9 Days Falling, Volume I k-5

by John A. Schettler

  “Can we handle them, Mack?” That was all she really wanted to know. “Am I flushing half my company down the tubes here while I watch the other half burn in the Straits of Hormuz?”

  “Oh, with Iron Duke along we’ll handle the Black Sea Fleet, m’lady. But the Russian air force is another matter. You’ll be at risk in another four hours. We have a good air defense missile umbrella, one of the best in the world for that matter, but we’ll have no air cover to speak of, unless we can get Turkish support. If the Russians get serious about it they can give us something to shoot at. Our Sampson radar can track a cricket ball flying at Mach 3 and our Sea Vipers are as good as they come. That said, they only need one hit on a tanker to cause serious pain—as we’ve seen with Princess Royal in the Gulf.”

  “Very well… Keep your ear to the ground on this for me. I want to know what they tee up before it gets airborne.”

  “The Chinese have been taking pot-shots at American satellites, but as far as I know they haven’t hit anything belonging to the Crown yet. I’ll see if I can have them keep a good eye out for us, Madame.”

  “I’ll sleep easier, Mack. Thanks.”

  Morgan saluted, and made a graceful withdrawal, glad he had not been grilled and fried like the fish he was supposed to have served. That bit about the cold mackerel made the point well enough for him. He couldn’t let the company down again.

  Chapter 18

  The commander of Iran’s aerial defense, Brigadier General Ahmed Mighani was not happy. He had been reading all morning, digesting news feeds and official government statements on the ever boiling kettle of the Gulf. The latest was the typical fare, half taunting and half bravado, with a swipe at Israel in the mix: “The Zionist regime lacks the diplomatic, economic and social capability to launch a wide-scale war,” General Yahya Rahim Safavi said in response to threats by Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. “Iran's armed forces, including the Revolutionary Guards, and 11 million members of the Basiji, the Guards voluntary force, “are fully prepared to deal with any attack.”

  Yes, he thought. So prepared that I can barely fly half the planes we have in inventory, and have to scavenge equipment that should have been retired twenty years ago. This was followed by a story claiming the US planned to use Georgian military facilities as a beachhead to strike Iran. And at this very moment the Pathfinder, an oceanographic survey ship owned by the US Military Sealift Command, was making its second visit to the Black Sea in the last ten days. The official purpose of the visit was to conduct an underwater survey to ostensibly look for the wreckage of the Armenia, a WWII era Soviet hospital ship sunk by the Germans. Needless to say, that mission was now cancelled.

  The curiosity of the Americans knows no bounds, he thought, fully aware that this ship could also monitor Russian submarine activity in the Black Sea at a range out to 60 miles. He continued reading: “With regard to the United States, Safavi said military assets in the region were deployed in such a way that they actually posed a serious danger to the U.S. itself.”

  General Mighani wondered what that was supposed to mean, concluding that all the American assets would, of course, make wonderful targets for Iran’s Shahab IIIs, the medium range ballistic missiles that were the backbone of the country’s real deterrent against any possible attack. The government release continued it’s confident line: “There is no doubt that the Americans, who are still meddling in the Pacific, will not open a second front with a major war in the Middle East,” he said, referring to a possible attack on Iran.”

  No doubt, no doubt. That was why the nation was busy this morning conducting an emergency preparedness drill over the next three days. No doubt…

  But the cable that had darkened his mood had come suddenly, interrupting his review of the National Air Defense drill. The news about the attack on a British flagged tanker was cause for both elation and regret. It was a dangerous situation that could easily cause him great grief. The British tanker was struck amidships as she entered the Straits of Hormuz. The attack delivered a sharp rebuke to those who have plundered the region for decades, he thought. It also made the obvious point that the oil the West so desperately needed could be choked off at a moment’s notice. But the danger that this attack would be blamed on Iran was very real.

  At the moment he had no hard information as to who the perpetrators might be, and did not know the incident had been carefully planned. Special Operations had not bothered to consult with the Air Force for security purposes. He was only told to conduct these silly exercises, but with live ammo load outs.

