“Get Space Command to give you the plume-illumination-rate levels from the satellite detectors,” Saks recommended. “They’ll squawk and say you’re not cleared for that info, but tell them you need it anyway. A ground-launched missile will have a huge and sustained first-stage plume, followed by a medium-size second-stage plume, followed by a long unpowered-coast phase. Air-launched missiles like the Kh-90 have a relatively small first stage — the carrier aircraft is actually considered the missile’s first stage — followed by a whopping big and sustained second stage, which sometimes continues through reentry and even to impact.”
“Would DSP be able to track the Koala during its ramjet-cruise phase?” Patrick asked.
“Probably not, sir,” Saks responded. “DSP needs a good hot flame, as from a chemical-reaction motor, versus an air-fuel motor like a ramjet. A ramjet is basically an air-breathing engine, like a turbojet, except it uses the Venturi shape of the combustion chamber, rather than vanes and rotating blades, to compress incoming air. Because there’s no moving parts that stall in supersonic air, the ramjet vehicle can fly several times faster than most turbojets or turboramjets. NORAD can tune DSP to pick up cooler heat sources such as from a ramjet engine, but then it’s more prone to false alarms, so they probably wouldn’t do it unless they had a really compelling reason. The HAVE GAZE and SLOW WALKER satellites — designed to detect and track stealth aircraft — might be able to pick them up, but they need a pretty solid aimpoint to start with.”
“Speed of a ballistic missile, range of a cruise missile — and a nuclear warhead to boot,” Griffin summarized. “Did you get the data on the antiradar missiles fired against Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan yesterday?”
“Yes, sir. Most certainly AS-17 ‘Krypton’ antiradar missiles, what the Russkies call the Kh-31P. It’s a knockoff of the French ANS supersonic antiship and antiradar missile. We’ve never seen them on Backfires before, but it makes total sense. It’s a pretty awesome threat. But if the Russians are flying Koalas now, that’s an even greater threat. The Russians practiced launching Koalas from everything from fighters to cargo planes, and even from airliners back in the eighties. Even a Patriot missile can’t catch up to it — it’s a hypersonic missile almost right up to impact.”
“Any more good news for us, Don?” Patrick asked wryly.
“Two things, sir: The Russians know superramjet technology,” Saks responded seriously. “If you think you saw a Koala test-fired lately, chances are they’ve got a bunch of them ready to go.”
“What’s the other thing, Don?”
“The Koala was originally designed to carry
Those words stayed with Patrick long after he hung up. “Tagger, we’re going to need to look at those uncorrelated contacts in Siberia,” he said finally. “We know that Backfire bombers were involved in that attack on Bukhara, and we know that they can carry both AS-17 and AS-19 missiles. The boss wants to know where that Backfire came from — but I want to know who launched that AS-19, and I want to know what else the Russians are doing with their bomber fleet. If this was some isolated incident, or if this was a prelude to some sort of bigger offensive in Turkmenistan or somewhere else, I want to find out about it.”
“I’ll get the ball rolling, Patrick,” Griffin said. “What’s your guess?”
“My guess is that this attack on Bukhara was an operational test mission,” Patrick said. “I’ve flown many of them myself with planes from Dreamland and from Battle Mountain. I think the Russians are getting ready to roll out a whole new attack system, based on long-range bombers. The addition of the Koala missile is the scariest part — with it they can hold thousands of targets in North America at risk.”
David Luger snatched up the secure telephone receiver as soon as he was told who was on the line. “Muck!” he exclaimed after logging in secure. “How are you, sir?”
“I’m fine, and I’m not ‘sir’ to you anymore,” Patrick responded.
“You’ll always be ‘sir’ to me, Muck,” Dave said. “How’s the Nine-sixty-sixth treating you?”
“Just fine,” Patrick responded. “Good bunch of guys. Some of the civilian contractors need a bath and a haircut, though.”
“Sounds like our kind of guys. And what’s it like to be hobnobbing with the numbered air force brass?”
“Remember the old saying about not wanting to watch how sausage is made?”
“Got it.”
“How are things out there?”
“Quiet and busy at the same time,” Dave replied. “Our tanker guys are getting plenty of work, but the bomber guys and UCAV operators are going stir-crazy. We had to fly the AL-52s back to the lake.” Even on a secure line, both parties hesitated to mention Dreamland or HAWC.
“I expected that to happen,” Patrick said. “We were spending their money but not keeping up with the test schedule.” The AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser anti-ballistic-missile aircraft was a test program initially begun at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, or HAWC, the supersecret flight-test facility in south-central Nevada known as Dreamland. Patrick McLanahan brought the Dragons, the first operational aircraft to use a laser as their primary attack weapon, to Battle Mountain and created a combat unit based around these amazing planes. They were used over both Libya and Turkmenistan with outstanding results, against both air and ground targets and on targets as small as a heat-seeking missile and as large as a Russian MiG-29 supersonic fighter. But technically the planes still belonged to Dreamland, because Patrick didn’t have an official budget. “Too bad. Are they going to continue the program?”
“Hard to tell. The Cobra program is doing well — they should deploy their first operational aircraft ahead of schedule.” The YAL-1A Cobra was an airborne chemical-oxygen-iodine laser set in a Boeing 747 airframe. While the AL-52 Dragon airborne laser had actually been used in combat, the technology used in the YAL-1A was less expensive and far less risky, and so it had much more political and military support than HAWC’s version.
“Who’s the project officer assigned to the AL-52?”
“There wasn’t one when we brought the planes in,” David said. “The director of flight ops signed for the birds himself.”
“That’s not good.” If there was no project officer assigned to the flight-test program, there was a very good chance the AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser program would languish — or, more likely, be canceled. “I’ll see what I can do from here.”
“Good. Hey, we got the word that the Seventh Bomb Wing is down for their ORI. We put in a request to cover their sorties. Any word on that?”
“It was discussed. They’re going to gin up some fly-stores instead.”
“That doesn’t make sense. We’re ready to go now. We can do everything the Seventh can do, plus the SEAD stuff.”
“I know. General Hollister stood up for us, but Zoltrane and Samson wanted fly-stores.”
“Hmph. Well, it’s kind of a moot point anyway — we still need to be certified by Eighth Air Force before we cover sorties. Any word on when we’re going to recert?”
“After this Russia thing cools down, I’m sure they’ll be out there to get you recertified.”
“I hope so — we’re definitely ready. The sooner, the better. So what’s up, Muck?”
“Dave, I’ve got a request for you,” Patrick said. “Do you have any NIRTSats handy?”
“Sure,” Luger replied. NIRTSat stood for “Need It Right This Second” satellite. Up to four of the different types of the small oven-size NIRTSats — reconnaissance, communications, or weapon targeting — were loaded aboard a winged rocket-powered booster, taken up to thirty or forty thousand feet, then dropped from a launch aircraft such as Battle Mountain’s EB-52s or EB-1C bombers or from other carrier aircraft, such as Sky Masters Inc.’s DC-10 launch/tanker aircraft. After launch, the booster’s first-stage solid rocket motor shot the aircraft to the top of the stratosphere, where the second-and third-stage motors would kick in and propel the booster into low Earth orbit, anywhere from fifty to three hundred miles’ altitude. After ejecting its satellites in the proper sequence and spacing, the booster would then fly itself back to Earth for reuse.
Although the NIRTSats carried very little fuel and therefore could not be easily repositioned and could stay in orbit only a short time, they gave a wide range of users — field commanders, aircrews, even small-unit commando forces — their own specialized satellite constellation. But the cost per pound was high; and although Dreamland
