by Dale Brown
The second time, he saw it—an explosion, just a few meters away. A missile had missed him by a fraction of a second! Another moment’s hesitation and he could be dead right now.
He had no choice but to bug out; he had received no warnings from his ground controller, and his radar had not locked on to anything—he was completely blind. He pulled the throttle back to full military power to help conserve fuel, then started a turn to the north and a fast climb away from the terrain. His only choice was to disengage, hope the newcomer would follow him up to altitude so the ground radar could see him, then try to reengage.
Kurva! Where in hell did he come from? “Control, Yupka Three-three, I’m under attack!” the pilot radioed frantically. “I was painted by fire-control radar, and I just evaded a missile!”
“Three-three, Control, we do not show a second aircraft, only your target at your seven o’clock position, twenty-eight K.”
“I tell you, Control, I was under attack!” He tried but failed to get his head back into the fight. His brain was hopelessly jumbled—he had a wingman up there to worry about, one known enemy target, and another completely unseen foe that had just attacked him. “Three-three wing, I’ve lost the attack picture, so you engage the target. I’ll take the high CAP.”
“Acknowledged, Lead,” his wingman radioed. “Control, give me a vector.”
“Three-three wing, steer forty right, your target will be at your one o’clock, forty-three K, low, lead will be at your two o’clock, eighteen K. Clear to descend to your minimum vector altitude. Three-three lead, come twenty right, continue climb to your patrol altitude, your wingman will be at your three o’clock, eighteen K, in a descending turn.”
“Wing acknowledges. Turning right.”
“Lead acknowledges.” The lead MiG-23 pilot was quickly regaining his mental picture of the battle space—minus the newcomer, of course. Or did he just imagine that “attack”? Maybe it was some spurious signal from the radar site on the ground or from his wingman, perhaps checking his weapon stores or briefly firing up his radar? Just forget about it, he told himself. Concentrate on getting the one known target and then—
Suddenly he saw a flash of light and a short trail of fire off in the darkness—and he knew he hadn’t been imagining anything. “Oleg!” he shouted on the command radio. “Attacker at your six o’clock position! Break! Do it now!”
“I’m not picking up any—” And at that instant the threat-warning receiver blared. Unlike the MiG-23, this attacker could launch a missile without having a radar lock-on.
“Chaff! Flares! Break!” the lead pilot shouted. But he knew it was pointless. His wingman’s reaction had to be immediate and aggressive, with no hesitation or second-guessing whatsoever. By the time he thought whether or not he should react and then how to do it, it was too late. The lead pilot spotted a bright flash far off to his right, followed by a large explosion, and then a trail of fire that wobbled briefly through the night sky before being swallowed up by the darkness.
Splash one, Crowbar.”
“Thank God—and thank the propellerheads,” the mission commander aboard the U.S. Air Force MC-130H Combat Talon transport plane, Marine Corps First Lieutenant Ted Merritt, said half aloud with a rush of relief. He felt as if he hadn’t taken a breath of air in several minutes, and his throat was dry and scratchy. A veteran special-operations officer of the Twenty-fourth Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable, Merritt was accustomed to handling any kind of contingency on the ground—what he couldn’t handle was being engaged by the enemy while still aboard the transport plane.
Merritt was leading a force of forty-eight Marines on a covert insertion mission deep inside Russia. Their MC-130H had lifted off from Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico, shortly after being given the warning order from U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. Its seven-member crew flew to Camp Pendleton, California, and embarked Merritt’s Marine Special Purpose Force platoon of fifty-one men, including three thirteen-man infantry squads and three four-man fire teams, that were part of the Fifteenth Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Fifteenth MEU had just completed its twenty-four-week qualification course and had just earned its Special Operations Capable designation before preparing to deploy on a six-month Pacific Ocean cruise.
