“And I received it only thirty minutes ago,” McLanahan added. “You can launch NIRTSat-equipped bombers on a mission with no pre-planned targets whatsoever. You no longer need to build a sortie package, brief crews, schedule simulator missions, or get intelligence briefings. You just load up a bomber with gas and bombs and send it off. One NIRTSat pass later, the crew gets all its charts, all its intelligence, all its weapon-release aimpoints, all its terrain data, and all its threat data in one instant — and the computer will plot out a strike route based on the new data, build a flight plan, then fly the flight plan with the autopilot plugged into the strike computers. The crew can replay the satellite data from the point of view of the flight plan and can even dry- run the bomb run hours before the real bomb run begins.”
McLanahan then switched the SMFD screen back to the original tactical display, but this time with NIRTSat data inserted into it. “Unfortunately, you can’t search for fighters with the NIRTSat data,” he said, “and it takes a few seconds of radar time to update the screen…”
Suddenly several symbols popped onto the right side of the big screen, resembling bat’s wings, far to the west of the B-2’s position. Each bat-wing symbol had a small column of numerals near it, along with a two-colored wedge-shaped symbol on the front. The wider edge of the outer yellow- colored portion of the wedge seemed to be aimed right for the symbol of the B-2 in the center of the SMFD, while the red inner portion of the wedge seemed to be undulating in and out as if trying to decide whether to touch the B-2 icon.
“And there they are,” McLanahan announced. “Fighters at two o’clock. Two F-23s. Doppler frequency shift processing estimates they’re twenty miles out and above us. Signal strength is increasing — their search radar might pick us up any second. I don’t think they got a radar lock on us yet, Henry… their flight path is taking them behind us, but that could be a feint.”
Cobb seemed not to have heard McLanahan — he remained as motionless as ever, as if frozen in place with his hands on the throttles and control stick and his eyes riveted forward — but he asked, “Got jammers set up?”
“Not yet,” McLanahan said, double-checking the SMFD display of the fighter’s radar signal. The colored portions of the fighter’s radar wedges, which represented the sweep area, detection range, and estimated kill range of the fighters, was still not solidly covering the B-2’s icon, which meant that the stealth characteristics of the B-2 were allowing it to continue toward the target without using active transmitting jammers. He selected the ECM display and put it on the right side of the SMFD, ready to activate the electronic jammers at the proper time. “PRF is still in search range, and power level is too weak. If we buzz them too early, they can get a bearing on us.”
“If you buzz them too late, they’ll get a visual on us.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” McLanahan said. “In any case, they’re too late.” He brought the communications screen forward and activated a pre-programmed SATCOM message, then transmitted it. “Sending range-clearance request in now,” he said. Sent by SATCOM and coded like normal SAC message traffic, the message or its response would not alert the fighters searching for them.
The reply came thirty seconds later: “Range clearance received, all targets clear,” McLanahan reported. “Less than fifteen minutes to first launch point.”
He enlarged the weapons screen and brought it higher up on the large SMFD screen so Cobb could check it as well. The B-2 carried one AGM-84E SLAM conventional standoff missile in the left bomb bay and a three-thousand-pound concrete shape, which simulated a second SLAM missile but was not intended to be released. With its turbojet engine, the AGM-84E SLAM, the acronym for the Standoff Land Attack Missile, could carry a one-thousand-pound warhead over sixty miles. It had an imaging infrared camera in the nose that transmitted pictures back to its carrier aircraft, and it could be flown and locked on target with pinpoint precision. It was designed to give SAC’s bombers a precision, high-powered, long-range conventional bombing capability without exposing the bomber to stiff target-area defenses. The right bomb bay carried two AGM-130 Striker rocket-powered glide bombs, which had a range of only fifteen miles but carried a two-thousand-pound bomb with the same precision as the SLAM. Striker worked in conjunction with SLAM to destroy area defenses and strike hardened targets with one bomber — and with the B-2 stealth bomber, which could penetrate closer to heavily defended targets than any other bomber in the world, it was a lethal combination.
McLanahan glanced at the weapons arranged along the SMFD, then spoke, “Unsafe… ready,” to ready all weapons. Each weapon icon changed from red to green, indicating all were ready for release. “Weapon status verified, full connectivity.”
