Iron Wolf

by Dale Brown

  More vehicles, launchers, and command trucks belonging to long-range S-300 and S-400 SAM battalions were already deployed in a wide ring around these new tactical ballistic missile and cruise missile sites. Close-in protection was provided by detachments of Tor-M1 30mm gun and short-range SAM units.

  Another convoy of large armored trucks, this one even more heavily guarded by grim-faced Spetsnaz troops, followed the Iskander brigade. These trucks turned off onto a side road and drove deep into the heart of the newly created missile complex. There, in another camouflaged clearing, specialist crews waited to off-load their cargoes of tactical nuclear warheads into a new bunker dug deep into the Russian soil.

  Gennadiy Gryzlov was keeping all of his options open. If his conventional forces failed to defeat the Poles, he would still possess the power to turn Poland into a ravaged, radioactive wasteland with a brutal, lightning-fast tactical ballistic and cruise missile strike.

  OVER BELARUS

  THAT NIGHT

  Twenty Su-34 fighter bombers streaked low over the fields and forests of eastern Belarus, flying just high enough to clear trees and power lines. Three big KAB-1500L laser-guided bombs hung from the center-line and inner-wing hardpoints on each aircraft. Two of the fifteen-hundred-kilogram bombs were bunker-busters, designed to penetrate up to two meters of reinforced concrete and then explode with devastating power. The third KAB-1500L carried by each Su-34 was a highly lethal thermobaric bomb. It contained two small explosive charges and a large container of highly toxic and flammable fuel. Once the bomb was dropped, its first charge would detonate at a preset height, splitting the fuel container. As a mist of dispersed fuel drifted down, the weapon’s second charge would go off, igniting the fuel cloud in a massive explosion. The KAB-1500’s thermobaric warhead was designed to create a searing fireball with a radius of one hundred and fifty meters, while its powerful, lung-rupturing shock wave would kill anyone caught within five hundred meters of the blast.

  In effect, the two squadrons of Su-34s were carrying enough precision-guided explosives to turn much of the historic city center of Warsaw into a sea of shattered, burned-out ruins. Two Kh-31 antiradiation missiles and a pair of long-range, radar-guided R-77E antiair missiles on the outer-wing pylons completed their armament load.

  Strapped into the darkened cockpit of one of the lead fighter-bombers, Major Viktor Zelin firmly held the Su-34 on course as it bounced and juddered through turbulent pockets of warmer and colder air. He blinked away a droplet of sweat trickling down from under his helmet. Without the terrain-avoidance and terrain-following capabilities ordinarily provided by his aircraft’s Leninets B-004 phased-array radar, flying this low seemed like madness. But their orders were to go in without radar until they were almost right on top of their planned targets.

  The brass said flying without active radars would help ensure surprise. Maybe so, he thought gloomily. Then again, the generals and politicians who’d ordered this stunt were sitting around knocking back vodka in cushy operations rooms back in Voronezh and Moscow. They weren’t the ones who would pay the price for any nasty surprises.

  Abruptly, Zelin pulled back on the stick, climbing just high enough to clear the onion-domed top of a little village church that suddenly appeared right in front of them. “Eto piz`dets!” he grumbled. “This is fucked up! First, Voronezh wants us to go in practically blind. And then we’re not even carrying enough air-to-air missiles to scare off one Polish F-16, let alone tangle with their whole damned air force.”

  Beside him, his navigation and weapons officer, Captain Nikolai Starikov, smiled tightly. The major was a superb pilot, but he was never really happy until he found something to bitch about. “Mixing it up with the Poles is what those Su-35s out ahead of us are for,” he said calmly. “And the boys on the Beriev have their eyes open. They’ll let us know if anyone’s heading our way.”

  “They’d better,” Zelin said darkly.

  Another twenty Su-35 fighters were flying about twenty kilometers ahead of them, ready to zoom farther ahead and bounce any Polish planes that tried to intercept the raid. Technically, Russia could have committed many more combat aircraft to this mission, but not without significantly reducing its ability to effectively command the attack force. The big, four-engine Beriev A-100 Airborne Early Warning and Control plane flying at medium altitude was a huge improvement on the old A-50 “Mainstay,” which had been limited to controlling just ten to twelve fighters or strike planes at a time. But there were still limits on how many planes the fifteen systems operators aboard the A-100 could handle.