The Marine Special Purpose Forces, once known as Direct Action Platoons, were composed of highly trained and experienced special-operations soldiers who specialized in light, mobile, and highly destructive missions deep inside enemy territory. Their job was to go in ahead of a Force Reconnaissance battalion or other heavy Marine unit to map out the forward edge of the battle area, hunt down and kill enemy scouts, pinpoint and relay locations of air defenses and fortifications, and create diversions to confuse, exhaust, and harass enemy forces.
The MC-130, using in-flight refueling, had flown nonstop since leaving Camp Pendleton, receiving hourly intelligence briefings and mission updates and plans via satellite while en route on the torturous fifteen-hour flight across the northern Pacific. The plane made several inflight refuelings, with the last one just north of the Aleutian island of Attu, right before entering Russian radar coverage. Once within range of Russia’s long-range airborne early-warning radars at Kavaznya and Petropavlovsk, the MC-130 descended to just a few hundred feet above the ocean using its satellite-navigation system, then used its terrain-following radar once over land to stay at treetop level.
Merritt was hopeful: They hadn’t had one indication of any threats during the entire long overwater cruise through Russian offshore airspace. But just minutes after going feet-dry and hugging some of the roughest terrain on the entire route of flight, where they should be the best protected from radar, they were jumped. Combat Talon II birds had an extensive electronic defensive suite, including jammers and decoys that were effective against ground and airborne threats, but the highly modified C-130 turboprop transports were very large, slow, inviting targets.
Thank God for their guardian angel. He was out there somewhere, blazing a trail for them.
The threat-warning receiver blared once again. The second MiG had already found them.
Control, Three-three, my wingman is hit, repeat, my wingman is hit!” the lead MiG-23 pilot shouted. “Give me a vector! The second target is somewhere at my twelve o’clock! Do you see him?”
“Vy shutitye, Three-three, nyet! Proceed with the attack. We will launch—” And then the radio was drowned out by an earsplitting whistle. The automatic frequency-hopping mode on the radio cleared the jamming for a few seconds, but then it returned again with full force.
He was alone—no wingman, and now no ground controller. It sounded as if the controller was going to vector in some help, but at maximum speed it would take them over fifteen minutes to arrive.
The MiG pilot activated his radar. There, right in front of him, was a radar target. Again he didn’t hesitate. He immediately got a lock-on, centered the aiming pipper on the lock box, and squeezed the trigger just as he got a IN RANGE indication on his heads-up display. He reached down to select his second radar-guided missile.
When he looked up, his radar was a jumble of targets that filled the entire scope. The radar lock box on his heads-up display was flitting from one false target to another, whichever one it thought was the strongest return or the most serious threat. The MiG pilot hit a button on the radar panel to activate the electronic counter-countermeasures mode. That cleared up the radar screen—but only for a few sweeps, and then the enemy jamming signals locked on again to his radar’s new frequency and started false-target jamming it all over again. He had no idea where his missile was heading. For all he knew, it could be heading back toward him.
“Control, Three-three…” he tried, but the radio was still unusable, a hopeless jumble of screeches, pops, and whistles. The MiG pilot immediately started a climb and made a slight right turn—he’d been on that one heading too long, exposing himself to attack. What in he
ll was it? An enemy fighter over eastern Siberia with both air-to-air weapons and jammers strong enough to take out a Sokol PrNK-23S radar?
He had just a few minutes of fuel left before he needed to head back to base. Without a ground controller, he had only one option left: try to find his original target on his own. Kill something before he had to get out of there—or before he was killed, like his wingman. The MiG pilot’s strength was forming the mental map of the battle space in his head—visualizing where all the players were and correctly guessing what they might be doing, even many minutes since getting their last exact position. That’s what made him such an important and trusted flight lead. He had to put that skill into use right now.
His original target was slow-moving, flying very low but not terrain-masking, and pretty much flying in a straight line. Maybe he would still be doing the same thing now.
