Iron Wolf

by Dale Brown

  “Search radar detected!” one of his junior officers said suddenly. “It’s coming from that larger aircraft over Warsaw. Strong signal! I can’t identify it, Colonel, the frequencies are switching too fast! It has a lock on us, though!”

  Frowning, Samsonov switched his display so that it repeated the information reaching the younger officer’s station. He studied it intently. What the hell was that radar? It had to be an AESA type, and the Poles weren’t supposed to have any radar systems like that in their inventory. Quickly, he ran the data through another program, looking for some match. He stared intently, watching while the Beriev’s computers sorted through some of the known signal characteristics associated with a host of different AESA-type airborne radars.

  “Sir?” another systems operator said uncertainly. “I picked up a very small bogey in our front left quadrant. The range was around ninety kilometers. But it’s gone now. It was just there for a second or two.”

  “Then look harder, Captain Yanayev!” Samsonov growled, still focused on his own computer. “And make sure it wasn’t just another damned systems glitch.” Fielded operationally for the first time a year ago, the Beriev-100 was still a new aircraft, operating with a new radar and new, incredibly complex software. Occasional bugs and blips were a fact of life.

  As more signals from that unknown radar accumulated, the computer steadily narrowed down the possibilities—and then, quite suddenly, it offered an identification: Radar is an AN/APG-81. For a second, Samsonov stared at the glowing text in shock. That was the type of radar carried by the new American F-35 Lightning II. What the devil was an American stealth fighter, the newest in their arsenal, doing orbiting over Warsaw?

  A stealth fighter! Abruptly, he remembered Captain Yanayev’s earlier report of a bogey that blipped onto the screen and disappeared. He spun around in his seat to look down the crowded compartment. “Yanayev! Find that—”

  Alarms shrieked suddenly and the huge aircraft banked hard to the right, rolling over almost onto its side. Unsecured manuals, coffee cups, and clipboards flew wildly through the Beriev’s radar compartment, whacking into bulkheads, crewmen, computer screens, and lights.

  “Missile attack!” Samsonov heard the pilot scream over the intercom. “We’re under missile—”

  Three of the AIM-120Cs slashing up at them out of the darkness missed—jammed or decoyed away by the Beriev’s automated defenses. One slammed into the aircraft’s starboard wing and exploded. Another blew a massive hole in its fuselage. The third missile smashed into big plane’s tail and tore it away. Spinning out of control, the rapidly disintegrating Beriev-100 plummeted earthward, wreathed in flame.

  Leading two squadrons of Su-35s spread in fighting pairs across a twenty-kilometer-wide front, Colonel Alexei Filippov listened in horror to the report from one of the two Su-27s that had been escorting their AWACS plane. “A shitload of missiles just came out of fucking nowhere, Hunter Lead,” the lead Su-27 pilot said tersely. “They blew the hell out of the Beriev. And now we’ve got nothing on our radars. Absolutely nothing.”

  Forcing himself to speak more calmly than he felt, Filippov said, “Understood, Guard Dog Lead. Did you get a vector on those missiles?”

  “We think they came from the southwest,” the other pilot said, not sounding calm at all. “But that’s only a guess. It was all so damned fast!”

  “Head in that direction,” Filippov ordered. “See what you can pick up!” He scowled. Without guidance from the Beriev, the bomber strike force and its escorts were on their own. Which meant he was in effective command. Should he abort the raid? It was obvious that the Poles knew they were coming. Otherwise, there was no way they could have ambushed the AWACS so effectively.

  No, the colonel thought coldly. Turning and running now would be cowardice. Even without the Beriev, his Su-35s still had a significant edge over those enemy F-16s. They had better radars and carried more long-range missiles. And Moscow would not thank him for handing the Poles another propaganda victory. He switched back to the frequency for his own fighters. “Hunter Flights, this is Hunter Lead. Activate your radars and go to full military power! We’ll climb to five thousand meters so we can get a better look at what’s in the sky ahead of us. Then we’ll go kill some Poles!”

