Lightship

by Stephan Besik

  "The mission will take time and stealth. The plan is to fly your drones into the vicinity of Anapa and locate Gorovyak. The drones will be carrying a mixed load of air-to-surface and air-to-air ordnance, the latter to try to protect themselves and escape back to Truman in case they are detected. The distance across the Black Sea is such that a couple of UAVs will be used as communications passthroughs above the Black Sea, changing shifts every ten hours or so to return to Truman, refuel, and head back to relieve the UAVs on duty. Your manned aircraft will take shifts as well but they will remain close to land on the western side of the Black Sea. The E-7Us will have to be stealthy to the extent possible; we will have planes providing air cover for our ships but nothing over Bulgaria. If there are any opposing forces the air cover for our ships may keep them focused on happenings in the Aegean. If you are spotted by the Russians, or even a Balkan power that's nervous or unhappy with people they think did them wrong, it will be a race between our fighters and the enemy to see who gets to you first. You may have to play hide-and-seek among the hills and mountains of Bulgaria to stay alive long enough for our fighters to help you.

  “Two E-7s will be on duty off the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria at any given time. One plane will be doing split duty, searching for Gorovyak and watching for trouble for our planes or the strike group, both by evaluating message traffic and tracking enemy resources. The other will be dedicated to finding Gorovyak. Once you've got positive ID your controllers will take their drones in and hit him. If you can find him it's likely you will be able to take him out. If you can do that and still have munitions left, you will attack and destroy the FSB station in Anapa.

  “Once these tasks are accomplished you will get into the hills of Bulgaria and bring yourselves and the drones back to the ship. If you think you're going to lose drones, make sure they self-destruct. Ignore any UAV losses and get yourselves back to the ship. Once you're back we will get the hell out of the Aegean and head for home as soon as possible.

  “This mission will be boring for much of the time you will be near enemy territory. It will be boring until it very quickly becomes exciting, either because you have found your target or because someone is chasing you. Do your best to stay alert, find your man and keep from becoming a target.

  “Any questions?"

  Truman's Captain Georgian spoke up. "What will be the position of the strike group while the flyers are in the air, Sir?"

  "Four destroyers will be in open water south of Mount Athos on the Greek mainland. Truman will be just south of the island of Thasos to launch aircraft. Our cruiser Port Royal and one destroyer will be posted at the south end of the Dardanelles to watch for Russian or Turkish ships in case we get in real trouble. A destroyer will be posted at the south end of the Aegean to keep snoopy neighbors out of our way."

  Captain Jenson spoke up next. "How should we handle air cover for the ships?"

  The admiral thought for a moment. "I think two flights should cover the destroyer and protect airspace over the south Aegean. One flight for Combat Air Patrol over the northern Aegean."

  "Why all the protection over the south, Sir?"

  "I think it's the only way we can have a strong force in the air without making all the neighbors nervous. If things weren’t so bad already there would still be a lot of nerves jangling just because of the number of our ships in Aegean waters.

  “We can cover Port Royal and Truman with one flight even with the cruiser on station outside the Dardanelles. It will look less threatening, as if we have some interest in the eastern Mediterranean, and we'll have strong air cover at a bottleneck if the group has to run. While it's not perfect it will give us more planes in the air and reasonably close if we have to take on Russians who are after the E-7s. We can launch planes to protect our escape route if we have to send the planes in the air to defend our people near Bulgaria. If we have trouble with Russian air or we have to deal with enemy ships in the Dardanelles we'll fight long enough to get our people back and then do a fighting retreat toward the Mediterranean. And by our people I mean our flyers. If we come under attack there's a good chance we'll be writing off the drones.

  “Any more questions?"

  The ship's captain and the air group captain shook their heads.

  "Good. Let's get moving."

  The Aegean

  The sailing plan for Truman's strike group changed a little as the ships approached the eastern Mediterranean. The original plan had been to launch aircraft near Thasos but it was obvious from maps that getting close to the island would be little help to the attack force and a real hazard for Truman. The admiral changed the plan after a quick consult with the air group commander. Thasos was ringed by the mainland and a series of islands that would have made it hard to get to open water in event of attack. The aircraft would have to fly a bit further to get to the mainland but the decision was made to launch a little south of the line of Mount Athos and Lemnos, where there was open water and maneuvering room if it was needed. Once the attack force was launched Truman would cruise south towards the mouth of the Aegean and then circle back toward Lemnos when it was time to launch the next shift of aircraft and pick up planes returning for refueling.

  The launch and deployment of the first shift of drones and their controllers went quickly and quietly. The controllers kept their eyes on their screens as the two E-7s crossed over the finger of Greece that adjoined southern Bulgaria and the Turkish border. All three countries had been in NATO before the war and should have recognized the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) of the aircraft. That was in the good old days, however, and in wartime there was always the possibility of nervous air defense units not trusting their own information and taking a shot at friendly aircraft.

  On this mission the worst thing about the first shift had been the deafening silence. It seemed that no one was watching. No one cared that their path took them over national borders. No one asked what they were doing, no one came to challenge, or even seemed to notice. The scuttlebutt had been that Europe had been burned worse than the U.S. The scuttlebutt appeared to be correct.