  In this case, the calculation was that the Poles would have trouble getting more than a handful of their best fighters off the ground before the Russian strike force was already on its way home—leaving Warsaw ablaze behind them. But even if they reacted faster than predicted, their F-16s and even older MiG-29s were no match for Russia’s Su-35s, at least not in a beyond-visual-range missile shootout.

  “Beriev reports no airborne contacts yet,” Starikov said, listening intently to information radioed by the controllers aboard the AWACS plane. He glanced down at the digital map on his MFD. It used data from their inertial navigation and GPS receivers to show their current position. “Thirty minutes to beginning of attack run.”

  REMOTE OPERATIONS CONTROL CENTER,

  IRON WOLF SQUADRON COMPOUND,

  POWIDZ, POLAND

  THAT SAME TIME

  “Search radar, L-band phased-array, Beriev-100 detected. Eleven o’clock. Seventy miles from Vedette Two and closing,” Brad McLanahan heard the XF-111’s SPEAR threat-warning system report. Although his XF-111 was still parked inside its camouflaged shelter at Powidz, it was receiving and evaluating information collected by some of Sky Masters’ newest toys—a series of experimental unmanned aircraft leased out to Scion for testing in real-world combat conditions.

  This particular type of drone, designated by Hunter Noble’s aerospace engineering team as the RQ-20 Vedette, was about as simple, stealthy, and cheap as could be imagined. Designed around a single lightweight Pratt & Whitney 610F turbofan engine, the Vedette carried only the basic avionics and flight controls it needed for remote piloting and a small package of radar-warning receivers. Rather than using radar to detect other aircraft, Vedettes “heard” the signals emitted by their radars instead. Theoretically, a chain of data-linked Vedettes, all of them orbiting far forward of friendly bases, could use triangulation to get a pretty good read on bearings, ranges, speeds, and radar types—even against agile, frequency-hopping radars like the AESA system carried by that Beriev-100 AWACS aircraft.

  Tonight, the Iron Wolf Squadron was putting this theory to the test.

  Brad checked the map displayed on his monitor. Vedette Two was currently circling low near a little town called Kuliki in central Belarus. That put the Russian AWACS plane about eighty nautical miles east of Minsk—way too far forward for it to be operating in a defensive role. Unless this was just a feint designed to test Polish air defense reaction times and measures, the Beriev and its crew must be providing early warning and control for an approaching Russian strike force.

  Briefly, he pondered that possibility. Like all good chess players, the Russians could be subtle, if they felt the need. Then he dismissed it. Although the destruction of Konotop and Baranovichi must have come as a nasty shock, Gryzlov and his air commanders were probably still confident that their fighter and bomber regiments could steamroll right over Poland’s much smaller air force and its relatively weak SAM units. As far as they were concerned, he suspected, subtlety was something important only to the outnumbered and the outgunned.

  No, Brad thought, the radar emissions from that Beriev-100 meant the Russians really were coming this time. He tapped a series of commands, linking the information from his system to the other remote-piloting consoles and to a whole series of Polish airfields and air defense command centers. Then he picked up a secure phone. “Iron Wolf Ops to Thirty-Second Air Base. I need to speak to Colonel Kasperek. R
ight away!”

  “He is in his aircraft, sir. Out on the flight line. I will connect you,” the air-base operations officer said quickly. Transferring most of his F-16s from Poznan in western Poland to the more central 32nd Air Base at Łask had been one of President Wilk’s first responses to Russia’s ultimatum.

  There was an incredibly short delay and then, “Kasperek here.”

  Brad grinned to himself. Trust Paweł Kasperek to be on top of things. The Polish Air Force colonel must have been waiting for this call ever since their conference with President Wilk earlier in the day. “It’s on, Paweł,” he said. “We’ve got a Beriev-100 radiating east of Minsk and heading our way.”

  “Any sign of other bandits?” Kasperek asked.

  “Not yet,” Brad told him. “My bet is their strike aircraft are coming in behind the AWACS a little ways, flying right down in the dirt. They’ll have fighters out in front.” He tapped a few keys, indicating guesstimated positions and vectors for the as-yet-undetected Russian strike aircraft and their escorts. “And, as we expected, they’re all coming in dark.”