  OVER WARSAW

  THAT SAME TIME

  “Warning, warning, multiple X-band target search radars, Su-35s, twelve o’clock high, range one hundred fifty miles and closing, seven hundred knots,” the XF-111’s computer reported to its control cab at Powidz.

  “Looks like we’ve got their attention, Smooth,” Sievert muttered. He kept the SuperVark in a slight bank to the right, still circling over the Polish capital city at five thousand feet.

  Herres nodded. “Oh, yeah. That we do.” He studied his displays. “We should get a good solid paint on them in about five minutes.”

  Sievert winked at him. “Hell, that seems like an awful long time to wait. Maybe we should mosey out to go meet those Rooskies in a toe-to-toe missile confrontation.”

  “Now, guys,” they both heard Brad say through their headsets, “let’s stick to the plan, okay?”

  “Only joking, Mr. McLanahan, sir,” Sievert said, chuckling. “Just passing the time!”

  Beside him, Herres rolled his eyes. He clicked off his mike long enough to say, “Bet the kid’s never even seen Dr. Strangelove.”

  “Ah, the young people these days,” Sievert agreed with a grin. “Missing out on all the real classics. It’s a crying shame, Smooth. A crying shame.”

  Two small green dots blinked repeatedly on their map displays. Fifty nautical miles to the northeast, Coyotes Two and Three had reached their preset position and were orbiting low over the little Polish village of Grodzisk Duźy. The two northernmost flank units for SUCKER PUNCH CHARLIE, each loaded with ten AMRAAMs, were on station. A couple of minutes later, more green dots appeared roughly seventy nautical miles southeast of Warsaw. The southern flank—Colonel Kasperek’s twelve F-16s—was also in place, loitering silently not far north of Lublin.

  OVER POLAND

  A FEW MINUTES LATER

  Colonel Alexei Filippov glared at the multifunction display showing his Su-35’s evaluation of the radar data it was picking up. This was crazy, he thought. Based on size and radar type, his computer was claiming that the target was the new American F-35 stealth fighter-bomber. But obviously the thing wasn’t as stealthy as they claimed, since he was picking it up at maximum range. Could it be another aircraft with an F-35 radar on board? What the hell were they facing?

  “Hunter Two,” he radioed his wingman. “Do you see what I see? A big fat target with an APG-81 radar?”

  “Da, Colonel,” his wingman replied. “And I show a signal strength high enough so that it must have a lock on us.”

  “Probably,” Filippov agreed. “Fortunately, we’re well out of their range.” Then, still shaking his head in disbelief, he spoke to the rest of his aircraft. “Hunter Flights, this is Hunter Lead. I will take that big bastard at maximum range. The rest of you stand by to engage those Polish F-16s as soon as you get a good lock-on.” Acknowledgments flooded through his earphones.

  Filippov designated the strangers as the target for his first salvo of four R-77E radar-guided missiles. His thumb hovered over the missile switch on his stick, but he held off. They were still about fifty kilometers outside the reach of his weapons. Firing now would just waste missiles to no effect.

  BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

  My God, he thought, horrified. They were under attack—by missiles streaking in from the northwest. But how? There were no radars active in that quadrant, and no reports of any enemy aircraft at all.

  Instinctively, Filippov yanked his stick hard left, breaking away from the attack in a high-G turn. Straining against nine times the force of gravity, he thumbed another switch, activating the Su-35’s defensive systems. Bundles of chaff and sunburst flares streamed out behind the violently maneuvering Russian fighter, corkscrewing across the sky. At th
e same time, his wingtip ECM pods poured energy into an array of radar frequencies, trying to jam the seeker heads on any missiles that might be homing in on his aircraft.

  Something flashed past his canopy and vanished in the night. Not far away, an explosion lit the sky. A cloud of debris, smoke, and fire marked the end of a warhead-shattered Su-35.

  Swearing under his breath, Filippov rolled inverted and dove, hoping to lose any remaining enemy missiles in the ground clutter. A cacophony of desperate voices poured into his ears as other pilots radioed frantic warnings or sought orders. Grimly, the Russian colonel rolled out of his dive at one thousand meters and tried to make some sense out of the information flooding through his data link. He had to regain control over his squadrons.

