Alpha Strike

CHAPTER 3

Captain Wayne studied the satellite imagery carefully, and then compared it with the one from the day before. No doubt about it — the South China Sea was missing one rock.

“Son of a bitch,” he breathed, as he leafed through the rest of the briefing package. Even after his months at the Pentagon, the capabilities of satellite surveillance still stunned him. Pictures of events happening over five thousand miles away were hand-carried to his desk by an armed courier before the on-scene commander even had time to figure out what had happened.

“Not a chance anyone survived that blast long enough to drown, Batman,” Admiral Dunflere said. “Hell of a way to go. It’s not like that boat could even fight back.”

Both men shivered slightly. The idea of being trapped in a small boat, at the mercy of almost any other platform, was repulsive to any fighter pilot. At least in the air they’d die fighting back.

“Where was this, Admiral?” Batman asked his boss. “Anywhere near Mischief Reef?”

“Five miles to the south,” Admiral Dunflere replied. “That whole area’s thick with reefs, shoals, and rocks. The Vietnamese outposts are damned near within spitting distance of the Chinese ones. That battle group commander must be sweating some water space management problems just trying to keep from going aground. And if he has to maneuver worrying about sea-skimmers … better him than me. Interesting tactical situation, don’t you think? Suggest anything to you?”

“That’s Stoney’s battle group, you know,” Batman remarked casually. “Old friend of mine from way back.”

“He’s on the scene,” the admiral agreed pleasantly. “Helluva coincidence.”

“If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, it’s more than that. Stoney’s got a sea-skimmer problem, and we’ve got a new toy that might just make his life a little easier. Course, we’d make the same offer to any on-scene commander, but it sure does make it easier if it’s Stoney.”

“Great minds think alike,” his boss said, and grinned. “Why don’t you give your old lead a call, and see how life’s treating him? Let’s get a response before we start generating message traffic — I want us all singing in the same key on this before we go public.”

“Roger, copy, Admiral. If I know Stoney, he’s going to be awful glad to see his old buddy about now.”

“As glad as any operational commander ever is to see someone from Washington,” the Admiral replied.

“AE Branch! Atten-hut!” the Chief snapped.

Bird Dog walked toward the eighteen technicians assembled in three neat ranks for morning quarters. Some were in dungarees with chambray shirts or green pullovers while others wore coveralls. A scruffy-looking lot, he thought as he approached them. Although Bird Dog had been on the carrier for almost a month, he was still struggling with names and faces of the technicians who worked in AE — Aviation Electricians — division.

Appearances were important, he reminded himself. He’d taken extra care with his uniform that morning, even polishing the gold belt buckle to a brilliant shine to convey the impression of leadership, of a sharp, polished officer. By God, it was time for a change in attitude in AE Branch. These people would know they didn’t have a slacker for a Branch officer.

Unfortunately, the enlisted personnel didn’t seem to care. At least half of the men hadn’t bothered to shave. While some of them might not even need to shave on a regular basis, three petty officers sported rough-looking stubble. The five women in the Branch particularly dismayed him. He’d expected the women to take a little more pride in their appearance. Two of them had long hair straggling out from underneath their cranials, and one wore the grimiest looking coveralls he’d ever seen.

Bird Dog returned the Chief’s salute, trying to conceal his dismay. They must be testing him, he thought. Trying to see how far they could go with him. Well, he wouldn’t stand for it!

“Personnel inspection, Chief,” he snapped.

The Chief looked startled. “Sir, we’re setting flight quarters in thirty minutes. The FOD walk-down-“

“How long can it take with fifteen people?” Without bothering to see if the chief followed him, Bird Dog began pacing down the row of assembled sailors.

“Haircut,” he said shortly, as he looked the first sailor over carefully. “That goes for just about all of them, Chief.”

“Yes, sir,” the Chief said. He walked slowly down the first line, then the second. Halfway through the third rank, he came to the young female sailor in grimy coveralls. The top of her head barely came up to his wings, and her short blond hair was in disarray.

“Why isn’t this sailor wearing a cranial, Chief?”