  The decision had been made to climb to operational altitudes right after the drones and the manned aircraft left the ship, making the climb over relatively friendly territory and getting high into position in their respective roles as soon as possible. It took about an hour for the controllers to reach the north-south landmarks they were to use as reference for their loitering ranges over the Black Sea coast. Of course, they stayed away from cities of any size. Even at forty thousand feet they might have a detection problem. Assuming, again, there were people and technology left to do the detecting.

  Six UAVs launched from Truman about an hour before the E-7s and climbed to 60,000 feet at a leisurely pace, separating into four flights of two planes each. The two relay drones flew as far as the central Black Sea and began to cruise in slow, lazy circles above, doing the easy job of transmitting and receiving information between the human controllers and the four Panthers that would hunt for their Russian target and make the assault. While the relays weren't directly involved in the assault they were critical to the mission. They each carried a load of air-to-air missiles to protect themselves in case of attack, spending most of their time with electronic eyes and ears open, scanning the Russian coast and airspace for signs that they had been discovered. While the UAVs weren't fast or maneuverable enough to engage in a dogfight with a manned fighter there was a chance that some well-timed air-to-air missile firings from the drones could save part or all of the remote team on their way back home to Truman. If they were detected before the mission was accomplished it was likely they wouldn’t last long enough to complete the mission.

  The controllers in the E-7s watched their own passive sensors and video streams from the drones as they split up. The two manned aircraft were flying high over hills and beaches at forty thousand feet. The pilots of the E-7s kept the relay aircraft in line of sight to maintain communication with the UAVs via narrowly focused two-way
microwave beams. They were aided in their primary task by the height at which the Panthers were flying; the communication beams originating from the E-7s were pointed up into space and away from Russian territory, while the beams back from the relays to the E-7s pointed down into ostensibly friendly territory. At the same time the E-7 crews used passive technologies to watch for Russian air or signs of ground-based antiair activity directed against them. If they got into trouble orders were to dive back into the Bulgarian hills and pray for fighter cover.

  Each Panther in the assault group loitered at the same height as the relay drones. Most of the controllers were using visual detection and passive electronics in the search for the target, while one controller focused on the detection of Russian anti-air resources that might be headed for the assault aircraft. All of the drones in the assault team carried air defense weapons as part of their ordnance loads on five of their six wing hardpoints. The Mockingbird launch pod was attached on the sixth hard point. The internal storage of the UAVs was split between extra fuel and the remainder of the weapons load- four Dragonfire hybrid laser guided air-to-surface missiles per drone. Any one of the Drangonfires could take out a fair sized building or a goodly portion of a vehicle convoy. The Dragonfires were dropped like laser-guided bombs, free falling most of the way to the target from the high flying Panthers to help avoid detection of both the weapons and the launching aircraft. Once the Dragonfires were in nearly point blank range of the target their rocket motors lit off and the missiles covered the remaining kilometer to the target in just a few seconds.

  The Black Sea

  As the two E-7s settled into randomized patrol orbits, the controllers made contact with the relay drones and confirmed connections with the assault aircraft. The Panthers had farther to go than the manned aircraft and were moving at nearly the same speed, so even with the drones' one-hour lead the controllers had time to kill before their mission began in earnest. The flight of the UAVs to the target didn't require human control, so the controllers focused on a search for opposition as the Panthers flew toward the target, watching for any signs of detection.

  Things got interesting once the UAVs reached their patrol area above the town of Anapa. Emmet and Charlene, the senior Combat Information officer on the second E-7 of the shift, began their reconnaissance with wide-angle views of the town to get oriented on their targets. Communication between the two aircraft ran encrypted over a tight-beam maser link to prevent detection and comms interception.

  "Jesus, look at that," exclaimed Charlene. "Over to the east of town."

  Emmett rotated his cameras away from his target. "Yeah, that might be a problem. Looks like a couple of vehicle parks. Maybe for an armored brigade. Looks like twenty to thirty tanks each. Probably the same number of armored personnel carriers. Likely heavy artillery, triple A and SAMs. Anybody see radars and antiaircraft?"

  "Raq, what have you got?" asked Charlene. Raquel was the controller running the antiaircraft detection and defense for the mission, with responsibility for both the E-7s and the UAVs.

  "There are some mobile radars down there and a number of missile batteries on the outskirts of town. A few batteries in the vehicle park too. The birds report that they have been pinged a few times but the stealth on those babies must be working. No signs of activity near the batteries."

  "Well, that's a plus. Anyone see anything else?"

  Emmett's second controller Enzo added, "I was on wide view. Looks like there are roadblocks on the roads out of town. No kidding around down there. APCs at all of the roadblocks, plus a tank on the larger highways. They've got missile batteries at those locations too. Kind of like a small camp at every major highway in and out of town. Seems like this guy isn't fond of unexpected company."

  Raquel spoke up again. "I just ran visuals up north. I figured if there was more traffic it would be on the northbound highways. I didn't see anything moving, but there appears to be a lot of military hardware on the sides of the roads. Maybe they're out of gas?"

