“You bet. The Black Knight has an AN/APQ-181 multimode radar mounted along the wing leading edges, with ground-mapping, terrain-following, targeting, surveillance, and rendezvous modes — we can even add air-to-air capability to the system…”
“Air-to-air on a B-2 bomber?” McLanahan whistled. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not after what we did on the B-52 Old Dog,” Ormack replied. “After our work in Dreamland putting antiair missiles on a B-52,1 don’t think there’ll ever be another combat aircraft that can’t do a dozen different jobs, and that includes heavy bombers carrying air-to-air weapons. It makes sense — if you can take sixteen to twenty weapons of
The underside of the B-2 was like a huge dark thundercloud — it seemed to stretch out forever, sucking up every particle of light. Patrick was surprised by what he found — two cavernous weapon bays. “It’s a hell of a lot bigger than I thought, General,” he said.
“Each bomb bay carries one Common Strategic Rotary Launcher filled with eight SRAM short-range attack missiles,” Ormack replied. “Sixteen SRAM missiles — it packs quite a wallop. Putting B61 or B83 gravity nuclear bombs on board is still possible as well, although using standoff-type weapons instead of gravity bombs makes the B-2 a much greater threat. The Black Knight can only carry four cruise missiles, so there are no plans to include AGM-129A cruise missiles although we modified the weapon-delivery software to do so.”
“It’ll make a great battleship escort,” McLanahan said. “I think the boss is right — it’s a waste to have these babies sitting on the sidelines with nukes on board while we’re getting hammered in some non-nuclear dogfight. Air Force talks about ‘global reach, global power,’ but they don’t talk much about how long-range bombers can defend themselves in a hostile environment without an initial nuclear laydown. They talk about sending B-52s from Guam, Diego Garcia, or Loring to anywhere else in the world in twelve hours, but they don’t explain how the bomber is supposed to survive its attack. With the Black Knight configured as a counterradar escort, it can do it. It has the range to fly just as deep as the strike bombers, and it carries as much firepower as a B-52. We’ll put that new PACER SKY satellite data stuff on it, maybe an ISAR radar, smart bombs…”
“We’ve tested every possible weapon on a B-2,” Ormack acknowledged, “from AGM-130 Striker glide-bombs — your personal favorite, I know — Harpoon antiship missiles, sea mines, MK 82 iron bombs, AMRAAM missiles, Sidewinder missiles, the TACIT RAINBOW antiradar cruise missiles, Durandal runaway-cratering bombs, AGM-84 SLAM TV- guided missiles, hell, even photoreconnaissance pods. At half a billion dollars a pop, Congress didn’t want to buy a nuclear-only plane, so we’re going to demonstrate that the B-2 could be flexible enough for any mission.” Ormack shrugged, then added, “Pm not convinced myself that the B-2 can make a good defensive escort plane. If a fighter or ground missile site gets a visual on this thing, you’re dead.” “I don’t know about that,” Patrick said. “I think it’d be tough to kill in a tactical battle.”
“Yeah? Most of the Air Force would disagree,” Ormack replied. “Look at these wings — this thing is huge, even when seen from several thousand feet up. It’s subsonic, which makes it a more inviting target and less elusive. No, I think the Air Force would forgo risking B-2 on a conventional raid.” He looked at McLanahan for feedback and was surprised when the young navigator gave him an unsure shrug in reply. “You still disagree?”
“I haven’t flown fighters as long as you, sir,” McLanahan said, “but I have a tough time finding an airport from five thousand feet in the air, much less a single plane. At five thousand feet, a pilot is looking at almost four hundred square miles of ground. If he’s flying, say, eight miles per minute on a low combat-air patrol, forty square miles zip under his wings every ten seconds — twenty on each side of his cockpit. If he can’t use a radar to at least get himself in the vicinity, his detection problem is pretty complicated.” “If a combat air patrol always had that wide an area to search, I might agree with you,” Ormack said. “But the field of battle narrows down rapidly. One lucky sighting, one squeak of a radar detector or one blip on a radar screen, and suddenly the whole pack’s on top of you.”
