Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (84 page)

BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE,
BOSSIER CITY,
LOUISIANA

TUESDAY, 24 JUNE 1997
,
1431 HOURS LOCAL (1531 HOURS ET)

 
          
SKYBIRD,
SKYBIRD, message follows: kilo, three, seven, niner, eight, foxtrot, one ...”
the U.S. Strategic Command senior controller said over the command net, reading
off a long string of phonetic letters and numbers, then repeating the coded
message with the phrase “I say again ...” In the Eighth Air Force command
center, two teams of two controllers were copying the message down, then
beginning to decode the message separately, then comparing their results with
each other; satisfied, they began running the associated checklist. The
checklist would instruct them what message to transmit to the bomber forces
under their command. Both sets of controllers composed the new message, then
quickly verified it with each other.

 
          
Then,
while the first set of controllers began reading the new coded message on the
command posts UHF and VHF frequency, the second set of controllers copied the
message and passed it along to the battle staff operations officer. He in turn
decoded the message with another officer, checked their results with the first
two sets of controllers—it checked once again. At least four sets of eyes
always checked every message and every response to be sure they were
accomplishing the proper action. If there was any error anywhere along the
line—a nervous or cracking voice, a hesitation, anything—the other controller
would slap a piece of paper over the codebook, and the controller reading the
message would read, “Stand by,” then start all over again. The stakes were too
enormous to leave any ambiguities.

 
          
“Latest
EAM verified, sir,” the ops officer reported to the Eighth Air Force battle
staff. “DEFCON Two emergency action message.” The entire staff opened up their
checklists to the appropriate page, as the ops officer began writing updated
date-time groups up on the command timing board. DEFCON, or Defense Condition,
Two was a higher state of readiness for all U.S. military forces; for the
bomber forces, it placed them at the very highest stages of ground alert, just
short of taking off. “Message establishes an ‘A hour only, directing force
timing for one hundred percent of the force on cockpit alert status, plus fifty
percent of available forces as of A plus six hours to go to dispersal
locations,” the ops officer went on. “Bases with missile flight times less than
twelve minutes go to repositioned alert; bases with MFTs less than eight minutes
go to engines-running repositioned alert. The message directs full Reserve and
Guard mobilizations.”

 
          
Every
member of the battle staff reached for telephones as soon as the minibriefing
was over. Lieutenant-General Terrill Samson, commander of Eighth Air Force, was
on the phone to his boss, the commander of Air Force Air Combat Command,
General Steven Shaw. He was put on hold.

 
          
Samson
sighed but did not let himself become angry. He knew he was already effectively
out of the picture—in more ways than one. Steve Shaw didn’t need to talk to
Terrill Samson for any important reason right now.

 
          
Barksdale’s
sortie board was filled with tail numbers and parking areas, but all the sortie
numbers and crew numbers were blank. That’s because they were all for B-52H
bombers, and the B-52s had all been retired, deactivated. By October, all of
them would be flown to Davis- Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona,
there to be cut up and put on display so that Russian, Chinese, and whoever
else’s spy satellites could photograph the birds and be sure their wings had
been clipped for good. Not that Barksdale’s ramps were vacant. Some of the
B-lBs from the Seventh Bomb Wing out of Dyess Air Force Base, Abilene, Texas,
who were going to become Air Force Reserve bombers in October, had dispersed to
Barksdale—they would probably be assigned here full-time when Dyess turned into
a B-1B training base.

 
          
But
all of the heavy bombers that had once been under Terrill Samson’s command were
now in the hands of U.S. Strategic Command and Admiral Henry Danforth—and since
Samson had opened his mouth and dared to contradict Danforth’s blind
preparation for a nuclear war that was not wanted and probably would never come
except by some horrible accident, Samson was not even entrusted with commanding
his bombers under CINCSTRATCOM. He was a three-star general without a command,
without any responsibilities. He still monitored the status of each and every
bomber that was formerly under his supervision, but he was not in the chain of
command anymore—he was not even in the advice and consultation loop.

 
          
The
bomber SIOP generation, the preparation for all the land-based B-1B Lancer and
B-2A Spirit bombers for nuclear war, was still not going very well. About
three-quarters of the force was on alert now—but under DEFCON Three, 100
percent of the bombers had to be on alert. In addition, 25 percent of the force
had to be dispersed to alternate operating locations—Barksdale was one, along
with Fairchild AFB in Spokane, Washington, Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota, and
Castle AFB near Merced, California—but just a few bombers had arrived, and it
would take days for them to get on alert with nuclear weapons aboard. All of
the alternate fields were former bomber bases, but it had been months, even years,
since any of them had any big bombers land there, let alone any bombers with
nuclear weapons aboard.

 
          
Terrill
Samson could offer words of encouragement, or dispense advice, or rant and rave
and threaten to kick ass if they didn’t get moving faster. But it meant
nothing. His words did not have any authority behind them anymore. Although his
stand-down wasn’t officially set until October, it was as if Terrill Samson had
already been relieved of command, and retired.

 
          
“Terrill,
Steve here,” General Shaw said, as he came on the line a few moments later.
“STRATCOM wants to put the B-2s on airborne alert. You got something on the
shelf that we can give them in the next couple hours?”