  “I concur,” the Polish Air Force colonel said, obviously studying the map images sent to him via data link. “So, which air defense plan do you recommend?”

  For a fleeting moment, Brad was struck by the wild incongruity of this situation. He hadn’t even finished college, and yet the highly trained and experienced squadron commander chosen to lead Poland’s best pilots and planes into combat wanted him to select a battle plan. Then again, weird as it might seem to an outsider, he probably knew the capabilities of Scion’s stable of unmanned aircraft better than anyone except Hunter Noble. In fact, he’d spent a good part of his interrupted internship at Sky Masters studying different ways to employ them in action.

  Thinking fast, he called up the position of Coyote Four. The MQ-55 was currently on station over the region where Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus all came together. Given the Beriev’s present course and speed, the plotted intercept time was around twenty minutes. More quick calculations allowed him to discard several of the options crafted earlier by the Iron Wolf Squadron and Kasperek and his staff. None of their prepared plans was perfect, but, given the geometry and timing, one stood out as a close fit. “I recommend we go with CIOS Z MAŃKI CHARLIE, SUCKER PUNCH CHARLIE.”

  “Very well,” the colonel said. “But the timing will be very tight.”

  “True,” Brad agreed. “Still, it’s our best shot at them.”

  “I concur,” Kasperek said again. Still holding the secure phone in one hand, he snapped an order in Polish over his radio mike. Within seconds, the sound of multiple jet engines spooling up echoed over the connection. “My alert fighters are taking off now.”

  “Pomyślnych łowów! Good hunting!” Brad told him, using some of his acquired Polish. He hung up and hit another key, instantly connecting him to all the other Iron Wolf pilots on duty in the operations center. “This is McLanahan. This is not an exercise. Execute SUCKER PUNCH CHARLIE immediately.”

  Responses from Mark Darrow, Bill Sievert, and Karen Tanabe rippled through his headset. They’d pretty obviously been waiting to go as soon as that first report from the chain of Vedettes flashed across their screens.

  “Get your birds off the ground pronto and launch as soon as you’ve got good altitude,” Brad ordered. “Bill, you and George are the designated missile-target controllers for Coyotes Two and Three once SUCKER PUNCH goes active. I’m flying Coyote Four myself.”

  “Copy that,” Sievert said. “Smooth and I are gonna have some fun tonight.”

  Brad grinned. “Just don’t get cocky, old man.”

  Sievert chuckled. “Yes, Mr. McLanahan, sir. We’ll be good.”

  Minutes later, three remotely piloted XF-111s taxied out onto the runway at Powidz, swung into line one after the other, and roared off into the night sky on afterburner—climbing through five thousand feet in seconds. At ten thousand feet, the SuperVarks leveled off and turned east toward Warsaw.

  In the right-hand seat of the XF-111 control cab he shared with Sievert, George “Smooth” Herres said, “Configure MALDs to Foxtrot One Six mode.” He knew that the weapons officers for Darrow and Tanabe were issuing the same commands at the same time to their own XF-111s.

  “MALDs configured,” the SuperVark’s computer reported.

  “Set navigation package Sierra Papa Charlie.”

  “Navigation package Sierra Papa Charlie set,” the computer said.

  “Countdown to MALD launch?” Herres inquired. Once a strike package was in place, SPEAR would interface with the attack computers and determine the best time to launch the autonomous MALD aircraft.

  “Forty seconds,” SPEAR responded, followed by, “MALDs away.”

  Four ADM-160B decoys dropped out from under their XF-111’s wings, joining the flock of eight more launched simultaneously by the other two Iron Wolf fighter-bombers. Each MALD’s small wings unfolded at launch. Propelled by ultralight turbojet engines, the twelve tiny decoys headed straight toward Warsaw at three hundred knots, followed closely by the SuperVark controlled by Sievert and Herres. Behind them, the other two XF-111s circled back toward Powidz.

  At the same time, sixty-plus nautical miles southeast of the Iron Wolf Squadron, the last of twelve F-16s took off from Łask and sped onward, flying very low along a route that would take them well south of Warsaw and then back northeast toward a preplanned point north of Lublin. Ground crews and pilots began frantically prepping the remaining fighters.