The MiG-23 pilot turned slightly left and aimed the nose of his jet slightly nose-low, aiming for the spot he imagined the original target had moved toward. His guess was that the first target was a large American turboprop special-ops aircraft, like an MC-130 Hercules, probably loaded with troops and fuel but having to stretch that fuel a long way—which meant he was going to continue to fly slow and low and not make a bunch of course reversals, climbs or descents, or even very many turns if he could avoid it. Maybe if he was concerned about—
Suddenly a dot appeared on the TM-23 electro-optical sensor screen. There it was! He couldn’t believe his luck. The radio was still being jammed, so he assumed his radar would be jammed, too, so there was no use turning it on and giving away his position. No messing around this time—he slammed the throttle forward, lowered the nose, and started a rapid descent at the slow-moving target.
He had no definite idea how far away he was from the target—he was relying strictly on his own internal “radar screen” as he selected his R-60 heat-seeking missiles and closed in. All he had to do was keep the dot centered and continue moving in—the R-60 would report to him when it had locked on to a hot enough heat source. It had to happen any second now. His situational-awareness “chart” told him he couldn’t be any farther than five or six kilome—
A red light flashed on, and he flipped open the safety cover and squeezed the launch button—before, realizing that it wasn’t the IN RANGE indicator, but the MISSILE LAUNCH warning. The Sirena-2 radar threat detector had picked up the specific frequency of a radar-guided missile in flight. He had to get out of there! He had only a fraction of a second to react.
But at that same moment, he heard the raspy growl of the R-60 locking on to its target, and moments later he saw the IN RA—
The AIM-120 AMRAAM missile plowed into the center of the MiG-23’s fuselage, tearing open its fuel tank and blowing the fighter into pieces in the blink of an eye. The pilot stayed conscious long enough to grasp his ejection handles before the fireball created by his own exploding jet engulfed him, instantly vaporizing him.
Splash Atwo, Crowbar,” Matthew Whitley radioed a few moments later. He was also the “game boy” for the unmanned EB-1C Vampire “flying battleship” bomber, flying in protection mode to cover the MC-130 Combat Talon II transport as it flew through long-range radar coverage from Anadyr and Kavaznya along the Russian coastal area. “Your tail is clear.”
“Thanks, Bobcat,” Merritt radioed back on the secure radio frequency. “We owe you big-time.”
Merritt’s “guardian angel” was an unmanned EB-1C Vampire long-range bomber. Launched from Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base twelve hours earlier, it was one of the most advanced SEAD weapon systems ever developed. A modified B-1B strategic bomber, its three bomb bays were loaded with a mix of defensive weapons: twelve long-range radar-guided AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missiles on a rotary launcher in the forward bomb bay; six AGM-88 HARMs—high-speed antiradiation missiles—on another launcher in the center bomb bay; and eight AGM-65M Longhorn Maverick TV-and imaging-infrared precision-guided missiles in the aft bomb bay. The Vampires also had advanced ultraprecise laser radar systems that could locate and identify enemy targets at long range, even spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
“We can hang with you for another thirty minutes,” Whitley said, “and then we’ll have to reverse course and hit our tanker. But after we refuel, we’ll head back in to cover your approach into Yakutsk and your egress.”
“Copy that, Bobcat,” Merritt said. “We’ll be waiting for you. What’s the word from Condor?”
There was a slight, strained pause. Then: “They may be having some problems. Stand by….”
Warning, airborne radar in target-tracking mode, eight o’clock, fifty-five miles,” the threat-warning computer announced.
The commandos inside the little Condor heard a loud baarkk! sound coming from the rear, followed by a very substantial shudder, another animal-like cough, and then a faint whirring sound. “Engine up to thirty percent…thirty-five percent…forty…forty-five percent…Starters off, temps in the green, looks like we got a good light,” Matt Wilde reported. “Power’s coming up…generators coming online.” At that moment the rumbling and shuddering completely disappeared—it was as if they had suddenly been firmly planted on solid bedrock. “Mission-adaptive system active, guys. Power up to eighty-five percent. Looks like the engine swallowed a chunk of ice, but everything looks okay.”
