The terrain in southeastern Iran was flat, with occasional high razorback ridgelines plunging down into flat valleys, many with marshes or dry lake beds at the bottom. Fifty miles south of Zahedan, they crossed a major superhighway, the Mashhad-Chah Bahar Highway. Their flight path took them about forty miles west of it, far enough to stay away from any detection from populated areas along the highway but close enough that Jamieson could see it. "Lots of traffic out there, heading north," Jamieson said.
"Good idea to get away from the coast these days."
About 180 miles north of Chah Bahar, they picked up the first threat indications from radar sites out in the Gulf of Oman. They saw a bat-wing symbol with a small circle on the apex--the symbol for an airborne early-warning radar. "There's the Iranian A-10 radar plane," McLanahan said. "About two hundred fifty miles away--seventy miles offshore. The radar guys say that if they're going to pick us up, we'll be within one hundred twenty miles of the second site. That means we might be visible to them for seventy to one hundred miles--ten, maybe fifteen minutes."
Just then, another bat-wing symbol appeared on the scope--not an A-10 radar plane, but an Iranian F-14 Tomcat fighter. "F-14 off the nose, about one hundred miles," McLanahan said. "Not locked on yet, but he's headed right for us..."
"It's that loose screw or rivet or joint on the left wing," Jamieson said. "It's screwing up our stealthy stuff. And the F-14's designed to look for low-flying targets as small as a cruise missile."
"So let's start giving them something to shoot at," McLanahan said. "It's a little earlier than we wanted, but we're definitely an item of interest. I'm setting five hundred feet--stand by for missile launch." McLanahan switched the terrain-avoidance system to 500 feet, then commanded the first launch of an AGM-86C cruise missile. The subsonic AGM-86C cruise missile had a turbojet engine that flew the missile at six miles per minute for 500 miles; this one had no warhead, only radio transmitters that gave it the radar cross-section and electronic profile of a large bomber. The cruise missile made an immediate right turn and headed west toward Bandar Abbas--and the F-14 Tomcat turned west to pursue. "He took the bait," McLanahan said. "Let's make a jog east, put Iranshahr off our right wing." McLanahan reselected COLA on the terrain-avoidance computer, and they recrossed the Chah Bahar-Mashhad Highway again, heading east along the ridgelines.
"One hundred twenty miles to go," McLanahan said. "Threat scope's clear... got an SA-10 site at Chah Bahar searching, but so far we're..." And just then, the F-14 Tomcat appeared on the threat scope again.
"Shit, the F-14's back--he must've downed the cruise missile and is searching for wingmen."
"Let's give him one--this time, bugging out," McLanahan said. He commanded 500 feet on the terrain-avoidance system again and launched the second AGM-86C, this one programmed to head north, toward Beghin Airport. "Missile away, resetting COLA..."
Just then, they heard the computer-synthesized voice in their headphones shouting. "WARNING, MISSILE LAUNCH, WARNING, MISSILE LAUNCH!" The SA-10 Grumble surface-to-air missile site had opened fire on them--and with their bomb doors open, the B-2A bomber was a very inviting target, even at very long range. "MAWS activated!" McLanahan shouted. "Track-breakers active!" But it was the wrong decision--McLanahan recognized it seconds later.
"No, the SA-10 launched against the cruise missile!" But it was too late--when he activated the missile defense system and jammers, it briefly deactivated the BEADS cloaking device, and the F-14 Tomcat, which had not yet detected the decoy cruise missile, locked on to the B-2A.
"MAWS down, track breakers in standby," McLanahan reported--but they could see the F-14 barreling down on them now, coming "down the ramp" from its high-altitude combat air patrol straight at the B-2A bomber. "He's still headed for us. Stand by to..."
Suddenly they received another "WARNING, MISSILE LAUNCH!" as the F-14 fired.
McLanahan reactivated the MAWS missile defense system, and the system immediately dumped chaff from the left ejectors as Jamieson broke hard right. "Track breakers active, MAWS tracking!" They could actually see the first missile, probably a Phoenix or air-launched Hawk missile, depicted on the threat scope, getting closer every second... then another "WARNING, MISSILE LAUNCH!"
as a second missile was fired from long range.
