by Dale Brown
Patrick, Daren, and their technical crew were conducting an aerial surveillance and reconnaissance mission over central Turkmenistan, a former Soviet Central Asian republic — but they were safe and secure in the BATMAN, or Battle Management Center, at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base in north-central Nevada. The aircraft flying over Turkmenistan was a QB-1C Vampire III, a highly modified unmanned B-1 bomber loaded with electronic surveillance and monitoring equipment. Eavesdropping equipment allowed Patrick to intercept signals from a wide variety of sources, and the bomber’s laser radar, or LADAR, allowed them to take incredibly detailed images of ground and air targets from long range.
Along with defensive weapons — six AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) on external fuselage hardpoints — the Vampire bomber carried two StealthHawk UCAVs (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles) on a special rotary launcher in its center bomb bay. Resembling wide, fat, winged surfboards, the StealthHawk drones carried small but powerful precision-guided missiles and cluster munitions to attack hostile ground targets. The StealthHawks could be retrieved, refueled, and rearmed inside the Vampire, allowing each drone to attack dozens of targets while the mother ship stayed well out of range of antiaircraft threats.
Patrick punched the radio channel command, entered a password, waited a few moments until the secure channels synchronized, then spoke, “Fortress, this is Avenger, secure.”
“Avenger, Fortress is secure,” the Eighth Air Force senior controller on duty responded.
“How are you tonight, Taylor?”
“Just fine, General,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Taylor Viner replied. Taylor Rose Viner was a young and talented aerospace engineer and command pilot that Patrick had tried for years to recruit to Dreamland, the top-secret weapon center in Nevada, but the mother of twin boys had opted for a halfway normal family life as one of the shift commanders in charge of Eighth Air Force’s command center. “Go ahead, sir.”
“We’ve detected a new SAM site in central Turkmenistan, an SA-12 less than forty miles outside the city of Mary,” Patrick said. “It’s not a threat to task-force aircraft right now, but that’s only because we’re stealthier than the average bear. If we put up any standard reconnaissance aircraft, they’d be dead meat.”
“The Security Council resolution prohibits Russian forces from approaching closer than fifty kilometers from Mary — that’s thirty miles,” Viner said. “He’s legal.”
“But an SA-12 is a threat to large aircraft out to forty miles, and that means over the city of Mary,” Patrick said.
“I understand, sir,” Viner said. “I’m not arguing, only playing devil’s advocate.” She was also gently reminding Patrick of the first likely question the Eighth Air Force commanders would ask if she woke them up with this information. “What do you want to do, sir?”
“I’m requesting permission to launch a StealthHawk UCAV over the city in an effort to ascertain the Russians’ intent.”
“UCAV? You’ve got UCAVs on board the task-force aircraft, sir?” Taylor asked with surprise. She paused for a moment as she typed on her own computer terminal, then added, “Sir, there’s nothing on the frag order about UCAVs. Are they armed, sir?” Patrick hesitated — and that’s all Viner needed to know. “General, my recommendation to you would be to launch another aircraft immediately that is armed exactly per the frag order to replace the one you have on station.”
“The frag order doesn’t prohibit us from carrying UCAVs, and it does permit us to carry defensive weapons.”
“Yes, sir,” Viner replied, in a tone of voice that clearly said, The bosses aren’t going to like that argument one bit. “Shall I upchannel your observations and request, sir, or would you like to continue monitoring the situation?”
Taylor was making one last attempt to dissuade Patrick from taking any action, and Patrick decided she was right. “We’ll continue monitoring the situation, Colonel,” Patrick said. “You can put in your report that we have StealthHawk UCAVs on board the Bobcat patrol aircraft and that we are ready to respond immediately if necessary. Please mark the SA-12 battery-contact report ‘urgent’ and let them know we’re standing by.”
“Yes, sir,” Viner responded. “Anything else to report, sir?”
“No, Taylor. Ops normal otherwise. We’re standing by to respond.”
“Roger that, sir. Fortress clear.”
“Avenger standing by.” Patrick sat back in his seat and studied the displays in front of him. “Well, Daren,” he said to Mace beside him, “I sure hope I didn’t piss off the brass — any more than I already have.”
