“How long would it take them to take that aircraft apart, General?”
Kane was anxious to get out of the sudden glare of attention and have the spotlight focus on the principal of this incident. He said, “I can’t give you an- accurate answer, Mr. President.” He turned to General Bradley Elliott sitting beside him. “Brad?”
“It’s hard to say, Mr. President.” All eyes were on Elliott, but not because they were waiting to hear what he said — they all believed he was the one who had leaked the information on DreamStar to the press in the first place. “If they wanted to, they could have DreamStar in pieces in hours — it could already be crated up and ready to ship. But I don’t think they would just hack it up. The XF-34 is the most advanced aircraft in the world. The Soviets will want it intact.”
“Then why take it apart at all?” William Stuart, the Secretary of Defense asked. “Why not just fly it to Managua and load it onto a large freighter?”
“That can be done, sir,” Elliott replied. “But they know that it would be easy to spot once it arrived in Managua, and very difficult to conceal. We could detect which ship it was loaded onto and intercept or destroy—”
“Destroy a Russian freighter?” from Attorney General Richard Benson. “In peacetime? That’s crazy!”
“Mr. Benson,” Elliott said, “that is one thing we should never reveal.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sir, many other military powers in the world would kill to keep an aircraft like DreamStar from falling into enemy hands. To the Russians, the Chinese, the French, the Israelis, the British, destroying a freighter with a torpedo from several miles away to keep that freighter from escaping with their country’s most valuable military aircraft would be no big deal. They wouldn’t hesitate—”
“That’s them, not us.”
“Mr. Benson, if we really want our fighter back, we must at least appear ready at any time to commit such an act. We must convince the Russians that we are ready to do anything necessary to get our aircraft back. If we announce we will never shoot at a Russian freighter in peacetime, we invite them to load DreamStar on that freighter and sail it right under our noses back to Russia. If we tell them we’ll blow your ass out of the water if we find out our plane is on board, and we convince them and the world that we mean it, well, they may just look for a different way to get it out of Nicaragua.” He was also thinking about the Cuban missile crisis but didn’t bring it up.
Heads nodded around the conference table; Elliott had apparently gotten through to most of them, at least enough to see the logic of what he was saying. And the President was at least attentive if perhaps not convinced.
“If they don’t want to risk discovery by loading the entire aircraft onto a ship,” Elliott pressed on, “and they don’t just quickly chop it up into pieces, they have two other options: they can take their time dismantling it, making careful records and notations about how to put it back together, or they can fly it out of Nicaragua. It wouldn’t take long to dismantle DreamStar — a day or two, pull the engine and the black boxes, dissect and discard the rest. If they choose to fly it out, it may take them a few days, three at the most, to configure it for overwater flight with extra fuel tanks.”
“What’s keeping them from just flying the thing onto one of their new aircraft carriers?” Deborah O’Day asked. “From what I understand DreamStar can land on a carrier without an arresting hook and take off again without a catapult.”
“All true,” Elliott said, surprised that she knew so much, careful to use the same tone of voice with her as with the President and Stuart and the other members of the staff. He had to fight himself to keep from smiling at her. He was all but convinced that she was the one who had leaked information about DreamStar to the press to force the President’s hand. He knew her feelings and those of the NSC. It was a risky maneuver, but it could pay off — and it could also result in both of them being sent to Leavenworth or Eglin for ten years for conspiracy … “Again, they’d be exposing themselves to a great degree of danger if they tried to fly DreamStar onto a carrier. It’s a tricky operation under the best conditions; for James in DreamStar it would be that much more difficult, even with his advanced flight-control system. And the Soviets know they would risk attack if it was discovered that they had DreamStar on board. They would not, I feel, risk one of only six Moscow-class aircraft carriers for one fighter plane, even this one.”
“These are all conjectures on your part, Elliott,” the President said. “Sheer speculation not surprisingly biased in favor of a military response.”
“Yes, sir, I agree. I am speculating on all of this, and I am leaning in favor of a swift, decisive, direct response — but only for the sake of time. If we could count on the Russians taking weeks to carefully dismantle DreamStar I would not even consider a direct military response. Certainly not at this point. If you recall back in 1976, when Viktor Belyenko flew his then-top-secret MiG-25 to Japan, one of the first reactions by the Ford administration was to guarantee that we would turn the MiG over to the Russians intact immediately after our investigation of the matter was completed — which, of course, gave us time to study the thing. We made that guarantee, sir, because the Russians had one-fifth of their navy within five hours’ sailing time of the MiG’s landing spot, and the administration was convinced that the Russians would militarily intervene in Japan to get their MiG25 back. I’m saying, sir, that is the threat we need to project to the Soviets in Nicaragua. It comes down to how badly we want DreamStar back.”
The President was silent, staring at Elliott. “Did we give the MiG-25 back?”
“Yes, after we determined that the MiG-25 wasn’t all our intelligence and their propaganda said it was. The MiG-25 was simply two huge jet engines with wings, built for speed at any cost. Our F-15 was operational by then, and the F-16 was in production. Both those aircraft could fly rings around the MiG-25. But DreamStar is different, sir. DreamStar is our only flying model of that concept of aircraft. It would be a huge loss for us and a quantum leap in technology for the Soviets. It would take two years to build another XF-34, and we’d be right back where we are now. Meanwhile, the Soviets would take several giant steps forward in their technology, and with their advantage in military budget and production could field a squadron of XF-34 aircraft before we could—”
“Excuse me, Mr. President,” William Stuart broke in. “General Elliott has made several broad statements that Defense doesn’t find supportable. He’s making DreamStar seem like the ultimate weapon, when in fact it’s nothing more than an advanced technology demonstration aircraft. Congress hasn’t voted to deploy the XF-34, nor will DreamStar even be ready for deployment for another five years. Agreed, it’s an extraordinary machine, but it is not our next fighter aircraft. Far away from it”
“So you’re saying that it’s not worth going after?”
“My point is simply that DreamStar in the hands of the Russians is not the terrible threat that General Elliott is making it out to be. It is a setback, true, but no more of a setback than if DreamStar had crashed on a test flight or if the program had run out of funds and was canceled.”
“General Elliott?”
“I disagree with Secretary Stuart, sir. Seriously disagree. The technology transfer alone in the DreamStar theft is enormous. It’s certainly of such great military importance to us that its return, or if it comes to it, destruction, is of the highest priority—”