“Great.” Stone turned to Fusco and said, “Take a swing past the south apron and let’s see what’s going on, Tony.” They drove south along the flight line road, past an E-3C AWACS radar plane with its distinctive thirty-foot-roto- dome atop its fuselage; another camouflaged Boeing 707 aircraft with no distinctive marking except for two canoeshaped fairings on the underside of the fuselage behind the nose gear and rows of antennae atop the fuselage; and another Boeing 707 aircraft painted white over gray, with a refueling boom on the tail and a large, complex antenna array on the top of the fuselage. There were also two McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 aircraft modified as aerial refueling tankers in dark green and white camouflage nearby, and another two Boeing 707s also modified as tankers in standard light gray livery. Crates and crew members from Sky Masters, Inc., were already congregating around the planes, talking with Air Force maintenance crews.
“Quite a collection of planes out here,” Masters exclaimed. “I recognize the AWACS plane and the KC-10 and KC-135 tankers, but what are the other 707s?”
“The dark gray one is an RC-135X radar reconnaissance plane,” Stone explained. “The fairings you see house the multi-mode radars with the inverse synthetic aperture and pulse-Doppler systems, which we’ll use to map out ship and troop locations; it can also slave its radar to radiation-detection sensors to map out locations of search, acquisition, fire control, and missile uplink transmitters, and in an emergency we can arm it with antiradar missiles. I believe you’ll be installing a PACER SKY set and your communications complex on him so he can receive your PACER SKY data and transmit his data directly here.
“The other is one of SAC’s EC-135L radio relay aircraft. We’ll be using him on the first few missions to make sure we get a good feed from the recon planes.” He paused for a moment, then said, “This is a good way of conducting strategic reconnaissance. Lots of planes, lots of crew dogs, not much sleep. Frankly… I still trust this method. No offense, Doctor Masters.”
“None taken,” Jon said. “I’m sure the crews will enjoy the tropical weather, because they won’t be doing much flying. My NIRTSats’ll work just fine.”
The commander of the Strategic Air Command STRATFOR gave the young scientist an amused nod. This guy’s got confidence, Stone had to admit. He wasn’t afraid to place his trust in this high-tech crap, although none of it had ever been tested in fast-changing, demanding combat conditions. Unfortunately, it was cockiness like this that usually got such operations in big trouble.
“What exactly is the plan for these recon flights?” Elliott asked.
“Simple,” Stone replied. “We’re going to do the southern Philippines first; the Chinese defenses are weaker. RC-135 no less than one hundred miles off the coast, well within radar range but nothing too provocative — I got that word loud and clear from JCS. AWACS close enough to monitor the Philippine coast and all our aircraft. Two hundred miles east, we put the EC-135. Between the AWACS and the carriers, we put a Navy E-2 Hawkeye radar plane to control escort fighters coming from the carriers. The Navy will put up tankers to service their fighters after takeoff; we’ll have a KC-10 nearby to service all aircraft involved in the recon operation.”
“How many fighter escorts will you have up?”
“Not enough,” Stone replied grimly. “JCS asked for eight per aircraft; we’re only getting two. Apparently the White House thought eight fighters per looked too much like an invasion force.”
“So if there’s any trouble…” Elliott said.
“We run like hell,” Stone answered. “The fighters cover the withdrawal; they don’t engage. But we’re not expecting any trouble. We’ll be far enough offshore that we won’t seem like a threat. The Chinese should lay off.”
The sight across the road from the south apron commanded instant attention; it was a huge black B-52, with a tall, pointed tail, glistening polished steel skin, and racks of bombs hanging from hardpoints under each wing. Masters asked, “What’s that? Some sort of memorial?”
“The Arc Light Memorial,” Colonel Fusco replied. “Dedicated to the men who flew the heavy bombing missions over Vietnam. That was one of the B-52s that made the last bomb run over North Vietnam in 1972 — ‘Old 100,’ the one-hundredth B-52, built in 1955. We keep her in tiptop shape — in fact, it’s still considered an operational aircraft. The memorial was dedicated on the first anniversary of the return of the POWs from Vietnam.”
“I’ve crawled all over a B-2,” Masters said, “and I know the avionics system on the Space Shuttle like the back of my hand, but you know, I’ve never seen a B-52 this close before. Weird, huh? That thing is just plain
