by Dale Brown
“Roger, Bullrider.” There was a touch of irritation in the AWACS controller’s voice. It was a hazardous maneuver. His job was to bring aircraft together — preferably in a position where the good guy can kill the bad guy. It was not typically his job to separate aircraft. But he monitored the formation split, made sure the two F-15s were far enough away from each other as they maneuvered around to get pointed at their respective targets. At their combined speed, even twice the normal separation distance — ten miles each — gave them only six seconds to react to a collision situation.
The second F-15 pilot was a little miffed that he was given the “easy” kill, the tanker, but a kill was a kill. He’d get max points if he moved right in for a gun kill and didn’t waste any missiles — he didn’t even have to use his radar. As he pointed his fighter’s nose down, he picked up speed and closed the distance quickly. Man, that tanker was low! Those crews must be sweating bullets, flying below ridgeline level like that!
Finally, at four miles’ distance, he could see his quarry. Actually, he saw the tanker’s shadow first — big, slow, and highlighted against the dry brown rocky hills occasionally broken up by dirty white snow, it was easy. “Avalanche, Bullrider Two tally-ho.” The AIM-9M Sidewinder heat-seeking missile simulator he carried growled its lock-on warning. “Bullrider Two tracking heat.”
“Copy, Bullrider Two, good heater.”
“Rog. Withholding. Closing in for guns…”
* * *
“They took the bait,” Patrick said. He was watching the profile of the attack on his threat profile display, which showed all of the “players” in the range. “They broke off from Two-Zero and they’re going after the tanker.”
“Both of them?” Rinc Seaver asked.
“Yep… stand by. No, one’s going after Two-Zero, the other’s going after the tanker.”
“Aces, this is lead, looks like one’s after you,” Seaver radioed to Rebecca Furness on the interplane frequency.
“Roger. We’re heading for mother earth. Looks like our tanker’s had it, though,” Rebecca responded.
“We can’t let the tanker get nailed,” Rinc Seaver said on interphone. “We won’t lose Damage Expectancy points if he gets shot down, but…”
“But we lose a tanker,” Patrick said. “They might not want to play with us anymore if we keep on sending them out to get shot down.”
“Lock up that fighter air-to-air, Long Dong,” Rinc said. “Put him in rendezvous mode.” Patrick looked over at Rinc in surprise. Long reconfigured his attack radar to rendezvous mode, which was exactly like an F-16 fighter’s radar’s air intercept mode, and in a few seconds he had the F-15 Eagle locked up. The pilot’s Horizontal Situation Display now showed a set of cross hairs — keep the cross hairs centered, and eventually they’d smack into the fighter.
“Steering is good, Rodeo. He’s low and slow, closing in on our tanker.”
“Not for long,” Rinc said. He turned the bomber westward and cobbed the throttles to max afterburner.
“What’s the plan, Seaver?” Patrick asked.
“No one chases one of our tankers, sir,” Rinc Seaver said. He turned toward him, and Patrick could see his eyes dancing with excitement and evil. “No one messes with Aces High…”
* * *
It took only a few more moments. The tanker — a KC-135R Stratotanker, leaving a trail of black smoke several miles long as it struggled around the craggy hills — couldn’t maneuver very well way down here. It was almost like closing in for an aerial refueling rendezvous — the pilot felt like calling “Stabilized precontact and ready,” as if he was ready to move in and plug in for gas. Instead, he called, “Avalanche, Bullrider Two, visual contact on bogey two, a KC-135 Stratobladder, looks like California Air Reserves. Closing in for guns.”
“Roger, Bullrider,” the AWACS controller responded, “we copy your—” He broke off and shouted frantically, “Bullrider Two, Bullrider Two, pop-up bogey at your three o’clock low, low, low, range nine miles, airspeed eight-zero-zero, collision alert, collision alert!”
In a panic the pilot searched out the right side of his cockpit canopy. But before he could spot it, it was right in front of him—a B-1B Lancer bomber, wings swept all the way back, in what looked like a tight ninety-degree left bank. The F-15 pilot thought he could see the bomber pilots through their windshield, it was that close! For goddamn sure they were going to collide!