  Second by second, a clearer picture emerged. Six of his twenty fighters were gone—blown to pieces by a salvo of missiles his computer said were American-made AIM-120s. Two pilots had successfully ejected. They were now drifting downwind into Poland and captivity. But the other four were undoubtedly dead. And the rest of his Su-35s were scattered across a wide swath of sky, the inevitable result of each pilot’s individual maneuvers to evade attack.

  Filippov thought fast. The stealth aircraft that had surprised them had to be somewhere north of Warsaw. Very well, he would swing his fighters away from them fast, fly south of the Polish capital, and then turn back hard to come in straight over the city. Whoever was out there hiding would have to engage the Su-35s head-on, or abandon Warsaw’s civilians to the massed strike Su-34 strike force coming in several minutes behind him.

  He set a rally point on his digital map display and then sent it to the other pilots via data link. “Form up here,” he ordered. “And then we get back into the fight!”

  Circling just two hundred meters above the ground, Colonel Paweł Kasperek kept one eye on the plot relayed from Sievert’s Iron Wolf XF-111 over Warsaw. Those Russian fighters were turning south. They were coming right at him. He shrugged. Part of him had hoped the Russian commander would be foolish enough to chase after the undetected Iron Wolf drones that had just savaged his formation. That would have allowed Kasperek’s F-16s to hit them from behind.

  Instead, things were going to get harder. The Russian Irbis-E radars were better than the AN/APG-68 sets equipping his fighters. With all other things being equal, those Su-35s would lock on to his F-16s sooner and fire first.

  Kasperek smiled coldly. Fortunately, thanks to the radar data being relayed by their comrades in the Iron Wolf Squadron, all things were not quite equal. He clicked his mike. “Talon Lead to all Talon Flights. Stand by to engage.” Quickly, he keyed in separate targets for each of his twelve F-16s. Confirmations rippled across his display as their computers accepted the designations.

  He rolled out of his turn and headed north at full power while climbing toward two thousand meters—a move echoed by the rest of the Polish fighters. Glowing visual cues on his HUD gave him a running estimate of the range to the oncoming Russian Su-35s. The two groups of aircraft were closing on each other at incredible combined speed, more than 2,600 kilometers per hour. This, the colonel thought tightly, was going to require almost perfect timing.

  The range marker slid down to one hundred and sixty kilometers. Shrill tones pulsed in his headset. The Russian radars had detected them. “Talon Lead, to Talon Flights. Activate your radars,” Kasperek ordered, pressing a switch to light up his own set. Although they couldn’t yet “see” the Su-35s, going in totally blind would only make the Russians more suspicious.

  One hundred thirty kilometers. Their own radars still hadn’t locked on to the Su-35s. But that didn’t matter. Not with the data supplied by the XF-111 over Warsaw. And they would be in range of the Russian R-77 missiles in less than thirty seconds. Close enough, the Polish colonel decided. “Talon Flights, shoot! And then execute tactical withdrawal!”

  Kasperek toggled the weapons release on his stick. “Fox Three!” he snapped, a call echoed almost simultaneously by the other eleven F-16 pilots. Twenty-four AMRAAMs, two from each Polish fighter, streaked north toward the fast-closing Russian Su-35 formation. And as soon as their missiles were away, the Polish pilots broke hard left, pulling high g’s as they went to full afterburner, and turned away from the Russians.

  “They’re running!” one of the Russian fighter pilots shouted. “The Poles are running away!”

  Colonel Filippov scowled at the images on his radar display. The F-16s were definitely turning away and accelerating. They were pulling away outside his missile range, just seconds before it would have been too late. And there was no way his fighters were going to be able to catch them—not without burning fuel they could not safely expend, not this far from their home base.

  He shook his head in disbelief. This was a rat’s nest. How could the Poles already have so many of their best fighters in the air and waiting for them? First that group of twelve still holding over Warsaw? And now this squadron coming in from the south? Twenty-four F-16s was half the total in their whole damned air force! And where the hell were the Poles getting stealth fighters and weapons from? According to the briefings he’d been given, the Americans were supposed to be sitting this conflict out. Was that a lie?

