Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  “General, I think the First Lady is right,” the President said. “Is there any way we can work it to make our involvement purely defensive in nature? Let’s let the Turks and the Ukrainians call the shots on this one.”

  Freeman shook his head in obvious frustration. Christ, how I loathe both of them. He took a deep breath and replied, “Sir, I understand your concern, but that’s not the way we should operate. Our primary concern is the safety of our crews, and sending them against a hostile force with orders to fire only when fired upon is wrong and outdated thinking. If we launch those Vampire bombers, they should go in fighting.”

  “This is not between America and Russia, General,” the First Lady informed him as if he were just too thick to understand real policies. “This is between Russia and the Ukraine. Turkey was an innocent bystander—President Velichko said the attack on the Turkish ships was wrong, and I believe him. If we attack Russian ships without provocation, we’ll be drawn into this war, and it’ll be your fault.” She crossed her arms and affixed him with a stare, just daring him to challenge her.

  Freeman felt like raising his hands in utter surrender—his words were being deflected away from the President like bullets off cold steel. “Sir, I have a plan for your review,” he said finally. “It meets your criteria for defensive action and support for our allies.” He hesitated, knowing he shouldn’t make any concessions to the First Lady when it came to his troops in the field, but said, “We may be able to adjust the rules of engagement to allow only nonthreatening surveillance actions by our crews, but I—”

  “I think that’s a wise idea, General,” the First Lady said pointedly.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Over the Black Sea North of Turkey, That Night

  Rebecca Furness and Mark Fogelman were flying at ten thousand feet over the rugged coastal mountains surrounding the Marmara Sea near the city of Yalova. It was after two A.M. in Turkey, and the night was overcast and very cold—Rebecca could see a light dusting of frost on the leading edge of the wings and hoped the icing wouldn’t get too bad. They had barely reached the Marmara Sea, the body of water between the Dardanelles and the Bosporus Strait in western Turkey, when the TEREC (Tactical Electronic Reconnaissance) sensor system and radar threat indicator came to life. “Naval search radar, one o’clock,” Mark Fogelman reported. “Analyzing … I’ve got an S-band naval search radar, probably a Head Net or Top Steer radar. That must be the cruiser we’re picking … nope, wait, now I got two S-band radars, one farther north. The closer one must be the destroyer and the farther one must be the cruiser.”

  “Copy that, Mark,” Rebecca Furness acknowledged. “Let me see the satellite photos again.”

  Fogelman gave Furness a small binder with satellite photos of Russian warships stationed off the coast of Turkey, delivered electronically just a few hours earlier. There were actually two groups of warships directly off Turkey’s northern coast in the Black Sea: a guided-missile cruiser task force, led by the cruiser Marshal Ustinov, with two guided-missile destroyers and two light frigates escorting it. Farther east, halfway between the Crimean Peninsula and Turkey, was an aviation cruiser task force, spearheaded by the carrier Novorossiysk, which carried missile and antisubmarine-warfare helicopters and several Yak-38 Forger vertical takeoff and landing fighters. The Novorossiysk battle group was escorted by two guided-missile destroyers and four frigates with powerful air search radars. Antisubmarine sonars patrolled the waters between the two groups, making sure nothing sneaked in between the two powerful Russian battle groups.

  “Thunder One-One flight, use caution for Russian patrol vessels at your twelve o’clock, one hundred miles,” the air traffic controller at Istanbul Air Control Center told them. “They have requested that aircraft be vectored at least sixty miles around them.”

  “Roger, copy, Istanbul,” Furness acknowledged. On interphone she remarked, “The magic number: sixty miles. Ten miles outside range of our radar reconnaissance pod.”

  “And just outside maximum range of the cruiser’s SA-N-6 missile system,” Fogelman added, copying the details of that call down on his kneeboard. “I’m going to transmit and see if I can pick ’em up. Radar’s going to transmit.” He switched on the attack radar, set the range to one hundred and twenty miles, and turned the tilt down. “Bingo. Radar contact, three vessels, about one hundred miles north of our position and about eighty miles offshore, due north of Istanbul.” He hit the manual video button on the attack radar, which recorded the radar’s video image on tape for later analysis. “Can’t break out individual ships yet—there’s supposed to be five ships in that group, but I only see three so far. Not picking up any jamming yet. Going to ‘standby.’ “ He flicked the mode switch to STANDBY, which kept the system warmed up but did not allow any transmissions that the ships could use to home in an antiradar missile.

