Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (31 page)

V. R., always a pilot at heart, asked, “Will you be using other airplanes to guide these? Who flies them?”

“Pilots will fly them but from the ground. Here’s the thing to remember. I didn’t just show you an airplane. I showed you a system. Behind that little dude of an airplane is an amazing tapestry of technology that weaves in satellites, lasers, infrared, television, GPS, and everything else in the market today. And tomorrow we’ll be adding precision guided munitions to the mix. Pilots sitting in specially equipped trailers will fly them, maybe from a local site, maybe from thousands of miles away, it doesn’t matter. With satellite communications, everything is real time, no matter what the distance on earth.”

“Steve, I don’t want to sound negative, but you are talking about fighting MiGs and bombing, when it seems to me that the best this thing could do would be to carry some electronic sensors and maybe do some photo reconnaissance.”

“Harry, I know you think I get carried away and I do. But I know in my gut that this is the way to the future. It just makes sense: have an air force that establishes air dominance, then do your control and your fighting with unmanned vehicles.”

“How does this thing perform?”

“This is a prototype, Dennis, but let me give you what the specs are for the production version.”

He pulled a yellow Post-it from his pocket and read, “Endurance: forty hours; cruises at about seventy knots; wingspan forty-nine feet; length twenty-nine feet, max takeoff weight just over a ton; the engine is a 101 horsepower four-cylinder Rotax, just like they are using in the ultralights.”

The forty hours seemed to make an impression. If you can loiter over a battlefield for that long, you stifle the enemy’s ability to move. Yet there was doubt on everyone’s face, except for Bob Rodriquez, Sr.

Young Bob Rodriquez, Jr. voiced their thoughts. “Come on, General, we’re sweating out the F-22, with supercruise and stealth, and you’re touting a throwback. It’s not even jet-powered, it probably can’t climb above fifteen thousand feet.”

“Don’t you worry, Rod, there will be unmanned jets in the future,
and stealthy ones, too. That’s why I’m saying this is the future for the little guy, the companies that cannot produce the F-22s. I’ll bet you that in a year’s time there will be firms all over the world producing things like this.”

Bob Rodriquez, Sr., was not noted for his humor, but he stood up, assumed Al Pacino’s stance and voice, and said, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

As the room broke into laughter, Harry Shannon flashed a look of gratitude to O’Malley. The man had done much for his country and much for the Shannon family. Getting Rodriquez on board at Vance Shannon, Incorporated, would be the key to the firm’s future.

April 5, 1995

Duluth, Minnesota

“W
HAT
’
S THAT OLD
joke about first prize being one week in Duluth and second prize being two weeks?”

They were eating a huge breakfast at the “Original Original” Pancake House, preparing themselves for another day of meetings with the small but professional crew at the Cirrus Design Corporation plant at nearby Hermantown. Two days before they had witnessed the first flight of the revolutionary Cirrus CR20, a hot little four-place aircraft with a host of modern features.

His mouth full, Dennis Jenkins chewed slowly, then said, “This is the first time I’ve ever had scrapple. And the last.”

“I’m too old for traveling in cold country like this, Dennis, but I’m not too old to appreciate a real treat.” Harry Shannon helped himself to the rest of the scrapple, looked around, and then said, “You know there might not be a Cirrus or a lot of other airplanes if it hadn’t been for the way Ed Stimpson pushed the General Aviation Revitalization Act through Congress last year.”

He paused, and Jenkins could see that he was troubled. Something was bothering him, and it was the lot of the aviation industry.

Harry said, “I still feel uncomfortable about coming out here to see the first flight and pretending that we want to buy an airplane. We’ve never done anything like this before.”

Jenkins laughed, saying, “Harry, if you want me to believe this is the first industrial espionage Vance Shannon, Incorporated, was ever involved in, I’d have to say I don’t believe you. It’s just that this is the first that you’ve been the lead man on it.”

Shannon winced. His father’s company had been Simon pure when it came to avoiding even the appearance of industrial espionage. But in the later years, as the company grew bigger, he knew that it had gone on.

Jenkins continued. “And it’s partly true. If this airplane is as good as it looks and as they say it is, we could add it to our combined fleet.”