  There was other news as well. An attack on the US embassy in Yemen, beginning with a suicide bomb and followed up by an attempt to storm the embassy in San’ai, had also just crossed the wires. The attacked failed. Good coffee in San’ai, he thought, but bad politics. Could this be part of a new wave of jihadi attacks? It was clear that the Americans would look first to Iran for any potential involvement. He knew the incident would offer them just the pretext they needed to make good their longstanding threats. Already the American light carrier Iwo Jima had put to sea from its berthing at Jebel Ali, and there were alarming signs of increased US naval activity building in the region.

  In an official statement to the Iranian press, for general release, he made it clear that Iran would be ready, sounding just like all the other official statements he had been reading that morning. “If Iran is attacked, it will deliver a crushing blow to the enemy…we will surprise the enemy and make them regret their actions.” And now he was sorting through his surprises, realizing that, when it came to fixed wing aircraft in defense of the homeland, he had very little in inventory.

  The aging Iranian air force was still holding on to retired legacy systems inherited from the days of the Shah. He had all of 65 F-4 Phantom fighters, and some 60 F-5E Tigers, though he knew the air force would be lucky to get even half of these in the air and keep them there for longer than a few days. Of the 25 old F-14 Tomcats, perhaps 6 were mission capable. Officially he also had 25 more advanced Russian Mig-29s in inventory, but he knew many of these were mere trainers. The one plane he had any faith in, perhaps good for one desperate strike at a given target, would be his strike group of a dozen Sukhoi-25s and the 30 Sukhoi-24s behind them. Half of these had been a surprise gift from Saddam, fleeing to Iran during the first Gulf War. He knew his planes were no match for the superior American made inventories that they would have to face, but some would reach their targets. The rest of his air force was comprised of a few old Chinese J-7 fighters and a couple dozen French made Mirage F-1s, both planes dating to the old cold war era of the mid 1970s.

  The only thing he could do with such a force was simply throw it into the wind and hope for the best. The American F-16 and F-15 fighters would destroy the bulk of his force in a matter of hours, not to mention the lethal F-22 Raptors, a new stealth fighter that could not even be seen on the old radars his planes mounted. His only hope was that some of his planes would pose a distraction, while perhaps a few others would manage to unleash a few missiles. Yes, it was in his missile inventories that all hope resided now. He had enough to unleash a storm on the Gulf, and make life there very miserable for a few weeks, perhaps a month at most. The air force would simply buy him a few precious hours time so his liquid and solid fueled missiles could be staged and targeted on key installations in the region that the Americans depended on for their life blood of oil.

  The strategy, of course, was not to concentrate his force on American military assets. Oh, he would use the new Russian missiles to threaten the American carriers, but otherwise engaging the U.S, military was fruitless. No, instead he would fling his arsenal of Shehabs at the major oil terminals on the oil rich states to the south. He would strike at America by cutting off the flow of her precious oil business. There was no other way. But how long would it be before the American planes swept his meager air force aside and pounded his missile sites to dust? Saddam had played cat and mouse with his mobile missile systems in the desert fo
r many weeks, but the American planes and missiles were much better now.

  And even though Iran had been making efforts at strengthening its air defense systems in recent years, taking delivery of more advanced Russian made Tor-M1 and S-300 systems, they were too few and too widely dispersed to provide a credible defense. The system had weak low altitude radar coverage, no overlapping radar network, shaky command and control systems, and inadequate electronic counter-countermeasures. So the so called ‘exercises,’ and all his bravado today before the press, was more talk than anything he could put to action. The surprises, he knew, would not come from his fixed wing aircraft, or from his ability to fend off a determined enemy air attack, but from the considerable missile forces Iran had been building over the last decade. The best defense, he knew, was a good offense. Iran could make any attack against its homeland a painful option for the aggressors.

  The long war with Iraq had also proved the folly of trying to wage war with conventional ground forces, particularly against American equipped enemies. Millions of young Iranian men had died, some in suicidal WWI style human wave assaults against the prepared Iraqi defenses. Even the inferior Russian built T-55 and T-72 tanks Saddam had in inventory were enough to repulse such attacks, particularly when backed up by chemical weapons, napalm, artillery fire, wire, mines and a host of other defenses. God rot the soul of Saddam, he thought. The General’s son, a young Revolutionary Guardsman, had died in such a battle. Mighani passed several moments, imagining the last moments for Saddam. He would have liked to have been there, watching him hang.

  Yes, the lesson of that long war was evident. The one weapon that seemed to in any way surprise the enemy was the short range ballistic missile. Capable of delivering large warheads over great distances, with reasonable accuracy, the missiles put the enemy urban centers into the war theatre and acted as a supreme weapon of terror. The famous ‘scud wars’ in the Gulf were a perfect example. They were far more effective than believed, and very few SCUDs had been successfully intercepted back then—not even by the American Patriot system. He knew those defenses were better now, but the Chinese had just demonstrated what a massed missile barrage could do to Taiwan.

  So when he watched his old fighter planes perform their low level fly-bys, he knew that there would be little he could really do to defend against a determined American or Israeli air campaign. But we can hit back, he mused, not long, but long enough. The single missile in the belly of a British tanker this morning put a fine point to it. Only a very few of his planes or missiles would have to reach their targets to have a dramatic and devastating effect—a very few. And there were some weapons he held close to his chest, the real surprises should the Americans ever be so bold as to strike mother Iran. He would get a chance to play his hand sooner than he hoped.

  The phone rang. An adjutant handed him a new telex. The first page was obvious, though insulting. The Americans were over-flying Iranian soil with their damnable drones! It was time stamped thirty minutes ago. Three had made close approaches to Abu Musa in the Gulf, where a small outlying airfield was maintained with a few maritime patrol boats. He could smell the lies they would soon be vomiting in the UN. Then he read the second page, time stamped ten minutes later. It was signed by Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and marked with the highest level of urgency:

  US MARINES HAVE LANDED ON ABU MUSA

  STAND READY

  The Marines were indeed landing on Iranian soil, storming out of their hovercraft and helos covered by a phalanx of F-16 fighter groups that had massed over the Persian Gulf like a swarm of angry locusts. It took little time to occupy the tiny island of Abu Musa, where the leading companies in the first assault wave brushed aside light resistance from the small island garrison around the harbor, while other forces swooped down from helicopters to secure the island’s small air strip.

  The assault groups quickly secured the tiny harbor and quay where they had hoped to find the proverbial “smoking gun” in a rogue Iranian attack boat. Nothing was there. By the time Colonel Andar was ignominiously led off to interrogation by his Marine captors, the small attack craft that had skewered Princess Royal was deep below the oil-dark waters of the Persian Gulf. The frogmen had rendezvoused quietly with a small Iranian sub, which had then skirted off towards the Iranian territorial waters of the northern Gulf coast.

  All across Iran the aging Iranian air force was scrambling to put planes in the air, expecting their airfields to come under blistering attack by cruise missiles and stealthy aircraft launched by the U.S. from its carrier groups and Gulf region bases. None came. The American response had been deliberately scaled to the simple objective of seizing Abu Musa to try and track the source of the terrorist attack, while writing a spectacular headline and poignant message to the Iranian Government at the same time.

  An uneasy calm settled over the Gulf region, but tensions ratcheted high as radar crews squinted at their screens in anticipation of the next retaliatory wave of incoming strikes. Missiles in Iran were fueling at a frantic place, and mobile launchers emerged from their hiding bunkers to prepare their deadly game of shoot and scoot. But for the moment, however, the missiles stayed on their launch pads.

  The hours ticked by, and tensions slowly subsided. One by one the Iranian air force planes in the initial scramble defense waves were running low on fuel and returning to their bases. Too few rose to replace them, as the initial wave had sent more than 80% of the inventory aloft. In spite of recent drills, only 75 of the 125 aging F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers were air worthy. Of these 60 had flown in the first alert wave, leaving fifteen to take their place in the hot late afternoon sun. There were still five old F-14 Tomcats and ten Mig 29s available as well.

