The mission of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center had changed as well. With budget cutbacks and greater downsizing in all strategic bombardment units, some place had to be designated to keep all these inactive aircraft until they might be needed again. Although most were sent to the “boneyard,” the Air Force Aerospace Maintenance and Restoration Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona, to be stored for spare parts or for scrap, a few were secretly sent to Dreamland, in the desert of central Nevada, for research and special missions.
The place was the Strategic Air Reserve Group, commanded by General Elliott. SARG took the work of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center one step further — it created an operational unit out of exotic research experiments. Whereas the Old Dog became an operational mission completely by accident, now other “Old Dogs” were being created and held in reserve until needed. The new Old Dogs collected over the years now included six B-52 bombers; two B-l bombers — both original A-models; six F-111G fighter-bombers, which were formerly SAC FB-111A strategic bombers; and the newest arrival, McLanahan’s B-2 Black Knight bomber.
“The other task you’ve got is ASIS,” Ormack continued. “Air Force is finally considering putting a pilot-trained navigator-bombardier on board the B-2 instead of the current navigator-trained ‘mission commander’ layout. The cockpit is designed for two pilots; you have to redesign it for a weapons system officer and defensive systems operator, but retain the dual pilot control capability. You’ve got a few months, no more than four, to get ASIS ready for full-scale production and retrofit, including engineering blueprints and work plan.”
He smiled mischievously and added, “The B-2 pilot ‘union’ is not too happy about this, as you might expect. They think ASIS is a bunch of crap, that the B-2 is automated enough to not need a navigator, and the B-2 should keep its two pilots. I think our experience with the Old Dog proved otherwise.”
McLanahan laughed. “That’s an understatement. Now, what’s ASIS stand for?”
“Depends on who you ask,” Ormack said dryly. “Officially Attack Systems Integration Station. The flight test pilots and B-2 cadre call it something else — in honor of all navigators, of course.”
“What’s that?”
“Additional shit /aside.”
McLanahan laughed again. “Figures.” Slamming navigators was common fare in this fighter pilot’s Mecca in southern Nevada. Still awestruck, he walked toward the huge bat-winged bomber sitting inside the brilliantly lit hangar.
The Black Knight was designed specifically to attack multiple, heavily defended, and mobile targets around the world with high probability of damage and high probability of survival. To fly nearly five thousand miles unrefueled, the B-2 had to be huge — it had the same wingspan as a B-52 and almost the same fuel capacity, able to carry more than its own weight in jet fuel.
In the past, building a bomber of that size meant it was a sitting duck for enemy defenses — a quarter-to-half-million pounds of steel flying around made a very easy target for enemy acquisition and weapons-guidance radars. The B-52, first designed in the 1940s when it was designed to fly at extremely high altitudes, eventually had to rely on flying at treetop level, electronic jammers and decoys, and plain old circumnavigation of enemy threats to evade attack. The B-58 Hustler bomber relied on flat-out supersonic speed. The FB-111 and B-l strategic bombers utilized speed, a cleaner “stealthier” design, advanced electronic countermeasures, and terrain-following radar to help themselves penetrate stiff defenses. But, with rapid advances in fighter technology, surface-to-air missiles, and early warning and tracking radars, even the sleek, deadly B-l would soon be vulnerable to attack.
The black monster before Patrick McLanahan was the latest answer. The B-2 was still a quarter-million-pound bomber, but most of its larger structural surfaces were made of nonmetallic composites that reduced or reflected enemy radar energy; reflected energy is dispersed in specific narrow beam paths, or lobes, which greatly decreases the strength of the reflected energy. It had no vertical flight-control surfaces that could act as a radar reflector — viewed on edge, it appeared to be nothing more than a dark sliver, like a slender tadpole. Each wing was made of two huge pieces of composite material, joined like a plastic model — that meant there were no structural ribs to break, no rivets attaching the skin to a skeleton, producing an aircraft that was as strong at the wingtips as it was at the fuselage.