“That doesn’t make much sense, Dennis. Since we brought SpaceVisions in as part of Vance Shannon, Incorporated, we’ve had to get rid of a half-dozen planes. I don’t know what you were doing over there, but you had about twice as many airplanes as you needed.”

“Yeah, but we don’t have any like the Cirrus. There aren’t any airplanes like the Cirrus.”

It was true enough. Cirrus Design Corporation had started out building the VK-30, a radical pusher-engine kit plane. It had been pretty well received, but the company founders decided to make a play for the big time, moved their plant to the Duluth Airport, and brought out a clean, four-place light plane with some radical features. Of composite construction, the airplane featured a glass cockpit and, most intriguing of all, a ballistic parachute system designed to lower the entire aircraft to the ground in the case of in-flight difficulties.

“Were you at Oshkosh last year?”

Jenkins nodded, saying, “I never miss the EAA Fly-In if I can possibly help it. I shouldn’t have gone last year, but I’m glad I did, for as soon as I saw the Cirrus on display there, I knew we had to have one. And I knew we could profit from its technology.”

“Do you think there’s any chance that we can buy them out? Everybody in my family has always itched to get into the aircraft manufacturing business, and somehow it never came about. This would be a good way to start.”

“No chance. I’ve talked to the two principals, brothers, Alan and Dale Klapmeier. They are determined to beat out Cessna in sales in their field.”

“That’s not ambition, that’s chutzpah! If and when Cessna sees them gaining on them, they’ll put out a new product and snuff them.”

“I don’t think so, Harry. These are two determined guys, with a vision, and they know how to build a team. I think their slogan ‘Plane Genius’—that’s ‘p-l-a-n-e’—says it all.”

“Well, what can we use from them? We’ve got Rutan’s outfit, Scaled Composites, if we want to contract out some composite construction work. We can license the Ballistic Recovery Systems from Boris Popov’s company, just like Cirrus does, if we want to use a parachute for one of the unmanned vehicles we’re doing.”

“We don’t want anything from them but their business model. Combining our two companies made a lot of sense from a balance sheet standpoint, but it made us way too big. You don’t see it so much because you are not around as much as you used to be, and I’m glad for you that you are not. But making decisions is tough for us now. Despite everything we do, there are too many committees, too many design reviews, too many everything. I want us to blueprint how Cirrus operates, and set up a new company, small, to do the drones.”

“Unmanned aerial vehicles. Not drones. Repeat: unmanned aerial vehicles.”

Jenkins could tell from the tone in Harry’s voice that he had touched a nerve.

“You are right about that, Dennis. We are too damn big. I hate going even to the annual stockholders meeting, a bunch of strange faces sitting around, pretending they know something about the industry.”

As Harry grew older he thought more often about his father, and how he had run his still tiny business.

“I know I sound like a broken record, but Dad would never have put up with the setup we have now. I think you are right. If we set this new company up along the lines of Cirrus, or whatever, who is going to run it? You?”

“No, I’m locked in with more than I can handle at SpaceVisions. We’ve got stuff coming down the line that is fantastic, and you know I’ve always been smitten by the idea of manned spaceflight. I can’t shake my fascination with the Space Shuttle, even though it’s old hat to the public by now. No, I was thinking of making it a Rodriquez team project. Have Bob Sr. act as Chairman, and Bob Jr. run it as CEO and President. Leave Bob Sr. to do the thinking and the planning on unmanned vehicles, and not just air vehicles at that. We will
need them on land, on and under the water, and out in space as well, for exploring Mars and wherever we can get to.”

Harry didn’t speak for a moment.

“Have you talked to them about it?”

“No, but I know Rod feels like he’s a fifth wheel at AdvanceAir. Mae is running the leasing programs brilliantly, and I think he’d jump at a new gig. And I think Bob would be gratified to be able to work with his son on a new project.”

Harry shoved his almost-empty plate away and finished his fourth cup of coffee.