  “Okay, the cruiser is supposed to have an SA-N-6B Grumble missile system, and we’ll be within range of that in about two minutes,” Fogelman said, reading from the order-of-battle card given to them by NATO intelligence officers back at Kayseri. “The next system is an SA-N-3B Goblet system. The destroyer has an SA-N-7 Gadfly missile system good out about twenty miles, and that’ll be our primary threat.”

  “That and fighters,” Furness reminded him. “We’ll be under constant radar contact from that cruiser, so fighters will be under full radar control—and as long as they’re over water, they’ll have the balls to come down and get us. We gotta stay sharp.”

  “Bingo,” Fogelman called out. “TEREC picked up a strong data-link signal, looks like a Pincer Chord microwave steering signal. Nothing on the RHAWS scope yet, but they don’t need a fighter radar if they got naval. Now I’m picking up a search radar at one to two o’clock. That must be the AWACS plane.” The Novorossiysk battle group was stationed directly under the loitering area of an A-50 “Mainstay” airborne early warning and control radar plane which had been detected flying over the central Black Sea. From its position, it could see the entire Black Sea and detect the approach of any aircraft from sea level to forty thousand feet.

  “Well, we can assume we’re busted,” Furness said grimly. “Let’s hope we can convince them we’re just taking pictures.” On the scrambled HAVE QUICK FM interplane frequency, she radioed, “Okay, guys, we’re feet-wet and moving in. Stay as tight as you can.”

  Two clicks of the microphone was the only acknowledgment from Thunder One-Two, Furness’ wingman, manned by Paula Norton and her temporary navigator, Curt Aldridge. Of course, the two RF-111Gs were prepared in case the Russians didn’t buy that argument. Furness’ RF-111G carried four AGM-88C HARM antiradar missiles and two AIM-9P-3 Sidewinder missiles under the wings, along with the TEREC electronic reconnaissance pallet in the bomb bay.

  Norton’s aircraft was configured completely differently. She carried an AN/ALQ-131 electronic countermeasures jamming pod mounted between the ventral fins in the rear of the jet and a total of twelve ADM-141 TALD (Tactical Air-Launched Decoy) gliders mounted on pylons under each wing. The TALDs were small four-hundred-pound unpowered gliders resembling small cruise missiles, with small wings that pop out after release. The TALDs carried chaff dispensers, radar reflectors, tiny radar transmitters, and heat emitters that would make the eight-foot-long missiles look like slow-moving attack aircraft to a weapons officer or fire control officer. Two more two-ship RF-111G Vampire hunter-killer formations—half the Vampires deployed to Turkey—had been launched that night to probe the boundaries of the Russian Fleet stationed not far from Turkey’s shores and to take an indirect part in the first counterattack by the Ukrainian Air Force against their Russian invaders.

  “Thunder One-One flight, warning, you are endangering your aircraft by proceeding in that direction,” the Turkish radar controller said. No shit, Rebecca thought. “What are your intentions?”

  “Thunder One-One is due regard,” she replied.

  “Understand, One-One,” the controller said. Furness noticed that the air traffic
controllers sounded much more official and their English was very good—the civilian controllers must have been replaced by military controllers in critical centers such as Istanbul. A civilian controller might not know that “due regard” meant that a military flight was going off to parts unknown—this controller knew and understood right away. “Cleared to proceed, contact me on this frequency when able.”

  For a moment Furness and Fogelman thought he was going to add “Good luck,” but he did not.

  “Thunder, go active,” Furness radioed. That was the signal to Norton and Aldridge to take spacing as briefed in mission planning and to go to their briefed radio frequency. “Shut ’em down and button up, Mark,” Furness said on interphone. Fogelman began turning off exterior lights, turning the identification beacons to standby, turning off the Doppler radar, attack radar, and other transmitters, and buckling up their oxygen masks, donning gloves, rolling down sleeves, and lowering the clear visors on their helmets. Fogelman set 243.0, the international UHF emergency frequency, in the primary radio, and the prebriefed AWACS secure voice channel in the secondary radio.

