Tour the Airship
As if sensing a chill in the conversation, Foster took the opportunity to change the subject and recapture the positive vibe. “Enough theory! How about we take a look at the modifications we’ve been making?”
Relieved by the distraction, Ranell said, "Sure!" Perhaps a bit too quickly. He looked around, expecting a door to open, but Foster just stepped over to the bare white wall.
“Outstanding!” Foster’s smile grew even brighter. “Dr. Ranell, I present to you the Eye of Horus." He tapped a control panel, and the bare white wall transformed into a translucent floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over a massive hangar bay. In the center of the bay sat Ranell’s airship, surrounded by people and equipment and an assortment of vehicles and gantries.
Ranell gasped. His airship was huge, over three hundred feet long, and seven stories tall, but even it looked small inside the vast hangar bay. The scale of this undertaking was greater than anything he could have imagined.
Foster nodded an unspoken message to Vaughn. Apparently, they had achieved the desired emotional effect. “What do you think, Josef? Want to go down and see her up close?”
“Is that a typo?” Ranell immediately regretted asking the question. They were driving in an electric cart across the hangar floor, and the newly painted writing on the airship's side said HORAS. Not ‘Horus,’ as in ‘the Eye of Horus.’ They could call it Happy Hippo for all I care, he thought dourly.
“Acronyms are tough in this business,” Foster chuckled. “HORAS stands for High-energy, Optical, Radar, Anti-ship Surveillance.”
They stopped at the boarding ramp and climbed the all-weather aluminum staircase into the main cabin. Ranell didn't know what he expected to see, but he was shocked at what he saw. The entire inner hull of the airship was gutted. It was completely empty from the cockpit to the rear hatch at the end of the cargo bay. Torches, saws, and other equipment lay scattered around, and loose wires hung from the ceiling. Several technicians milled about, but it seemed like all they were doing was taking pictures and making measurements.
“What’s all this?” Ranell asked, waving his hands at the empty shell of the GML airship.
“The future,” answered Vaughn as she handed him an expensive-looking pair of glasses. "Here, put these on, and let us really show you around.”
Ranell noticed that both Foster and Vaughn had already donned their own glasses. “What are these?”
“Extended Reality glasses,” answered Foster. “Let me get them adjusted for you.”
With a few taps to a control feature, the empty shell of an airship transformed into a modern, sleek-looking military craft replete with banks of control panels and sophisticated equipment.
“Wow.” It was all he could manage to say.
“Don’t try to walk yet Josef,” Vaughn put her hand on Ranell’s shoulder to steady him. “The XR glasses take some getting used to.”
"With these, we can explore a huge number of different design configurations," Foster stepped into Ranell's field of view and used hand movements to guide his attention to different features. "Once we decide on the optimal parameters, the build-out is simple. Getting the design right means the difference between winning and losing. We are in the critical stage now. The design is everything."
Ranell wasn’t sure if Foster meant winning a potential war with China or winning against Boeing and other competitors. He guessed it was a little of both.
For the next hour and a half, Vaughn and Foster showed Ranell dozens of configurations of airborne radar systems, tracking and jamming systems, state-of-the-art Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASMs), weather, communication, and other telemetric devices. There were Marine amphibious cargo configurations and even one idea to use the HORAS as a mothership for swarms of unmanned drones. The possibilities seemed limitless.
When the virtual tour was finally over, Vaughn and Foster invited Ranell back to the suite to review some final paperwork.
"I still can't believe you can do so much with this platform,” Ranell shook his head slowly from side to side. “It’s truly incredible.”
“Like I said, unlimited funds.” Vaughn smiled knowingly. Then she added slowly, “Unlimited possibilities.”