“Thank you, sir.”
“I thought you were a little too aggressive,” Furness said. At Patrick’s request, Rebecca Furness had flown in the evaluator’s seat, while two systems officers operated the SO’s side of the weapon systems trainer; terrain-following systems would only work in the sim if the SO’s cab was powered up too. He also asked Furness to administer his closed-book and emergency procedures written test. “Why ask for CITS codes and the expanded tech order text?” she went on. “It got distracting. You were juggling too many balls in the air at once.”
Rinc looked at Patrick, who nodded. “She’s right,” Patrick said to Seaver. “You obviously know your stuff, but you did get a couple steps ahead of the crew as they ran through the troubleshooting matrix, and it was distracting. You had a handful of broken jet to fly.” He turned to Furness. “Good call, Colonel. Anything for me?”
“You’re rusty, you don’t know local procedures that well, and you don’t verbalize enough,” she replied. “But you got the job done and brought your crippled jet back home. I’d fly with you. You’d fly anyway, I suppose, even if you were picking your nose the whole time, right?”
“Right. But thanks. I’ll give my official critique to General Bretoff, but I rated Seaver’s performance an ‘excellent.’ Good job, all of you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Seaver said. Furness offered no congratulations. Seaver copied some notes from the whiteboard, then departed.
“I gotta tell you, Colonel,” Patrick said as he watched Furness work, “I’m very impressed with the squadron. Everyone’s doing an exceptional job.”
“You say that like you expected us to be a bunch of drunken slobs,” Furness retorted.
“No. But it’s certainly getting tough to explain how you lost a jet and a crew.”
“I don’t suppose you believe in plain old bad luck, do you?”
“Sure I do,” Patrick replied. “You think it was bad luck?”
“Yep. Shit happens. You fly jets long enough, something bad happens. It’s a dangerous business.”
“True,” Patrick admitted. “But I’ve noticed in the sim and looking over the accident records…”
“I thought you weren’t here investigating the crash, sir.”
“I’m not, but I’d be an idiot if I didn’t get some background on the accident, wouldn’t I, Colonel?” Patrick retorted. “Most of your bomb runs are level radar bombing, right?”
“All of our bomb runs are level radar,” Rebecca replied. “The Joint Direct Attack Munition will give us a little more flexibility, but without precision-guided bombs or imaging sensors like LANTIRN or Pave Tack, we pretty much do it the same way strategic bombers have been doing it since the beginning.”
“But your squadron flies very aggressively,” Patrick pointed out. “Maybe too aggressively. Some might say recklessly. If all your bomb runs are the same, why all the gyrations?”
“My opinion, sir, is that we’re asked to do more with less,” Furness replied. “We have fewer bombers, smaller budgets, and more taskings over more dangerous battlefields. We don’t set up the threats. We do whatever it takes to destroy the target against whatever threat we encounter.”
Furness regarded Patrick for a moment before continuing: “You’re a bomber guy, sir.” Patrick had no response. “I remember hearing a little about you, back when I flew tankers and later when I got into the RF-111s. You know how bombers used to fly — low, fast, and alone, mostly with gravity nukes or SRAMs. Well, it’s not done that way anymore. We fly as packages. We go in high, or low, or slow, or fast, depending on the threat and the weapon we employ.
“But we don’t train that way. We still train like you and I did years ago — alone against the threats, the area defenses, and the target. Instead of having a cruise missile or stealth bomber take out the threats from standoff range followed by Bones with fighter cover, we drive a couple of Bones through a gauntlet of fighters and SAMs. It’s unrealistic. We’d never do that in the real world. But that’s the way we train because it’s cheap and it’s easy.
“Our job is to destroy the target, no matter what the threat,” Furness went on. “That means pushing ourselves and our machines to the limit. The Bone has the payload of a BUFF but the speed and agility of a Strike Eagle. We’ve got the horses, so we’re going to use them.”
“Well, what do you think about Bones going in alone?” Patrick asked. “Are they capable? Or do they need a package to do the mission?”
“Of course we’re capable,” Rebecca replied hotly. “When you flew BUFFs, you flew against every threat in the book without any support. True, in the SIOP missions, you expected to go in long after the initial ICBM laydown, so most of the threats would be taken down for you. But if that’s true, why did BUFFs and Bones and Aardvarks and even B-2 stealth bombers start going low? Why did we start training in ranges with fighters and SAMs and triple-A? Because we were expected to fly against any target, any threat, whether there was a strike package or nuclear laydown preceding us or not.
“We can do the same thing again — but we need better tools. Give us a standoff capability, like JSOW or SLAM or TSSAM, and we can take out our own threats as we encounter them, like a HARM shooter such as an EA-6 or F-16CJ. Or give us an imaging infrared or TV capability, and we can hunt down our own targets like an F-15E or F-16 Block 50. The Bone can do all that. We can carry four or five different weapons at the same time. I guess it’s politically better to build fighters and deploy carriers. But we’re still training like we did in the seventies and eighties. We should train like we’re going to fight.”
Patrick nodded, pleased with the way this woman was thinking. He knew he was on the right track — he knew his plan would be accepted by the crews. Now he just had to make it work and then sell it to the brass.
“What’s everyone got against Rinc Seaver?” Patrick asked. “He’s a good stick, a good systems operator, a good crewdog. Is he a good team player or more of a loner?”
“No one has anything against the guy,” Furness said. “You ever lose a crew and a plane in your unit before, sir?” Again, Patrick had no answer, so Rebecca assumed the answer was no. “It tears the unit apart like nothing you’d ever believe. But we’re still technicians, pilots, systems officers. We need to find a reason for the accident…”
“You mean someone to blame?”
“We’re human too,” Rebecca said. “Maybe part of the healing process is assigning guilt, blame, responsibility. Rinc is it. He had the controls, he was the commander, he pulled the handles, and he survived, and all that makes him culpable. It’s shitty, but it’s the way it is.”
“How do you feel about Rinc Seaver, Colonel?” Patrick asked.
“I told you. He’s a good crew member, a good OSO. But he had the bad luck to survive this unit’s only training mission crash. It’ll take some time for him to work his way back into the unit.” Patrick hesitated, looking carefully into her eyes, expecting her to add something a little more. “If you have something to say, sir, please say it.”
“No,” Patrick said finally. “Forget it. Completely unrelated.” He spotted Rinc Seaver and a few other crew members drifting back and forth in front of the open door, wondering if it was safe to enter, so Patrick decided to back off. They had a mission to prepare for, and everyone’s attention had to be focused on the task ahead. The room filled up quickly with crew members and technicians ready to start the briefing.
Furness began precisely on time; she dinged one crewdog two dollars for showing up just as she was starting to close the door and gave him a warning glare, then began: