by FX Holden
The briefing the DARPA Marine pilots got from the Colonel in command of the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing had been blunt. “Gentlemen and ladies, you will be providing close air support to United Nations observers in an area of only 700 square miles. To your north and east, you will be facing aircraft of the Russian 7th Air Group and if you cross into Syrian or Lebanese airspace, they will shoot your aircraft down. If they cross into your airspace, you can only return fire if fired upon first, and we believe they will try to provoke you. If the Syrian army enters the Golan Heights, putting UN troops in danger, you will fly missions to protect those troops if needed, in which case Russian aircraft will almost certainly attempt to shoot you down. You may only engage hostile aircraft if you are attacked, and only to allow yourself to withdraw. If the missiles start flying, my staff calculate your likely attrition per sortie at thirty percent. At that rate, your small unit will be non-mission capable within about three days, which is why we are not committing manned aircraft to this operation.”
Bunny had noticed Kovacs had looked pale at the idea of her precious airframes being turned into smoking holes in the ground across the Golan Heights. “If that’s the case, Colonel, what is our plan for continuing the no-fly zone beyond that period?”
“If that happens, then Syria will be well and truly at war with Israel, and we will be organizing a rescue operation for those UN observers, not close air support.” He had seen the expression on Kovacs’ face and gave her a wan smile. “Cheer up, DARPA; consider this the ultimate ‘proof of concept’ trial.”
That had all happened yesterday. And overnight, things had gotten batshit crazy in Israel.
The first reports came over radio and television, indicating that all telephone and internet links to Israel had apparently been cut. Russian media had put out a statement from its Ministry of Defense saying that an anti-satellite missile test conducted by its cruiser, the Pyotr Morgunov, may have ‘inadvertently’ shot down an Israeli communications satellite. Rumors around the base at Akrotiri said a massive space and cyberspace attack on Israel was underway. Commercial air traffic into Israel was in chaos, with pilots receiving no response from air traffic controllers and having to divert their aircraft to Lebanon, Egypt or Jordan. Two light aircraft collided over Haifa, the wreckage coming down in a residential suburb.
Bunny and the other pilots had been glued to the TV screen in their mess. ‘Inadvertently shot down’ my ass, Bunny decided. The timing with the cyber attack was too much of a coincidence. The TV was also showing images of Israel taken by Egyptian news helicopters showing large parts of southern Israel completely blacked out, except for the headlights of cars traveling slowly down dark roads and motorways. And she was willing to bet that more than one Israeli satellite had been hit. You didn’t lose all communication with the outside world, your air traffic control system, and your power generation network, just because a Russian missile flew wild and took out a single satellite.
Sure enough, the Fantom pilots were called to readiness, and by 0400 Bunny was in her trailer, with Kovacs in the jump seat again. As she approached Israeli air space, she switched her radio to a Bombardier Global 6000 aircraft which was at 30,000 feet over Cyprus, acting as ‘quarterback’ for US air operations over the eastern Mediterranean. Unlike the older E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft, the Bombardier didn’t have its own onboard radar systems. Instead, it was a part of the recently introduced ‘Advanced Battle Management System’ adopted by the US and acted as both a controller and an aggregator of data from multiple inputs: unmanned drones in the air over the Middle East, satellites, ground radars at US bases in the region, data from ships at sea and from aircraft like the Fantoms Bunny was flying into the Golan Heights.
It had a pretty good picture of the chaos over Israeli airspace and gave her a new ingress route that would take her over Lebanese rather than Israeli airspace. Checking the situation along the route, Bunny quickly saw why. Israel had managed to get one of its three Gulfstream G550 Eitam AWACS aircraft into the air to try to coordinate military air traffic, and the IDF was busy scrambling its fighter defenses. How that would help them fight a cyber warfare strike, Bunny couldn’t quite see. But the US air controllers were in contact with the IDF Gulfstream, and the IDF had told them in no uncertain terms to keep US fighters out of Israeli airspace. That suited Bunny fine, she had no desire to fly her six Fantoms into a fraught environment filled with Israeli fighter pilots who were no doubt on edge and looking out for anything unusual to shoot at.