           
“Yes, sir,” Samson responded
woodenly, disguising his shock and disbelief. Airborne alert, nicknamed “Chrome
Dome” and immortalized in films like
Dr
Strangelove,
hadn’t been done in more than twenty-five years because it was
so dangerous to have nuclear-loaded bombers flying around for hours or even
days on end—the old Strategic Air Command had lost two bombers and four nuclear
gravity bombs during Chrome Dome missions. Now Danforth and Balboa, two Navy
pukes, somehow thought it would be a good idea to do it again.

 
          
“I
expected a slightly stronger reaction from you, Earthmover,” Shaw remarked.

 
          
“Would
it do any good, coming from me—or you?”

 
          
“Probably
not, but I’d like to hear it anyway,” Shaw said. “First answer the question so
I can give STRATCOM their answer, then talk to me.”

 
          
“We
don’t have any Beak-specific airborne alert tracks laid out,” Samson responded,
“but we can modify a few old B-52 racetracks and give them out to the B-2
crews. We can mate them to B-1B tracks, but we want to be sure we spread them
out in case
China
decides to use nuclear warheads on air-to-air missiles.” Samson
wondered why his deputy, General Michael Collier, who was the bomber chief for
Strategic Command after Samson had been relieved, hadn’t called in the request
directly from STRATCOM headquarters at Offutt. The only explanation was that Danforth,
commander in chief of Strategic Command, was disregarding Collier’s
recommendations, as he disregarded Samson’s.

 
          
“Sounds
good. I knew I could count on you. Pass them along to Offutt soonest,” Shaw
ordered. “Now, lay it on me. Give me your thoughts. Quickly, please.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Samson said. “I want to make another pitch to the Chief and the National
Command Authority about the bomber force. We have got to take them off SIOP
alert. I’ve got a series of plans we can present to the NCA—”

 
          
“I
don’t have time to make the same pitch we tried yesterday, Terrill,” Shaw said.
“I’m up to my eyeballs. STRATCOM wants to put nukes on the Strike Eagles now. ”

 
          
“What?”

           
“You heard me,” Shaw said. “We’re
going to have all four F-15E Strike Eagle wings—the 3rd at Elmendorf, the 4th
at Seymour-Johnson, the 366th at Mountain Home, and the 48th at
Lakenheath—loaded for the SIOP and deployed to Elmendorf for operations against
North
Korea
or
China
. CINCSTRATCOM is looking at
North Korea
starting a nuclear exchange within a few
hours.”

 
          
“That’s
nuts, sir,” Samson said. “That’ll suck a fourth of your tankers away. Losing
Guam
was bad enough for the tankers—putting
nukes on F-15s for possible missions against
North Korea
, will drain even more tankers away.”

 
          
“You’re
exactly correct, Earthmover, and that’s the argument I made—but the JCS and
STRATCOM are on autopilot for Armaggedon. They think that if we put more nukes
on more planes, the Chinese and North Koreans will back off,” Shaw said.
“Anyway, I’m still waiting on a cocked-on-alert call from your Bones. Pass
along a good word for me to the boys and girls at Whiteman for a good job in
getting the B-2s loaded up so fast.”

 
          
They
were loaded up and put on alert just so Danforth and Balboa could start dinking
around with them, such as putting them on airborne alert, Samson thought
bitterly. “I will, sir,” he responded; then, quickly, Samson went on: “Sir, I’d
like a chance to meet with you and General Hayes on my plan to neutralize the
Chinese strategic forces. We have missions on the shelf right now, ready to go,
where we can take out every one of the Chinese long-range-missile silos without
using nuclear weapons. I’d like to—”

 
          
“Sorry,
Earthmover, but I can’t,” Shaw interrupted. “I went to STRATCOM with your suggestions
without any luck, and I’ve got a second message in with the chief. They want to
keep all the bombers on nuclear alert—they think it gives them the most
leverage to have the bombers, especially the B-2s, loaded with nukes and
threatening to destroy targets in
China
.”

 
          
“It’s
obviously not working, sir, because
China
went ahead and destroyed Andersen and
nearly wiped out the capital city of
Guam
,” Samson interjected, “and we still haven’t
retaliated.
Someone
did, but it
wasn’t us.

 
          
“Sorry,
Earthmover,” Shaw repeated. “To a certain extent, I happen to agree with the
JCS. We can’t risk losing the B-2s on a deep strike mission inside
China
.”

 
          
“The
B-lBs can soften up
China
’s air defense well enough for the B-2s to
go in.”

 
          
“But
then they’re up against thousands of fighters and triple-A sites,” Shaw argued.
“We can’t destroy all of them. Eventually, the B-2s would be fully exposed. If
we lost even ten percent of the B-2 fleet on this attack, it would be a
staggeringly demoralizing loss—and it would seem even worse if we didn’t do
commensurate damage to the Chinese military. We might then be forced to use
ICBMs or nuclear cruise missiles to destroy Chinese targets, and then we’d be
on the very slippery slope we want to stay off. We’d be sending nuclear
warheads over the pole, over
Russia
. That would make the Russkies very nervous,
and we don’t want them involved in this fight, on either side.”

 
          
“Sir,
we’ve got a plan that would practically ensure destruction of the Chinese long-
and intermediate-range strategic offensive arsenal, without a devastating loss
on our side—and without using nukes,” Samson said. “But I need the B-l and B-2
bombers. All of them. They’re not doing any good loaded with nukes. With you,
me, and General Hayes talking to the SECDEF or maybe even the President, we
might be able to convince him to let us try my plan before it’s too late.”