by Dale Brown
The problem was, the images were high-resolution radar images — they saw everything that could reflect radar energy, including decoys and other targets that looked like threats, and threats could easily be concealed inside buildings or even simple shelters. The only way to draw the decoys out to plot their position was to give them something to shoot at. The cruise missiles carried by the Vampires — FlightHawks, StealthHawks, and Wolverines — were too small and stealthy to fool a strategic surface-to-air missile battery. They needed the real thing.
The SAR images were downloaded to Battle Mountain’s BATMAN Center and displayed on the large screens. The computers picked the most likely targets and quickly displayed them. “There it is,” Luger said. The image he was looking at definitely showed a standard brigade-level SA-10 engagement battery: a command-launcher vehicle, its four missile tubes already erect; two more simplified launcher vehicles, separated by about two miles from one another, only one of which had its tubes raised to launch position; a radar vehicle; a towed, mast-mounted radar for detecting low-flying aircraft and cruise missiles; and several service vehicles, including trailers with extra missiles and cranes to lift the reloads onto the transporter-erector-launcher vehicles. Other SAR images showed the front-level command vehicle, about six miles away, which coordinated the activities of several SA-10 engagement brigades.
“Nice to see you guys,” Luger said. He rolled a set of crosshairs onto the command-launcher vehicle and pressed a button. The geographic coordinates of the vehicle were instantly transmitted via satellite to the Vampire bomber and loaded into the attack computer. He repeated the process with the rest of both the SA-10 brigade and the front-level vehicles in order of priority. “I got all my pictures, guys. I’m ready anytime.”
“Set three hundred clearance plane,” Daren said. When they climbed to the proper altitude, he said, “Here they go.” Daren uploaded the target coordinates to the weapons in the aft bomb bay. The bay held a rotary launcher with eight AGM-165 Longhorn Maverick missiles. The two-thousand-pound Longhorn missile had a two-hundred-pound thermium-nitrate warhead, a two-stage solid-rocket motor that gave it a range of almost sixty nautical miles, and an imaging-infrared guidance sensor. Once he’d programmed the target coordinates, Daren ordered, “Attack commit Longhorn SA-10 brigade.”
“Attack commit Longhorn, stop attack,” the computer responded. After a short pause the aft bomb doors opened, and one by one the Longhorn missiles were shoved into space. After they’d fallen about sixty feet, their rocket motors ignited and the missiles shot ahead, then arced over and above the Vampire bomber and headed back for the SA-10 missile site.
Thirty seconds before impact the Longhorn missiles began transmitting imaging-infrared images via satellite to both the Vampire bomber and to the Battle Management Center back in Battle Mountain. David Luger recognized the very same SA-10 brigade photographed by the NIRTSats just minutes earlier. The Longhorn’s crosshairs were only a small distance off the command-launcher vehicle. He used a trackball to move them back on target, then locked them on. “Got target one,” Luger announced.
“I got targets two and three,” Daren said. He was looking at the infrared images being transmitted from the second and third Longhorns in a window on his supercockpit display. Again the crosshairs needed only slight adjustments to bring them dead on target, and he locked them on. Daren then switched to the first Longhorn, and he was able to watch as the Longhorn missile got closer and closer to the command-launcher vehicle, destroying it moments later. “Good hit on target one! Yeah, baby!” he crowed. Targets two and three were destroyed shortly thereafter, and the SA-10 threat from that site was gone. There were other SA-10 batteries in the area, and Luger loaded their coordinates as well, but they were far enough away at the moment not to be a threat. They needed the Longhorn missiles to knock down any threats closer to their target complex.
Daren selected a waypoint on his supercockpit display. “SA-10s are down. We’re heading in, guys. Center up, Rebecca. Clearance plane two thousand.” She made a hard right turn toward Engels Air Base. With the surface-to-air-missile threats reduced, they could afford to climb a bit higher to stay away from any optically guided antiaircraft artillery sites that might pop up in front of them.