  “Thunder, this is Banjo, good evening,” the NATO E-3B AWACS controller said a few moments later. “Fence check, stand by. One-One.”

  At that, Fogelman briefly shut off the Mode Four transponder which provided secure identification for the AWACS controller, then turned it back on. “Fence check complete, One-One,” Furness replied. The controller repeated the process for all the Thunder aircraft. They could not hear it, but Turkish and Russian-speaking controllers on the same plane were checking in other aircraft as well.

  “One-One flight, push blue,” the controller said. Fogelman switched the radio to the second prebriefed frequency, where one controller would control only their two aircraft. On the new frequency, the controller did not check them in again; he assumed both aircraft had made the jump to the new frequency: “Thunder Flight, you have bandits at two o’clock, high, eighty miles, not paired on you.”

  “The destroyer is lit up like a Christmas tree,” Fogelman reported. “S-band search radar, F-band director for the Gadfly missiles, even the X-band for the cannon. They must not be talking to their AWACS or … ah, they’re going radar-silent now. I still see a side lobe from an H-band close-in weapon system radar—they’re ready for cruise missiles.”

  “Thunder, range to first target, thirty miles.”

  “We’re well inside Grumble missile range, coming up on Goblet range,” Fogelman said. They were still flying north toward the guided-missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov and its escorts, still at ten thousand feet. “Inside Goblet range, still no sign of the F-band. They’re staying cool. Coming up on Gadfly range.”

  Then, on the emergency frequency, they heard in English, “Unidentified aircraft fifty miles north of Istanbul heading north, this is the Russian missile destroyer Stoykiy. You are endangering yourself by approaching our vessels. Suggest you turn away immediately and maintain a fifty-kilometer space from our vessels. Suggest an immediate heading of zero-four-five for at least ten minutes. Thank you. Please respond immediately.”

  “Gadfly range, now,” Fogelman announced.

  “Arm ’em up, Mark,” Furness said. Fogelman had already displayed the weapon status page on the right Multi-Function Display. On his weapons panel, Fogelman turned the weapon status and control switch to ALL and made sure that all four of the AGM-88 HARM legends were highlighted on the right MFD, indicating they were powered up and ready. When he received good READY lights from all four missiles, he depressed the number-three weapon cassette, rotated the weapon select switch to the number-three position, and selected BOMB on the mode switch. On the right-side MFD, only the missile on the number-three pylon indicated ready.

  “All weapons check good, number-three missile selected,” Fogelman reported.

  Almost at the same time they heard a brief “Pump” on the secure radio. At that, Furness chopped power and began a rapid descent. Thunder One-Two had released two TALD decoys, which would fly straight ahead and begin a slow descent, and they had also begun electronic countermeasures to try to get the Russian radar plane to break lock and lose track of the Vampires. The pod Thunder One-Two carried was designed to jam the Russian AWACS plane, but not the naval search radars—hopefully this would force the ships to turn on their search radars, and hopefully give Furness and Fogelman a chance to kill it. The TALDs were not programmed to fly closer than fifteen miles to any ship and would crash in the ocean someplace far behind the Russian cruiser …

  … if they were allowed to continue flying. At that moment, Fogelman cried out, “SA-N-7 up, eleven o’clock!”

  “One-One, working Gadfly,” Furness reported on the command radio.

  “The Gadfly’s still up … okay, it’s fading, he’s locked on to the decoys,” Fogelman reported, activating the radar altimeter and setting the warning bug for one thousand feet. “You’ve got five thousand to level … two thousand to level … decoy’s been out for thirty seconds … one thousand … five hundred … coming level.” They were now flying at an angle away from the lead Russian destroyer, maintaining a range of about twenty miles—just outside the deadly SA-N-7 Gadfly missile’s range. “My HARM is receiving telemetry, first one will be from the number-three pylon. Go to ‘Attack.’ “

  “Thanks, Mark.” Furness set her ISC (Integrated Steering Control) to ATTACK, which would take range information from the TEREC system and give her steering information to the nearest threat.

