Mad Dog - First Strike Ch. 01

1 - Prologue:

"RAF Tonopah," Pilot Officer Dave 'Shifty' Roberts snorted cynically.

"Don't make me sodding laugh. It's not an RAF station, all it is is a corner of a Yank bloody air base."

Sitting at the terminal to the right was the surveillance systems operator, Flying Officer 'Sticky' Vicky Lloyd. An attractive slim woman, originally from Morpeth in North East England. She had a cheerful disposition, in her mid-twenties with dark hair swept back in a tight military bob. Lloyd gave him a scathing glance from the corner of her eye.

He was a white posh boy. A cookie cutter clone of all those who'd gone to a private British boarding school and Oxford or Cambridge university, the traditional route of the British upper-middle class. He was medium height, athletic build and with an overwhelming sense of self-entitlement.

"Why don't you stop moaning and concentrate on the job in hand?" Lloyd asked. "You know, actually flying the drone."

"No point, the bloody thing's on autopilot," he moaned, "I mean, where's the real flying in this?"

"Away Shifty man..."

"No, the bloody thing's autonomous, it can fly the whole mission all by its self," he moaned, "we're only here to tell it whether or not it's allowed to zap the target. We're here just in case the sodding thing gets any funny ideas and decides to wipe all the pesky humans out."

"I don't think we've got to the Terminator stage yet, have we?" Lloyd chuckled.

"Not quite just yet, but soon," Roberts said ominously.

Shifty had a point. They were operating a British Aerospace Taranis, and operating was the right word. Nobody ever claimed that they were the UCAVs crew. No one in their right mind would accuse Roberts or Lloyd of flying the drone.

Taranis is a stealthy, jet-powered Unmanned Combat Aviation Vehicle. The drone was named after the Celtic god of thunder.

The UCAV was part of the British Ministry of Defence's new air war strategy; the whole project cost of creating a fleet of eight drones set the British taxpayer back £185 million, while a single Typhoon FGR4 Eurofighter costs £110 million. For the cost of a single squadron of Typhoons the RAF could launch a swarm of semi-autonomous Taranis UCAVs and overwhelm enemy air defences.

Buried inside the fuselage were two weapons bays, each capable of launching a single Storm Shadow long range cruise missile. Today, however, each bay had a single GBU-27 Paveway III laser-guided bomb. It was a test to see if the Taranis could function in the tactical role.

The Americans were interested to see if the Taranis could be used as a replacement for the F-117 stealth fighter. Like their British RAF counterparts, the USAF were looking for a UCAV that had the low cost to allow a large number to be purchased.

They were thinking of the potential for future conflicts with Russia. The problem that air force planners in the Pentagon faced was Russia's massive size and the comprehensive layered air defence system and anti-access air denial zones - A2AD.

Swarm tactics using large numbers of strategic and tactical drones could overwhelm even A2AD. The drones would bear the brunt of the initial attack and the vast majority of casualties.

"Where would you rather be, back at Aberporth?" Lloyd asked, "I mean, come on, you can only tell if its summertime in Wales because the rain's slightly warmer."

"So it's warmer and sunnier here than it is back in Wales," Roberts showed his contempt by curling his lip, "big fucking deal."

"Besides, this is Nevada. Mate, you could drive to Las Vegas, be there in three hours and spend the weekend playing roulette or something," she continued, "which has got to beat Rhyl any day of the week, hasn't it?"

"Rhyl Vegas," Roberts grunted, and almost broke into a smile. The thought of the small Welsh seaside town trying to compete with Sin City USA was funny.

"Bright light city gonna set my soul on fire," she sang, "viva Las Vegas!"

Shifty began grinning at her singing. She wasn't that bad, but she'd never win Britain's Got Talent.

"Don't quit your day job," Shifty chuckled, "please, don't quit your day job."

"How did you end up being called shifty?" Sensing that Roberts was cheering up a little, Lloyd tried to change the subject and lighten the mood some more. She knew he'd open up to her, Shifty Roberts was a bit of an egotist, his favourite subject was himself.

"for a short while after I graduated from Oxford I was a used car salesman. Nothing shabby, all up-market stuff, Bentley's and Aston Martins, right," he said. "That was before I joined the air force, obvs."

"Obvs," Sticky Vicky mimicked him, "so why did you join up?"

"I thought I'd get to fly real aircraft," he responded, "not something that's the illegitimate product of a shag between a robot and a bloody radio controlled model of a stealth bomber. I'm pretending to be a combat pilot with delusions of adequacy."