The'HAVE GLANCE defense system started firing its high-power laser "blinding" system only three seconds before the first missile hit--but it was enough. The Phoenix missile's active terminal radar overheated, causing a safety self-destruct. The Phoenix missile exploded less than 500 feet from the B-2A bomber. "Break left, second missile coming in!" McLanahan shouted, and Jamieson executed a hard left turn, pulling on the control stick to tighten the turn even more. The MAWS system pumped out chaff from the right ejectors in response.
The second Phoenix missile was momentarily decoyed by the chaff and by the loss of radar lock when the damaged left wing dipped from view, but reacquired a lock when the chaff cloud dissipated--however, it locked on to Kuhiri Mountain, south of Iran-shahr, not on the B-2A. Again, the second missile missed by less than 300 feet--one-tenth of a second of missile flight time!--and exploded on the barren desert highlands below.
But now the F-14 itself was moving in. "Fighter at one o'clock high, range less than three miles, closing at seven hundred knots... HAVE GLANCE active!"
The HAVE GLANCE system, the high-powered laser emitter married to a missile-tracking radar, had a deadly effect on delicate, sensitive combat sensors such as those found on heat-seeking missiles, passive and active radar-homing missiles--and the human eyeball. The F-14 pilot had just zoomed down the ramp through 15,000 feet and was arming up his 20-millimeter cannon when the HAVE GLANCE laser blinder locked on to his aircraft and fired.
The helium-argon laser, only the size of a large videotape camera but just as powerful as an industrial-strength diamond-cutting laser, didn't cause any pain when the orange-blue beam hit the pilot's eyes. He saw a quick flash of dirty blue light that temporarily obscured his vision, like a waft of smoke or sand. He blinked--the spot was still there. He blinked again--ah, the spot was beginning to clear, still fuzzy but getting better. The Iranian pilot could see the radar range click down on his heads-up display... 3,000 meters to fire... 2,000 meters to fire... ready to fire... now!
But he wasn't locked on to the target anymore--like the Phoenix missile, his fire-control radar had first locked on to a cloud of chaff, then on a piece of terrain when the bomber jinked away.
The radar wasn't counting down to his shoot point... it was counting down to when his fighter would hit the ground. A light from a passing car near the town of Chanf was the first indication to the pilot of how close he was to the ground--a split second before he impacted, traveling at almost the speed of sound straight down.
"Scope's clear," McLanahan said. "Chah Bahar's off the nose, forty miles. We're well inside radar range of that A-10 radar plane now."
ABOARD THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN AIRCRAFT CARRIER AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI THAT SAME TIME "Combined radar reports a low-flying aircraft now two hundred fifty kilometers north of our position, heading south at very low altitude--less than two hundred meters, speed seven hundred kilometers per hour," Brigadier General Muhammad Badi, Major Admiral Akbar Tufayli's chief of staff aboard the carrier Khomeini, reported. "Chah Bahar air defense forces have engaged numerous unidentified air targets south of Iranshahr, destroying one believed to be a decoy."
"Good," Tufayli said confidently. "This new radar system seems to be working perfectly."
"Shall we commit any of our fighters to the pursuit?"
"No, Badi, not yet," the Pasdaran naval commander replied. "We shall wait until the aircraft is over water before committing our forces." He paused to think for a moment. "The bomber is over eastern Iran now? That means it must have flown westward across Afghanistan... and across India and China, too, perhaps? This means that the Americans may have violated Chinese airspace to attack from the Asian side, rather than attempt another
attack from over-water! I think our Chinese friends would be very interested to learn about this new development, wouldn't you say, Badi? Get me the Chinese group commander at Chah Babar immediately."
ABOARD AIR VEHICLE-01 I "It worked once before--let's see if they work again," McLanahan said. "Missile launch, ready... ready... now... doors open...
one away... two away... doors closed..." At that instant, there was another missile launch warning from the SA-10 site--again, when the bomb doors were open, the B-2A bomber was at its most vulnerable position.