Like six bat-winged drones crossing Lebanon from west to east, just outside Israeli airspace.
“Leaving international airspace, entering Lebanon,” Bunny told Kovacs. “We’re going to hit Golani airspace from southeastern Lebanon. I’m picking up Syrian anti-air radar. Classification … S-400 Growler. Not good. That thing has teeth. Range is about twenty miles: they’ve put it right on the border. Pretty certain they can already see us. There’s no Lebanese air force to worry about, but Russia might get nosy, since their definition of Syrian airspace is pretty fluid.”
“We want them to see us, correct? This is not a combat patrol,” Kovacs reminded her. “Peacekeeping. Right?”
“Sure. I’ll be trying to keep your Fantoms in one piece, if that’s what you mean?”
“Not funny. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“You should have,” Bunny told her. “Russia hasn’t acknowledged the US no-fly zone. They might decide our presence is both illegitimate and inconvenient. Besides, one twitch of the stick in the wrong direction and we are in Syria, with that Growler throwing missiles at us at five times the speed of sound.”
Kovacs looked pained. Bunny decided to try a little misplaced optimism.
“Look. I’ll do my best to make it hard for them. Yes, we want them to see us, but I’ll only have two aircraft at 30,000 feet, and the rest are going to be down in the weeds. They call it the Golan Heights for a reason. There is plenty of terrain I can use to make life difficult for that Growler. I’ll have four of our machines down low, back inside Israeli airspace as a kind of ready reserve, if things get hot.”
“I signed off on your latest additions to the combat AI routines. You really think you can manage a complex engagement with a single set of ten commands?”
“No,” Bunny shook her head. “But your AI can. What’s been holding you back is, none of your pilots trust it. Your AI can fly those machines better, closer to the edge of the envelope, than any human pilot. It can react faster to changes in the tactical environment. It doesn’t get target fixation. It won’t freak out or get scared. And it learns. Every time it makes a mistake, gets outmaneuvered, gets locked up by an enemy radar, or god forbid gets shot down, it gets smarter and knows what not to do next time. A human pilot would be dead, but your AI lives to fight the next fight, and the next…”
“Yes, but you can’t just set it loose up there and expect to be able to direct the actions of six separate AIs,” she warned.
“Three,” Bunny reminded her. “I am only directing three. The other three are flying wingman unless their lead is destroyed. In which case I am still only directing three. Your AI is directing the others. And I’m not flying them, my ten commands just tell them what postures to adopt – attack or defense, long or short range, passive or active sensor profiles, high altitude or low, aggressive or conservative … combining those ten routines in different ways means I can give over 100 different orders. Which is more control than I would have over a human wingman who would probably forget what I told them the moment they entered combat.”
Bunny hoped she sounded more convincing than she felt. She’d taken on US F-22s in a Red Flag with two Fantoms and won. Having faced off against the Russian 7th Air Group before over Turkey, she knew the real thing was going to be even more of a challenge.
Syrian Airspace, East of the Golan Heights, May 18
As his flight of two Su-57s got within engagement range of the Golan Heights, Lieutenant Sergei ‘Rap’ Tchakov of the Russia
n 7th Air Group was coming up against Bunny O’Hare for the second time in his short fighter pilot career, though he didn’t know it.
All he knew was that the US had declared a no-fly zone over the Golan Heights and the Russian Aerospace Force inside Syria had no intention of recognizing it. Two US aircraft, probably unmanned drones judging by their electronic signatures, had just been spotted on radar over the Golan Heights and he’d been vectored to intercept them with orders to challenge whoever was flying them. Six months earlier, he’d traded missiles with an F-35 over Turkey and had barely made it home on one engine after the Coalition pilot had followed him into international airspace and then attacked him, illegally, after he’d made the clearly peaceful gesture of joining formation with the Coalition pilot and even waving to them, pilot to pilot. He was still smarting over that confrontation. The Coalition pilot had made a fool of him, ignoring his gesture and attacking him without warning.
