“I’m not going to close my eyes!” he yelled as they entered the little valley.
Joe DiConza, the simulator operator, snickered at Jerry Rodell’s bravado. Dressed in a dirty white lab coat, Joe leaned back and scratched the three-day-old stubble on his face. A civilian employee, he took the privileges of being a range rat seriously and shaved only when the spirit moved him.
“He won’t last five seconds!” he sneered derisively.
Roger Kirby, DiConza’s equally grubby assistant, smiled. “Hell, he’ll last at least seven, maybe eight seconds before he shuts his eyes.”
“Ten spot?”
“Okay, but timed from the first turn, like the other times,” Roger replied. He pulled a stopwatch out of his lab coat pocket.
Outside the control room, the simulator suddenly jerked and began a series of rapid movements that made it look like a cocktail shaker being shaken.
“You can open your eyes now,” Cleo announced demurely. Jerry felt the airplane straighten out. Even though the ride lasted less than a minute, it had seemed an eternity as Cleo jerked and yanked the agile fighter through one violent maneuver after another while threading her way through the narrow pass.
“They are open,” Jerry lied.
“No, they aren’t. The infrared scanners on your helmet don’t detect the whites of your eyes, Colonel.”
He opened his eyes and blinked. The plane was exiting the pass and heading down the side of the mountain toward another wide valley. However, this one was different from the last—it contained their target. The screen showed a series of translucent red umbrella-shaped domes scattered over the valley. Each represented a threat to them; the red umbrellas represented antiaircraft missiles or gun emplacements, and the size of the umbrella indicated the effective range of that weapon. Flying into one of those umbrellas meant placing themselves within the range of that weapon.
“What’s our armament, Cleo?”
“Real or simfire?”
Jerry Rodell wasn’t surprised by Cleo’s question. Real bombs and bullets not only cost money but were also dangerous particularly in training exercises such as Red Flag. Therefore, each aircraft was temporarily armed with a low-power laser and a series of sensors. Whenever someone fired a weapon, his laser would blink out a code indicating what type gun or missile had been fired. If the sensors on the target detected the laser, a small onboard computer calculated the probability of a kill. If the result was high enough, the computer disabled the target’s own weapons and flashed a strobe indicating a kill to the attacker. The defeated pilot knew instantly that he had been tagged out and had no choice but to fly to his regeneration point. There a ground- based radio beacon reset his simfire system and reloaded his simfire armament. Reborn and rearmed, he was free to rejoin the fray.
The simfire system proved so successful that soon the entire range was equipped; even ground-based SAM missiles and antiaircraft guns were armed with the little lasers and sensors.
“Both real and simfire,” Jerry replied to Cleo’s question.
“None real. Simfire includes four Sidewinders, a 27-mm Mauser cannon with 150 rounds, and a B-61 tactical weapon.”
“What the hell are we doing with a nuke?”
“Our mission is to take out that tank park, Colonel,” Cleo told him matter-of-factly. “The target is designated in blue.”
Jerry saw the target clearly. It was on the other side of the valley, neatly surrounded by a series of interlocking transparent red umbrellas. It was a suicide mission.
“How are we going to penetrate that?” he demanded, pointing at the mass of defensive weaponry.
“We just follow the yellow brick road,” Cleo replied calmly.
An instant later, the planned flight path was displayed on the HUD- like screen as a transparent yellow pathway. It directed them to go in low and fast. All he had to do was follow the “yellow brick road,” and they would be as safe as possible, zigging and zagging along the edges of each defensive zone. The only problem was that the yellow brick road headed right through the center of one of the umbrellas as the flight path turned skyward. That told Jerry that the bomb was to be released while they were climbing, throwing it high into the air into a ballistic curve, so to give them time to escape.
“Oh, what the hell,” Jerry groaned. “It’s all just a simulation, and I’m just along for the ride, anyhow. Let’s do it.”
