It was the third time that week that the Sukhoi SV-51's roll posts had developed the overheating problem. I couldn't really blame the things. Temperatures at our searing Kazakh test base had shot up into the triple digits, and our hours not spent in or around the two gleaming prototype jets were spent indoors with fans on. It would have been a dream come true if that had been the only thing wrong with our fighter. But no, there were dozens of other problems. The thrust vectoring flaps on the engines couldn't be made to kick in gracefully, dipping too deep into the jet wash and moving the aircraft violently when employed (new designs were being shipped from Sukhoi OKB in a few days). The VTOL lift fan was developing an alarming rattle that no-one dared to speculate about in the hopes that it would just go away. The brand-new interface on the cockpit displays was having trouble reading finger inputs because of the finicky capacitve touchscreens (infrared models were on their way with the new thrust-vectoring panels). Wing buffet was heavy at certain ends of the flight envelope, and to top it all off, the afterburner couldn't be engaged for more than 300 seconds before things started to melt.

And we were the low-risk option of the flyoff.

The other competitor, the Viscovich Vi-116, had been designed with enough experimental weaponry built into it to arm a third-world republic. A multidirectional mini-missile pack, three miniature railguns with complicated cooling and shock-absorbing systems, and a powerful ECM system were all possible operational loadouts. On the SV-51, we'd left such details to our weapons contractors, sticking to building a fine plane. Relying on hardpoints as opposed to internal bays decreased our stealth (and our flexibility to an extent), but weight was down and mobility was up compared to the Viscovich.

Side by side, the two competitors had completely different approaches to the design goals. The SV-51 had a slightly drooped Sukhoi nose, a framed canopy, twin angled canards, a thick, slightly variable wing, twin engines, twin angled tails, and square engine inlets. The Vi-116 had a frameless canopy, a heavily swept delta wing with equally swept canards, three internal weapons bays, twin engines with peculiar rotated- rectangle inlets, and an incredibly instable flight envelope. We'd heard stories about the Vi-116 attempting to bank in a high-G turn, and the nose pointing towards a new heading a good 5 seconds before the jet actually started moving that way. The SV-51 could VTOL, but the Vi-116 had no such capability.

I was glad I was in the SV-51. It seemed like the last of the true great Russian fighters, whereas this new Viscovich was something new and not entirely pleasant that got to its maneuverability through dangerously unstable dynamics. The SV-51 went where you told it to go when you told it to go. And if you told it to go, it sure as hell went.

That clever little phrase ran through my head as I slammed the stick forward and gasped with giddy excitement as the G's fell away. The SV-51 leveled out perfectly on target, and I got ready for the next exercise. I opened the air-brakes to full, inverting the beautiful bird and swinging down into a split-S. I came out of the split-S near the deck, streaking towards my target- a line of 'tanks' some twenty miles away.

"Molniya One, you're cleared to open fire on the targets," the AWACS in the air informed me.

"Roger. Firing standoff dispensers," I replied, clicking my fire button.

Underneath the two inboard wing hardpoints, twin black pods dropped off the aircraft, grew wings, and sped away in a glare of rocket flame. They soared towards their targets, releasing clusters of innumerable little bomblets that carpeted the area with fire as the dispensers self-destructed.

"We have a 77% accuracy rating with the bomblet hits, D.D.," the AWACS reported. Not bad for unguided bombs, I thought."You have four bandits at four o'clock high, 50 miles out."

Drones!

This was the part I was going to enjoy. I utterly loathed the little things that sought to put manned aircraft out of business. It would be a pleasure destroying them.

Almost as much of a pleasure as it would be to wipe out the UN Forces.