“Awesome, totally AWE-some.” Ambler Furry, Jack Locke’s Weapon Systems Officer, couldn’t shut up.
Locke was ready to tell him to go cold mike to stop the incessant chatter over the intercom but decided not to. Ambler would stop talking if things got hot. Like Furry, Locke was new to the E model of the F-15 and had only been recently assigned to Luke Air Force Base, upgrading into the Air Force’s latest jet. The transition into the new bird had been easy and proved to be a diversion, letting him put the memories of combat in the Persian Gulf and his old fighter, the F-4E, behind him. He raised his seat a fraction of an inch, still looking for the best sitting position for his six-foot frame. Satisfied, he cross-checked the digital readouts on his Head-up Display and scanned the horizon.
The young captain sitting in the pit of Locke’s two-place F-15E Strike Eagle was like a kid with a new toy — he couldn’t get enough of the systems he had to play with. Like most wizzos, Weapon Systems Officer, Furry was fascinated by the capabilities of the Hughes-developed APG-70 radar and what it could do when used with their mouthful-named Low-Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared System for Night as well as on-board computers. No wonder they shortened the system to LANTIRN.
Furry kept playing with the four video screens in front of him. The missionized cockpit had been developed using state-of-the-art electronics and presented all the information the wizzo needed. Furry controlled the left two screens with the hand-controller on the left console and the right two screens with the right-hand controller. He was uninterested in the stick in front of him and would only fly the jet reluctantly. He figured that Locke only existed to drive him around the sky so he could do his job.
The Tactical Situation Diplay, TSD, an electronic moving map that was tied in with the ring laser gyro in the inertial navigation system, scrolled on the far left MultiPurpose Color Display, the MPCD, constantly updating their position and showing them their route. The next screen in was a MultiPurpose Display without color and it was blank. Furry had selected air-to-ground radar for that screen, and as they were flying a limited electronic-emission profile, the radar was in standby. The third screen, an MPD, was programmed to show the pilot’s Head-Up Display, HUD, and Furry was seeing what Locke was seeing through the wide-angle twenty-one-by-twenty-eight inch HUD. Unfortunately he did not have the holographic effect that could be projected onto the pilot’s HUD. Furry had the far right MPCD slaved to the Tactical Electronic Warfare System.
“Cosmic, ab-SO-lutely cosmic,” Furry mumbled to himself.
Locke agreed — the instrument panel in front of him hardly resembled a traditional cockpit. Three video screens and the Up Front Controller dominated his main panel. Actually the UFC was a computer keyboard that controlled the Strike Eagle’s systems and was located directly underneath the HUD. Locke could call up the different menus with his left hand and never take his eyes off the HUD. Underneath the UFC, the Tactical Situation Display showed Locke where they were on a color display. The right MPD was tied into the Terrain Following Radar in the LANTIRN navigation pod hung underneath the right intake. His left MPD was tied into the air-toground radar. The only concession to tradition was in the lower left-hand corner of the instrument panel, where five small back-up gauges were nestled.
Locke squeaked the F-15 down another fifty feet and tweaked the throttles, riveting the airspeed on 480 knots groundspeed. He checked the Terrain Following Radar and decided it was being honest and the presentation jibed with the desert terrain he saw in front of them. Things happened fast below three hundred feet. Locke could have coupled the autopilot to the TFR but chose to manual Terrain Fly because he liked to hand-fly the jet. Furry was right, the fighter was sweet but its low wing loading and high gust response gave them a much harsher beating than the F-4 did at low level. Sometimes he missed the old bird.
“Turn point in thirty seconds,” Furry told him. “New heading 198.”
Locke waited for Furry to tell him when to start the turn. Once they overflew the next turn point, the TSD would program the command steering bar in the HUD to the next steer point. But he preferred crew coordination. Locke wanted to use the equipment, not rely on it. Combat had taught him some hard lessons about what battle damage did to the magic in black boxes.
“Turn … now, 198.”
Locke loaded the F-15E with four-and-a-half Gs through the turn and rolled out. Furry had led the turn and they were right on track …
Locke and Furry were on a single-ship mission working their way south through the mountains of northern Nevada heading for Tolicha airfield, a target on one of Nellis Air Force Base’s numerous bombing and gunnery ranges. Tolicha was set up to resemble an eastern European air base for U.S. aircrews to practice on during Red Flag exercises. But for the mission Locke was flying it was a friendly field and Locke was the intruder. Somewhere along the route he could expect a Combat Air Patrol of two F-15s to jump him. Their job was to find and intercept him before he reached the target; his job was to get past them and drop a bomb on the airfield.
“Okay, Amb, start looking for Snake. He’ll CAP someplace around here.” Locke had a healthy respect for Snake Houserman’s abilities. It was going to be hard to sneak by the Snake and as long as the Eagle’s pulse Doppler radar was working, Snake should be able to find them. Locke inched lower. That’s not the answer, he told himself. Maybe some terrain-masking might do the trick — get some mountains between him and Snake. “Hey, Amb. I want to get out of this valley. Everyone flies down it. Reprogram the turn points so we go down the western side of Stillwater Range and over Carson Sink. We’ll turn over Salt Wells and dogleg back to our original course.”
Locke could hear Ambler Furry mumbling as he picked new turn points out of his Eagle Aid and punched them into his up-front controller. “Roll out on a heading of 182 on the other side of the ridge. You have steering to Salt Wells … now.” The command steering bar on the HUD swung and the miles to go counter rolled to 78. Furry was fast, Locke thought, but not as fast as Thunder Bryant, his old backseater in F-4s.
They were still on the wrong side of the mountain range if he intended to fly over Carson Sink. “When I hop us over do a quick search for bogies,” Locke said. He scrolled the TFR presentation off his left MPD and called up the air-to-air radar. The screen showed only guidelines but would come to life when the radar was turned on.
“Inverted again? Don’t do this to me,” Furry complained, his fingers flying over his hand controllers and UFC.
Locke turned the Eagle to the west and headed for the mountains they were paralleling. He gently stroked the throttles and the new F-100-PW-229 engines responded crisply. He lifted the jet up the slope, rolled it upside down as they created the ridge and pulled the velocity vector back down to the steering box in the HUD, keeping them at two hundred feet, their clearance-set limit. Locke, using gravity to help reduce his exposure time when they were above the mountains, didn’t worry about the overload warning system talking to him about pulling excessive Gs. They were stressed for nine Gs throughout the flight regime. Now he rolled upright as they came down the western slope and turned onto their new heading.
When they crested the ridge Furry hit the EMIS LIMIT switch and brought the high volume radar to life. When Locke rolled out on the down slope, Furry hit the EMIS LIMIT switch again and returned them to silent running. During the few seconds the radar was operating it had swept the horizon for hostile aircraft and fed information into its processor. The results showed up on the screens in the cockpit — they had four aircraft in front of them and Furry had a frozen radar picture on his display.