“Uh, sir-Shaughnessy?”

“Forgot it, Chief,” she said. Her voice was so low Bird Dog had to strain to catch it. “It’s in the line shack.” A Southern drawl drew the five words out into a paragraph.

“Your bird a go this morning?” the Chief asked, ignoring Bird Dog impatiently shifting his weight from foot to foot beside him. The huge Chief, darkly bronzed by the sun and immaculately attired in sharply pressed khakis, towered over the small blond woman. For some reason, the odd contrast between the Chief and the airman annoyed Bird Dog even more than Chief Franklin’s attitude. Wasn’t anything the way it was supposed to be in the Navy?

“Yes, Chief.” The corners of the young airman’s mouth twitched upward. “Found the problem about ten minutes ago. A circuit breaker — can you believe it?”

“No shit? Good work! Which one was-?”

“Ahem. The personnel inspection, Chief,” Bird Dog said.

The Chief glanced down at him as though seeing him for the first time. “Sorry, sir,” he said after a moment. “You know how it is, trying to get all the aircraft FMC just before flight quarters. We’ve been having problems with that bird for two days now. Shaughnessy thought it might be a bad circuit breaker, not resetting correctly. Sounds like she was right.”

“Fine, but there’s no excuse for ignoring safety regulations, Chief. She’s on the flight deck, she wears a cranial from now on.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Chief Franklin said. “Want her to go get it now?”

Bird Dog hesitated. Something in the chief’s voice made the rough tarmac under his feet feel like a slippery slope. “Up to you, Chief,” he said, trying to inject a decisive note into his voice. “As long as we’re clear that my first priority for AE Branch is safety.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the Chief said again.

Bird Dog paced down to the end of the row, and then returned to the front of the ranks. The Chief followed him.

“AE Branch — parade rest!” Bird Dog snapped. The sailors hesitated for a split second, glanced at each other, and then fell into the more relaxed stance. “I will now read the Plan of the Day.”

Suddenly, a voice boomed over the flight deck. “Would you people like an engraved invitation? The rest of the airwing would be pleased to have you join us for a FOD walk-down — that is, of course, assuming it’s convenient?”

Bird Dog looked up, bewildered.

“Air Boss, sir,” the Chief said. “If I could make a suggestion — this might be a real good time to dismiss the troops and buster down to the ass end of this bird farm. Air Boss likes to sit up in Pri-Fly and watch FOD walk-down. He’s a little touchy in the mornings.”

“Very well,” Bird Dog replied, trying very hard to convince himself that he was in control of the situation. “Take care of it, Chief.” He snapped off a salute in response to the Chief’s, executed a smart about-face, and started walking briskly toward the island.

“Not so fast, mister,” the voice boomed out again. “Get your little khaki butt down to the stern. Officers and chiefs aren’t excused from FOD walk-down.”

Bird Dog stopped dead. He could feel his face turning a brilliant shade of red. He looked aft and saw that his branch was already joining the line of sailors strung across the flight deck. Damn Chief Franklin! He could have warned me, he thought angrily.

“NOW!” the speaker roared.

Bird Dog settled into a jog — hoping it was a dignified one — and headed for FOD walk-down.

“Of course I’m here! Just where the hell else did you think I would be, Batman? It may be after midnight, but you’ve been in Washington too long. You’ve forgotten what life at sea is like and the hours we keep.” Tombstone glanced down at the receiver and noted that Batman was calling on the secure, encrypted circuit. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

“Just looking out for my old lead, shipmate. Doing my small part for the war effort back here in the Pentagon.” Batman’s voice sounded slightly murky. Not surprising, since it had been encrypted, bounced off two satellites, and then de-encrypted before being piped into the plain vanilla telephone receiver now pressed to Tombstone’s ear.

“It’s good to hear your voice, Batman. But quite frankly, your timing sucks. I’ve got a couple of situations going on down here, and-“

“I know all about it, old buddy. That’s why the Batman is calling. Think I’ve got something cooked up back here that might be of some small assistance to you.”

Tombstone snorted. “Like what? Another one of those point papers the Pentagon feeds on? Some help that’d be.”

“Better than that. How’d you like to have a couple of hotshot look-down shoot-down aircraft out there?”

“I’ve got Hornets and E-2C’s. Not to mention the Tomcats.”

“Don’t try to con me, Tombstone. Our Tomcats aren’t what you need, not until the next upgrade hits the Fleet. I’ve got something that will outclass even those lawn-dart Hornets. Would you buy a Tomcat with the latest JAST technology?”

“JAST? The Joint Aviation Strike Technology stuff? I thought that was years away from being operational!”

“In production models, yes. But I just happen to have a couple of prototypes hidden out for special occasions. Nothing I’d like better than to see if these airframes can live up to the manufacturer’s warranty.”

“But Batman, we’re not talking about a range exercise out here. Somebody’s doing some real live shooting.”

“All the better. I’d rather see what these turkeys can do in real operating conditions instead of on the range. Listen, Stoney, this is important. Not only for your battle group, but for the Navy as well. With the push on to go joint, JAST is going to be the technology of our next fighter aircraft, and we’ll be living with it for decades. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, I want to know that now, before we’re committed.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Give me some deck space and berthing. I’ll send you two JAST, plus flight crews and technicians.”

“Who’s gonna fly them?”

There was a moment of silence on the line, and then Batman chuckled. “Oddly enough, there’re only three pilots completely checked out on this bird and her electronics. Unfortunately for the Pentagon, one of them happens to be me.”

“Anything to get out of the Pentagon, huh?”

“It’s not that bad, once you get used to the fact that a full-bird Captain is barely qualified to make coffee around this place. Trade places with you any day.”

“Okay, okay, come on out. I’ll let CAG know his air wing just got a little bigger and stranger.”

“Expect a COD and our airframes in three days. It’ll take a little while to arrange the tanking and refueling, but we’re on our way.”

Tombstone replaced the receiver and stared thoughtfully at it. From what he’d heard of the problems with JAST technology, he wasn’t all that convinced the modified Tomcats would be that much help. But Batman seemed convinced an op-test was essential to evaluating the performance of the aircraft, and Stoney had to agree with him on that. If the Navy was going to be stuck with the aircraft, it might as well make sure they worked first.

JAST was a comprehensive program aimed at building the finest strike force in the world. Its mission was to develop technology and equipment to outfit aviation strike programs for every branch of the service. Key to its requirements were programs related to low observability — the follow-on term for what had initially been called “stealth” technology — and black box avionics that would dramatically increase both attack capabilities and interoperability with other services’ data systems.

Tombstone took the frequent press releases and the JAST announcements on the World Wide Web with a grain of salt. Too many programs over the past twenty years had been touted as the ultimate marriage of man and machine, as the final word in complete integration of all weapons systems.

There were two problems with building the ultimate joint strike system. First, no matter how advanced the technology the United States developed, someone would eventually develop a counter to it. The Aegis seaborne weapons systems were a prime example. Even with a radar as sensitive as the SPY-1 system, the ships still had to be wary of mines and submarines.

Second, there was one factor that developers always seemed to overlook. Clausewitz, the nineteenth-century German general and theorist, had given the most accurate name to the phenomena that plagued every combat force and confounded every tactical decision: the fog of war. No matter how sophisticated, how elegantly planned and calculated, something would always go wrong during a military campaign. War-fighters that relied on the latest technology too much failed to plan for the inevitable foul-ups that were part of life.

Still, he admitted, there were some improvements that could make a great deal of difference in the Tomcat’s capabilities. And if Batman was vouching for the JAST Tomcats, they were worth taking a look at.

Who knows? We might even have a chance to make some suggestions about these queer turkeys before they go into production. A little Fleet testing could make the difference between another Pentagon project that sticks us with a politically correct and technologically screwed-up platform that just won’t work.

He picked up the receiver to the carrier telephone lines and dialed CAG’s number. After all, what was the use of being an admiral if he couldn’t roust a mere Captain out of bed?