He thought about a quick snap-shot — just squeeze the trigger and hope to hit it — but survival came first. He hauled back on his control stick as hard as he could, then shoved in full afterburners. All he saw for a few seconds was the side of a mountain — and then his nearly blacked-out vision filled with blue sky. He kept the stick pulled back and his fighter’s nose aimed for blue sky for several seconds, not wanting to release the back pressure until he was positive he was away from the ground and the mountains and all low-flying mother-fucking planes. “Fighters were not meant for flying so damned close to the ground, not so close to the ground, not so close to the ground,” he kept on muttering, like a mantra.
It was an illegal maneuver. It had to be. His range to the tanker was less than three miles, seconds before claiming a gun kill. Because this was the first day of the exercise, the ROE stated all opposing aircraft could close to no less than two miles, and closure rates were restricted to less than one thousand knots — no going nose-to-nose over the sound barrier. The F-15 pilot knew the rules, knew the bomber pukes busted the rules, knew he could get the AWACS radar controller to document the entire violation…
… but he didn’t call “knock it off” and report the violation. Once he leveled off — at eighteen thousand feet, high enough that he knew he wouldn’t hit any mountains — he had to laugh and, yes, tip his hat to the fucking bomber pukes. They saved their tanker and chased the United States’ most advanced air superiority fighter right out of the damned playground. By the time he got himself turned around, reoriented, and pointed back toward the players, the KC-135 tanker decoy had exited the range complex and was on his way home.
He was never, never going to live this one down.
* * *
“Hey, lead, we got you drifting out to eleven miles,” Rebecca Furness radioed to her wingman on the inter-plane frequency. “You defensive?”
“That’s a big negative, Go-Fast,” Rinc responded. “Just had to chase some fighter pukes out of our range. Break. Pioneer One-Seven, this is Aces Two-One, tail’s clear, you are clear to exit the range direct Hokum intersection. Squawk normal and contact Joshua Approach. See you in the patrol anchor. Thanks for your help. We owe you a night on the town.”
“Pioneer Seventeen, roger,” the pilot of the KC-135R tanker replied happily. “Thanks for the pick. We liked flying in the dirt with you guys. Go kick some butt. We’re outta here.”
“Thanks, Pioneer,” Rinc radioed. “Break. Aces lead, you’re clear down the chute. We’ll keep your tail clear. You better drop some shacks, or don’t bother comin’ home. We’re right behind you.” On interphone, he said, “Okay, hogs: we keep our wingman’s tail clear, we drop all zero-zeros, and we don’t screw up. Keep it tight and lean forward. No mistakes.”
Patrick had seen it all happen right before him — he thought he was going to die. He didn’t know — didn’t want to know — how close they came to that F-15 Eagle fighter. It was close enough to see the pilot’s unit patches on his sleeve, see the collar of his flight suit turned up, see the kink in his oxygen hose as he looked out his big canopy and saw the big B-1 barreling down on him. Hell, it had to be close enough to hear that F-15 driver’s asshole slam shut as he saw his windscreen fill up with 400,000 pounds of Bone cracking the speed of heat. Patrick knew it, because he thought he’d heard his own asshole do the same thing!
He would find out exactly how close later from the AWACS guys and the Nellis range controllers, since they had all the planes and the entire fifty thousand square miles of bombing ranges fully instrumented and could re-
create every moment of a battle in exquisite computerized detail. When someone is that close to death or disaster, you can feel it coming at you — you don’t need windows or radar or anything. In his eighteen-year career, Patrick had felt that feeling many, many, many times. They certainly busted the ROE big-time, and they probably came within seconds of creating one of the most spectacular midair collisions in the history of aviation. The tiniest of deviations — just a few seconds off, a few miles off, one extra turn, crossing east around a peak instead of west, a half-degree steeper dive or 1 percent more airspeed — could have had disastrous results.
“Center up, steering is good,” John Long announced. His voice boomed over the quiet interphone channel like a gunshot in a tunnel. “Forty seconds to ACAL, sixty seconds to my fix.”
“You see any brown streaks coming out that fighter’s cockpit, sir?” Rinc asked Patrick, his voice light.
