Dale Brown
Day of the Cheetah
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the United States Air Force Aeronautical Systems Division (ASD), Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, for their invaluable assistance in gathering information on America’s future fighter aircraft. ASD is a dream come true for an ex-Air Force nav, wistful fighter pilot, and fiction writer.
Space prohibits me from mentioning each of the fine persons of ASD that I had the pleasure of meeting, but I would like to thank Lt. General William E. Thurman, commander of ASD, for allowing me the privilege of a visit; Lt. Col. George H. Peck, Helen Cavanaugh, Capt. Brian Hoey, Jo Ann Rumple, and Capt. Jamie Scearse of the Office of Public Affairs for arranging my visit and escorting me through the myriad of offices and labs; Captain Myers N. Drew, AFTI/F-16 Program Manager, from the Flight Dynamics Laboratories, who showed me how a fighter could really fly sideways; Mr. James Pruner, X-29 Program Director, Mr. Ron DeCamp, mission-adaptive wing (MAW) Program Director, Mr. James Kocher, Integrated Close Air Support System (ICASS) Program Director, all of the Flight Dynamics Laboratory, Wright Aeronautical Laboratories; and a special thanks to Dr. Wayne L. Martin, acting chief of the Visual Displays System Branch of the Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory, for allowing me to try out some of the incredible “Buck Rogers” supercockpit systems that our fighter pilots will be using five to ten years from now. I hope I have done credit to the time you extended to me.
Source for many of the technical descriptions of aircraft, weapons systems, and military forces of foreign nations was the United States Naval Institute Military Database, Arlington, Virginia. Other information sources include Western Union InfoMaster Research Database (medical articles, research papers, theses), CompuServe Information Service (encyclopedia, data storage, and computer utilities), and the Dow Jones News/ Retrieval Service (news articles, historical data, government statistics).
Thanks to Dennis T. Hall for helping arrange research trips and interviews. It’s great having you on the team.
A special thanks to George Wieser, who helped me to focus in on the real story behind Cheetah, and to Donald I. Fine, editor as well as publisher, for sharing his experience and talent with me.
And, as ever, to Jean. I’m happy you’re with me.
Dedication
Day of the Cheetah is dedicated to two very special people who helped me over the years.
To my grandmother, Ruby Normandin, for her warmth and vitality, her charm and humor, for her patience when I was little, and her pride now that I’m not so little. I’m happy to let the whole world know what kind of person you are and how much I love you.
To my uncle, Leo Brown, a very special dedication. I took a lot of your time, your talent, and your patience — I even took your name. I wish I had taken the time to say Thank You.
Glossary
All terms in this Glossary are actual terms, weapons, or systems unless designated “fictional.”
AA-11 — NATO reporting name “Archer,” advanced Soviet close-range heat-seeking or radar-guided air-to-air missile. Carried by MiG-29 (can carry six), MiG-23 (cames two), and Su-27 fighters (carries four).
AAA — anti-aircraft artillery. Also called triple-A.
ADIZ — Air Defense Identification Zone. Specially marked areas around the United States where aircraft from outside the United States must receive permission from air traffic control before entering.
AEROFLOT — The national airline of the Soviet Union. Aeroflot has a major role in the Soviet Union’s military strategy and planning — all Aeroflot aircraft can be expected to serve under military command in wartime.
AFTERBURNER — A throttle setting in a high-performance jet engine where extra fuel is sprayed into an engine chamber to increase thrust. The use of afterburner increases the rate of fuel consumption by 500 % but can double or triple the engine’s thrust.
AGL — Above Ground Level. The actual distance between the aircraft’s belly and the ground. Usually measured by a radar altimeter.
AGM-88 HARM — HARM stands for High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile. The AGM-88 is an air-launched anti-radar missile built by Texas Instruments, Inc., that homes in on enemy ground or ship radars and destroys them from ranges as far as ten miles.
AGM-130 — An air-launched rocket-powered glide bomb built by Rockwell International. Guided by infrared or TV camera, by manual data-link guidance or automatic target lock-on, it has a two-thousand-pound high-explosive warhead and can glide for two to five miles, even when launched from very low altitude.
AGM-132C TACIT RAINBOW — An air-launched winged drone anti-radar missile built by Boeing Aircraft. The missile can be pre-programmed for certain enemy radars and launched from long distances. The missile will cruise to and then orbit the target area until an enemy radar comes up, then home in on it and destroy it.
AIM-9R SIDEWINDER — Primary U.S. heat-seeking air-to-air missile, built by Raytheon Company and Ford Aerospace. It has a speed of over Mach two (twice the speed of sound) and a range of more than ten miles.
AIM-120C AMRAAM — Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, a radar-guided missile built by Hughes Aircraft and Raytheon. The AIM-120 has its own radar seeker in its nosecone — unlike other radar-guided missiles, the AIM-120 does not need guidance signals from the launch aircraft to home in on its target. It has a top speed of over Mach four.
AIM-132B ASRAAM — Advanced Short-Range Air-to-Air Missile — The proposed European-built successor to the MM-9 Sidewinder.
AIRWAY — Pre-planned routes to be followed by large or commercial aircraft entering, leaving or flying within the United States under positive control. Three kinds: “A” routes (from foreign or overwater points), “V” (for low altitude), or “J” (for higher-altitude aircraft).
ALPHA — Stands for “angle of attack,” the angle, measured in degrees, between the wind hitting an aircraft’s wing and the angle of the wing itself. A plane exceeding a certain angle of attack will stall (cease to fly). Most high-performance aircraft cannot fly at more than eighteen to twenty alpha, but advanced fighters will be designed to fly and attack at well over fifty alpha.
ANTARES (FICTIONAL) — Advanced Neural Transfer and Response System. A method for digitizing and transmitting neural impulses from the human body to a computer, and vice versa.
ATF — Advanced Tactical Fighter. A program developed to specify, design and build the next generation of fighter aircraft, beginning in the year 1992 and continue well into the twenty-first century. The ATF (X-22 or X-23) will use non-metallic materials in its construction, rely heavily on artificial intelligence and advanced computer graphics in the cockpit, fly in unconventional ways, fly at supersonic speeds without afterburner, and take off and land on a fifteen-hundred-foot-long runway.
AWACS — Airborne Warning And Control System. An aircraft-mounted radar that can scan for aircraft at any altitude out to two hundred miles and control air-to-air intercepts and engagements with enemy forces with a wide array of communications equipment.
BIG CHICKEN DINNER — BCD, or Bad Conduct Discharge.
BOGEY — Fighter pilot slang for unidentified aircraft.
BREAKAWAY — An emergency term used during air refueling when the two aircraft must separate quickly. The tanker aircraft will immediately accelerate and climb five hundred feet, and the receiver aircraft will immediately decelerate and descend five hundred feet.