  But if the Americans were in the war, why had that second group of Polish F-16s suddenly turned tail and fled—especially before their radars could possibly have spotted his Su-35s? They must have been warned by that strange large aircraft orbiting around Warsaw, Filippov suddenly realized. After all, its high-powered APG-81 radar was still locked on to them. A secure data link could feed everything that system picked up to any allied aircraft within range.

  He went cold. Oh, shit. Those F-16s had known exactly what they were doing. They weren’t just running away. They’d already fired at him! “All Hunter Flights! Break left now! Break!” he shouted. “We’re under missile attack!”

  Without waiting for acknowledgments, Filippov threw his Su-35 into another high-G rolling turn. All across the sky, other Russian fighters—galvanized by their leader’s roared orders—were doing the same thing. Decoy flares lit the darkness while chaff blossoms and jammers flooded radar frequencies with false images and static.

  Their commander’s abrupt order was almost in time. Almost.

  Twenty-four AIM-120C missiles tore into the tangle of turning Russian jets. Most of the AMRAAMs were lured off target by chaff, blinded by jamming, or found themselves out of energy and unable to turn with their desperately maneuvering targets. But enough streaked through all the clutter and noise and exploded to send five more Su-35s tumbling out of the sky in spiraling plumes of smoke, fragments, and fire.

  The nine survivors dove for the deck and raced east as fast as they could fly, heading home to Russia and safe haven.

  Colonel Alexei Filippov was not among them.

  Still more than a hundred kilometers from this scene of aerial slaughter, the twenty Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers were also ordered to abort their strike and return to base. Without fighter escort and left blind by the loss of the Beriev-100, pressing on into the heart of an alerted Polish air defense network would have been madness—especially one that appeared to be bristling with American stealth fighters and advanced weapons.

  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  Gennadiy Gryzlov listened intently while his defense staff and commanders summarized their findings. They were still analyzing the fragmentary recordings of radar imagery and other data obtained during the aborted raid on Warsaw, but certain conclusions seemed obvious. Painfully so.

  “The Poles have obtained an arsenal of highly advanced stealth aircraft and weapons,” Colonel General Valentin Maksimov said bleakly. “And it was this new technology which enabled them to successfully ambush our strike force.”

  “Now that we know this, can we go back again—to hit Warsaw with a more powerful attack?” Defense Minister Sokolov asked. His face was pale. The assumption that Russia would have absolute air superiority over Poland had been a k
ey factor in all their war planning. “If we massed even more aircraft, with two or three Berievs along for support and control, surely we could overwhelm the Poles, even with their new stealth capability?”

  “Not at a price we could afford,” Maksimov said, sounding exhausted. “This failed raid cost us a third of our most advanced operational fighters from the western air division assigned to the Ukraine and Poland operation, without inflicting a single loss on the enemy. And we do not yet know what other improvements the Poles may have made to their ground-based air defenses. Without better intelligence, throwing more planes into Polish-controlled airspace would risk too much, for too little possible gain.”

  “But—” Sokolov started to protest.

  Abruptly, Gryzlov’s patience snapped. “Shut up, Gregor! And that goes for the rest of you, too!” He glared around the table. “Stop dancing around the real issue,” he snarled. He tapped a key, bringing up some of the last data received from Filippov’s Su-35 before the colonel was shot down. “Look at that! An American-made aircraft using the same kind of radar used on their new F-35 stealth fighters! Do you think the Poles simply went shopping at some arms bazaar to buy aircraft like that?”

  Grimly, Russia’s air-force commander shook his head. “No, Mr. President.”

  “Of course not!” Gryzlov said. He scowled across the table at Sokolov and Kazyanov. The two men wilted. Gryzlov looked away in disgust, his mind racing. A moment later: “Wait. The American planes that were detected over the western Mediterranean . . .”

  “Our naval vessels did detect an X-band radar several minutes after first contact,” Sokolov said. “Now we know what the Americans were secretly flying across the Atlantic a couple of nights ago, don’t we?” He stabbed a finger at the screen. “Those bastard F-111 hybrids! And God alone only knows what else!”