The SA-10 Grumble missile flew a high ballistic flight path over the rugged terrain of southeast Iran, flying up to 50,000 feet before starting its terminal dive into the "basket," where its quarry was supposed to fly. When it turned on its active terminal radar and flashed it into the target "basket," it acquired the B-2A bomber immediately. The SA-10 Grumble missile actually had two seeker heads--an active radar seeker in the nose and, since the missile actually flew "sideways" into a lead-computing intercept, it also had an infrared seeker head mounted in the body of the missile that looked sideways at its target as it got closer, acting as a backup and as a terminal fine-tuning device for a precision kill. With two seeker heads, the SA-10 was very difficult to decoy.
But the bomber's HAVE GLANCE laser immediately destroyed the infrared seeker, allowing the IR seeker's computers to deliver false aim-correcting data to the missile--just for about a second, but long enough to knock the missile out of its nice, smooth intercept. At the same instant that the HAVE GLANCE laser hit, Jamieson threw the bomber into another hard left break, just as McLanahan dumped chaff. The SA-10 missile wobbled, reacquired, locked on to the chaff, decided it wasn't moving fast enough and rejected that lock, reacquired the bomber--and hit the right wing, near the tip just forward of the trailing edge. The shaped-charge missile warhead punched a two-foot-wide hole in the wing, destroying the right wing ruddervators and rupturing the right wing fuel tank.
The B-2A bomber heeled sharply to the right, flipping over at nearly a ninety-degree bank, throwing the bomber nearly into a full accelerated stall. Jamieson tried to correct the turn, but had trouble controlling the aircraft. "Controls not responding!"
he shouted at McLanahan. "We lost the right niddervators...
c'mon, dammit, give it to me, give it to me!" It took both men on the control stick, then full left rudder trim, to straighten the bomber out.
"Lost the right ruddervators," McLanahan confirmed. "Left ruddervators are deployed fifty, sixty percent. Power plants, all other systems OK. Fuel looks like it's draining out the right wing... right wing valves are closed, all engines feeding off the left wing, boost pumps on, system still in AuTo but I'll watch it.
Hydraulics OK."
Meanwhile, the two JSOW cruise missiles were on their way, and as expected, the "screamers" did their magic once again. Two JSOW "screamers," one east and one west of Chah Bahar, created so many false targets, emergency radar locks, and close-in automatic engagements that a dozen air defense sites within twenty miles of Chah Bahar opened up all at once--and all of them shooting east or west, instead of north, toward the B-2A.
At ten miles from Chah Bahar, McLanahan and Jamieson launched the next two missiles--these were AGM-88 HARMs (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles), supersonic radar seekers loaded with a 150-pound conventional high-explosive warhead with tungsten alloy steel cubes embedded in the explosive to triple the warhead's destructive power. The rotary launcher ejected two HARM missiles out into the slipstream, the missiles fired ahead of the bomber, then quickly locked onto the Chah Bahar radar straight ahead and homed in. With the radar at Chah Bahar on full-cycle duty to counter the JSOW "screamers" and direct Chah Bahar's murderous antiaircraft defenses, the HARM missile had a clear shot all the way, and seconds later the search radar had been destroyed for good.
"Okay, Mack," Jamieson said. "We're at the IP. We can turn back and hightail it for the hills, and we got a pretty good chance to make it outta here. We can E and E through the Pakistani or Afghan hills, then bug out over the Gulf of Oman and catch our tanker."
"You don't want to do that, Tiger," McLanahan said. "You want to see that carrier go down. So do I."
"Yeah, you're right," Jamieson said. "Hell, I didn't want to live forever anyway. Let's take care of business and get the hell outta here." He began pushing up the throttles to full military power while McLanahan cut off the COLA terrain-avoidance system, and they started a steep climb over the Gulf of Oman toward the carrier.