“If you’ll pardon an unsolicited observation, sir, I think they’re probably going to be perpetually pissed at you, whether or not you launched the Vampires with UCAVs,” Daren observed. Patrick nodded in agreement. He was right: This whole mission was a no-win situation from day one, and Patrick was the center of the shit storm.
The United Nations Security Council resolution ordered aerial observation of Turkmenistan only. President Thomas Thorn, in a surprise move, pledged support, and the council accepted. The secretary of defense ordered U.S. Central Command, the major command in charge of military operations in Central Asia, to set up round-the-clock reconnaissance; Central Command in turn tapped the U.S. Air Force to perform the reconnaissance task.
At first the Air Force tasked Twelfth Air Force, the Air Combat Command headquarters that owned long-range reconnaissance aircraft, to plan a reconnaissance schedule. Twelfth Air Force built a plan to deploy its conventional reconnaissance aircraft — the unmanned RQ-4A Global Hawk, the U-2 “Dragon Lady” spy plane, the RC-135 RIVET JOINT electronic reconnaissance plane, and the E-8 Joint STARS (Surveillance and Targeting Radar System) ground-reconnaissance aircraft. With a combination of these aircraft over Turkmenistan, augmented with satellite reconnaissance, they’d have a complete, 24/7 real-time picture of the situation there.
But the 111th Bomb Wing’s aircraft, already deployed to Diego Garcia during the initial conflict in Turkmenistan, offered so much more than just simple surveillance. An unmanned QAL-52 Dragon airborne-laser aircraft could protect as much as 20 million cubic miles of airspace from ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, aircraft, and even some ground targets; the unmanned QB-1C and QB-52 “flying battleships” each provided as much offensive and defensive firepower as a flight of tactical fighters. At Patrick McLanahan’s urging, Central Command vetoed Twelfth Air Force’s plans and ordered Eighth Air Force, in charge of the Air Force’s long-range bombers, to deploy McLanahan’s Air Battle Force to patrol Turkmenistan. The high-tech bombers of the 111th Bomb Wing had acquitted themselves well in the opening conflict with the Russians, and this was seen as a reward for their efforts; besides, they were already in place and knew the tactical situation thoroughly.
This decision managed to upset both Eighth and Twelfth Air Force commanders, although they had no choice but to accept it. Eighth Air Force had its own fleet of strike aircraft, of course—160 long-range B-1B, B-52, and B-2 bombers and several hundred aerial-refueling tankers, along with a dazzling array of cruise missiles and precision-guided munitions. But they were all back in the States or providing long-range patrol duties with U.S. Navy Surface Action Groups around the world.
Although administratively part of the Air Reserve Forces — most of the men and women in the Wing were part of the Nevada Air National Guard — the 111th Bomb Wing operationally belonged to Eighth Air Force. But when it came down to it, no one at Eighth Air Force knew how to deploy or fight with the high-tech gadgets at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. They had no choice but to place Major General Patrick McLanahan in charge of the operation, reporting directly to Eighth Air Force headquarters.
The decision to let Patrick’s Air Battle Force patrol Turkmenistan created a much more effective presence there for far less cost than Twelfth Air Force’s planned operation, but the decision did not sit well with many Air Force general officers. No doubt they were all waiting for Patrick and his fleet
of robot planes to fail.
Daren Mace let Patrick stew in silence for several long moments. Daren was a bit older than Patrick, but his Air Force career had not been nearly as successful or dynamic — until he met up with the young two-star general. Now, as operations officer of the 111th Bomb Wing, Daren Mace commanded a growing fleet of the most high-tech warplanes on the planet, the majority of which were created by Patrick McLanahan in the supersecret desert research center at Elliott Air Force Base in Groom Lake, Nevada, commonly known as Dreamland. A few years ago, aerial-warfare expert Mace had made his living flipping slides and making coffee for generals and administrators in the Pentagon. Now those same generals and bean-counting bureaucrats were coming to him asking for answers to America’s tough defense problems.
“Want to bring that Vampire home,” Daren asked, “and replace it with one without StealthHawks aboard?”
