by Dale Brown
As soon as he flicked it on, there it was, right at the very right edge of his radarscope and lower, as big as day. But just as he flicked the switch on his control stick to switch from heat-seeking missiles to radar-guided missiles and take a shot, he received heavy jamming so persistent and agile that his counter-countermeasures equipment still couldn’t burn through it. “Detskaya, this is Tashnit Two-one, be advised, as soon as I was able to lock on with my radar, I encountered very heavy jamming, all frequencies and modes.”
But as soon as he let up on the mike button, he heard an unbelievably loud squealing noise. Comm jamming! This bastard had jammed his radio frequencies as well! He was hostile, no doubt about it now. But once the pilot turned toward the fleeing aircraft, his IRSTS sensor picked him up once again. Without the radar and without vectors, his only chance now was to close in to heat-seeking-missile range again. And he had better hurry—the bastard was flying farther and farther away from base, and his own bingo fuel level was fast approaching.
The enemy aircraft had sped up now, but it was still about half of the fighter’s speed. Keeping the power up but being careful not to select a higher afterburner power setting, he zoomed in for the kill.
Here he comes,” Whitley said. He had cut loose the towed decoy array just as the MiG closed within twelve miles, the max range of the AA-11 “Archer” missile, and as soon as he did, he turned the EB-52 bomber hard right, started a rapid descent, and jammed the throttles to full military power. If the MiG had locked on to the towed decoy, once it was cut loose, he would disappear from sight—but not for long. Even a stealthy bird like the Megafortress couldn’t hide its four huge, hot turbofans for long. “Sir?”
“Take him down,” Dave Luger said simply.
“Roger that.” Whitley entered instructions to his remote aircraft-control section, who designated the MiG-29 as an active target. The EB-52 aircraft that launched the Condor aircraft and StealthHawk unmanned attack aircraft couldn’t carry its normal complement of weapons, but it did carry some defensive weapons: two AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air radar-guided missiles on each wing pylon.
On Whitley’s command, one missile was launched from the left pylon. The missile shot forward ahead of the bomber, then looped overhead in an “over the shoulder” missile-attack profile. The EB-52’s laser-radar arrays datalinked steering information to the missile, aiming the missile to a point in space where the MiG would be on its projected flight path. When the targeting computer determined that the MiG would be in range, the Scorpion missile activated its own radar and locked on to the MiG.
That was the first indication the MiG-29 pilot had that he was under attack—and by then it was too late. The Russian activated his electronic countermeasures and ejected chaff and flares to try to decoy the oncoming missile, but he stubbornly stayed on the same flight path, hoping to catch up to his quarry in the next few seconds. Undeterred by the decoys, the Scorpion missile scored a direct hit on the MiG’s left wing, sending the fighter into an uncontrollable spin into the Bering Sea.
“Splash one MiG-29, guys,” Whitley announced.
“Roger that, Wildman,” Luger said. “Let’s bring that Megafortress around so it can refuel the StealthHawks coming back from the Kamchatka Peninsula, and then we’ll bring it back to Shemya for refueling and rearming.”
“Should we fly it back to help the guys in the Condor?” Whitley asked. “We still have three Scorpions on board, plenty of gas, and three towed arrays left.”
“We’ll need the Megafortress for the follow-on attacks,” Luger said. “Everything is proceeding as the general planned so far. Besides, it looks like the StealthHawks are lining up a target of their own.”
At’ yibis at min’ a! Get the hell away from me!” the Russian MiG-29 pilot screamed in his oxygen mask. One second he was pursuing an unidentified pop-up target below him, heading south down the middle of the Kamchtka Peninsula just a hundred kilometers north of his home base, and the next he was surrounded by airborne threats. “Control, Four-seven, I’m being engaged! I’ve got a bandit on my tail! I need help!”
“Four-seven, Control, we are not picking up any more targets on radar,” the ground radar controller at Petropavlovsk replied. “Four-nine flight of two will be airborne in three minutes. ETE five minutes.” Silence. “Four-seven, do you copy? Acknowledge.” Still no response. Suddenly the radar-data block representing the lone MiG-29 on patrol started to blink. The altitude readout from the fighter’s encoding transponder showed it in a rapid descent…then it disappeared. “Tashnit Four-seven, do you copy?” Something was wrong. “Tashnit Four-nine, we’ve lost radar contact with Four-seven. Your initial vector is three-three-zero, base plus twelve. Radar is clear, but use extreme caution.”