ABOARD THE KHOMEINI THAT SAME TIME "The radar at Chah Bahar is down," Badi reported to Major Admiral Akbar Tufayli. "We are resynchronizing with the A-10 radar plane and our own search radar. He is repositioning his orbit fifty kilometers further north to compensate for the loss of the shore station. We have requested that another A-10 take up a position to back up our A-10 on station; his ETE is thirty minutes Stand by..." It took only a few moments. "We have reacquired the target, sir, bearing zero-one-five, range ninety-six kilometers, speed six hundred kilometers per hour--it appears to have slowed down considerably."
"Possibly damaged," Tufayli said. "Now may be the time to commit our forces to hunt that bomber down and destroy it forever!"
"Range ninety kilometers, speed five-ninety, altitude now reading... sir, altitude is increasing. He's climbing... now passing three hundred meters, four hundred... range eighty kilometers, passing six hundred kilometers in altitude. We have a solid lock-on, sir... seventy-five kilometers and closing, speed down to five hundred kilometers!"
"Engage at maximum range," Tufayli ordered. "Launch the alert fighters. Get everything we have airborne. Where is that bomber now?"
"Still climbing, sir... Interceptor flights Twenty and Twenty-one engaging target, range sixty kilometers and closing..
"Twenty? Twenty-one? Where are those flights from'?" Tufayli asked.
"Those are the air defense F-4 Phantoms from Chah Babar, on station with the A-10." He stopped and looked at his commander.
"The A-10? Could that bomber be going after the radar plane?"
"Get him out of there! Have him take evasive action!" But it was too late. The B-2A bomber launched two more AGM-88 HARM missiles, which horned in straight and true on the A-10 radar plane, sending it quickly spinning into the Gulf of Oman.
"He's... he's gone, sir, off our radar screens," Badi reported.
"Interceptors have lost the target."
"No!" Tufayli shouted, slamming a fist on his seat in anger. The F-4s had poorly maintained radars, with few spare parts, and were not as reliable as the Sukhoi-33s or the MiG-29s. "Not now! We were so close! Badi, I want every fighter we have in the air right now! I do not care if we shoot at every bird or every cloud in the sky that even remotely looks like a bomber on radar. I want it done, and I want that bomber on the bottom of the Gulf of Oman! Now!"
ABOARD AIR VEHICLE-01 I Nose pointed down to the sea, throttles to idle to present the smallest possible thermal cross-section astern, the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber plunged down into the darkness of the Gulf of Oman.
As it passed through 5,000 feet, following the computer's projected track to where it thought the carrier Khomeini was, McLanahan saw a tiny spot of light--on the ocean--soon he saw others. "SAR coming on he announced, "now... SAR standby. Got the carrier, directly ahead, fifteen miles... last four missiles are programmed and ready to go."
"Punch those 'Elmers' out and let's go home," Jamieson said.
Thirty seconds later, the last four JSOW missiles were on their way to the aircraft carrier Khomeini.
Following McLanahan's programmed flight plan, the four "Elmer's" missiles arced north of the Iranian battle group, then turned south-southeast, roughly following each other in trail 1,500 feet apart. They were just a few dozen feet above the tallest antenna on the destroyer Zhanjiang by the time they passed over the fleet.
As they passed overhead, tiny bomb bays opened up on each missile and an invisible liquid vapor cloud sprayed over the Iranian warshi
ps. The heavy vapor droplets settled quickly in a straight sausage-shaped pattern, coating the ships with a thin, odorless, tasteless film. As the missiles completed their silent deliveries right on target, they splashed harmlessly into the Gulf of Oman, completely undetected and unrecoverable.
In seconds, exposed to air, the thin clear film that had been deposited over the two big warships began to change toward THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER KHOMEINI "it is about cursed time!" Admiral Tufayli shouted. The first rescue helicopter was just lifting off the deck and taking position on the port-side, ready to rescue any crewmen who might have to eject shortly after takeoff. It had taken more than five minutes to scramble a crew and get a helicopter airborne, and that was totally unacceptable.
Dale Brown - Shadows Of Steel Page 37