"Oh," it was all Roberts could think of to say, there was no response to a rant like that.

Inside the cargo-container like control suite, near-silence descended. The only background noise being the white noise generated by the computers cooling fans and the noise of the air conditioning.

Lloyd knew that the quiet wouldn't last. Once Roberts got the meat bees buzzing in his head, he'd go on, and on, until death would be the only blessed relief. She wasn't sure who'd die; she could either murder Roberts or kill herself. Considering that the scheduled length of the drone's mission was supposed to be nine hours in duration, it'd be a toss up who would leave the UCAV's virtual cockpit alive.

The Taranis was operated by 1335 Flight, and the flight had been deployed to America for basic operator training. As Roberts had pointed out, the weather was better suited to flying, more reliable. Today's mission, however, was a departure from the norm. The UCAV was taking part in a live-fire exercise.

In a joint development exercise with the Americans the British UAV had been equipped with Hellfire missiles in its weapon bays. The mission profile tasked Roberts and Lloyd to fly on a racetrack flight pattern over the Nevada Test and Training Range; hundred mile straight legs with sweeping ten mile curves at each end to bring the drone back onto the reciprocal heading.

This would be an extended mission with multiple air-to-ground missile strikes, against a collection of bunkers and vehicles. These would be called in at random points in the mission by the joint

British-American monitoring team at the Tonopah Bombing Range.

"That's strange," Roberts muttered.

"Now what?" Lloyd asked.

"I didn't tell the stupid bloody thing to change course," Shifty said hoarsely.

"Maybe it's programmed into the autopilot?" she suggested.

"I programmed the autopilot, there's no scheduled turn here," he snapped back, "look at the flight plan."

On a whiteboard on the wall next to Lloyd was the scheduled flight plan, written in her own neat handwriting in black marker. She checked the scheduled time and grid reference with the same data on the drone's map display.

"You're right..."

"I know I am!" he snapped.

"Can't you alter the drone's course?" she asked. "Go over to manual control."

She looked at the pilot as he manipulated the flightsim-like joystick and throttle.

"What do you think I'm trying to do!" Robert's snapped back, "the sodding thing isn't responding to the controls."

"What?"

"It's being flown manually by the remote uplink," he snapped. "Somebody else has control of the fucking drone!"

Lloyd noticed something on her surveillance screen. The tennis ball-sized sensor turret under the drone's fuselage had rotated to the right. The cross hairs on the screen were locked onto a compound where two yellow school buses were parked unloading kids who'd just arrived at school.

"Oh shit!" she gasped, before snatching for her own joystick and trying to move the target. "It's bloody useless, I can't control the sodding thing!"

"Didn't I just say that?" Roberts said. He squeezed the press to talk comms button on his own joystick."Ramrod Four Niner to control, do you copy?"

There was no response.

"Use the landline," he snapped at Lloyd.

She grabbed the phone from the wall-mounted cradle and a pressed button on the speed dial. She was instantly put through to the Operations Centre.

"Ops Centre this is UAV Flight Pod, Ramrod Four Niner is not answering control input, I repeat the UCAV is not answering control..." she paused, "...what do I mean by not answering control? I mean that someone else is flying the drone. We've been hacked."

She glanced at her flight display. The weapons system was now armed.

"Oh Fuck!" she swore. "Whoever has hacked us is targeting two buses at Tonopah High School, and they've just armed the missiles."

The speakers in the control suite gave a low high-pitched tone, indicating that that one of the bombs had locked onto the laser target designator. It was armed with a live warhead and ready to fire.

Lloyd opened up a window on her monitor and began tapping manically at her keyboard. It wasn't usual procedure to open up the Root Directory while the drone was in flight, but desperate situations call for desperate remedies. If she could just override the fire control system, even if she couldn't prevent the missile from firing she could perhaps disengage the laser designator. That would ensure that the missile wouldn't hit its target.

In her headset she could hear the radio chatter as F-16A Falcons from the 429th Tactical Fighter Squadron were scrambled from Nellis AFB. They'd been activated to intercept and shoot down the Taranis.

Well good luck with that. The drone was stealthy, getting a missile lock for a heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder might be difficult. While the radar guided AIM-120 AMRAAM would struggle to lock onto the UCAV due to its low radar cross section. Lloyd hoped the pilots were good shots with the Falcon's 20mm cannon.

"Away y' bugger man!" she swore softly. "Gotcha."

She had the computer code that told the fire control system what to do. A simple overwrite and...

"Yeah, now let's see you hit what you're aiming at," she smiled smugly.