Now that the SA-10 site had been destroyed by Longhorn missiles, the road was clear for an attack on the base itself. From then on, the Vampire bomber was little more than a manned missile-launching truck. David Luger had already identified two large antiaircraft artillery sites near both ends of the base’s long runway, and Daren fired a Longhorn missile at each of them and destroyed it moments later. One Longhorn took out the base’s surveillance-radar antenna, and the last two missiles were sent into the middle of the petroleum-storage facility, setting the entire complex of storage tanks afire.
But the main target was still alive — Engels’s huge inventory of bombers, poised to strike Turkmenistan again.
The center bomb bay contained a rotary launcher with eight AGM-177 Wolverine cruise missiles. The turbojet-powered cruise missiles had three internal bomb bays that could hold a total of three hundred pounds of ordnance, plus a fourth high-explosive warhead section. The Wolverines had been preprogrammed with their own “mission” to fly, so it was just a matter of flying within twenty miles of Engels Air Base, opening the center bomb bay, and letting them go. They were not as fast or as pinpoint-accurate as the Longhorn missiles, but they were perfectly suited for this mission.
One by one the Wolverine missiles flew over Engels’s twelve-thousand-foot-long runway, northern taxiway, and the mass aircraft-parking ramp, about two thousand feet aboveground. As the missiles cruised in, they dropped small canisters on parachutes. Called the CBU-97R Sensor Fuzed Weapon, or SFW, each canister had a small radar sensor in the nose that detected targets below, and it would steer itself and rotate its business end at its targets according to images picked up by the tiny radar. At a computed point in its fall to earth, the SFW canister detonated. Ten copper disks instantly melted and fired from the front of the canister, aimed toward the detected targets below. The white-hot blobs of molten copper could pierce steel up to three-quarters of an inch thick. But as the copper slugs pierced the outer armor they cooled, preventing them from blowing out the opposite end. The result: Each blob of molten copper became thousands of red-hot BB-size pellets that ricocheted around inside at the speed of sound, creating an instantaneous but deadly meat-grinder effect.
On Engels’s runway, taxiways, and aircraft-parking ramp, the result was devastating. Each SFW canister could hit as many as ten targets — aircraft, vehicles of all sizes, or buildings. Each bomb bay on the Wolverine cruise missiles held nine SFW canisters. The Wolverine would eject one SFW canister every few seconds as it cruised across the airfield, emptying one bomb bay per pass. Then it would orbit away from the base, turn around, fly down the runway or taxiway from a different direction, and drop another bomb bay — ful of SFWs.
The timing of the attack was perfect: The ramp and taxiways were choked with thirty-two Tu-22M Backfire and Tu-160 Blackjack bombers preparing for takeoff.
For the next twenty minutes, the eight Wolverine cruise missiles assaulted the base, staggering their attacks so that they deconflicted each other and so that the SFWs would not attack the same target. The results were spectacular and horrifying at the same time: When a Wolverine missile made a pass, the ground below it would suddenly erupt into a carpet of stars as the SFW did its deadly work, followed by explosions and a burst of flame; then the effect was repeated a few dozen yards away as the next SFW detonated. The Wolverines’ orbits changed slightly each time so there was no risk of a missile’s being targeted by ground fire or of its attacking targets that had already been struck. When the Wolverine’s three bomb bays were empty, the missile itself plunged into a final fixed target, detonating its internal high-explosive warhead on support buildings and hangars near the runway, power substations, communications buildings, nearby bridges, and weapon-storage areas.<
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While the Wolverines did their damage, Rebecca Furness and Daren Mace had their own job to do — get their Vampire bomber out of Russia alive.
Daren activated the Vampire bomber’s LADAR, or laser radar, arrays, which instantly “drew” a high-resolution picture of the world around the bomber in all directions for a hundred miles. Each LADAR “snapshot” took only two seconds but produced an image that was of nearly photographic quality — accurate enough to measure objects, compare their dimensions with an internal catalog, and identify them within moments.
“LADAR picked up a flight of four MiG-29s, five o’clock, thirty-three miles, our altitude,” Daren reported. “Second flight of two MiG-25s at nine o’clock, high, forty-seven miles, coming in at Mach two.” The Vampire bomber automatically turned slightly right to present a thinner profile to the MiG-29s and to point its hot exhausts away from the MiGs as well in case they attempted a shot with a long-range heat-seeking missile.
