Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age Read Online Free PDF Page B

General Richard V. Wyatt, the Vice Chief of Staff. Wyatt had been a strong opponent of O’Malley’s last crusade, the so-called low cost fighter that had led to the YF-16. He had resented O’Malley’s unorthodox—but successful—advocacy of the concept. Wanting to keep O’Malley firmly out of the airplane acquisition business, Wyatt had set up a special office in the Pentagon, with O’Malley reporting directly to him. This had benefited Rodriquez, for O’Malley was as effective working on the GPS program as he had been on the lightweight fighter, as it was now being called. The name had changed as costs had risen.
    But everyone knew what the new assignment meant. O’Malley had raised so much hell about getting a lightweight fighter that Wyatt was determined to see that he was never promoted again. Ironically, if O’Malley had failed, if no lightweight fighter had come into being, his previous record would have made his promotion to brigadier general certain within the year.
    The hangar doors were open now, and a tug was pulling the gleaming YF-16 out. Rodriquez saw Oestricher in the cockpit, with O’Malley walking along at the wing tip, making sure that it cleared the hangar doors that were at least forty feet away. Oestricher’s head was down in the cockpit. An image came to Rodriquez of the instrument panel and switches. They were already worn, shining metal gleaming through the paint. It was amazing how quickly an aircraft’s cockpit aged—outside it might look brand-new, gleaming in the sun; inside it was always tattered and torn.
    Although Rodriquez had spent many hours working on this very sophisticated aircraft, he never tired of looking at it. The YF-16 had an exotic beauty, with its sensuous blended wing-body design. The wing itself had a computer-controlled variable camber that combined with flaperons to take full advantage of the relaxed stability characteristic. There were other advances as well, including a wing strake on the forebody that generated a vortex lift.
    Few airplanes embodied so many advances in a single package, and he had a proprietary interest in one of the most important of these, the “relaxed” static stability/fly-by-wire control system. In simpler terms it meant that the YF-16 was deliberately designed to be far more unstable than previous aircraft, a factor that, when controlled by computers, gave it an unparalleled maneuverability. The fly-by-wire system was distrusted by many, but years of experiments made Rodriquez sure that it was the system of the future. As multiple computers were introduced into new designs, it became essential to take the fly-by-wire approach.
    Rodriquez had seen the YF-16’s competition, the Northrop YF-17. It, too, was a beautiful aircraft, and a worthy competitor. But it used two engines, and that doomed it with the lightweight fighter crowd.
    Asking the driver to wait, Rodriquez walked over to O’Malley, shaking his hand and saying, “Man, you shouldn’t be here. Wyatt will skin you alive when you get back.”
    “It don’t matter, son, it don’t matter; my ass is grass with Wyatt anyway, and I might as well enjoy my last days in the Air Force.”
    Seeing Rodriquez’s stunned look, O’Malley went on. “They have given me the word, no stars for a wiseass like me. I might as well get out while I’m still young. I don’t want to be one of those gray-haired colonels still running the halls at the Pentagon after they’ve got their thirty in.”
    Rodriquez was shocked. From his days as quarterback at Academy to shooting down MiGs in Vietnam, O’Malley had been a comer. Tom Shannon had predicted that he would be Chief of Staff someday.
    “Jesus, Steve, after your career, how can they do this to you?”
    “Easy, if they can do it to John Boyd, they can do it to me. I’m not political enough. I stepped on too many toes helping set up the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis. Then working with the fighter mafia just about finished me off. All