“SA-3 at two o’clock,” the crew’s defensive systems officer, Captain Oliver “Ollie” Warren, announced, checking his electronic warfare threat profile display. “Coming from the target area. I’m picking up high PRF and intermittent uplink signals, but not aimed at us — he must be trying to lock onto our wingman.”
“Give ’em a shout, Ollie,” Rinc said. “See if we can’t divert their attention away from our wingman.” Patrick shrugged — pretty good idea, although it would be giving away their position. Warren manually activated the L-band uplink jammer. At this range, the jammer would be only marginally effective, and it would immediately tell the enemy the range and bearing to the new threat. He shut it down after only a few seconds.
It worked. The “enemy” switched from the missile-guidance uplink to a wide-area search, trying to find the newcomer. It didn’t last very long, ten seconds at the most, but that ten seconds could mean the difference between successfully dropping bombs and destroying the enemy, and getting shot down.
Seconds later Rinc and Patrick saw a brilliant sparkle of white-yellow lights in the desert ahead on the horizon, spreading out in a long, wide oval pattern — the unmistakable look of a stick of detonating cluster bombs. At the same moment, the SA-3 search radar disappeared completely. “SA-3 down,” Warren announced.
“Good shooting, guys!” Rinc crowed. Colonel Fur-ness’s crew obviously dropped its bombs close enough to the SA-3 site to score it as a “kill.”
The crew heard deedle deedle deedle in their headphones, and Warren announced, “Fighter at twelve o’clock, fifteen miles, looks like he’s heading down the chute after our wingman.”
“Go-Fast, this is Rodeo, bandit on your tail!” Rinc radioed to their leader.
“We’re on the rail, Rodeo,” Rebecca in Aces Two-Zero responded. “We’re lining up for the second release. Can’t maneuver too much.”
“You son of a bitch,” Rinc swore. “We’re going to fry his butt. Long Dong, we’re going to racetrack around back and you can get your ACAL and a patch on the second pass. We’re ten seconds ahead right now. If we do this right, we’ll lose about thirty seconds time-over-target. We’ll lose points, but not as many as we’d lose if our leader gets shot down.”
“Go for it, pilot,” Long said, but it was obvious he didn’t think much of the plan.
Seaver didn’t hesitate. He punched the throttles into max afterburner and turned sharply right to line up behind the lead F-15 fighter. “Lead, we’re coming up behind you,” he radioed to Furness. “Give me some S-turns so we can catch up. We’ll get those Eagle pukes off your butt.”
Meanwhile, Long switched radar modes on his APG-66 attack radar back to rendezvous mode and locked onto both the F-15 and their wingman in the other Bone. “Got them,” he said. “Twelve-thirty, eight miles, fighter’s at about a thousand feet AGL… range seven miles… six miles… five…”
“Tally-ho,” Patrick shouted, pointing out the windscreen. Rinc followed his gloved hand and saw the fighter, highlighted against the blue sky.
“Gotcha!” Rinc said. They slid through the sound barrier and rapidly closed the distance. “Knock knock, motherfucker…”
* * *
“Bullrider flight, you’re cleared to the perch,” the lead F-15 pilot said on his interplane frequency.
“Roger, lead. I’m at your six, moving up. Got you in sight.”
“What the hell happened, Billy? I didn’t hear you call out a ‘guns’ on the tanker.”
“I was three seconds from hosing the tanker and then the second B-1 popped out of nowhere and flew between me and the tanker,” the wingman explained. “I lost sight of both of them and had to bug out before I hit a goddamn mountain.”
Shit! Shit! Shit! the leader swore to himself. This morning was not going well at all. He was angry not only because his wingman failed to kill the tanker but because he couldn’t catch up with the first B-1 before it bombed its first target. He couldn’t see the B-1 down low, but he knew he’d been there — the sight of a bunch of cluster bombs detonating across the desert floor just a few miles in front of him was hard to miss. “Well, why didn’t you call KIO or record a violation?”
“Because… oh, fuck it, just because,” the wingman said. “I recorded a possible heater kill anyway. It was a gutsy move. They deserve the save.”
“Like hell they do,” the lead F-15 pilot shot back. “They deserve to get busted for doing a stunt like that.” But if the pilot on the scene didn’t register a violation, there was no violation — even if the AWACS airborne radar controllers or range controllers saw it. No doubt the bomber crew would get a stern lecture on range safety from the commander, but if no one called a foul, there was no foul.
