Charlene sat down next to Emmett. She kept her voice low as she asked, "Think we're going to run a drone war?"
Emmett nodded. "If it’s just us that might be the job."
Captain Jenson, Carrier Air Group commander of Truman's squadrons, entered the room and went straight to the front, giving a wave of a salute to the Combat Information officers and their pilots there. Jenson was always a fast walker; this morning he seemed to be moving even faster than usual. He spoke an aside to Adams and then turned to the aircrews assembled in the room.
"Good morning, gentlemen. As you may have guessed, we have received orders and are heading out to sea in the near future. Our mission is secret, so leaves are cancelled and everyone stays on board until the mission is completed.
“Our orders say the Mediterranean. The Admiral expects to receive additional instructions once we're out of port. Apparently there is a good chance we are headed in to combat, although what that means we don't know at the moment. We think we may be flying near, maybe even over enemy territory. I need to know if there are any last minute issues with your aircraft or the Panthers. Harvey?"
"I think we're in pretty good shape, sir, all things considered. We've got a decent number of ASMs and AIM-30s left for air-to-air combat and the E-7s are in good shape. The Panthers have been quite reliable and we haven't even eaten into their spare parts yet. That's my biggest concern for the E-7s, though. We're low on spare parts. If one of our planes needs repair we may have to scavenge a perfectly good machine for parts. We have two spare planes on board. If necessary we should be able to swap birds."
"Well, that should do. How about the Dragonfires?"
Harvey hesitated. “I’ll have to check with the ordnance people. Some of those were used in antiship actions. I don’t think they should be a problem but I don’t have numbers.”
Jenson's followup question took Harvey by surprise.
"How's your supply of birdies?"
Birdie was the nickname for the microdrones that the squadron had acquired just before the start of the war. Officially named Mockingbirds, they were battery-powered devices that recharged themselves with solar arrays that covered most of the wings and the upper part of their bodies. They had a vague resemblance to their namesakes, close enough in size and shape to look like a large bird if the viewer's distance was more than thirty or forty feet. They were quite maneuverable, with the ability to land in a tree if the human controller was good and the branch was strong enough to carry the weight. They were also very quiet, with electric motors that could barely be heard even a few feet away. Too small for a sizable sensor package, they relied on a couple of very expensive day-and-night cameras mounted like eyes for reconnaissance and a medium-range radio for communications to a controller. If the target was close enough, a couple to highly sensitive microphones just behind the “eyes” could pick up and retransmit sound.
They could be piggybacked as many as a dozen at a time on a Panther, although the launch pod took up a hard point on the Panther’s wing and reduced the ordnance load of the drone. A Panther could loiter within communications range of a Mockingbird and provide precise high-resolution reconnaissance and targeting for a controller on an E-7 hundreds of miles away if the drone was flying high enough to have line-of-sight back to its control aircraft.
The Mockingbirds were planned to be disposable. Circumstances being what they were, though, now they probably couldn’t be replaced.
The E-7 Combat Information officers had played with the Mockingbirds on Truman when she was in port, much to the annoyance of the deck crews. After a while the controllers started to hide their birdies by flying them into nooks and crannies around the deck and island, which had worked out pretty well. Complaints went down and they were often able to run a birdie for hours in a hiding place, sometimes recording things they weren't supposed to see. Once in a while it was something nice and juicy.
"Uh, I think we're OK. Emmett, how are we on the birdies?"
Emmett looked up. "Pretty good, sir. We have about four dozen. We've flown a half dozen and all of the ones we've tried work. We did lose one early on, but that was a training issue as much as anything." Then he hesitated. "But we've never had a chance to find out what they can really do. We've played with them but that's about it."
Jenson looked at the CI controllers. "Take a good look at them. If the mission is what I think, we will need them.
“All right, think about your options if one of your aircraft develops a hitch. Make sure you know whether you can do a last-minute swap. Let me know if there's something about your aircraft that means we'd have to delay or abort if one of them develops a problem. And get familiar with the Mockingbirds. Get that inventory of Dragonfires, Harvey. I’m sure we’ve got enough but I will need that information if this mission requires a substantial draw down."
"Yes, sir."
"How about crew replacements? Any specialties that might be a problem?”
Harvey thought for a second and shook his head. "We can swap in pilots and copilots if necessary and we have two backup controllers with drone experience. That's it for piloting the drones. The training on the Panthers is pretty specific and I don't recall seeing anything in aircrew records that looked related. The combat version wasn't out very long before the war started. I doubt anyone would have prior history. I'll double check, though. As for the Mockingbirds..." He shrugged.
"Well. It will have to do." Jenson looked at the aircrew members in the room. "Any other comments, concerns?"
Emmett cautiously raised his hand.
"Go ahead, son."
"Sir, the Panthers aren't very good at air-to-air combat. Will we have an escort when we go in?"
Jenson looked at the floor, the raised his head. "I don't know, son. We don't have enough information about the mission at the moment. You'll know about as soon as I do."
Emmett nodded quickly. "Yes, sir."