“Come and get us, kids,” Rebecca said. She hit the voice-command button. “Best speed power profile.”
“Best speed power,” the computer responded. The computer immediately set full military power and started a steep climb. The higher it flew and the faster it reached a higher altitude, the greater its average speed would be.
“MiG-29 radar lock-on, twenty-five miles,” Daren said. He hit his voice-command button. “Attack commit MiG-29s.”
“Attack commit MiG-29, stop attack,” the computer responded. It immediately turned farther right, almost going head-to-head with the MiGs, then opened its forward bomb-bay doors and ejected four AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missiles. The missiles dropped several yards below the Vampire, then ignited their solid-rocket motors, shot ahead, picked up the datalinked steering information from the Vampire, and began the chase. As soon as the missiles were away, the attack computer turned the bomber to the left and back on course.
The Scorpion missiles followed the steering signals until about ten seconds from impact, then activated their own onboard radars. The Russian MiG-29 pilots never realized they had been fired on until that moment, and their survival depended on their reaction. In combat-spread formation, each pilot had a specific direction to evade and enough room to do it. All he had to do was execute, without more than a moment’s hesitation.
The pilots that survived were the ones who reacted immediately when the threat warning blared — dropped chaff and flares and turned to their evasion heading as fast as they possibly could. Once the Scorpion missile switched to its own internal terminal guidance radar, it was easily spoofed — akin to walking along normally at first, then walking while wearing blinders. The Scorpion’s radar locked on to the biggest, brightest, and slowest-moving radar reflector within its narrow field of vision — which for two of the four MiG-29s happened to be the cloud of the radar-reflecting tinsel called chaff they left in their wake. But the other two MiG pilots were more worried about losing sight of their leaders or screwing up their formation work than about saving themselves, and the Scorpion missiles clobbered them easily.
Daren flashed on the LADAR once again after the Scorpions’ missile-flight time ran out. “Two Fulcrums down,” he reported. “Man, we sure—”
“Warning, missile launch MiG-25 AA-10, eight o’clock, high!” the threat computer reported.
Rebecca immediately threw the Vampire bomber into a tight left turn. At the same time Daren ordered, “Attack commit AA-10 and MiG-25!”
“Attack commit AA-10 and MiG-25, stop attack,” the computer responded. As soon as the bomber rolled almost wings-level, the attack computer opened the forward bomb doors and launched four AIM-120 Scorpion missiles. The first two were aimed at the large radar-guided AA-10 air-to-air missiles fired by the MiG-25 “Foxbats.” The Foxbats immediately peeled away after launching their missiles. Like the Scorpion missile, the Russian AA-10 missile had its own radar and locked on to the EB-1 Vampire when less than ten seconds from impact. Heading nose-to-nose with the oncoming AA-10, Rebecca started a series of vertical jinks, trying to get the Russian missiles to overcorrect and blow past the Vampire.
Successfully attacking an air-to-air missile with another air-to-air missile was a long shot — and in this case completely ineffective. Both Scorpions harmlessly detonated well away from the faster Russian missiles.
The first AA-10 missile flew just a few yards under the Vampire and hit the towed array as it homed in on the jamming signals from the array. The second AA-10 looked like it might miss as well, passing over the Vampire by a scant few feet, but it steered itself on target at the last moment and detonated right between the fuselage and the trailing edge of the right wing.
“Crap, we lost the number-four engine, and number three looks like it has a compressor stall,” Rebecca shouted. But the power-plant computers had already reacted: They had shut down the destroyed engine, brought the power on the number-three engine back to idle, then trimmed out the adverse yaw in the bomber by adjusting its adaptive skin. The computer also shut down the affected hydraulic, pneumatic, fuel, and electrical systems. Seconds later it automatically attempted a restart. “Damn it, number three’s not restarting. I think the computer’s going to shut it down in a sec—” Just then the fire number 3 warning light winked on, then off as the computer shut down the engine and cut off fuel. “There it goes.”
“Looks like a flight-control fault on the right. We’re losing both the number two and the emergency hydraulic systems,” Daren reported. “Weapon computers reset… bomb-door malfunction… looks like no more Scorpions today.”