“Tell you what let’s do. Let’s go over and talk to those folks at Cirrus and buy you an airplane. I know you are dying to get one, and we might as well save time by putting our order in now. Then let’s level with them, tell them we admire what they are doing, and would like to have our team Rodriquez come out for a visit to see how they work. We’d pay them a fee, of course—why should they take time to help us out pro bono? And if it turns out the Rodriquez boys don’t go along with our idea, I’ll hire some young whippersnapper and take over the project myself.”

As Dennis was paying the check he considered Harry’s last comments. Everything was great until the line about hiring a whippersnapper and taking over himself. That was the last thing he should do at his age—it wasn’t going to be easy to set up the new firm and keep it as simple as the folks at Cirrus had done. He wasn’t even sure if Bob Rodriquez could handle it. But it had to be done, and Harry was not the man to do it.

For his part, Harry walked outside into the welcome, if brisk, fresh air immensely satisfied with himself. He had worked with Steve O’Malley for months to bring Bob Rodriquez back within the Vance Shannon, Incorporated, fold, only to find that he was no longer the same man. It was difficult for Bob to work with others. So much had happened to him during his long lonely years as a covert agent that he no longer worked well within a big corporation. Harry had always respected Dennis immensely, the man had led ActOn successfully, made SpaceVisions into a real contender, and was now a tremendously valuable asset to Vance Shannon, Incorporated. Now this new track was going to be his biggest challenge. He was channeling Rodriquez’s talent into a new environment,
one where he might be able to function as he did in the past, and he was adding Rod to the equation. Without having said a word, both men understood that as talented as the younger Rodriquez was, his real value would now be in allowing his father to put his extraordinary vision to use, unfettered by the bureaucracy inevitable in a big corporation. Stuffed with a big breakfast, looking forward to the prospect of a flight in the new Cirrus airplane, Harry felt uncommonly content with himself. When Jenkins came out through the door, Harry slapped him on the back and said, “Not bad for a couple of geezers, eh? Coming up with a new strategy! Let’s hope we can sell it to the Rodriquez boys.”

“And to the Cirrus boys.”

October 11, 1995

Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs,

Colorado

T
HERE WERE TWO
lines passing in front of the Academy’s officers club. From left to right, a long series of three- and four-star generals were filing into the third Corona meeting of the year. From right to left, a handsome buck led four does on a gourmet tour of the Academy’s azalea plants. Both lines seemed to be enjoying the beneficence of the weather, dry and fifty-five degrees.

The tri-annual meetings dated back to 1944, and had long since proved themselves to be the best conduit of upper-level information and insight. The series of presentations crossed all the command boundaries, and everyone had a chance to say their piece, on the spot, and in the presence of the Chief of Staff. For the Air Force, the Corona meetings were remarkably free of protocol, and everyone was encouraged to speak up, even if their opinion ran counter to the prevailing philosophies.

Three hours later, just before the lunch break, Lieutenant General Harry Matarese had just concluded a compelling briefing on unmanned aerial vehicles.

General Ron Yates, commander of Air Force Materiel Command, commented, “We’ve been able to resolve so many of the flight control issues with UAVs so that they are much more reliable now.
I think it’s time that we really evaluate unmanned aerial vehicles as a combat system.”

From the other side of the room, Lieutenant General Carl Berry spoke up. People turned to him, for Berry was usually somewhat reticient, but when he spoke it was always worth listening to. Berry was the deputy chief of staff for command, control, communications, and computers, the heart of the AWACS and JointSTARS programs.

“We are now able to combine surveillance and reconnaissance very effectively into our command and control systems. I think we can link anything that develops in UAVs right into the existing architecture. No problem.”

General Mike Loh, first commander of the new Air Combat Command, stood up. A big man, almost massive in impression if not in size, he was normally outspoken and occasionally boisterous. Now he stood for a moment before softly saying, “Given that we are getting new munitions—sensor fused, what-have-you—and that we have good lightweight missiles, the Hellfire for one, maybe it’s time we look at a combat UAV.”

There was the dead silence that occurs when a really big idea pops up, and then the room erupted into a hotbed of noise, with everybody wanting to chime in.

In the back of the room, sitting quietly, Steve O’Malley felt a glow of contentment. There is nothing like having a good idea confirmed by a roomful of three- and four-star generals.