A Time for Patriots

“Jon, you can’t do stuff like that,” Patrick said. “At best you could get fired — at worst, you could get fired, sued, and have to pay for the Sparrowhawks yourself!”

“Hey, look who’s talking about bending the rules! You practically made an entire career out of it!”

“I did it when I had the discretion as the on-scene tactical commander,” Patrick said. Jon looked at him with a skeptical “oh, really?” expression. “And when I did it otherwise, I was either kicked out, forced to retire, or was sued. You work for a private company. The directors and officers make the decisions, not you.”

“Well, I’d be worried — if I already wasn’t the smartest guy in the company,” Jon said dismissively. “They can’t fire me or sue me — it’d tank the stock and we’d be lucky to get a contract to provide propeller beanies to Cub Scouts. Don’t worry about it.” He paused, looking in the direction of where Brad walked off. “I feel sorry for the kid,” he said. “What’s a scanner do?”

“His job is to search for mission targets or for hazards,” Patrick said. “Apparently Brad has trouble when he looks sideways out the window in a turn, or has to look downward or backward — we don’t quite know yet what triggers the motion sickness.”

“He looks out the window? That’s it ?”

“He’ll also take pictures, make records of what happens on a mission, run checklists, maybe talk to mission base or ground teams on the radio, but basically his job is to search outside the plane, from engine start to engine shutdown.”

“We have stuff that can more than take the place of a scanner,” Jon said. “We’ve developed sensor balls that can fit easily on the wings of a little bug smasher like your Cessnas. They’re a quarter of the size of a Predator’s sensor dome but do even more stuff and perform better. Plus, the scanner can operate the sensors from the ground. You save weight, the plane performs better, and you put fewer crewmembers at risk. Plus, once we install the video datalink, you can up- and download voice, data, telemetry — almost anything.”

“You know,” Patrick said after adopting that “ten-thousand-yard stare” expression for a moment, “the Civil Air Patrol flies missions called Predator Surrogate. They mount a Predator sensor ball on the Cessnas, and they fly around the Nellis Air Force Base ranges. The Army and Marine Corps use them to train sensor operators. It solves the problem of ‘see-and-avoid’ and loss of control that unmanned planes have — you have two guys in the plane that can look for traffic, and they can take the controls if the aircraft loses contact with remote operators.”

Jon was starting to adopt the same faraway expression as Patrick. “But our sensor domes are much better for the job than the Predator’s,” he said. “All we have to do is stick one on the Cessna… maybe one on each wing for better coverage and to even out the drag. Even with two, you’d have lower weight and better performance—”

“Jon, this is the Civil Air Patrol, not the U.S. Air Force or Space Defense Force,” Patrick said. “The whole idea of CAP was to have civilian volunteers helping their country by using their planes and skills. It defeats the purpose of the organization to start outfitting the planes like military aircraft. They’re—” But Patrick stopped… because the idea was starting to make total sense to him. “But… it would take years to get approval to put those sensors on the CAP Cessnas.”

“Maybe so,” Jon said. “So… let’s stick them on your

Cessna. The CAP plane here with the bullet holes in it is out of commission, right? Let’s use yours, and anyone else’s plane who wants some toys to play with.”

“What?” But after a few moments, the idea made him smile. “You know, CAP once only used a member’s plane — they switched to using CAP-owned planes about twenty years ago.” But then he shook his head as reality set in. “It would take months, maybe years, to get a field approval from the FAA for that kind of major modification. We’d have to do engineering drawings, do controllability and flutter tests, get authorization for—”

“Blah blah blah blah blah,” Jon Masters said, shaking his head. “Sheesh, maybe living way the hell out here has softened you up. So you decertify your plane and turn it into an ‘Experimental.’ You’re worried about the FAA? Have you ever seen the FAA out here at Battle Mountain? Do they even have

field inspectors anymore? What are the odds of getting ramp-checked these days? Besides, if they do catch you, so what? They’ll make you take the sensors off, so we’ll take them off. There are lots of options, Patrick. It seems to me you’re coming up with more excuses not to do it than ideas on how to do it.”

Patrick realized that was exactly what he was doing, and he nodded his head. “You’re right,” he said. But he looked at Jon seriously and added, “But we’re just going to grab a couple sensor balls from the company, again, like the Sparrowhawks? We can’t do that.”