“Four-nine flight of two, acknowledged. We’ll be airborne in two minutes.” The two MiG-29 fighters taxied rapidly down the taxiway, their pilots quickly running alert-takeoff checklists as they made their way to the active runway. At the end of the runway, they lined up side by side, received a “cleared for takeoff” light-gun signal from the control tower, locked brakes, pushed the throttles to max afterburner, and screamed down the runway together. Both were off the runway in less than fifteen hundred meters. The pilots raised gear and flaps, accelerated to five hundred kilometers per hour, pulled the throttles back to full military power, and started a left-echelon formation turn to the northwest.
Almost at the same instant, both fighters exploded in midair. There was no time for either pilot to eject—the burning aircraft hit the ground almost immediately, still in formation.
Splash two more,” Matt Whitley reported. “StealthHawk One took out the MiG on the Condor’s tail, and StealthHawk Two took care of the two MiGs launching from Petropavlovsk. Both are returning to Bobcat Two-three for refueling, and they’ll all recover to Shemya for rearming. StealthHawks Three and Four are proceeding across the Sea of Okhotsk to the feet-dry point.”
“Roger that, Wildman,” Hal Briggs said. He felt naked now without the vaunted StealthHawks, a commando’s best friend. The RAQ-15 StealthHawk was the improved version of Dreamland’s FlightHawk remotely piloted attack vehicle. Small, stealthy, fast, and powerful, the StealthHawk could fly through the most heavily defended areas in the world at up to ten miles per minute and attack targets with pinpoint precision. The StealthHawks carried a mix of weapons in their ten-foot-long bomb bays; these birds were configured for both air defense and defense suppression, with AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles and AGM-211 mini-Maverick guided missiles configured to home in on and destroy enemy radars. The best part: The StealthHawks could be retrieved by their unmanned EB-1C Vampire motherships, brought up inside the bomb bay, refueled and rearmed, and flown back into battle.
The same unmanned EB-52 Megafortress bomber that launched the Condor had launched two StealthHawks from wing pylons. That was the reason the plane was visible from so far away one moment, then invisible to radar the next: The StealthHawks riding on the wing pylons completely destroyed the Megafortress’s stealth capabilities, which were fully restored once the StealthHawks were released. The EB-52 could refuel the StealthHawks in midair from a hose-and-drogue-type refueling system.
Meanwhile, an EB-1C Vampire bomber from Battle Mountain had launched two more StealthHawks over the Sea of Okhotsk between the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island; those two StealthHawks would escort the Condor in toward the Siberian coast. The Vampire bomber would then retrieve, refuel, rearm, and relaunch the EB-52’s two StealthHawks and send them inland to rotate patrols with the other two StealthHawks. The rotations would continue until the Vampire had to return to Eareckson to refuel and reload.
Briggs’s Condor infiltration aircraft had leveled off at ten thousand feet and proceeded west-northwest across the west side of the Kamchatka Peninsula toward the Sea of Okhotsk. The Condor’s turbojet engine was running at 80 percent power, sending them smoothly on their way at a little over six miles per minute. The Condor descen
ded slightly to five thousand feet above the sea, likely high enough to prevent any Russian naval patrols from hearing or seeing it but low enough to avoid the long-range surveillance radars and antiaircraft missile batteries located along the shore and on patrol vessels on the Sea of Okhotsk.
The crossing was treacherous. The Russian patrol vessels were arrayed so tightly across the Sea of Okhotsk that Battle Mountain had to make the Condor do several heading changes to avoid detection—they were even forced to steer the Condor toward a slightly less capable weapon system in order to avoid another, deadlier missile system that suddenly appeared.
Soon the inevitable happened—they vectored themselves right into the radar footprint of a Russian warship that had appeared as if out of nowhere. “Air-search radar!” Dave Luger shouted over the secure satellite link. “Echo-band air-search radar, close aboard, two o’clock, twenty-eight miles—probably a big-ass destroyer!”
“Get us out of here, Dave!” Hal Briggs shouted.