  All across the region radars were humming as they scoured the skies for any sign of incoming enemy aircraft. Yet nothing was seen. Then, a few minutes before dusk, the newly installed Syrian early warning radar facility atop Lebanon's highest peak at Mount Sannine, went dark. There were crucial minutes of confusion at Syrian Air Defense Command before they realized the facility had been destroyed by a missile. The source was not discovered, but the outpost had been hit by an Israeli Popeye Turbo cruise missile launched from a submarine in the Eastern Med. Other missiles were already on their way to strike similar early warning outposts in Iran, this time launched by Israeli submarines in the Persian Gulf. The hawkish government, always ready to exploit any opportunity, had chosen this delicate moment to launch their long planned air strike against new suspected Iranian nuclear facilities!

  Even as the first alert wave of Iranian aircraft were landing for refueling, two Israeli air groups flying F-15 I and F-16 I fighters were being led by radar suppressing G-550 Suter and NCCT aircraft on a mission targeting uranium enrichment facilities in Qom and Natanz, as well as the heavy water reactor at Arak, the new facility at Bushehr, and the gas storage complex at Esfahan. The Israeli attack would look like a joint operation with the Americans, though Israeli diplomats had not revealed their intended strike date to politicos in Washington until the planes were well on their way. It was a necessary formality, for the Americans had supplied most of the KC-707 air refueling tankers and liberal allotments of missiles and bunker busting bombs that would be used in the attack.

  The strike groups began their run up the Mediterranean coast, then turned East, flying low over Syria. With massive jamming and software attacks unleashed by the IDF, Syrian Air defense response was simply too slow, and the fledgling government there after Assad’s fall years earlier was too reluctant to pick a fight with Israel in any case. The few anti aircraft missile batteries that managed to acquire Israeli targets were quickly extinguished from the grid as their radars fell prey to the AIM “Harm” anti-radar missiles. The strike groups were out of Syrian airspace in a flash, but even though the Iranians had been forewarned, there was little their own air defense could do about the attack.

  The Israeli F-15 top cover swept aside the few remaining Iranian aircraft aloft to cont
est their approach, and the F-16s went to work. As night fell the moon was just off full and targets would soon begin lighting up the deepening dusk, their heavy laser and GPS guided ordinance pummeling the industrial heart of the Iranian nuclear program, at least those facilities that were known. The Israeli’s were meticulous, and went after any known ballistic missile sites as well, though they knew they would be faced with a perpetual duel with mobile systems in the coming weeks.

  Unable to prevent the attack, or hinder it an any way, the Iranians had a precious few minutes to consider reprisals. They could order a massive retaliatory strike, in keeping with the rhetoric of their own government in recent months, and “severely punish any aggressor who would dare to threaten or strike the Iranian homeland.” But the Israelis were already finding and extinguishing a good number of the fixed Shahab missile sites. If they were to launch a counterattack, it had to be soon. Alternatively, they could stand down, ride out the storm, then take the role of the aggrieved victim and raise hell in the UN and every other international forum available. The scene the previous week in the UN with the Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Americans all exchanging accusations and threats did little to convince them the diplomatic route would prove fruitful. The attack on Princess Royal, would also stand as a flagrant violation of international law, and serve as an all too visible and obvious provocation.

  Their third option was to take the conflict "international" and make the world suffer the consequences. The Straits of Hormuz and the oil rich Sheikdoms to the south were the most inviting and easily ignited targets a ballistic missile commander might ever have. They still had time to draw the sword of Islam and make their reprisal before the second wave of Israeli planes went after their missile sites.

  The Iranians had made up their minds.

  At a little after 22:00 hours, Gulf time, the first wave of missiles left their launch pads. The Israelis had found, and destroyed, sixteen launching sites, those deemed most likely to harbor weapons packages that might be aimed at Israel. But the Iranian response had a far greater scope, taking in the full range of the target rich southern shores of the Persian Gulf. The oil storage bunkers and terminals at Al Fujairah, the world's third largest bunkering center, were among the many targets they had decided to strike, and the list was long.