“This thing’s like a really big Strike Eagle or an F/A-18 Hornet,” Hayes commented.
“But it has four times the weapons load, five times the loiter time, and six times the range of any other tactical strike aircraft in the world,” Samson said. “The B-52 was number one until Congress made the decision to send ’em all to the boneyard. Now the B-1 is the most powerful bomber in the fleet. But we’re changing the mission of the heavy bomber. We want big bombers to be able to do tactical missions — precision-kill, close-air-support, ‘tank-plinking,’ even air superiority, as well as antiship and saturation bombing.”
They climbed the tall nose landing-gear strut entry ladder up into the Megafortress. Samson started to crawl forward, but Hayes immediately noticed the big change inside: “Okay, Earthmover,” he called, “where are the systems officer positions?”
“Oh yeah. Missing, aren’t they?” Samson grinned. “C’mon up to the front office and I’ll show you.”
Hayes crawled forward through the tunnel to the cockpit and slid into the open aircraft commander’s seat on the left side. This looked very much the way he remembered a Bone’s cockpit — but not the right side. Instead of the copilot’s side being almost identical to the pilot’s, it was now a sleek, uncluttered array of six large multifunction displays, with almost no analog round or tape instruments. “Made some changes, I see,” he remarked.
“The Bone now joins the ranks of the rest of the bombers in the fleet that only have two crew members,” Samson explained. “Meet the new automated Bone. I’d always heard that a B-1 is nothing more than a really big F-111 bomber — well, we took that description to heart and built exactly that. Like the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, we combined the copilot and navigator-bombardier into the mission commander’s position, sitting in the right cockpit seat. The big exception is, we use a pilot-trained bombardier as mission commander, instead of a bombardier-trained pilot.”
“Why’d you decide that?”
“Mostly because of my deputy commander, chief program director, and chief of flight operations — a navigator, of course,” Samson responded.
“McLanahan.”
“The very one,” Samson said proudly. “He’s the one who conducted today’s tests and dropped the weapons you saw. He knows what he’s talking about, and when he talks, everyone listens.” Victor Hayes merely nodded. Samson’s deputy commander was indeed well known and highly respected within the Air Force and throughout the U.S. government. Patrick McLanahan had almost attained the status of legend, like HAWC’s first commander, Brad Elliott.
“The mission commander controls everything with voice and touch-screen commands and a trackball,” Samson went on. “Two CD-ROMs have the entire mission, weapons ballistics, and computer software, along with maps and terrain features for the entire planet, and it’s all fed into the strike computers before launch. Everything’s completely automatic, from preflight to shutdown.
“But we went one step further, sir,” Samson continued. “The two-person crew isn’t exactly alone. We use real-time high-speed satellite communications and datalink technology to create a ‘virtual crew’ onboard the EB-1C Megafortress…”
“A what? You mean, a robot crew, like an autopilot or computer?”
“Not exactly,” Samson said. “The bomber crew and the plane are tied into a ground-based cockpit by satellite. We have a pilot, an engineer, a weapons officer, and a tactics officer on duty, linked to the crew. They see and hear everything the crew does. They have access to all the bomber’s systems and can spot problems and take corrective action if necessary. They can advise the crew on tactics, keep an eye on systems, and sort of look over the crew’s shoulder all the time — even fly the plane for them if absolutely necessary, although the system probably can’t react fast enough to survive while under attack.
“What’s more, this ‘virtual cockpit’ is transportable by cargo plane and can be set up in remote locations and run off a standard jet aircraft’s power cart. It’s the same technology we’ve been using for decades on manned spacecraft — we’ve just adapted the concept to manned bombers. And for bomber defense, we’ve replaced the ALQ-161 defensive management suite with the new ALR-56M and ALE-50 systems…”
“Speak English, techno-geek.”
“Yes, sir. Bottom line: fully automated, more maintainable, and overall a better electronic jamming and self-protection system, with a towed decoy system,” Samson said. “Antennas on the bomber still pick up enemy radar signals and process them, but now jamming signals are sent out via a robot emitter that’s towed several hundred feet behind the bomber. It’s a target decoy. It’s only a foot long and three inches in diameter, but it has an electronically adjustable radar and infrared cross section. The system automatically changes the electronic ‘size,’ depending on the threat. If the bomber’s just being scanned, the towed emitter is almost invisible. But if the enemy gets a lock-on and fires, its radar and infrared cross section can be changed to hundreds of times larger than the bomber.
“The B-1 carries eight decoys on tail fairings. It can still transmit jamming signals and drop expendables if the towed decoys all get shot down, but the system makes it more survivable in a high-threat environment. We’ve replaced the standard chaff and flare expendables with tactical air-launched decoys, or TALDs, which are tiny electromagnetic emitters that work far better than chaff or flares in decoying enemy missiles. And since the new system is fully automatic, we simply eliminated the DSO’s station.”
“Incredible, Earthmover, just incredible,” Hayes exclaimed. “I can’t believe we had anything in the budget to make design changes and upgrades like this.”
“It’s been tough, sir,” Samson said. “We’ve eliminated the B-52 and grounded one-third of the B-1B fleet to get the money to make any upgrades at all. Give us a budget, and we can field a squadron of B-1 rocket killers in less than twelve months.”
“Less than a year?” Hayes echoed. “How in the hell is that possible?”
“Because HAWC has turned into scrounger’s central, sir,” Samson explained. “We suck up every gadget we can get our hands on. Everything we have on this beast is off-the-shelf, and in some cases the shelf the stuff came from is mighty dusty. It’s what we’re forced to do nowadays to build new weapon systems — instead of designing an antiballistic missile killing system from a clean sheet of paper, HAWC looks at what we’ve got lying around the boneyard and depot warehouses. Beyond that, it’s just the raw talent and imagination of the troops we have around here.”
“So what’s your proposal going to look like, Earthmover?” Hayes asked, excited now.
“I propose the formation of a rapid-response antimissile squadron,” Samson responded eagerly. “I’m looking for at least ten B-1B Lancer bombers sent here to Elliott Air Force Base, one per month. We modify the planes and train the crews simultaneously. My suggestion: get the B-1s from the National Guard, and use National Guard crewdogs. We train them, reequip them, then send them back to their home states to stand ready. That way, we have low acquisition costs, low personnel costs, and low upkeep costs.
“But the trick,” Samson went on, “is going to be finding the right combination of crews to man these Megafortress-2s. The bombers’ll be operating behind enemy lines all the time, right in the bad guy’s face. They have to be hunters. They’ll have to hang around the forward edge of the battle area, expose themselves when a ballistic missile lifts off, then drive right down the enemy’s crotch to cut off his balls before his erection goes away. We need to pick the most aggressive, most fearless crewdogs in the service. I mean, they have to be real hard-core mud-movers.”