Like Old Girl, the B-1Q was a flying test bed. She, too, had undergone extensive refurbishing, so much so that she now belonged to the future rather than the past. Having started life as a B-1B Lancer, the plane had been stripped to her skeleton and rebuilt. Her external appearance and performance were similar to the B-1R; like the updated Bone, she was capable of flying well over Mach 2 for a sustained period and carrying armloads of both air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons. But the B-1Q’s electronics were very different than those in the B-1R model, and her internal bomb bay held something more advanced than any of the missiles other bombers could unleash.

Turk glanced at the B-1Q as the bomb bay door opened. A gray cloud spewed from it, as if she had been holding a miniature thunderstorm in her belly. The cloud grew black, boiling, then dissipating. Black hailstones appeared, rising and falling around the airplane, until it was enveloped in a loose black cocoon.

“That’s it?” said the admiral. “Looks like a net.”

“In a way. Sure,” said Turk. It was the least cantankerous comment the admiral had made all morning.

“Interesting.”

The admiral remained silent as the cloud and the B-1Q continued downrange. Turk tipped the Phantom into a bank, easing off his stick as he realized he should keep the g’s to a minimum for his VIP.

Old Girl bucked with a bit of unexpected turbulence as she moved through the turn. Even she seemed a bit fed up with tour bus duty this morning.

The B-1Q started an abrupt climb. As it did, the black cloud began to separate. Half of it stayed with the bomber. The rest continued forward, forming itself into a wedge.

“So that’s the swarm,” said the admiral. Not only was he not complaining, he sounded enthusiastic.

“Yes, sir,” said Turk.

“You’re going to follow it, aren’t you? Yes? You’re following it?”

“Yes, sir. I, uh, I have to keep at a set distance.”

“Get as close as you can.”

“Yes, sir. Working on it.” Turk was already as close as the exercise rules allowed, and wasn’t about to violate them—hot shit pilot or not, that would get him grounded quicker than pissing off the admiral. He tilted the aircraft just enough to placate the admiral, who remained silent as the Phantom followed the black wedge.

The wedge—aka “swarm”—was a flight of twenty nano-UAVs, officially known as XP–38UVNs. Barely the size of a cheap desk calculator, the small aircraft looked like a cross between lawn darts and studies for a video game. With V-shaped delta wings, they were powered by small engines that burned Teflon as fuel. The engines were primarily for maneuvering; most of their flight momentum came from their initial launch and gravity: designed to be “fired” from space, they could complete complicated maneuvers by altering the shape and bulges of their airfoil. Though their electronic brains were triumphs of nanotechnology and engineering, the real breakthroughs that made them possible were in the tiny motors, switches, and actuators that brought the skeleton to life.

Dubbed “Hydra,” the nano-UAVs stood on the threshold of a new era of flight, one where robots did the thinking as well as the doing. They could be preprogrammed for a mission; their collaborative “brains” could deal with practically all contingencies, with humans in the loop only for emergencies. It was a brave new world . . . one that Turk didn’t particularly care for, even if as a test pilot he’d been an important cog in its creation.

Cog being the operative word, as far as he was concerned.

The nano-UAVs headed for a simulated radar complex—a vanlike truck with a dish and a set of antennas transmitting a signal that mimicked Russia’s Protivnik-GE mobile 3D L-Band radar. The L-Band radar was generally effective against smallish stealthy aircraft, including the F-35. The exercise today mimicked a deep-penetration mission, where a B-1Q and its swarm would cut past enemy defenses, clearing the way for attack planes to follow.

As a general rule, L-Band radars could detect conventional UAVs, even the RQ-170 Sentinel, because their airframes weren’t large enough to create the proper scatter to confuse the long wavelength of the radar. But the Hydras were so small and could fly so low, they were dismissed by the radar as clutter. Once past the calculated danger zone, the individual members of the swarm suddenly bolted together, becoming a literal fist in the sky as they pushed directly over the trailer housing the radar’s control unit.

“Looks like an air show,” said the admiral. “Or a school of fish.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So they scored a direct hit on that antenna, by the rules of the encounter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the van?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Narrow target, that antenna.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hard to hit from the air?”

“Well, um . . .”

Actually, taking out a radar antenna or van was child’s play with even the most primitive bomb, and a heck of a lot cheaper: the nano-UAVs cost about roughly $250,000 per unit; a half dozen would have been used to take down the antenna and another half dozen the van—a $3 million pop. In contrast, a five-hundred-pound Paveway II bomb, unpowered and outmoded but incredibly accurate under most circumstances, cost under $20,000.

On the other hand, as air vehicles went, the individual units were relatively cheap and extremely versatile. Mass produce the suckers and the cost might come down tenfold—practically to the price of a bomb.

Hell of a lot cheaper than a pilot, Turk knew.

The flock that had attacked the radar climbed and reformed around the B-1 as it neared the end of the range. The big bomber and its escorts banked and passed the Phantom on the left; Turk held Old Girl steady and slow, giving his passenger an eyeful. Having exhausted a good portion of their initial flight energy, the Hydras now used their tiny motors to climb in the wake of the B-1, using a wave pattern that maximized their fuel as they rose. The pattern was so complicated that Turk, who had controlled the UAVs during some early testing, would never have been able to fully master it without the aid of the nano-UAVs’ flight computers. As one techie put it, the pattern looked like snowflakes dancing in a thundershower.

As the Hydras closed around the B-1Q, Turk did a quick twist back, putting the Phantom on track as the second part of the demonstration began—two F-35s flew at the bomber, preparing to engage. When they were about twenty miles apart, the F-35s each fired a single AMRAAM-plus2, the latest version of the venerable medium range antiaircraft radar missile. The missiles were detected on launch by the B-1Q; a second later a dozen UAVs peeled off, forming a long wedge above the mother ship. As they continued flying straight ahead, the B-1Q rolled right and tucked toward the earth.

“Missiles will be at two o’clock,” said Turk. “Watch the swarm and you’ll see them come in.”

The electronics aboard the UAVs were marvels of nanoengineering, but even so, space aboard the tiny craft was at a premium. This meant that not every plane could be equipped with the full array of sensors even Old Girl took for granted. One might have a full radar setup, another optical sensors. The different information gathered could then be shared communally, with the interlinked computers deciding how to proceed.

All of the units contained small radar detectors, and while their power was limited, the size of the swarm allowed them to detect the radar at a fair distance. Thus, the UAVs knew that they had been locked on even before the antiaircraft missiles were fired. They remained in formation as the missiles approached, in effect fooling the AMRAAMs into thinking they were the B-1. Then, just as it looked as if the AMRAAMs would hit the swarm, the Hydras dispersed and the missiles flew on through them.

The radio buzzed with a signal meant to simulate the warheads exploding in frustration.