A bat-wing symbol appeared on the lead F-15’s threat scope, but the pilot got no warning tone, indicating that he was being painted with friendly radar. He immediately dismissed the indication, thinking it was his wingman taking up his position on the perch again, covering his leader. “Avalanche, Bullrider One, moving into position on bandit one, record a heater track, now.”
“Copy, Bullrider… Bullrider One, bandit at your six o’clock low, five miles, closing rapidly. Bullrider, can you delouse?” That was a request for the wingman to try to identify the newcomer.
Low? His wingman was low? That meant the target on his threat scope wasn’t his wingman! Oh, shit! “Bullrider flight, you got that bogey? You see him?”
“Negative, lead!”
“Bogey one six o’clock, three miles… two miles, closing fast!”
“I got him, lead, I got him!” the wingman cried out. “He’s right under you!”
Not for long. Just as the lead F-15 pilot rolled right a bit to get a better look underneath him, the B-1 bomber, in full afterburner, zoomed up directly in front of him. The pilot instinctively rolled hard left and pulled until he heard his stall warning horn, then rolled out. “Billy, you got him in sight? You got him?”
“Screw that, lead! I lost sight of you! I’m lost wingman! I’m blind! I’m level ten thousand!”
“Bullrider Two, collision alert, snap right forty degrees now!” the AWACS radar controller shouted. The lead F-15 pilot had rolled up and right into the path of his wingman on the high perch. The second F-15 took immediate evasive action. It was just in time — the two planes missed each other by less than two hundred feet, without either pilot seeing the other’s plane.
The lead F-15 pilot mashed his mike button as he jerked his control stick over hard, waiting for the crunch of metal and the explosion he knew was going to happen. “Knock it off, knock it off, knock it off!” he shouted on his command channel. That was the signal to all aircraft to stop maneuvering, roll wings level, and assess the situation. He had lost complete situational awareness, and any maneuver he might make could cause an accident or death.
“I got you in sight, lead!” the second F-15 called, after he rolled out of his snap-turn. “I’m at your five o’clock, one mile. I’m climbing to eleven thousand.”
The near-miss rattled the lead F-15 pilot so much he had to drop his oxygen mask to keep from
hyperventilating. Damn, what in hell was wrong with those bomber pukes? They used their aircraft like missiles, not giving a damn about peacetime safety-of-flight. Two near-misses within just a few seconds of each other — that was too much!
“I’m going to nail those sons of bitches if it’s the last thing I do!” the lead pilot shouted to himself as he snapped his oxygen mask back in place. No hot dog Guard bomber pukes are going to make any Eagle driver look like a putz!
* * *
At two hundred feet above the ground, Patrick felt safer now than he had for most of the flight in the Nellis range — he wasn’t accustomed to flying so close to other aircraft while on a mission, let alone “enemy” aircraft. He noticed he had pulled his shoulder and lap belts so tight that they hurt, but he didn’t even consider loosening them. Again, for the umpteenth time, he checked his ejection levers and ejection mode switches, mentally targeting the levers in case he had to go for them while they were upside down or pulling lots of Gs. This crew seemed hell-bent on making the worst happen.
Were they reckless? Maybe. Were they dangerous? Some might think so. But the question was — were they effective? Did they get the job done? So far, protecting their tanker and their wingman, the answer had to be yes. But at what price? When were these stunts going to finally catch up with them?
Rinc Seaver steered the bomber back around in a bootleg racetrack pattern, rolled back in over their lead-in point. Long got his altitude calibration, then took his initial fix and high-resolution patch of the target area. The bomb release — another Combined Effects Munitions cluster bomb attack, a few hundred meters beside where the other B-1 had dropped — was almost an anticlimax.
Were they effective at hitting their assigned targets? Definitely — but, again, at what price?
“I heard a ‘knock it off’ call, crew,” Patrick announced on interphone. “Stand by. I’ll be on the voice SATCOM. Everyone else toggle off.” Patrick got an acknowledgment from the rest of the crew, then dialed up the secure voice satellite channel. “Firebird, this is Aces Two-One secure.”