Patrick looked as if he didn’t hear Mace. He was staring intently at the large, full-color tactical situation display, with the new SA-12 battery in the center. Finally he pointed at the screen on the wall before him. “You see anything wrong with how that SA-12 is deployed, Daren?” he asked.
Daren studied the display. Something had been nagging at him ever since the surface-to-air missile battery had been detected. The SA-12’s precise position was plotted on the screen, along with a circle representing the maximum effective range of the two-stage solid-propellant Russian 9M82 antiaircraft missile, a larger but almost direct copy of the American Patriot missile. “Well, I wouldn’t have put it there myself,” Daren said a few moments later.
“Why?”
“It’s too far south,” Daren replied. “If we were going to fly a strike mission against Russian forces coming from Ashkhabad, we could easily circumnavigate that SA-12.”
“Which tells you…?”
“That…maybe the Russians have another SA-12 battery farther north?”
“Exactly,” Patrick said. “How many batteries can a single SA-12 command post control?”
“Up to four — almost a hundred missiles total.”
“We might have two or three more batteries sneaking their way east as we speak.” Patrick pointed at several laser-radar returns well north of the SA-12 battery. “There’s a bunch of newcomers up there, but we haven’t identified them yet—”
“Because they haven’t broadcast any radar or radio datalink signals,” Daren said. “They could be anything — tanks, SCUDs, SAMs, camels — but if they didn’t flash a radar or broadcast what we think might be a fire-control datalink signal, we left it alone until we had time to give it a closer look.”
“But the SA-12 could use a hardwired cable datalink, which we couldn’t detect. They could be ready to fire within seconds,” Patrick said. He pointed at the screen on his console. “I count ten vehicles in this area and twelve in this general area here. They could be SA-12 batteries, sitting silent. I wish we had authorization to send some Tin Man recon units into the area.” But that was not going to happen. Part of Patrick’s Air Battle Force, the Tin Men were small commando teams outfitted with electronic battle armor, sophisticated sensor systems, and high-tech infantry weapons. They could move quietly, survive in extremely hostile situations, and reconnoiter large areas far behind enemy lines very quickly. Naturally, the Russians didn’t want them anywhere near their troops. They convinced the United Nations Security Council that the Tin Men were nothing but search-and-destroy squads, not a monitoring team, and so were forbidden to enter the theater of operations at all.
“I think it might be time to take a look,” Daren said. “Eighth Air Force might squawk if we launch a StealthHawk, but if we move the Vampire bomber in for a closer look…”
“Do it,” Patrick said.
Daren smiled and pulled his headset microphone closer to his lips, issuing orders to the technicians in the “virtual cockpit” behind him in the Battle Mountain Battle Management Center. The QB-1C Vampire III bomber normally operated under a preprogrammed flight plan written and uploaded on the ground, which commanded the bomber to patrol a certain area for a certain amount of time, then return for refueling or landing. But it took only moments for the technicians in the ground-based “cockpit” of the big bomber to change the flight plan and radio it to the bomber via secure satellite transmission.
Moments later Patrick and Daren watched as the unmanned Vampire bomber began moving farther and farther north. It took almost thirty minutes to change the patrol orbit a hundred miles north. “Laser radar transmitting…LADAR identifies the vehicles as transports. No SA-12s.”
“Get it in closer,” Patrick said. “I want a detailed identification.”
“Roger.” Daren issued more orders, and they watched as the Vampire bomber moved even closer to the suspect vehicles — now within twenty miles of the unidentified “transports.” “LADAR now classifying some of the vehicles as transporter-erector-launchers,” Daren reported. “We might have something here. What next, General? You want one of the StealthHawks to make a pass now?”
“Not quite yet,” Patrick responded. He thought for a moment, then, “Open the bomb doors.”
“That should get their attention,” Daren said. Into his microphone he ordered, “Send to Bobcat Zero-seven: open center bomb-bay doors. Do not launch UCAVs. Repeat, do not launch UCAVs.”
The QB-1C Vampire III bomber had the radar cross-section smaller than a bird — until one of its three sets of bomb-bay doors were opened. Once that happened, its radar size increased a thousandfold. Radar energy bounced and reflected inside the bomb bay, making the bomber’s apparent size on radar jump exponentially. Seconds after Daren issued the order, they heard a computer voice in their headsets: “Warning, threat radar, SA-12, eleven o’clock, twenty-two miles, surveillance scan…warning, datalink active, SA-12, eleven o’clock, twenty-one miles.”
