KCR: Strikemasters (novel, military)

Strikemasters ranks among the worst books I've read. It is formulaic, presents military in impossible terms, is a blatant copy of already existing plots, and is basically a joke all around. I've read most technothrillers, from Harold Coyle to Tom Clancy to Dale Brown and plenty of people in between. Bill Kellan, in his "Strikemasters" attempts to emulate the style, but came up miles short.

Premise: US have a secret of secrets base, hidden even more than Area 51... called Area 153 (three times ore secret than Area 51, get it? 51x3? Ha-ha). Test pilot "Gunn" was sent on secret orders to join this group of misfits... flying three modified C-17's, which is so stealthed, it's even SOUND-stealthed (think Blue Thunder) and visually stealthed (smart-skin). One's the gunship, one's a dropship (paratroopers) and one's a tank landing ship. When Al Qaeda offshoot kidnapped 5 USAID workers in Pakistan and want to execute them on TV, Strikemasters are called in to deal with them... by the program's leader, because one of the hostages was his daughter.

Do you see the problem? I don't mind a bit of tech. I am a BIG fan of science fiction. However, putting super-stealth technology on a TRANSPORT PLANE? AND technology that just WORKS without ANY sort of explanation? It's impossible to sound-stealth a jet, even with active sound cancelling. You certain't can't quiet the rush of air. Smartskin is possible but a plane is impossible to keep absolutely clean, and any dirt will make the smartskin active camo useless. The premise of the leader of the program sending in the group as a private army is even MORE ridiculous. This guy is even more reckless than Rambo.

Let me describe a scene, and you tell me if it makes any sense. The tank-carrier plane intercepted a corp jet and through some sort of impossible eavesdropping tech, determined that UBG (ultimate bad guy) is onboard, but this jet doesn't have weapons. So what they did was... the stealth plane overtook the jet, still stealthed, then opened the rear ramp, so the tank use the main cannon to shoot the other plane out of the sky.

WTF?! Haven't this guy heard of wingtip vortex turbulence? You can't fly in front of the other plane without the other plane knowing it, even if you are positively CLOAKED! And haven't this guy heard of COAX machine gun? WTF?!

This guy reads like someone who wrote a technothriller without doing ANY research except what he *think* the military ought to operate like, then proceed to throw laws of physics out the window. There's a ton more impossible situations in the book that defies logic.

All being said, this is one of the most idiotic books I've read. Good thing I only paid a buck for it, and even then I felt it's sorta wasted.

Rating: Avoid it like the plague