“Too late,” Whitley said. “You’re already inside his radar coverage. We’re descending you to one hundred feet and turning you south. He’s got another ship on his right—maybe he’ll turn right into the bastard.”
“Warning, missile-guidance radar, SA-N-17, two o’clock, twenty-six miles,” the threat-warning receiver blared. “Warning, fire-control radar, DP-130, ten o’clock, twenty-five miles.”
“The patrol boat at your nine o’clock position is turning northeast,” Dave Luger said. “It’s trying to either engage you or force you to fly north into that destroyer.”
“Warning, air-search radar, nine o’clock, nine miles,” the warning receiver intoned. “Warning, fire-control radar, DP-76, nine o’clock, ten miles.”
“We gotta nail that patrol boat, Dave,” Hal Briggs said. “We don’t have any choice.”
Luger hesitated—but not for long. He knew they had no choice as well. “Matt…”
“Roger that,” Whitley said. He entered commands into his computer console. “Designating Sierra One-nine as a target. Commit one StealthHawk.”
“Commit,” Luger ordered.
The StealthHawk unmanned attack missile received position and velocity information moments later by satellite and activated its own millimeter-wave radar and imaging infrared sensors as it cruised at ten miles per minute toward the Russian Molnya-class patrol boat. Once it was within range, its bomb-bay doors slid open, and it fired both of its mini-Maverick missiles at the vessel. Configured to act as antiradar weapons, the missiles homed in on the Hotel/India-band fire-control radar, which controlled the seventy-six-millimeter dual-purpose gun on the patrol boat. Although the patrol boat carried SA-N-5 antiaircraft missiles, the dual-purpose gun had almost three times the range of the missiles and, coupled to the radar, had almost the same accuracy.
“Good hit…second missile missed,” Luger reported. “India-band radar down. Echo-band radar still locked on in target-tracking mode, but I think he’s locked on to the StealthHawk. We’re changing your course to bring you closer to the patrol boat and keep you away from the destroyer.”
“You’re sure making this exciting, Dave,” Hal Briggs deadpanned.
“The missiles on the patrol boat have a fairly short range and are only infrared-guided,” Luger said. “We’ll keep you out of range of those. We’re just trying to stay away from that destroyer and keep you out of range of that seventy-six-millimeter job in case they have—” Suddenly Hal Briggs could see the horizon illuminate with several spectacular flashes of light. “Optronic guidance,” he finished.
“Lost track of the StealthHawk,” Whitley reported. “Looks like we lost her. The patrol boat is turning—man, that thing is fast! At this range they can keep us in front of them easily.”
“Commit the second StealthHawk,” Luger said.
“Roger…target designated.” The sky lit up with more gun blasts for several seconds, but soon Hal could see two streaks of light from the sky down to the sea. A fraction of a second later, he saw a tremendous burst of light and a brief flicker of flame on the horizon. “Air-search radar is down,” Whitley reported. “Looks like we slowed him up a bit.”
“I’d say you started a little bonfire on his decks,” Briggs said. Even from his range, he could see flickers of light rippling across the sea. “I love those StealthHawk things, guys. Every kid should own one.”
Whitley managed to keep the Condor away from all other patrol boats; the destroyer stopped its pursuit to assist the smaller patrol boat fight its deck fire, so they avoided that threat as well. Fighters were vectored into the area to search for the unidentified attackers, but both the Condor and the StealthHawk were too small to be detected, and all it took was minor course corrections to keep them clear of the pursuing fighters.
Ninety minutes after passing the Kamchatka Peninsula, the tiny Condor jet crossed the coast of Siberia and headed inland. Twenty minutes later they crossed the Dzhugdzhur Mountains along the eastern coast of Siberia and finally left the warnings of the Magadan and Petropavlovsk surveillance radars behind—only to be replaced by warning messages for the Yakutsk surveillance radar. Unlike the rugged, volcanic terrain of the coastline and the Kamchatka Peninsula, the terrain here was rapidly smoothing out to flat, seemingly endless tundra, interspersed with sections of marshy swamps, gravelly kharst, and peat bogs—in short, there was no longer anywhere to hide. It seemed as if they could see forever—but if they could see forever, the enemy could certainly see them.