“There it is,” Daren remarked. “You were right, sir — they have another SA-12 system farther north. And it’s a lot closer to Mary. They have full radar and antiaircraft-missile coverage of the city now.” He hit his intercom button. “Bobcat Zero-seven, close bomb doors, activate all defensive countermeasures, and get out of there fast.” He knew that the flight-control techs would simply take manual control of the Vampire and fly it directly away from the SA-12, while at the same time reprogramming the flight plan for a low-level evasive dash. “What do you want to do with the SA-12 batteries, General?”
“Kill them, Colonel,” Patrick said simply, punching up the datalink code for Eighth Air Force headquarters again. “It’s an unidentified hostile threat that is not authorized by United Nations resolution. Destroy it. Command vehicle first, then the radars, and then the missiles. I’ll notify Eighth Air Force of our actions.”
“Yes, sir,” Daren responded enthusiastically. On the secure command link, he ordered, “Bobcat Zero-seven, this is Bobcat. Designate the SA-12 contacts as hostiles and attack. Repeat, designate all SA-12 contacts as hostile and attack. We think they rolled an entire brigade into the area. If they did, I want them all found, and I want them to die soonest. Order of target priority: command-post vehicle, missile-control radars, scanning radars, and launchers.” The Vampire flight technicians acknowledged the order and hurriedly reprogrammed both the Vampire and its StealthHawks for the attack.
The Vampire began a fast turn to the east and a rapid descent. The tactical display showed the lethal-range ring of the SA-12 system — as the Vampire descended, the ring was getting smaller, but the bomber was still well within kill range. The display suddenly showed the Vampire’s rate of descent slowing dramatically. Daren was about to ask why when he realized that Bobcat Zero-seven had to almost level off to launch its StealthHawks — the UCAVs could not safely leave the center bomb bay with the bomber in a steep descent. “First StealthHawk away…”
“Hurry, damn it, hurry,” Patrick breathed.
“Warning, SA-12 missile guidance radar, six o’clock, thirty miles,” the computer blared. “Warning, missile launch…warning, s
econd missile launch!”
“Second StealthHawk away…” Moments later the icon representing Bobcat Zero-seven disappeared. “Lost contact with Bobcat Zero-seven,” the flight-control tech reported. “Looks like both SA-12 missiles hit dead on.”
Daren Mace slammed a fist into a palm and swore loudly. “I don’t want to see anything but smoking holes in the ground where those SA-12s are!” he shouted.
“Take it easy, Colonel,” Patrick said. On his secure datalink, he spoke, “Fortress, this is Avenger, secure. Priority-alert notification.”
“Go ahead with your priority-alert notification, Avenger, Fortress is secure.” Patrick could hear the warning tones being sounded in the Eighth Air Force command center as Taylor Viner hit the ALERT button on her console, which sounded a tone in the entire room and would page each of the headquarters’ staff officers.
“Bobcat Zero-seven has just been shot down by a Russian SA-12 surface-to-air missile. Request permission to return fire with ground-attack UCAVs.”
“Copy your request, Avenger. Stand by.”
“General…?” Daren asked. The StealthHawks were beginning their attack runs.
“Continue,” Patrick said without hesitation. “Nail ’em.”
Each of the StealthHawk UCAVs carried millimeter-wave radar and infrared sensors that could precisely locate and identify the enemy targets. They received initial target-area instructions from the Vampire bomber, but, once released, they searched for targets on their own. A screen on the “big board” showed the decision-making matrix each StealthHawk employed. It was extraordinary to watch: The BATMAN staff saw the image the StealthHawk was looking at, saw it compare the image to its stored catalog of vehicles and come up with several possibilities. A few seconds later, the StealthHawk would take another “snap-shot” of the target and refine its guess until it came up with only one possibility. Then it selected a weapon that would be most effective in destroying the target: an AGM-211 mini-Maverick missile for the armored SA-12 command vehicle, and CBU-87/103 Combined Effects Munitions mines against the radar arrays and transporter-erector-launchers.