“Base, this is Bobcat.”
“We see you, Rebecca,” David Luger said from Battle Mountain. “Continue your left turn to heading two-niner-five. Your bogeys will be at your twelve o’clock, sixteen miles, same altitude, two MiG-29s. We’re trying to analyze the malfunction in the number-three engine. If we can find it, we’ll attempt a restart from here.”
“You got some help up here for us, Base?” Rebecca asked excitedly. At that instant, they saw a spectacular flash of light directly in front of them, followed by a spiral of fire that spun down into the darkness below. “Never mind, I see it.” An unmanned Vampire bomber orbiting over Kazakhstan’s airspace miles southeast of Engels Air Base had fired ultra-long-range AIM-154 Anaconda air-to-air hypersonic missiles at the MiG-29s from over 130 miles away. The missiles had been fired at maximum range almost two minutes earlier and were just now finding their targets.
But at that extreme range, even with a sophisticated laser-radar attack system and ultraprecise guidance systems, the weapons were not perfect. The Anaconda missiles fired from the unmanned air-defense Vampire missed the fourth MiG-29 and one of the MiG-25 Foxbats bearing down on the stricken Vampire bomber — and moments later the MiG-29 opened fire from short range with two AA-11 air-to-air missiles. The AA-11 missile was Russia’s most maneuverable and most reliable antiaircraft missile — but it didn’t need to be to hit Rebecca and Daren’s EB-1C Vampire bomber. One missile detonated just aft of the number-one and — two engines; the other missile punched away most of the Vampire’s vertical stabilizer.
The warning and caution panel was lit up like a keno board. Rebecca now had both hands on the control stick, trying to keep her Vampire under control.
“You got it, Rebecca?” Daren shouted.
“Shit… damn it…” She never answered, but she didn’t need to — Daren could tell that she’d lost control. “I am not going to lose this plane…!”
“Time to jump out, Rebecca,” Daren said, managing to reach over and touch her hand. “It’s over. You did a good job—we did a good job.” She continued to fight the controls, but it was no use. The attitude indicator began to spin; the spin was verified by the rapidly unwinding altimeter and the pegged vertical-velocity indicator. Even the flight-control computer offered no suggestions. Rebecca’s Vampire was indeed dead. “Let’s get out of here.”
Rebecca swore, then gave the controls one more try. She saw the altimeter go below t
wo thousand feet aboveground — and she couldn’t even tell which way was up anymore. “Get out!” she shouted. “Get the hell out.”
Daren nodded, straightened up in his seat, put his hands on his armrests.
He stood, and pushed his chair back. Rebecca followed right behind him. They squeezed past the technician at the console right behind the aircraft commander’s seat and looked at the flight-path depiction on his computer screen. The Vampire had just hit the vast floodplain of the northern Caspian Sea coast. “Impact,” the technician said. “Couple miles north of Lake Aralsor in Kazakhstan. You flew almost seventy miles with virtually no flight-control system and just two engines, and she still took three Russian missiles before she finally went down. That area is pretty marshy, and the plane was in an almost vertical spiraling dive — it may have buried itself a hundred feet into the mud.”
Rebecca studied the monitor, checking to see if the plane had gone down in an uninhabited area. As far as she could tell, it had. She opened up a bottle of water, took a deep swig, and passed it to Daren. “Crap — I hate losing a plane,” she said. “Even if it is a robot plane.”
Daren gave her a kiss on the cheek, then opened the door to the portable virtual-cockpit control cab. The small warehouse in which the VC had been set up on the tropical island of Diego Garcia was supposed to be air-conditioned, but the heat and humidity they felt as he opened the door were still oppressive. To them, though, after the past five hours in the VC, it felt glorious. Right beside them was a second VC, which another crew was using to control the unmanned air-defense EB-1C Vampire.
“Just remember, Rebecca,” Daren said, smiling as he took her hand and stepped out of the cab, “any landing you can walk away from is a good one.”
“Shut up, Daren,” she said. She smiled back, realized he was still holding her hand — and she gave his a squeeze. “Just take me to my room, get me a drink, get this flight suit off, then take me to bed.”