  Emmett mumbled, "Shit. What's in town could be the remnants of a division. And they wouldn't leave their AA behind." Then he spoke up. "Enzo, see if you can red circle the missile batteries and radars down there. There might be a division's worth of AA and mobile radars around the town. Raquel, have you seen any signs of air out there? Awful lot of firepower for no air support."

  "I started a scan from forty to sixty thousand, three hundred sixty degrees. Nothing on visuals or mass detectors. But that's a good question. How do you want me to handle patrols? We might see some air that's just out for a stroll. With a ground force of that size that's probable.”

  Emmett thought for a second. "Let us know if anything takes off. Run scans down to thirty thousand. If anything comes up, anything climbing, give us a shout. Okay, Char?"

  "Okay by me, Em."

  "Yes, sir," responded Raquel. "One other thing, sir. I did some additional scans to check for any long-range radars and I did some visual checks of surrounding cities, based on map coordinates. Sir, there's not much left of any of the cities in the area. It looks like this Anapa place is all that's left for quite some distance. I don't think there's another city or town of any size that is within range of the drone sensors."

  Emmet thought for a minute, and then asked solemnly, "Where did you look?"

  "Well, I was in contact with our UAVs as they flew across water toward the target. Odessa and Sevastopol are right on the coast. They were both gone. Clear signs of bombardment and no indications of traffic of any sort. No ships, no air, no road traffic.

  “When the Panthers started their patrols around the target I ran passive observation on Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, and as far east as Volgograd. All silent, all with what looks like nuclear damage, and no signs of traffic of any sort. Not even ground traffic."

  The comm channels were silent for a few moments. Charlene broke the silence. "Well, Em, it looks like it's just us and those guys down in Anapa."

  "Yeah," replied Emmett. "Well, now all we have to do is get a positive ID on this guy and take him out." Unspoken in his mind and in the minds of his crews was the thought that after all the damage it wasn't clear how the death of one more man would make the U.S. or what remained of its allies any safer.

  “Okay, folks, time to drop the birdies. Enzo, set the drogue chute timers for eighty seconds and get ready to pop the case on Drone Number One. Char, same for your birdies on Drone Three, but drop only eight. I don’t think we should tie up Raquel and we shouldn’t need the extra four. When you’ve got things set pop the pods on my mark.

  “Once they deploy their wings, Char’s people will take control of four each and move the birdies to the target locations. Get them settled into hiding places in the vicinity of the buildings we are going to monitor. Enzo and Jaime will take six each and get them to approximate watch sites. Once we’ve got them in range I want you to get them all spotted into locations with sights on any points of exit from the buildings.”

  A few seconds later Enzo and Char reported back. “Ready to go, boss, just give the word.” “Set on our side, Em.”

  “Okay, launch in three, two, one, Mark. Good hunting, little guys.”

  The carrier pods opened and what looked like small, egg-shaped bombs fell out of the racks. The minidrones would stay folded in their egg shape until they had dropped nearly fifty thousand feet. The eggs quickly hit terminal velocity and dropped at nearly constant speed, small fins at the back of each egg keeping them from rolling and tumbling. The little bombs fell at nearly five hundred miles per hour, free falling to ten thousand feet. At that height small drogue chutes popped out of the finned ends and slowed the birdies down to less than a hundred miles an hour. The speed was slow enough for the Mockingbirds to take over their own flight. The drogue chutes were released, the eggs twisted as wings deployed, fins twisting into artificial wings, and cameras opened their eyes at the large end of each egg. Once the wings were opened the birdies went into an automatic downward spiral, dropping the rema
ining distance, about eight thousand feet, down toward the ground. At this point the human team began to exert control, setting precise lat/long locations for the birdies to drop toward. At five hundred feet the controllers took over completely, bringing the birdies down near locations on roofs that were close to the targets.

  The human crews settled in for their long wait. It was boring, tedious and stressful work. It would have been a lot safer if the town had a few headquarters units in it. Instead the UAVs were loitering above a town with a significant concentration of detection capability and weaponry in it. They hoped for nothing to happen until they had their target spotted. The men and women in the E-7s watched and waited.

  Anapa

  Three days after the mission began, the team was still waiting.

  Emmett sipped his coffee and munched on a sandwich, all the while watching the display on his control board alternate between a zoomed-in view of the FSB facility and a medium resolution view of the facility's surroundings. He had resisted coffee for as long as he could and was still taking his time with small sips; he still had six hours to go on this shift and he would soon need a kick from stims to keep from drifting off. He didn’t want to take more than a single pill; he wouldn't get much of a boost if he was already shot up with caffeine.

  He had the prime and therefore most stressful assignment of the three drone controllers on his plane. Assuming the drones and birdies spotted Gorovyak at one of the places his crew was watching, it was his task to target him and control the weapons that were to do the job. The best their intelligence could do on the Russian’s location was that he might be at the FSB station, or in one of a number of large hotels. Anapa was a beachside city that had catered to Russian tourism. There were a number of big hotels in town, any one of which could probably do to support a senior military office and his staff.