you can trade on your reputation as the first female combat pilot only so long.”
“That’s not true, General,” Rebecca said — but her voice had no force, no authority behind it. She knew he was right.
“We can debate this all day, but it won’t make any difference,” Patrick went on. “We have the skill and knowledge to make this work. But you’re the aircraft commander, the final authority. If you disagree, call a stop to it.” He waited, hands on hips. When she turned her flashlight up at the emergency landing gear blowdown bottle gauges, continuing the preflight, he nodded and said, “All right then, let’s
They finished their walk-around inspection, then climbed the steep entry ladder behind the tall nose-gear strut and made their way to the cockpit. After preflighting his ejection seat and strapping himself in, Patrick quickly “built his nest,” then waited for the action to start.
Rebecca joined him a few moments later. After strapping herself in, she pulled out her checklist, strapped it onto her right leg, flipped to the before apu start page, and began — then stopped herself. She ignored the checklist and sat back, crossing her arms on her chest in exasperation — and maybe a little bit of fear.
“Pretty bizarre way to go to war,” she muttered.
“Pretty bizarre way to go to war,” Dean “Zane” Grey muttered. He was seated at a metal desk inside the VC — virtual-cockpit — trailer, staring at two blank flat-panel LCD computer monitors. It was a tight squeeze inside the trailer. In the center of the interior were two seats in front of the metal desk; flanking them were two more seats with full computer keyboards, a trackball, and large flat-panel LCD monitors. On Daren Mace’s side, he had a “supercockpit” display — a twelve-by-twenty-four-inch full-color plasma screen on which he could call up thousands of pieces of data — everything from engine readouts to laser-radar images to satellite images — and display them on Windows- or Macintosh-like panes on the display. All other room inside the trailer was taken up by electronics racks, air-conditioning units, power supplies, and wiring. It was stuffy and confining, far worse than the real airplane ever was. It made Grey a little anxious — no, a
“Well, this is very cool,” Zane said, “but I’m ready to get going. So where is everything? Flight controls? Gauges?”
“Right here,” Daren Mace said. He handed Zane a thin, lightweight helmet resembling a bicyclist’s safety helmet, with an integrated headset and wraparound semitransparent visor encircling the front. Daren then handed him a pair of thin gloves. They all took seats. Putting on the helmets helped to kill the noise of electronics-cooling fans and air-conditioning compressors.
“How cool is this!” Zane repeated. A few moments after turning on the system, he saw a three-dimensional electronic image of an ultramodern B-1 bomber cockpit. No conventional instruments — everything was voice- controlled and monitored via large, full-color, multifunctional electronics displays. He was able to reach out and “touch” the MFDs and move the control stick. “Man, this is unbelievable!”
“We can shift the view to anything you’d like to see — charts, satellite imagery, tech orders, sensor information — anything,” Daren said. “Calling up info and ‘talking’ to the plane is easy — just preface every command with ‘Vampire.’ Voice commands are easy and intuitive. We have a catalog of abbreviated commands, but for most commands just a simple order will do. Try to use the same tone of voice, with no inflections. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”
“Very nice,” Zane exclaimed as he got settled in. “It’s like a fancy video game, only a lot noisier. Almost as noisy as the plane, I think.”
“General McLanahan wants to build a nicer command-and-control facility here at Battle Mountain,” Daren said, “but we have to prove this thing can work first.” He spent several minutes explaining how to enter commands into the system — voice commands, touching floating buttons or menus, touching the screen with virtual fingers, or using eye-pointing techniques to activate virtual buttons and switches on the instrument panel.
“You almost don’t need arms and legs to fly this thing,” Zane commented.
“It was designed at Dreamland by a guy who lost the use of his legs in a plane crash,” Daren responded. “Zen Stockard. He’s a buddy of mine. There was a phase where everything designed there was based on virtual- reality or advanced neural-transfer technology, simply because that was the best way for paraplegics to be able to use the gear. You don’t need to be an aviator to fly them either — the computers do most of the flying, even the air refueling. We use crew chiefs and techs to fly Global Hawk all the time. Let’s report in and get the show on the road.”
“I’m ready, boss,” Zane said excitedly. “VAC is up,” he said on intercom, addressing himself as the “virtual aircraft commander.”
“VMC is up,” Daren reported as the “virtual mission commander.”
