by Ted Halstead
Chapter Twenty Six
Near Intersection of Highway 522 and Aramco Road, 228 Kilometers East of Riyadh
Though he’d known reorganizing his forces would take time after the beating they’d just suffered, Prince Bilal was dismayed that as the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) planes approached they were still almost exactly where they’d been during the attack. One problem had been getting medical assistance to injured tank crews, which were scattered and in many cases too badly wounded to even reach their radios.
Another problem had been track replacement. Dispersal had reduced the effectiveness of the air attack, but it had made getting replacement tracks to Leopards needing them a time-consuming chore.
Fortunately, the Qatari Emeri Air Force (QEAF) had been on alert from the moment Bilal’s force crossed the Saudi border, and had already radioed him that they were en route to provide cover.
Ironically, many of the fighter jets about to meet in the skies above Bilal’s force were the same aircraft operated by different countries. Both the RSAF and the QEAF flew the F-15 and the Typhoon, while only the QEAF flew the French Mirage 2000-5 and Rafale.
The QEAF’s sole advantage was that its aircraft were newer. With the exception of the Mirage 2000-5, its entire Air Force had been purchased largely as a reaction to Saudi threats, culminating in the blockade and the start of construction on the Salwa Canal.
The RSAF’s advantages included more planes and pilots, as well as more experience and training. While QEAF pilots had flown out of Crete to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya in 2011 and had later flown missions against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, that experience paled in comparison to the combat flying time the RSAF had accumulated in Yemen.
Of course, both the RSAF and the QEAF shared a complete lack of air-to-air combat experience since the Libyans had never sortied aircraft to challenge the Qataris, and neither the Houthis nor ISIS had an Air Force.
The air superiority versions of the F-15 (A/C/I/S) had never been shot down in air-to-air combat, while it had downed over a hundred aircraft in engagements in Europe and the Middle East. The Mirage 2000 had a less inspiring record of one enemy aircraft shot down, and one lost to ground fire.
The RSAF had lost both a Panavia Tornado and a Typhoon to ground fire in Yemen. The Rafale had flown in combat before, but had neither shot down an enemy aircraft nor been shot down itself.
All that would change today.
American trainers in Saudi Arabia for the F-15 were employees of its manufacturer, and were based at King Khalid Air Base near Khamis Mushait about one hundred sixty kilometers north of Yemen. British trainers for the Typhoon in Qatar were still considered on active duty in the Royal Air Force.
Neither group of trainers would have ever considered flying with their students.
The French instructors for Qatar’s new Rafale aircraft, however, were retired French Air Force pilots, and all three volunteered to fly with the QEAF. All of them sympathized with Qatar, disliked the idea that the Saudis could push it around simply because it was bigger, and thought that changing Qatar from a peninsula to an island with the Salwa Canal could reasonably be considered an act of war.
Plus, they had all wanted to fly the Rafale in combat, but had never had the chance.
One of them was Jacques Arcement, who like the other instructors insisted on flying as wingmen, with their Qatari cadets in the lead. One reason for all three was that it was, after all, the Qataris’ air force.
For Jacques it was also that he genuinely considered his Qatari cadet to be a better natural pilot. Part of this was a function of age, but by no means all.
Mansour Al-Attiyah’s situational awareness and lightning-quick reaction time made him one of the best pilots Jacques had seen in any air force. In fact, part of what had motivated Jacques to volunteer was to give Mansour a chance to put those talents to use, since Jacques feared without the experience he and the other instructors could bring to bear the Saudis’ superiority in sheer numbers would be likely to overwhelm the QEAF.
Jacques stood on the runway's edge well away from his Rafale as he enjoyed a cigarette from what was likely to be his last pack of Gauloises. As he smoked it to its unfiltered end, he had to smile. Here he was smoking a Gauloise as he prepared to board a Rafale to do battle in a nearly hopeless cause. The only way to make the moment more French would be to find some fitting music played by an accordion.
The Rafales were out in front of the formation because they were one of the few aircraft that thanks to its two Snecma M88 engines could
“supercruise,” meaning it could travel faster than Mach 1 without using its afterburner, even when fully loaded with four missiles and a drop tank. So could the Typhoons with their two Eurojet EJ200 engines, which followed right behind them, primarily because the QEAF had more Rafales than Typhoons.
When he saw the Saudi attack group on his scope, though, he realized the battle would not be as lopsided as he’d thought. For a start, there were far fewer Typhoons than Jacques had expected. This was partly because all of the RSAF’s Typhoons, in Squadrons 3, 10, and 80 were based at King Fahd Air Base near Taif, a full one thousand kilometers from Prince Bilal’s force.