“ ‘Looks okay,’ huh? You’re not being chased by a damned Russian MiG!” Hal Briggs retorted. “Where is that sucker?”
“Eight o’clock, less than forty miles,” Dave Luger said. “Stand by….”
“ ‘Stand by’? Dave, what’s happening out there?”
I think the fighter has you guys,” Luger radioed from Battle Mountain. “We’re working right now to buy you some time.”
“He’s got one MiG lining up on Condor and another that’ll get within firing range soon,” Whitley reported.
Luger had no choice. “Deploy the towed array on the EB-52, open target fins, and send out a beacon signal,” he ordered. Whitley reluctantly complied. A small, bullet-shaped device unreeled itself from a fairing on the EB-52 Megafortress’s tail. When the device was about two hundred yards behind the bomber, it opened up several fins and began sending out a tracking beacon. The device was an ALE-55 towed electronic-countermeasures array. As well as acting as a jamming antenna and decoy, the array could also act like an air target by making its radar cross-section larger and by sending out identification signals.
“Any chance he’ll run out of gas before he catches up with the Megafortress?” Whitley asked.
“He hasn’t caught it yet, Wildman,” Luger said.
Control, I have a weak radar return at my two o’clock position, sixty-four K,” the MiG-29 pilot reported. “I initially saw the target heading east, but this one appears to be heading west. Can you verify my radar contact? He’s at my two o’clock, sixty K meters, descending at two hundred and forty kilometers per hour. No infrared signature yet—he is either very stealthy or unpowered.”
“Negative, Two-one,” the ground controller reported. “We show negative radar contacts. Be advised, Tashnit Four-seven is engaging targets approximately in your vicinity. Recommend you return to—Stand by, Two-one.” The MiG pilot cursed in frustration. It took several moments for the controller to come back up. “Two-one, we now have a pop-up radar contact, unidentified aircraft, altitude base plus sixteen, range one-one-five K, bearing one-zero-five degrees, heading east at four-eight-zero K. Vector ninety-five left to intercept.”
The MiG pilot hated giving up the chase on a sure contact, but he had no choice except to comply. He plugged in min afterburner as he turned to the new vector heading. At min afterburner, flying just below the speed of sound, it would take him nearly ten minutes to catch up with the unidentified plane. “I’m going to need a relief chaser here in a few minutes, control,” he advised.
“Tashnit Four-nine flight of two will be airborne in a few minutes,” the controller reported. “They’ll join on you after they prosecute the
westbound target. You are clear to engage your target, Two-one.”
“Two-one understands, cleared to engage,” the pilot acknowledged.
Since the ground-radar controller had radar contact now, he didn’t need to activate his own radar. Moments later his infrared search-and-track sensor picked up the unidentified aircraft. With the IRSTS locked on, he could close to infrared-missile range and shoot him down without ever being detected. The target was still flying along, fat, dumb, and happy—no evasive maneuvers, just straight, slow, high-altitude flight, exactly like a training target.
“Range twenty K, Two-one.”
“Acknowledged,” the MiG pilot replied. The IRSTS gave him azimuth and elevation, not range, so he didn’t know exactly when the R-73 heat-seeking missile would lock on, but all he had to do was—
There! He heard a loud beepbeepbeep! and saw a REYS indication on his heads-up display. He flipped open the safety cover on his fire button and—
At that moment the target dropped quickly in altitude—slowly at first, then faster and faster. In less than three seconds, it had completely disappeared! That didn’t make sense! He searched in the darkness to see if he could spot it…nothing! “Control, Two-one, I have lost the target! It appears to have dropped straight down. Vector!”
“Two-one, target last seen at your twelve o’clock position, eighteen K. Negative contact at this time.”
“Khuy na!” the MiG-29 pilot swore. How in hell could he be right there one second, as big as a fucking house, and then completely gone the next? He had no choice: He had to activate his pulse-Doppler radar to reacquire.