For weaponry, the Kestrel was outfitted with special versions of the Sidewinder and Phoenix air-to-air missiles that were also designed to operate in a space environment.
The conventional Sidewinder was an infrared, heat-seeking missile designed for close "knife range" air-to-air combat. Its liquid-nitrogen-cooled nose cone locked onto the hot tailpipe of an enemy fighter, and like a bull terrier it wouldn't let go until its victim was dead. (Subsequent models of the missile were sensitive enough not to require the hot-tailpipe signature, and could acquire a head-on target profile.)
The space version of the Sidewinder followed this same basic concept, but with some alterations. Because it flew in a weightless environment, its special solid propellant burned slower than conventional fuel, giving the missile a range of 150 miles. Also, because it operated in a vacuum, it had no aerodynamic fins. Instead, steering was provided by the tail nozzle's vectored thrust, meaning it could swivel and point the exhaust plume in any rearward direction — sort of like steering a boat with an out-board'motor. However, when the Sidewinder was in the terminal phase of closing on its target, the vectored thrust couldn't provide sufficient maneuvering for extremely tight turns. Therefore, a double ring of small solid-fuel thrusters around the nose cone gave it the ability to execute incredibly precise movements in the final targeting phase as well as providing spin stabilization.
Its guidance system allowed the missile to have target lock-on through an infrared telescope sensor in the Kestrel's nose before it was fired, or it could be released in a given direction and told to "search and destroy" until it found a target with its onboard sensor, or ran out of propellant. When the Sidewinder finally pounced on its prey in the terminal phase, its annular blast fragmentation warhead would slice the victim spacecraft into chopped liver.
The Kestrel carried the Sidewinder in a recessed nacelle, sandwiched between the upper and lower plates of the wing. When fired, it was ejected from the nacelle by a cartridge of compressed nitrogen gas before the solid propellant ignited.
During the Vietnam War, the Sidewinder developed a devoted following among American pilots. When the missile locked on to a North Vietnamese MiG, it would signal the pilot with a grrrrrrr in his headphones — like an angry dog straining against his leash; and when released, it would often scurry into the MiG's tailpipe.
The Kestrel's Phoenix missile possessed many of the attributes of the Sidewinder, in that it also had vectored thrust, slow-burn propellant, nose cone ring thrusters for terminal phase maneuvering and spin stabilization, and an annular fragmentation warhead. However, the guidance system was different. The Kestrel possessed a state-of-the-art long-range, Doppler-pulse radar that was operated by the backseat WSO. The spacecraft's radar could guide the Phoenix to the target, or the WSO could switch the missile to its own organic radar system after launch, which also had a "seek and destroy" mode. The advantage of the Phoenix over the Sidewinder was range — with the powerful Doppler radar it could engage a target up to 500 miles away. This far outstripped the conventional Phoenix range of 127 miles, but operating in a space environment, distances can be deceiving. To engage a head-to-head orbiting target at a mutual closing velocity of 34,000 mph, or roughly nine miles per second, the Kestrel would have to acquire, lock on, and fire the Phoenix within a maximum of forty seconds. Therefore, it was virtually impossible to engage a head-on target without assistance from the ground. However, if the Kestrel was traveling in the same orbital path and direction as the target, it could take the Phoenix — traveling at a relative catch-up closing speed of2,500 miles an hour — up to twenty minutes to execute a rendezvous and reach a target that was 500 miles distant.
Because the Phoenix held much more electronics and pro-pellant, it was about three times thicker in the body than the Sidewinder and could not fit into the narrow wing nacelles. Nor could it be mounted on a pylon underneath the wing, because the Kestrel's belly surface had to remain smooth for the aerodynamic rigors of reentry. Therefore the missiles were mounted on pylons on top of the wings. Prior to lift-off they were covered with protective aerodynamic shrouds which were jettisoned after the Kestrel reached orbit. And prior to reentry, the pylons would be jettisoned so that the control surface of the Kestrel's wing would not be impaired.
In addition to the weaponry, the Kestrel was crammed with just about every electronic goody the Lockheed engineers could think of to cram onboard — from NavComputer to Global Positioning System to ring laser gyros to Autoland and threat warning systems.
Finishing his walkaround, Monaghan reflected that the Kestrel looked a great deal like the old Dyna-Soar project that had been under development during the early 1960s. Unfortunately, that prototype had been competing for funding in the shadow of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo effort. As a result, it had never built up a constituency of its own and was scrapped by NASA in 1963. Too bad, though Monaghan. If we'd kept Dyna-Soar going we wouldn't have had to play catch-up ball with the Kestrel.
There were two motivating factors for developing the Kestrel. One, the Graser was an extremely effective weapon, but its gamma-ray beam was several kilometers wide, and that could be a problem when friendly targets were mixed in with enemy targets — like satellites traveling shoulder to shoulder in the same orbital path. The Kestrel was a more "surgical" weapon and could pick out its target from a group of bogies. The second reason was that the Soviets already possessed a prototype space-plane fighter and had successfully orbited and retrieved a scale model several times. The President wasn't about to let that one go by. Period. But what the American President didn't know was that the Russians were unable to translate their success with the spaceplane model to the full-sized shuttle.
Monaghan went into the hangar chiefs office. "You got the transport lined up?" he queried.
The chief pushed his baseball-style cap back up on his head of thinning blond hair. "Yes, sir. A C-5N will be here in about an hour and a half."
Monaghan nodded and looked at the hangar door. "Can that C-5 back into here? I wouldn't want to move the Kestrel outside during a Russkie flyby," he said, referring to Russian reconnaissance satellites.
"No problem, Commander." He tapped the bulletin board with his pencil. "We get daily printouts from NORAD on the Russians' observation window. Besides, we'll have a tarp over it when we roll it out to the Galaxy."
Monaghan seemed satisfied, and wrote down a phone number. "Okay, the LTV people won't be finished for another six hours. I'm going back to my BOQ and get a little sack time before we roll. If our beloved General McCormack should call, tell him I'm in the head, then call me at home."
The chief shrugged. "Suit yourself."
Back in his quarters, Monaghan opened a closet that contained various and sundry memorabilia he'd accumulated over the years — a nice way of saying "junk." For several minutes he rummaged around in the closet like a bear in s beehive, until he found what he was looking for under a case of empty Bacardi bottles. It was a videotape.
He powered up his TV and VCR, then dropped in the tape and started the rewind.
Kapuscinski, Mulcahey, and Rodriquez, the general had said. One of them had gone over — defected — and it might be up to the Mad Dog to put the skids on whoever it was. Rodriquez he'd never met. Mulcahey had been the copilot on one of his two shuttle orientation flights. Kapuscinski he knew.