Rap Tchakov was not the kind of guy who let himself be made a fool of twice. He’d even gotten a photograph of that Coalition pilot as they’d flown side by side for several minutes … a woman. She’d taken advantage of his gallantry, his chivalry. But he’d lived, and learned. He had no compassion any more for the pilots of the Coalition, and even less for the drones they sent to police their illegal, unsanctioned ‘no-fly zone’. Was there a UN resolution authorizing the no-fly zone over the Golan? The hell there was. Were they brave enough to send their own human pilots to do their dirty work? The hell they were. They sent robots instead. Robots. It was the strategy of cowards, of men without honor.
But not of Russia. Thirty miles back from the UNDOF border, Rap set up a figure eight patrol pattern, ordering his wingman to watch his six while he worked the two drone contacts. Newly promoted to Lieutenant because of his performance in combat over Turkey, Lieutenant Sergei ‘Rap’ Tchakov was so named because of the music that blared through his earbuds whenever he wasn’t flying. But he also liked to think it was because of the way he carried himself. Gangsta, sure, but with a code of his own. Lines he would cross, and those he wouldn’t. Like attacking a foreign aircraft in international airspace who had openly declared their intention not to seek combat. For example.
Let it go, Rap, he told himself. He turned back to the task at hand. His Felon was pulling data from both a Syrian S-400 Growler ground radar unit and a Beriev A100 AWACS orbiting over Damascus. Of the two, the S-400 had the best lock, so close it was able to bathe the American aircraft in enough radiation to get a solid return despite the fact they were both physically small, and had an even smaller radar cross-section. Thanks to the US Presidential address, Russia’s 7th Air Group had known American fighters were coming, almost to the hour. And they’d had plenty of time to prepare.
Rap didn’t need to use his own targeting radar, and doubted the Americans would even know he was hunting their aircraft. He zoomed out his tactical display, looking at all the activity over Israel. The sky was swarming with Israeli fighters – old F-15s and F-16s, and so many F-35s that even a few of the normally difficult to detect stealth fighters were visible. There was only so much airspace in which to hide over the tiny nation of Israel. Zooming out again, Rap locked the two drones up and switched his radio to the Guard frequency. “Attention US aircraft over the Golan Heights, this is Captain Ali Assad of the Syrian Arab Air Force.” He smiled. Using the surname of the Syrian President was his own invention. It would make the US controllers wet their pants to think a relative of the Assad family was behind the stick of his Felon. He checked his knee pad and continued. “You are acting in breach of UN Security Council Resolution three three eight, which prohibits any nation from positioning military forces inside the borders of ceasefire lines in the area of the Golan Heights. Please withdraw immediately.”
There was no immediate answer. Rap prepared to broadcast again. He’d asked his CO exactly who was expected to respond, given that there was no pilot in the American aircraft, and the actual pilot could be as far away as Nevada in the USA for all they knew. So many elements of war in the air over Syria were being explored for the first time. It gave Rap the sense he was making history with every contact with the enemy.
Still no answer. Time to escalate. “American aircraft over the Golan Heights, this is Captain Ali Assad of the Syrian Arab Air Force … I repeat, you are in breach of UN Resolution, uh … three, three, eight. If you do not withdraw immediately, you will be fired upon.”
Bunny opened a channel to the controller in the US Bombardier Global 6000 aircraft. “Falcon Control, Valor flight leader. We are being hailed on Guard, do you copy?”
“Valor, Falcon, we have received the hail. Please ignore, continue your mission.”
“Falcon, do you have the Russian aircraft on radar? There’s nothing on my display…”
“Negative, Valor. It might also be a ground-based radio, we don’t have a fix. We’re working on it. Maintain patrol, Falcon out.”
Ground-based my fat backside, Bunny thought to herself. “Strap in,” she told Kovacs. “Metaphorically, I mean. This is how it starts.”
“You really think the Russians will fire on our drones?”
“Would we?”
“I suppose so.”
“Exactly.”
