"Anyway, we don't need the IFF," Sean pointed out. "Everything that flies in these skies, apart from the dicky birds, is a foe."
The IFF, "Identification Friend or Foe," was a system that inter rooted the target, determining from the aircraft's on-board transponder whether it was hostile or friendly and preventing missile launches against friendly aircraft.
Claudia found the section on the manual dealing with the IFF, and under her tutelage they disarmed the system, converting the Stinger into a free-fire weapon that would attack any aircraft at which it was aimed. straight Without IFF fit, the attack sequence for the missile is forward. The target is picked up in the small screen of the aiming sight, and the safety device above the pistol grip is disengaged with the right thumb. The actuator is engaged by depressing the button built into the reverse of the pistol grip. This starts the run up of the navigational gyro and releases a flow of freon gas to cool the infrared seekers as they become active. With the sights held on the target, all incoming infrared radiation is magnified and focused on the detector cell of the missile head. As soon as this radiation is of sufficient concentration to allow the mi ssi e to track to its source, the gyro stabilizer un cages and the missile emits a high-pitched tone.
To fire the mi ssi the operator depresses the trigger in the pistol grip with his Torefinger, which starts the electric ejector motor. The missile discharges from the launch tube through the frangible front seal and ejects to a safe distance, approximately eight meters from the operator, to protect him from rocket backblast. At this point the solid-fuel rocket engine fires, the blast of exhaust gas flares out the retractable tail fins, and the missile accelerates to four times the speed of sound. When an inertial force of twenty-eight times gravity is attained, the fuse shutout is thrown open and the missile is armed. It tracks the target on a fire-and-forget trajectory, guided not by the operator but by its own proportional navigational system.
With the specialized "Hind" attack cassette inserted in the launcher's RMP-re programmable microprocessor-the system automatically switches into "two-color" mode when it is a hundred meters from the infrared source. At this point it abandons the infrared radiations emitted by the engine exhaust suppressors and instead focuses on the much weaker ultraviolet emanations from the engine intakes. On tins target the high-explosive warhead hits to kill.
"Even a Shangane could learn how to fire one of these," Job said.
Sean grinned. "Tut-tut, your Matabele tribal racism is showing again.
It's like this-when you are genetically superior, there is simply no point in trying to conceal the fact."
They both glanced expectantly at Claudia, but she did not even look up from the manual as she drawled, "You're wasting your time, you two bigots. You aren't going to get a rise out of me this time."
"Bigot." Job savored the word. "It's the first time anybody has ever called me that. I love it."
"That's enough fooling around." Sean broke it up. "Let's take a look at the trainer."
After they had connected one of the freshly charged battery packs and assembled the trainer equipment, Sean gave his opinion: "With this stuff, we can have the lads ready to go into action within days, not weeks."
Once a microcassette was inserted into the training monitor, the launcher screen simulated the image of a Hind, which the instructor was able to manipulate in various flight patterns, climbing, descending, sideslipping, or hovering. While he did so, he was able to watch the trainee's reactions as he attempted to acquire the ghost ship on his own screen and attack it with a phantom missile.
Sean and Job played with the trainer like a pair of teenagers, flying the image in complicated maneuvers. "It's just like a PacMan game," Job enthused. "But what we need is a durn-durn, a pseudo-Shangane to act as a trainee for us."
Once again both the men looked at Claudia, who was still sitting cross-legged on the table, studying the manual.
She looked up as she felt their eyes on her. "A durn-durn?" she demanded. "I'll show you durn-durn. Give me the launcher."
She stood in the center of the amphitheater floor with the launcher balanced on her shoulder and stared into the sighting screw. The bulky equipment seemed to dwarf her. She had reversed her camouflage cap so the peak stuck out behind her head, and it gave her the ga mine air of a Little League baseball player.
"ReadyT" Sean asked.
"Pull!" she said, concentrating ferociously on the screen. Sean and Job exchanged smug supercilious i grins.
"Incoming!" Sean called sharply. "Twelve o'clock high. Lock and load." He brought the ghost Hind in on a head-on attack at 150 knots.
"Locked and loaded," Claudia affirmed, and in their screen they watched the duplicate sight ring of her missile launcher swing up smoothly and center on the approaching Hind.
"Actuator on," she said calmly, and a second later, they heard the launcher sob and growl in her grip, then settle into a steady insect whine, like an infuriated mosquito.
"Target acquired," Claudia murmured. The Hind was six hundred meters out but coming in fast, swelling dramatically in the sights.
"Fire!" she said. They saw the red light blink and then change to green, signaling that the rocket engine of the fictitious missile was running. Almost instantaneously the image of the Hind disappeared from the screen, to be replaced by the flashing legend: TARGET
DESTROYED! TARGET I)ESTROYM!
A profound silence followed. Job cleared his throat nervously.