"All right, then. Time to get to work. You're dismissed." Jenson turned and left the room. The last question bothered him. He was pretty sure he had just lied to his people. He was almost certain he knew what the target was. If he was right, his people would be going in without manned escorts. Their only protection would be their stealth features; their drones would be too far away and too slow to help if the E-7s got into trouble. If they ran into resistance they would have no protection. If they were spotted before the drones were able to attack the manned aircraft would have to run for their lives, their robot birds would probably go down and the mission would fail.
The Atlantic
The admiral opened the envelope holding the message his communications people had just decrypted. He looked at the captains of Truman and nodded.
"Gentlemen, it's the order we were expecting. We have been ordered to commence Operation Long Shot. We are to sail to the eastern Mediterranean, where you will launch your E-7s. The E-7s are to fly over the Balkans to avoid Turkish airspace and defenses. They will operate in pairs and run shifts to maintain contact with 24-hour drone reconnaissance until Marshal Gorovyak, the top officer of the RSR is located. At present Defense Intelligence is pretty sure Gorvyak is still in a city called Anapa on the eastern Black Sea coast. Once he is located the drone controllers are to take control of the UAVs and attack and terminate him. The FSB facility in Anapa will also be destroyed. In terms of priority, the destruction of Vasily Gorovyak is the most important task. If the FSB facility is not destroyed during this mission an additional effort to destroy it may be made in the immediate future. Any questions?"
Jenson asked the question he had been concerned about since the day they left port. He thought he knew the answer, but he wanted to make sure.
"Is there any way we can get an escort to give the E-7s some protection?"
The admiral looked stone-faced and shook his head. "I think we can provide escort until your planes hit the Black Sea. Once there they are on their own. We can't put too many aircraft in the enemy's backyard and expect to maintain some level of surp
rise. With the limited time our fighters would have available to cover your people we'd have to run a pretty obvious relay to maintain an escort. We won't be able to manage air cover for as much time as they are likely to have to be in the air in what is essentially combat territory. It's also unlikely we can manage any kind of numerical superiority with RSR territory so close unless their air force is in much worse shape than we think.
“The best bet for your E-7s is to stay close to the Bulgarian coast and stay up out of visual range once they hit the Black Sea. We're betting their stealth features will keep them off RSR radar, something that's been pretty successful so far. Bulgaria is in NATO so doing directional transmission of NATO IFF may keep them safe from friendly fire. That's assuming there's enough left of Bulgarian air defense to be any concern at all. If your E-7s are spotted by the Russians it’s likely they will be attacked. Your orders are to dive quickly and head for the Bulgarian hills. The terrain isn't very high until they get pretty far inland but there's enough to let your people play hide-and-seek until we can get them fighter cover. We just can’t provide them with an umbrella. Does that answer your question?"
Jenson nodded. “Yes, sir.”
"Good. Then I'll continue.
“There are NATO nations on the route but according to the government they haven't been able to make contact with anything in the way of national military forces. There hasn't been any closeup recon done in the area but images from the geosync satellites indicate that the capitals and other major cities were hit during the strike on the EU. If there are any organized governments left, it’s unlikely they have anything that can pose a threat."
The admiral hesitated for a moment and then continued. "The read-between-the-lines on Europe is that they actually got hit worse than we did because of their closeness to the RSR. NATO nations were hit with nukes delivered via everything from tactical missiles and bombers to intermediate range strategic missiles." The three men in the room sat quietly for a moment; then the admiral continued.
"We're avoiding Turkish airspace because of the bad relations we had with them before the war. We've managed some diplomatic contacts with them but it seems they're pretty touchy right now and want nothing to do with us or the Russians. Intelligence thinks the Russians didn't hit Istanbul because they wanted to retain access to the Mediterranean from the Black Sea and were afraid they'd damage or destroy the Bosporus. From what we know of the nuke strikes on our coastal cities their concern was justified.
“In terms of the diplomatic situation the Turks are more likely to fire on us than on the Russians. There have been some RSR ships allowed through Turkish waters into the Mediterranean; that was how we got that one kill. At this point, however, Intelligence thinks the Turks have stopped letting enemy ships through or there isn’t enough of the RSR navy afloat to be a concern any longer.
“As far as I can tell the intelligence estimates on this situation are a little off. We can't refuel your planes anywhere short of Truman and that means your people are going to have to stay pretty close to home to have very much loiter time. They will have to monitor the Panthers from about the western Black Sea to preserve flight time. They will have to swap teams every thirteen hours or so to keep round-the-clock watch for the target. In order to keep in touch with the drones near Anapa your people will have to post a drone in high airspace over the central Black Sea to act as a relay; otherwise comms with the attack drones are likely to fail. We don’t have a way to run your comms out of harm’s way. There’s not much of anything left in the way of communications satellites.
“Your E-7 teams will work a daylight and a night shift, about thirteen hours for the day team and eleven for the night team. If we can't spot this critter and take him out in eight days your teams are going to be running on fumes, too fatigued to be combat effective. I think it's realistic to expect that if we don't succeed in eight days the mission will be a failure."