Rap’s rules of engagement, or ROEs, were very simple. He was to close to a range at which he could lock up the US aircraft on his phased-array radar – probably about twenty miles, since he already had a good fix on their position. If they did not respond to the targeting lock by withdrawing their aircraft from the airspace over the border DMZ, he was authorized to engage them with missiles, from within Syrian airspace. Diplomats could then argue for months about whether Syria or Russia had actually broken the terms of the ceasefire or not, but he would be sending a very clear message to the US that its ‘no-fly zone’ was not being recognized.
“Kogot leader to Control, I have no response on Guard, moving to engage. Please confirm?”
“Kogot, Control. You are cleared to engage, out.”
“Kogot two, Kogot leader, watch my back, keep separation, keep targeting on passive systems only.”
“Kogot leader, acknowledged. Happy hunting.”
Rap swung his aircraft around to point its nose west and sent a high-powered beam of narrow-band radar waves down the bearing to the two US drones. “This is Kogot leader, lighting up the targets. I have a lock. Missiles armed, data synched.”
A warning chime sounded inside Bunny’s trailer. “Targeting radar,” she said for Kovacs’ benefit. “Not the Growler. AI is calling it a Felon.” Her fingers danced on her keyboard, one hand on her flight stick out of habit, just in case she needed to assume manual control for any reason – like a totally random AI maneuver. “I can’t see him, yet. Moving the two top cover units to aggressive-defense posture, radar active and searching, weapons safed. Bringing our reserve online, moving them into missile range.” To herself she added, Come on, Ivan, get curious, come and have a look. Cross that UNDOF line…
The two Fantoms on Rap’s heads-up display moved apart and as he looked down at his targeting screen he saw them each taking up station at the far northern and far southern extremes of the UN zone, forty miles apart. It made the engagement slightly more difficult, but only slightly. The important thing was that they showed no sign of withdrawing into Israeli airspace. As he watched, both of the American aircraft started radiating, searching for him with their radars. They didn’t have the same long-range passive detection systems that a true stealth fighter like the F-22 or F-35 possessed, so he wasn’t too worried about using his own radar, but there was always a chance that another radar system such as the Israeli ULTRA Active Electronically Scanned Array atop Mount Hermon would get a return off him or his wingman. He had to assume that the Israelis and Americans were sharing data.
“US aircraft illegally occupying the Golan demilitarized zone, this is your last warning,” he said on Guard, his finger hovering over the launch button for his two K-77M missiles. “Depart the
demilitarized zone immediately or you will be fired upon.”
He checked his position. His K-77M traveled at Mach 5 or five times the speed of sound. At twenty miles distance, it would only take thirty seconds to reach its target. Taking its targeting data from his own radar, it would give almost no warning before it struck.
There was no further reaction from the American drones: they stayed anchored to their waypoints at each end of the demilitarized zone, 30,000 feet altitude. Nor was there any communication from the pilots controlling them. So be it then. Goodbye, robots.
He pressed the stud on the front of his flight stick with his forefinger, felt the K-77 missiles drop from his weapons bay and saw them streak out ahead of him before veering toward their targets to the north and south. In a second, the burst of flame from their rocket engines was gone, leaving just a faintly glowing smoky trail against the night sky to show where they had been.
“This is going to happen too quickly for us to follow,” Bunny predicted. “I’m betting there are already missiles inbound.”
“Why can’t we see them on the threat warning?” Kovacs asked.
“Too close, with too many radars locked on. They won’t even need to go active…”
As she was talking, a missile detection alert sounded in the trailer. Two missile detection alerts. In the millisecond before the Russian ‘hit to kill’ missile struck, the two Fantoms reacted with a speed no human could have matched, firing radar and infrared decoys behind them, rolling onto their backs and diving at the ground at a rate that would have snapped the neck of a human pilot.
The Russian missiles were not fitted with proximity warheads – they relied on sheer speed, maneuverability and surprise, and had to hit their targets to kill them. If they had the ability to be shocked, as they flew through the holes in the air where the Fantoms had been just a millisecond before, they would probably have cursed. As it was, they tried maneuvering to reacquire the diving Fantoms, but they were traveling too fast to make the turn and ended up slamming into the earth ten thousand feet below the American drones as the Fantoms reversed their dive and began climbing back up to altitude.