Product Description

The new adventure thriller featuring maverick pilot Patrick McLanahan from the bestselling author of FLIGHT OF THE OLD DOG, WARRIOR CLASS and WINGS OF FIRE. Patrick McLanahan has a shot at redemption as he takes aerial warfare into unknown territory in a heart-racing new adventure. Still smarting from recent losses, the brilliant but unpredictable former USAF Major General is accepted back into the fold and assigned a simple task: devise and build the air combat unit of the future. McLanahan's answer: the Air Battle Force -- a rapid-response team of elite commandos protected by state-of-the-art body armour and supported by an armada of unmanned planes. His idea is soon put to the test when the oil-rich Republic of Turkmenistan becomes a battleground between Taliban insurgents, former Soviet overlords, Iranian opportunists and American oil companies and politicians. But can a handful of commandos half a world away, aided by an unproven force of robot warplanes, fight and win a war in which seemingly everyone -- even 'friendly' forces at home -- want them to fail?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #234758 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Review
'Clancy's got serious company.' New York Daily News 'When a former pilot with years of experience turns his hand to writing thrillers you can take their authenticity for granted. His writing is exceptional and the dialogue, plots and characters are first-class... far too good to be missed.' Sunday Mirror 'Dale Brown is a superb storyteller.' Washington Post 'The best military adventure writer in the country.' Clive Cussler

Old Dog Brown brings back his favorite technothriller heroes for what will likely be their 15th consecutive assault on the bestseller list, despite ever more unwieldy plots, laboriously detailed fantastic weapons, and bombastic action sequences. Forcibly retired US Air Force General Patrick McLanahan (Wings of Fire, 2002, etc.) and his unsanctioned Night Stalker special ops corps of freelance commandos (who work outside the government) have saved the world several times over from total destruction and always win the biggest stakes on the table. What is an Air Battle Force? Well, former child prodigy aeronautical and space engineer Jon Masters has devised the Vampire bomber, which carries StealthHawk Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles within it. McLanahan leads the 1st Vampire Squadron, and StealthHawks are the leading edge of the force he and Wing Commander Rebecca Furness use to launch a counterattack against Afghan Captain Wakil Mohammad Zarazi's Taliban troops, who capture a UN Afghan Relief and Rehabilitation unit in Northern Afghanistan. Air Battle Force is the future of air warfare and in part consists of robot warplanes launched from the Vampire bomber. Flying a B-1 over air space congruent to Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan, McLanahan loses a robot plane and goes searching for it through various hostile radars and air defense systems while running almost on empty. As it happens, the Turkmenistan oil fields have become the prime target of Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces no longer safe in Afghanistan. The novel bomber makes a pancake landing, skipping off the ocean onto a beach. The technoclimax comes with the Vampire in a dogfight while attacking an airbase in the Russian Federation. Tense pages hard-focused on aerial hardware as Brown pumps it up for fans-who know what they're getting. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Former US Air Force captain Dale Brown was born in Buffalo, New York. He was still serving in the US Air Force, where he was a navigator-bombardier, when he wrote his first thriller, Flight of the Old Dog. His most recent novels are The Tin Man, Battle Born, Warrior Class and Wings of Fire.

Customer Reviews

super......................
Air Battle Force starts the same way as all Dale Browns books.Straight into the action.This book is yet another high paced read.Once I picked the book up,I could not put it down.Long may Dale continue to prroduce these excellent thrillers......

It Loiters and is Gratuitous
I have read all of Dale Brown’s novels and have enjoyed his work. As an author he took his tales a step further than others in the genre by researching/creating believable cutting edge technology that was operated by enjoyable characters. He did not create super heroes that belonged in comic books, rather pilots and their teams that would read as though they could be found in the armed forces of our nation. His political players were also credible and their behavior, however unsettling, never strayed beyond what we might read or hear of in the news. “Air Battle Force”, is only the second of his books that I feel is poor, and it is weak because he tread the same ground he covered in his last work and allowed a gratuitous mean streak that may have a visceral appeal but is out of place in his collected novels.

In the tale it is mentioned that all but 2 of the original crew from his first novel are gone. The majority of members are missing and those that remain are embittered and often place their own personal feelings and vendettas ahead of any manner of rational action. This is not the first book that stretches credibility by having his players break every manner of law without consequence, some now engage in behavior they once would have routinely condemned, and practice conduct the author would not have written of. When some of the, “good guys”, engaged in electric shock torture I nearly put the book down. This type of vigilante behavior may appeal to the lowest common denominator of hatred but I don’t believe it has any place when it is our armed forces that are portrayed as the practitioners. The armed forces are made of imperfect people but this does not mean their imperfections create monstrous behavior by default. It kills the credibility of the tale even though this is a work of fiction.

Dale Brown is also too established a writer to opportunistically use events in The Middle East for 2 consecutive books. The racist rhetoric went well beyond what was credible until it deteriorated in to simplistic bigotry. To read this book as well as his previous novel is to be subjected to the idea that every person who fights and is a Muslim is a deluded, violent psychopath who believes he is God’s Instrument. This type of thinking is simplistic and not worthy of this writer.

I will again pick up his next book with the hope that he will once again bring new high technology and a great tale to readers, and will not recycle the same gadgets that have appeared in previous novels together with clichés about people and their beliefs that are as misguided as they are destructive.