The throttles advanced as Cleo dove down the side of the mountain. They were still almost twenty miles from the bomb-release point, but it would be just a matter of seconds before they reached it. Yet each second lasted an eternity. Jerry saw that several of the umbrellas were already blinking. Their radars were reaching out to find them. One went brighter as its radar locked-on them. It was the umbrella they were supposed to fly through while zooming up to release their bomb.
“We’ve been spotted, Cleo.”
“Yes, I know. It’s aShilka , four 23-mm barrels. It’s considered obsolescent, but it’s still in use all over the world—and still very deadly. We’re out of his range-for a while, at least.”
“How about that one?” he asked about a very large umbrella that reached out almost to where they were flying. A moment later, they entered the umbrella and came within the effective range of the weapon.
“Not so easy,” Cleo commented calmly. “That’s a Russian 9M9—a SA-6 Gainful. We’re in its range, and it just locked-on to us.”
Jerry saw first one and then a second Smoky SAM streak up from the ground. Barely more than toy rockets, they streaked up from the ground leaving smoky white trails to indicate simulated missile launches. Expended by the time they reached a thousand feet, the Smoky SAMs fell back to earth and were replaced by two glowing white dots.
“Cleo,” Jerry inquired anxiously. “What are those things.”
“Just simfire missiles,” Cleo answered placidly. “That’s one advantage of the electro-optical display. We can superimpose a representation of where the missiles would be if they were real. In this case, a ground- based computer is plotting those missiles for us.”
“They look real enough to me, damnit,” Jerry said anxiously while he watched them move toward him.
“If they get close enough, the simfire system will tag us out,” Cleo warned.
“What the hell are you going to do about it?” Jerry demanded as the two dots grew larger. The effect was uncannily like motion pictures he’d seen of actual SAM missiles fired at American aircraft in Vietnam.
Cleo abruptly banked left, climbing sharply to five hundred feet.
“Now, what the hell!” Jerry yelled. Several more of the red umbrellas were already glowing bright red. Over half of the defenses arrayed around their target were now locked-on to them. More Smoky SAMs arched up into the air.
“You’ve given us away, YOU GODDAMN MACHINE,” Jerry screamed.
Cleo didn’t answer, but continued on a diagonal course leading them across the flank of their target. The two dots representing the first two missiles shifted course to intercept Cleo and Jerry. Suddenly, Jerry heard popping sounds as Cleo began firing infrared decoys and packets of chaff.
“Hang on,” she warned as she racked the fighter over into a violent turn. She was going to hide behind the barrage of chaff and flares she’d just fired. The displays on the screens spun around, leaving Jerry dizzy, as Cleo continued the turn and then began to dive. In just a few seconds, they were headed in the direction opposite to their last course. She leveled the fighter out at fifty feet and dove behind a hill.
Jerry Rodell glanced up into the rearview mirrors and watched with satisfaction as the two simfire missiles passed well behind them. An instant later, two more white dots went streaking by in apparent pursuit of the first set of missiles.
“We’re running a course tangential to their radars, Colonel. They can’t see us with doppler shift.”
Jerry nodded. It was an old trick. Doppler shift can be used to spot a target moving toward or away from you, but not at rig
ht angles. A good example of Doppler shift is the way the siren of a police car racing toward you has a higher-pitched noise that becomes lower-pitch as it passes you. Yet, the pitch remains relatively constant if the police car is running down a cross street at a right angle to you. Thus traveling across somebody else’s path at a right angle gives you a zero-doppler shift. In the past, Jerry had often taken advantage of this phenomenon by turning to a heading ninety degrees to that of a flight of F-22s flying high overhead searching for his aggressor squadron of F-5s with their radars. Jerry and his flight would remain low in the ground clutter, undetectable because the F-22s’ radars automatically filtered them out with the ground clutter. Then, after the F-22s passed high overhead, he would lead his flight of four F-5s up and wax the F-22s from behind.
“Now for thatShilka that’s in our way,” Cleo announced. They turned and flew around the hill. Once more Cleo found cover, this time in an arroyo, a deep gully. Now flying slowly, barely four hundred knots, she threaded the fighter through the arroyo for almost a mile before popping up and climbing to a few hundred feet. Jerry felt the fuselage shake as the 27-mm cannon fired. Streaks shot out from the left wing root as Cleo fired a two-second burst. She dove for the gully again.
“What?” Jerry exclaimed before realizing that Cleo was stealing yet another trick, this time from the A-10 Warthogs. The aptly named Warthog was designed to destroy tanks with their massive 30-mm gun. Ugly as sin, the twin-engine, twin-tail attack plane was designed to come in low and slow, literally slicing enemy tanks apart with sustained bursts of gunfire. The ZSU-23-4Shilka was the Soviets’ answer to the Warthog. Built on a light tank chassis, theShilka has a turret containing four 23-mm ZU-23 machine cannons, each capable firing a thousand rounds a minute. The Warthog’s counter to theShilka was to charge in at theShilka ’s extreme effective range, fire a two-second burst, and dive away before theShilka ’s own bullets had time to reach the attacking Warthog. Since theShilka couldn’t dodge the Warthog’s bullets, it inevitably lost such duels.
So it was in this case; the simulatedShilka ’s red umbrella disappeared when its computer scored Cleo’s simfire as a fatal hit. A new yellow brick road reappeared in front of them as Cleo plotted a new attack course. It led right over the “destroyed”Shilka at a fifty-foot altitude.
The throttles moved forward again, this time to maximum power. The afterburners banged as Jerry and Cleo accelerated down the yellow path laid out on Jerry’s vision screen. They flashed over theShilka as its crew climbed out to shake their fists impotently at them. As they reached the vertical phase of their attack, the nose lurched skyward and the altimeter spun crazily.
“This Bud’s for you,” Cleo squealed happily as she released the bomb. The fuselage went translucent again so Jerry could watch. The weapon, or rather its simfire computer-generated image, was surprisingly small. The bomb, released while Cleo was climbing almost vertically, would arch up high into the air, like a stone thrown upward, only to come down into the middle of the fake tank park. They had fifteen seconds to get out of the area.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Jerry urged, not completely convinced that this was all a simulation. It looked too real to him.
“Do you want opaque again?” Cleo asked courteously as she pulled the plane over into inverted level flight. Jerry gasped. The yellow brick road now led directly back to the pass they’d just flown through.
“Don’t bother,” he grumbled resignedly, “I’ll just close my eyes.”
Colonel Kelder entered the simulator control room by the hallway door. He plopped himself into a chair beside Joe DiConza, the simulator operator, and handed Joe a cup of coffee while he took a sip from his own cup.
“They must be in that pass Cleo likes so much,” he remarked.
“How could you tell?” Joe DiConza joked while glancing through the window into the simulator room. The cylindrical fuselage section moved in frantic jerks and twists as it struggled to keep up with Cleo’s violent maneuvers. “She certainly enjoys it, doesn’t she?”
Fred Kelder shrugged. “How did he do?”
“Well, on the way going in,” DiConza said while he picked up his clipboard and read his notes, “your lieutenant colonel kept his eyes open for almost ten seconds—a new record.”
“Brave man,” Fred commented dryly while he watched the fuselage shake furiously.
“On the outbound trip,” Joe continued, “he closed his eyes three seconds before they reached the pass.”
“A wise man.” Fred nodded with approval. “He learns from his mistakes.”
Fred took a sip of his coffee. “How about Cleo? What did she do about theShilka we moved into her way?”
“She came up with a cute answer, Colonel,” Joe responded. “She flew low down that gully and popped up to let loose with a burst of cannon fire like the Warthogs would. I think she picked that up from the run-in with the A-10s last week.”
“Good. She’s still learning well,” Fred said. He noticed that the simulator’s violent movements ceased. “They must be out of the pass. Are the F-22s ready?”
“Yes, Colonel,” Joe replied. “They’ve been in the domes for almost ten minutes.”
Joe DiConza was referring to the four thirty-four-foot-diameter domes that filled one of the nearby buildings. Inside each was an F-22 simulator, manned by an experienced pilot. The F-22 simulators were less advanced than the CLEO simulator, and the pilots had to content themselves with images of their environment and adversaries projected on the inside surfaces of the domes, instead of the high-resolution images Jerry Rodell was watching. However, since all the simulators were linked together by banks of computers, they could see images of each other and fight each other with a high degree of realism. Now the four F-22 Eagle simulators were linked to CLEO as well.
“Okay,” Fred said quietly, sipping his coffee, “let’s see what Cleo and Lieutenant Colonel Rodell can do against real men.”
“Let’s head for the barn, Cleo.” Jerry’s voice quavered. He had opened his eyes too soon on the return trip through the pass and was greeted by a solid rock wall in front of them. Cleo couldn’t have missed it by more than five feet.
“Barn?” Cleo seemed puzzled.
“Hangar 18. You know, home.”
“Bad guys at twelve high.”
Jerry Rodell glanced up and groaned when he saw the four red dots.
“What are they?”
“F-22s.”
“Ours?” Jerry asked hopefully.
“Red Force.”
“That means that we must be Blue Force.”
“Why else were we nuking Red Force tank parks?”
Cleo’s sarcasm surprised Jerry, but he let it pass. In fact, he deserved it, he decided, for having happily hopped into the simulator without even bothering to ask anyone where he was going, what he was supposed to do, or even why he was doing it.
“All right, young lady,” he said while he watched the four F-22s separate into two flights, “can you find their communications channel?”
“Yes,” Cleo hesitated. “But why?”
“So we can listen to them, dummy. And leave our transmitter off, I just want to eavesdrop on their controller.”
“Aphid flight cleared to engage the Star Fighter,” Jerry heard over his earphones. “Cricket flight, vector two-three-zero.”
Jerry Rodell frowned. They were going to feint a frontal attack with Aphid flight while Cricket flight would sneak up from the side or rear. Besides being outnumbered four to one, Jerry was also flying low and slow. The F-22s had all the advantages.
“Not good,” he noted as Aphid flight bore in. “They see us and they know who we are, but we’re not dead yet.”
Jerry was surprised by his own bravado; he knew that his position was all but hopeless. Fortunately, he was not out of ideas.
“Cleo,” he asked, “can you spot their missile launches?”
“Yes.”
“Good, because they’re going to hang back about te
n miles from us and take pot shots with Sparrow missiles. Since those things travel at Mach 4, you won’t have much time.”
“I know,” Cleo muttered mournfully. “They usually give me a wax job.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Certainly.”
“Have you tried that trick you used on the Gainful SAM?”
“Only once,” she answered woefully. “I lost.”
“Well, you’re not going to lose this time,” Jerry said calmly. “Just do it the instant you spot a launch, and make certain that you do a zero- doppler run. We’re down in their ground clutter, and we can lose ourselves in it.”
“Okay,” Cleo agreed with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
Chapter Eight
Dan Spears studied his radar screen and smiled. As Aphid Oh-one, the leader of the Aphid F-22 flight, he’d get the first crack at the Star Fighter, as they calledMary Sue and Cleo amongst themselves. All four of the F-22 pilots had fought what they knew to be a robotic airplane many times before. They also took pride in the fact that they normally won against it even in individual combat although they normally fought it in groups of two. Now, today, all four were being sent against the Star Fighter; that was unusual. There must be some senior brass wanting a good show, they decided. What they didn’t know was that this time a human pilot was inside the Star Fighter.
“Aphid Oh-two,” Dan called, “I don’t think it sees us.”
“It has to have, unless its radar warning gear failed,” his partner replied.
Dan selected a Sparrow missile. Its growl changed pitch as it locked- on. Finally, he pulled the trigger on his control stick and the missile streaked away. Suddenly, his screen went mad with false echoes as Cleo fired chaff, and the blip representing the Star Fighter disappeared from his screen.
“Aphid Oh-two, that thing just made a zero-doppler turn. Do you see it?”
The Espionage Game Page 8