Sky Masters полностью

“To start engines, you simply press the button and advance the throttles to idle,” Ormack explained. “The computer takes care of everything else. Start engines, and up comes a different menu of items. Select TAKEOFF. The computer configures the plane for takeoff and continues to configure the plane during the climbout and all the way to level off — it’ll raise the gear and flaps, monitor the power settings, everything. Once at cruise altitude, you select CRUISE and it’ll fly the plane, manage the fuel, and report any errors. It has several different modes, including LANDING, LOW LEVEL, GUST for bad weather conditions, GO AROUND, and ATTACK modes.”

“Computerized flying, huh?” McLanahan muttered. “Pretty slick. You almost think they could do away with the pilot and nav.”

“It’s advance hardware, but not totally foolproof,” Ormack said. “The pilot in the loop is still important.”

“And the nav in the loop as well,” McLanahan said with a smile, examining the right-hand seat. “Or should I say, ‘mission commander’? I like the sound of that.”

The right-hand instrument panel had boles and slots for the same size and number of color MFDs as the pilot’s side, but technicians had already removed the monitors themselves. “This looks like a duplicate of the pilot’s side,” McLanahan observed.

“I think it is,” Ormack said. “The original idea was to have two pilots, remember. They decided it—” As Ormack watched, Patrick suddenly reached down to an awkwardly mounted keyboard on the right bulkhead and pulled it out of its slot. “Hey —!”

“Sir, having these nice color MFDs on the right side for the nav would be fine,” McLanahan said, “but it would also be a huge waste. Small MFDs are nice, but they’re old technology…”

“Old technology? These MFDs are the latest thing — high-resolution, high-speed, one twenty-eight K RAM per pixel, the whole nine yards…”

“Compare it with pilot’s side,” McLanahan said. “Look here. The pilot can sit back, set up a scan, and fly his plane with complete ease and confidence. What does the nav have? The nav has got to focus on one screen at a time to do his job. His eyes lock on one screen — they have to, because you got one screen that displays only one set of information. What happens then? He loses track of what’s going on around him. He loses situational awareness. Something important might be happening on one of the other screens, but he doesn’t know that because he’s got to stare at this screen for several seconds. The setup forces him to divert his attention in several different directions at once, and by doing so you make him less effective, not more.”

“These are the best MFDs available,” Ormack said wryly. “You can swap displays around on each screen, split the screens and have two displays on one screen, even have the computer shift displays for you — sort of an autoscan. What’s wrong with all that?”

“They’re great, but they’re outdated,” McLanahan repeated. “We can get something better.” He shook the keyboard at Ormack, then tossed it over his shoulder. “And no important keyboards on the side instrument panels. If the nav has to take his eyes off the scope on the bomb run, it’s no good and it shouldn’t be in the plane. That’s what gets crews killed.”

“We can rig up a swivel arm for the keyboard… Ormack began, but McLanahan was clearly unimpressed. “I don’t know exactly what you have in mind, Patrick, but I don’t think you can just decide to replace the entire avionics suite…”

“You want my recommendations, you’ll get them,” McLanahan said. “You didn’t mention any restrictions or specifications, so I’ll build you the best cockpit I can think of.” He paused for a moment, then said, “And we’ll start with the Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory at Wright-Pat.”

“Armstrong? What…?” And then he realized what Patrick was getting at: “The Super Cockpit program? You want to put one of those big six-square-foot screens in the B-2?”

“Sir, it’s tailor-made for the Black Knight,” McLanahan said excitedly. “The screen would fit perfectly in this big cockpit, and they can rewrite the software in a matter of months. We can bring it in within a few weeks and have a demo flight within four months, I guarantee it.” He paused for a moment, then added, “And once we get Super Cockpit installed, we can install that Sky Masters PACER SKY system General Elliott is working on — real-time satellite target reconnaissance. That’d be awesome. A satellite sending you real-time pictures of a target area, a computer drawing your route of flight, and having it displayed on a huge mother Super Multi-Function Display? Oh, man, this is gonna be great!”