  “Okay, boys, you gonna just watch them go by or—”

  Suddenly they saw a bright flash of light off in the distance, and a missile’s motor plume briefly illuminated the profile of a large military vessel—they were twenty miles away, but it seemed close enough to touch. The Russian ship decided not to issue any more warnings—at a range of about seventeen miles, the destroyer Stoykiy opened fire with an SA-N-7 surface-to-air missile. “One-One, Gadfly liftoff,” Furness reported on the AWACS network. Then, on the international emergency frequency, she radioed in the clear, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, any radio, Thunder One-Zero is under attack. Repeat, we are under attack.” She started a turn to the left to center the steering bars.

  “Missile one is locked on,” Fogelman reported.

  “Roger.” On the AWACS net, she radioed, “One-One, magnum,” indicating a HARM missile launch to other friendly aircraft, then said on interphone, “Clear to launch. Kill the sucker, Mark.”

  Fogelman reached down to his weapons panel, moved the launch switch from OFF to MANUAL, and pressed the pickle button. Immediately the left wing swung up, then stabilized, as the leftmost AGM-88 HARM missile dropped off the number-three pylon. The missile fell for a few seconds as it stabilized itself in the slipstream—which allowed enough time for Furness and Fogelman to close their eyes against the bright glare of the missile’s motor. The HARM’s motor seemed to explode as it started, and an impossibly bright column of fire erupted in the night sky. In seconds the big missile was traveling over Mach-one, in a slight overhead arc directly at where the SA-N-7 missile had lifted off. About eight seconds after launch, as Furness started a gradual turn back to the east, they saw a bright flash of light on the horizon, followed by several smaller flashes and what appeared to be missiles cooking off and spinning into the Black Sea.

  “Banjo, One-One, good magnum hit, I see secondaries,” Furness radioed.

  “Oh, man, oh, man,” Fogelman breathed. He dropped his oxygen mask with a flick of his wrist, as if he couldn’t draw enough air through it. “Goddamn, we actually hit something. We hit a real live fucking ship.”

  “C’mon, Mark,” Furness said. “Stay focused.”

  “Becky, it’s just that I… hell, I never thought I’d actually fire one of these for real.” He fastened his oxygen mask to his face, took a deep breath, and began checking the TEREC threat indications again. “Okay, it looks like the F-band is off the air … okay, the S-band search radar on the cruiser is back up and hitting us right in the face. He co
uld be taking over the air intercept for the Russian AWACS if he’s being jammed. That’s the one we want.”

  “One-Two, give us some music,” Furness radioed to Norton.

  “One-Two, pump,” Norton replied as Aldridge ejected two more TALD glider decoys.

  Fogelman selected the antiradar missile on the number-six pylon, then continued to check his sensors. “Still got a lock on the S-band air search … shit, the SA-N-6 just came up! I’m selecting the missile on four … dammit, c’mon, man, take it, take it … got it! I got a fix on both the Grumble and the S-band. Command bars are on the target.”

  “Turning,” Furness replied, and began a steep 60-degree turn toward the Russian cruiser. The HARM missile had to be aimed within 5 degrees of its intended target before it could lock on. She keyed the mike: “Banjo, One-One …”

  “Missile launch!” Fogelman cried out.

  At that, they could see first one missile, then another, then four more missiles rise vertically from the horizon, drawing bright lines of fire in the sky. The lines began to curl a bit—the first one or two missiles were obviously going for decoys, but the cruiser had rapid-fired enough missiles for all of them.

  “Missiles away!” Fogelman cried out, and hit the launch button. When the HARM missiles were away and well clear of the Vampire, Fogelman depressed the four jammer switchlights on the front instrument panel, and the forward XMIT light came on immediately—the SA-N-6 Grumble was locked on to them solidly. “Grumble at twelve o’clock,” he said. “I lost sight of the missiles … I can’t see them!”

  “Set one hundred feet on the LARA bug!” she shouted, and began a rapid descent to one hundred feet above the sea without changing heading. Their smallest radar cross-section was head-on, and if they turned they would be exposing more of themselves to the Russian missile guidance radar. “Gimme chaff.” Furness began a short-frequency up-and-down oscillation, no more than a hundred feet, trying to impart a rolling motion to the missiles that might throw them off.