The situation was at least as bad as Jenson had feared, possibly a little worse. Two manned planes at a time would have to be on station near or over the Black Sea to watch and control the drones, with at least some commitment of resources to watch for enemy activity. With two planes up at any given time, his people were going to have to hand off control to the other half of his squadron roughly every twelve hours. That left him only two crews and spare ships in case of trouble. They were going to have to hope that neither the E-7s nor the drones were spotted by Russian air defense for as many as eight days. That included drones in the middle of the Black Sea sitting in high airspace with no cover whatsoever, relying on high altitude and stealthiness to protect them. Stealth features had worked pretty well in the war so far but they hadn't been tested over the enemy homeland.
It was fortunate that both the manned and unmanned aircraft for the mission were heavily stealthed, with radar absorbent paint and airframe materials, signal deflecting curves, and highly effective passive sensors. Their turbofans were quiet and economical. The paint jobs were carefully colored to blend in to the sky for anyone looking up. The E-7s would not be spotted visually from the ground at their planned loitering height of forty thousand feet.
Their problems would begin if somehow someone did spot the drones or controller aircraft, which would become more and more likely if his people had trouble spotting their target and the mission went more than a couple of days. If the E-7s had to head for the hills they would not be able to outrun fighters and they would be easy to spot against the background of hills and mountains. Hide-and-seek would be a tough game and they would have to hold out for as long as they could, hoping for rescue by fighters coming up from Truman. The drones would be hanging in space with no cover whatsoever and would have to fight their way out with their air-to-air missiles, almost certainly a losing game against high performance manned aircraft. As for ground-to-air, it was likely that only the UAVs would be at risk. At sixty thousand feet they would probably be all right, but if they were spotted during their attack their best defense was their low detection profile, small size and the time it would take for air defense to react. There would likely be losses of the unmanned aircraft. That was no longer as small a thing as it once was.
Jenson thought there was a good chance the drones would accomplish their mission but be destroyed as they left the target. That wasn't a good feeling for him; mission success was good but he had no idea how they would replace high-tech UAVs in the post-nuclear Navy. Ordinary ordnance was already an issue for his group. His people could easily be successful and end up on the beach if the now irreplaceable Panthers were destroyed. If they lost the E-7s- well, that spoke for itself.
**
Truman was at sea and the crews of the UAV squadron were gathered in the ready room. It was time to hear their orders. The group commander gave the briefing.
"Gentlemen, we are headed for the eastern Mediterranean. The target for the next mission is somewhat unusual, at least for our people. It's not a place nor is it a military organization as such. It is a man.
CAG lit the data projector and pulled in a closeup of the eastern Black Sea.
“According to our intelligence estimates, this man is located in a town named Anapa on the northeast coast of the Black Sea. His name is Vasily Gorovyak, and as far as we know he is presently the highest ranking officer left in the Russian military. As such he is the commander of what's left over there. It is the task of the UAV squadron to locate this man, verify his identity, and take him out. A secondary part of the mission is to destroy a facility of the FSB in Anapa. Intelligence believes that Marshal Gorovyak has been working to restore command and control of the Russian military and has begun upgrading the facility in Anapa."
Captain Jenson pulled the podium aside backed out the map view. The scene on the screen was a map of the eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean Sea, the southern Balkans and the Black Sea.
"This will not be an easy mission. It is unlikely the Turks would allow our ships through the straits to the Black Sea, and if they did we would alm
ost certainly not be able to sail into those waters without being attacked by the Russian air force. Our plan is to sail into the Aegean Sea to the vicinity of the island of Thasos and launch our planes from there. You will fly north across the finger of Greece to Bulgaria and then east to the coast of the Black Sea." He moved the pointer on the screen to the island of Thasos, east along the coast and then north. "We think you won't be over Greece long enough for them to concern themselves. Bulgaria is a NATO member and probably not in a position to cause us trouble, but discretion will definitely be the better part of valor. If by some chance you are attacked by Bulgarian forces you will evade to the extent possible and call for fighter help to escort you back to Truman. If the Russians come after you we think you will be able to hide in the mountainous regions of Bulgaria until we can get help to you. If either of these circumstances occur on your inbound runs this mission will be scrubbed."
There were some murmurs among the crew assembled in the ready room. The island was close to mainland Europe and close to European Turkey. If there was any trouble it might be hard for Truman and her escorts to get out of the Aegean, let alone recover the manned aircraft and the drones. The strike group would have land on three sides. If any of the land powers in the area took a dislike to their presence and had forces left the ships would be facing land-based aircraft that would be able to strike from their bases in minutes. There would be little warning of attack and the enemy would know almost exactly the strike group's escape route. If there was any organization left in the RSR air force there was the possibility that the ships would have to fight off RSR aircraft from the Ukraine; perhaps even aircraft from central Russia. Even if the mission was successful, the aircrews might return to the Aegean to find they were homeless, Truman sunk or heavily damaged. How would they get home with most of Europe destroyed?
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