“Ken … Maraklov seems like he’s still on top of his game,” J.C. said. “He scared the hell out of those F-16 Air National Guard guys. Faked one with a missile shot, follows him in a horizontal climb, then hoses him while the F-16 descends on him. He busted up one other guy—”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
But that wasn’t altogether true — in reality, McLanahan was, in a way, fascinated by him. Not just because of the amazingly successful espionage operation that he had managed all these years, but because of what sort of person was out here. He was a Russian, a Soviet agent — he must have been worried about being captured every day, yet he not only successfully penetrated the most top-secret flight research lab in the U.S. but became the only pilot of the most advanced flying machine in the whole world. How anyone could keep calm and collected through all that without going crazy was unbelievable. Add on that he had to fly DreamStar itself — and in Maraklov’s case take it into battle, with no “knock it off” calls or prearranged attack scenarios, no “wait ten seconds then come and get us” stuff. And Maraklov had proved himself in battle, handily defeating two F-16 ADF interceptors … “How the hell does he do it?”
“He’s tuned into the ANTARES computer as if it was made especially for him,” J.C. replied immediately, as if he was thinking the very same thing as McLanahan. “It’s logical, though — if he’s a Russian mole like they say he is, he had to forget completely about being a Russian and transform himself into an American. It’s like he can ram-flush his own mind and fill it with whatever he wants. The same with ANTARES — he can empty his mind of everything and allow that machine to take over. I don’t know how he snaps out of it — he must keep back a bit of his brain, enough to remind himself that he’s a human being — sort of like leaving bread crumbs behind in a maze to help find your way out …”
“But how can a guy fight like that? I’ve flown lots of different high-performance fighters, including Cheetah’s simulator, and it takes every ounce of concentration I have just to keep the thing flying straight. How can a schizy guy like that fly one?”
“Practice helps,” J.C. said. “Sure, you’ve flown a lot of fighters — always with an instructor pilot and always in ideal day VFR conditions — but you don’t have many hours. Maraklov has got hundreds of hours in DreamStar. And let’s face it — the man is good. With or without DreamStar, he’s a top fighter pilot. I’m no psychologist, so I don’t know too much about his mental state, but just because you’re schizy doesn’t mean you can’t function normally or even above norm. Hell, they say most of us fighter pilots are schizoids anyway … But ANTARES is the key, Patrick. If you had a full-time, high-speed computer telling you what to do each and every second you were at the controls, you could fly any jet in the inventory. The problem you and I have is that we can’t interface with ANTARES. Maraklov is the opposite: he’s probably at a point where he can’t exist without ANTARES. He’s not whole unless he’s hooked up to that machine. When he’s not hooked up he’s less than himself. He’s probably more dangerous when he’s not hooked up. When he’s hooked into ANTARES he’s sort of at the mercy of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, no matter how far we’ve come with high-speed integrated circuits, micro-miniature computers and neural interfaces, there’s no unlimited amount of info you can take on board an aircraft. We call ANTARES artificial intelligence, and in a way it is, but the critical difference between my brain and ANTARES’ computer is that ANTARES can’t learn. And learning creates an unlimited pool of info that you rely on in combat. There’s a lot of it available on DreamStar, but it has a limit, and we know what the limit is. James — Maraklov — can call on his own experience and training to improve his own pool of information, but we’ve seen before that he doesn’t do that. He relies more and more on ANTARES to make crucial decisions for him. So his advantage can become a disadvantage for him, and that’s a one-up for me. On Cheetah I’ve got a lot of options available. Including ones I dream up or choose. He doesn’t—”
“But ANTARES has hundreds of options available,” McLanahan said, “and it can execute them much faster than you can—”
“ANTARES executes a maneuver based on what it figures out I’m doing, true,” J.C. said, “but he also makes moves based on the probability of what I’ll do in the future, based on what I do now. ANTARES is thinking ahead and maneuvering to counter or press the attack based on what it thinks I’ll do. But what if he’s thinking the wrong thing?”
“The chances of it computing the wrong thing are slim,” McLanahan said. “It computes dozens, sometimes hundreds of combinations to any situation—”
“But it can only execute one of them,” J.C. said. “The one it executes is based on current activity and probability — highly accurate mathematical statistics and historical averages but still chance, educated guesses.”
“So if you do something different, it recomputes on that move, executes the maneuver, and computes another dozen situations …”
“You got it. And when it stops and thinks — and I don’t care how fast it does it — I have some advantage. If it’s thinking instead of fighting that’s good for me.”
McLanahan’s head was pounding. “You’ve got a machine that can think and tract faster than a human being. A lot faster. How can you get the advantage over that?”
“Because of the way it’s programmed,” J.C. said.
“DreamStar is a fighter,” McLanahan said. “It’s been programmed to fight. Attack. It can compute a dozen different ways to attack every second. Where’s the advantage?”
“What would you do?” J.C. asked, “if You were chasing down a bogey at your twelve o’clock and you had the overtake on him but you both had a lot of smash built up? What would you do? Would you go max AB, firewall the throttle, close on the guy and attack?”
“I could, but it wouldn’t be smart.”
“Why?”
“Because if I had a lot of overtake, the bogey could reverse on me easier. Then I’d be on the defensive—”
“Exactly. DreamStar does not think like that. DreamStar has not been programmed to hang back, match speed and power, maintain spacing, look for an opening. DreamStar goes for the kill when the target is presented to it. It will always engage. If you’re ever in doubt about what it will do, it will attack. You can count on it. Remember our last flight test with DreamStar?”
“Sure. James almost pancaked into those buttes.”
“He did that because even in what we would call an unsafe situation, DreamStar’s computers will press the attack no matter what. If there’s the slightest opening, the tiniest chance for success, DreamStar will use it in its attack equation.”
“I wasn’t involved with the programming part of DreamStar’s computers,” McLanahan said, “but to me it doesn’t make sense. Isn’t defense as much a part of dogfighting as offense? Why wouldn’t DreamStar’s computer programmers teach it about defense?”
“Who knows? DreamStar was probably programmed by some computer weenie who never was in a cockpit. But then again, I suppose if you have the ultimate fighter, the most agile and fastest there is, it would be easy to ignore defense and concentrate on offense. But it can afford to ignore cut-and-run options because it has the speed and the agility to turn tiny mistakes into victories. Guys lose because they’re amazed by how fast it is. It’s not fast — you’re dead because you did exactly what DreamStar figured you would do, and it was right there waiting for you. Boom. Dead meat.”