“Man, oh, man,” Hal Briggs said after studying the terrain map on his multifunction displays, “if this ain’t the end of the fuckin’ world, you can sure as hell see it from here.” But every twelve seconds—the time it took for a radar antenna to make one complete revolution—they were reminded of what lay ahead: the threat-warning receiver announcing, “Caution, early-warning and fighter-intercept radar, twelve o’clock, three hundred miles…Caution, early warning and fighter-intercept radar, two hundred ninety-nine miles….”
“Shaddup already,” Briggs said, flipping a switch to silence the threat-warning voice.
Ryazan’ Alternate Military Command Center,
Russian Federation
A short time later
From his decades as an air forces commander, from lowly lieutenant to general, Anatoliy Gryzlov could pick up on the slightest change in noise, tempo, or state of alert of the personnel in his command centers. The changes were incredibly subtle—but enough to awaken him with a start from a deep sleep and catapult him out of his seat. He had been catnapping in his small battle-staff meeting room, but even after less than an hour of sleep, he was wide-awake and on the move. He stormed through the office door and into the main battle-staff area. “What has happened, Stepashin?” he shouted.
“Several air-defense units engaging unidentified hostile aircraft, sir,” Stepashin said. He stepped quickly over to the wall chart. “Fighter wings based at both Petropavlovsk and Anadyr report some losses, and one naval unit in the Sea of Okhotsk was attacked by antiradar weapons.”
Gryzlov had grabbed a long measuring plotter and was running it across some lines drawn on the chart. He pointed gleefully at one of the time markers. “I told you, Nikolai—right dead on schedule,” he said. “McLanahan is so punctual that you can set your watch by him.”
“Sir, all of the fighters reported very small contacts,” Stepashin said. “If McLanahan was coming with bombers…?”
“No bombers—not yet,” Gryzlov said confidently. “These are StealthHawks—unmanned attack aircraft. They can launch missiles, but their primary function is reconnaissance. I told you to pass the word along, Nikolai—use no radars, or they’ll be destroyed by stealth aircraft. The StealthHawks are launched by Megafortresses and Vampires, but McLanahan is not ready to send in his heavy jets—not yet, but soon. They were probably launched by unmanned aircraft.”
He pointed at the lines drawn to several bases in southern Siberia. “He is right on time, Nikolai, so get your men ready,” he said, a
sparkle in his eyes showing his excitement at the chase. “The next warning we get will be the main force of bombers trying to penetrate our air defenses. Petropavlovsk may pick up the first wave, but more likely it’ll be the terminal defenses around Anadyr again, Blagoveshchensk, Vladivostok, Sakhalin Island, or Magadan that will get the first indication of an attack.
“You must swarm all over any sensor contact you have and launch every missile possible at it, and keep firing until it goes down or until your crews run out of missiles,” Gryzlov said, stabbing at Stepashin with his cigarette. “We can achieve a stalemate or even a victory if we are successful in shooting down one transport or stealth aircraft—just one! Once the Americans realize they are not invulnerable to attack, they will quickly come back to the bargaining table.”
Yakutsk, Siberia, Russian Federation
Several hours later
There was no sweeter sight in the entire world than when you broke out of a thick, angry overcast and saw the landing strip, especially through sheets of almost frozen rain pelting the windscreen. The pilot of the Russian Federation air force’s Ilyushin-78 aerial-refueling tanker breathed a sigh of relief that he was sure could be heard throughout his large, noisy aircraft. “Kalyosa, nizhniy,” he ordered, and the copilot grasped the large landing-gear lever, squeezed the unlock trigger, and lowered the lever. “Flaps to thirty. Ignition switches on.” He reduced power and aimed for the end of the runway as the copilot flipped his plastic-covered checklist pages to the “Aborted Landing” section, ready to read to the pilot in case a go-around was required. But it didn’t look as if it would be needed. The winds were right down the runway, and although the rain was falling pretty hard, restricting visibility, he had this landing nailed. “Unit Three-four-four, field in sight.”
“Unit Four-four, cleared to land, winds three-five-zero at eighteen gusting to twenty-two knots.” The pilot looked through the whipping rain and saw the steady green light from the tower cab, a visual indication that he was cleared to land.