  Back at Powidz itself, two MQ-55 drones lifted off the runway and flew east-northeast at five hundred knots, on a course that would take them north of Warsaw. Coyotes Two and Three were on the hunt. And two hundred and sixty nautical miles east, deeper in Belarus and still guided by the data coming from the little RQ-20 Vedettes, Coyote Four arrowed onward—steadily closing the gap with the oncoming Russian Beriev-100.

  It was all an incredibly intricate aerial ballet, with more than thirty Iron Wolf and Polish Air Force aircraft, drones, and decoys moving in groups and singly toward the positions laid out in SUCKER PUNCH CHARLIE.

  Twelve minutes after launch, the flock of AGM-160 MALDs reached Warsaw. Acting on their programmed instructions, they went active, mimicking the radar signatures and flight profiles of F-16 fighters, and began orbiting the Polish capital. The XF-111 remotely piloted by Bill Sievert flew with them.

  “Caution, L-band search radar detected, Beriev-100, eleven o’clock high, range two hundred miles,” the SPEAR threat-warning system reported.

  “Think they see us, Smooth?” Sievert asked his partner.

  “Oh, yeah, those guys on that Beriev should be picking up a bunch of targets on their screens right about now,” Herres replied. He relayed the information to another operations-center control cab, where Brad sat hunched over his screens, joystick, and keyboard, carefully flying Coyote Four northeast over Belarus on a course to intercept the incoming Russian AWACS plane. “We’re over Warsaw and wriggling, boss.”

  “Copy that, Smooth,” Brad said. Based on data supplied by the Vedette radar-warning drones and now from the XF-111 circling over Warsaw, he estimated that his MQ-55 drone was within sixty nautical miles of the Beriev. He took a deep breath. It was time. “Light it up, guys!”

  “Activate AN/APG-81 radar,” Herres told their XF-111.

  “APG-81 active,” the computer said.

  Herres’s display filled with air targets, mostly their decoy flock masquerading as Polish F-16s. But there was one big sucker out about two hundred nautical miles to the east. The computer identified it as the Beriev. The rest of the Russian strike force was still effectively invisible. Even as powerful at the APG-81 was, their radar wouldn’t be able to pick up Su-35s or Su-34s until they came within eighty to eighty-five nautical miles. “Designate Beriev-100 as target and relay data to Coyote Four,” he ordered.

  “Target designated. Data relayed,” the XF-111’s computer replied.

  “That Russian AWACS is a
ll yours, Brad,” Herres said.

  “Copy that,” Brad said, seeing the Coyote feeding the target data to six of the ten AIM-120C air-to-air missiles in its weapons bay. He heard the bay doors whine open and saw six “AMRAAM” indicators blink and then vanish on his display. “Attacking now.”

  One by one, six advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles released, fell out of the bay, and ignited—accelerating to Mach 4 as they raced up into the night sky toward the distant Russian Beriev-100. For now, their own radar seekers were inactive, ready to energize only when the missiles reached close range.

  The Coyote’s bay door whined shut again.

  ABOARD THE BERIEV-100,

  OVER BELARUS

  THAT SAME TIME

  Seven thousand meters above the darkened Belarusian countryside, the converted four-engine IL-476 flew westward at three hundred and fifty knots. A large circular dome mounted on two struts above its fuselage contained the Vega Premier active electronically scanned radar. The dome rotated fast, once every five seconds, giving it high capability against fast-moving targets. Two sleek Su-27 fighters flew lazy circles around the much larger AWACS plane, ready to intervene against any enemy attack.

  Staring intently at his radar display, the Beriev’s senior air controller, Colonel Vitaliy Samsonov, keyed his mike. “Groza and Okhotnik Flights, this is Strike Controller One. We detect thirteen bandits over Warsaw. Twelve are F-16s. One is a larger aircraft, as yet unidentified. None of them are radiating at this time.”

  “Thunderstorm Lead copies,” the voice of the lead pilot for the Su-34 fighter-bombers replied.

  “Hunter Lead copies,” the Su-35 fighter commander said. “Standing by to fly ahead and engage at your order.”

  Samsonov nodded to himself. Now that they knew the Poles had a strong combat air patrol over Warsaw, it was almost time to unleash the fighters—sending them streaking out in front to knock those F-16s out of the sky before the bombers came within reach.