Jacques had no way to know the other reason was that only the Typhoon carried the Brimstone 2 air-to-ground missile, the RSAF’s only hope to take out the remaining S-300 guarding the northern invasion force. Many of the missing Typhoons were being fitted with Brimstone 2s at the same time as the strike against the Qatari force to do just that.
There were two big questions that Jacques knew would be answered in the next few minutes. The first was whether the Saudis had been arrogant enough to think that they could outfit their strike force with a mix of anti-air and anti-ground missiles to destroy the Qatari armored force and the QEAF in a single engagement, or whether they planned to take out the QEAF first followed by returning and rearming to destroy the now defenseless armor.
The second was whether the Typhoons that were approaching carried the Meteor. The first modern air-launched anti-aircraft missile to be developed by the Europeans, it had a classified range of “well over” a hundred kilometers, while the older AIM-120C that was the best carried on all Saudi fighters as well as the QEAF’s F-15s had a maximum range of about a hundred and five kilometers.
A new model AMRAAM, the AIM-120D, increased the missile’s range to one hundred sixty kilometers. So far, though, the Americans had only agreed to export it to Australia.
The Meteor’s hardware and software had been integrated into Typhoons in European air forces, and French technicians had completed the work for the Rafale in both the French and Qatari air forces, as well as the QEAF’s
Typhoons. Jacques thought the fact that the first air force outside Europe to receive the Meteor was flying the Rafale might have been because the company making the Meteor had a French CEO.
But Jacques was probably being too cynical.
Qatar didn’t have a real military intelligence service, relying on a few paid sources in the militaries of surrounding countries. They said the Meteor was not yet on any Saudi plane.
Today, they would find out for sure.
The Rafale had been upgraded in 2014 to the RBE2 AA active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar with a range of two hundred kilometers, and this upgrade was included in the Rafales delivered to Qatar in 2020. In theory that made it superior to the one hundred sixty kilometer range of the APG-63 in the F-15s flown by both the RSAF and QEAF, and the CAPTOR-D in the Typhoons flown by both the RSAF and QAEF with about the same range. Though only qualified as an instructor pilot in the Rafale, Jacques had also flown both the QEAF’s Typhoon and F-15 jets, and thought in practice all three radars’ performance was about the same.
Now it let him monitor a sight very rarely seen — the simultaneous launch of five dozen Meteor missiles by thirty-six Rafales and twenty-four Typhoons at the advancing RSAF planes. All Rafale and Typhoon pilots had been briefed before takeoff to launch their Meteors as soon as
they all had a lock, even though this would make a hit unlikely.
In training Jacques had told his pilots to wait, if the tactical situation allowed it, to launch from sixty kilometers away from the target. The Meteor’s manufacturer MBDA called this the beginning of the “No Escape Zone.” Jacques made a point of telling his students there was no such thing, but it was true that a hit was far more likely at the lower range.
The point of firing the Meteors now anyway was to occupy the RSAF planes with something other than destroying Prince Bilal’s tanks. To some extent it worked. All planes with a Meteor locked onto them changed course and began using their electronic countermeasures.
Jacques swore as he heard AGM-114 Hellfire launch warnings, which answered his first question. The Saudis planned to take out both Prince Bilal’s force as well as the QEAF.
When no answering swarm of Meteors came, though, Jacques knew he had a happier answer to his second question. It looked like the RSAF didn’t have them yet.
Just a few minutes later, the range had been closed to the point that the QEAF’s three dozen F-15s could send their AIM-120Cs at the RSAF fighters. An answering and much larger swarm of AIM-120s came from the RSAF jets, though not from all of them. Some of the Meteors had scored hits even from extreme range and many other RSAF fighters were still occupied with evading them, and so were unable to lock onto a QEAF jet.
Now came the most difficult part of the engagement. Jacques and all the other Rafale and Typhoon pilots were going to ignore the AIM-120Cs headed their way, and fire another five dozen Meteors at the RSAF from within the so-called “No Escape Zone.” The orders at their briefing had stressed they should still have time after firing a second Meteor to evade the AIM-120C.
Well, Jacques thought grimly, the operative word is “should.”
From the point of view of the QEAF Commander, he thought the second Meteor plan made a lot of sense. More RSAF planes would probably be lost to Meteor hits than QEAF planes to AIM-120Cs, and in the meantime nearly all the RSAF planes would be too busy to attack Prince Bilal’s tanks.
Jacques’ point of view, though, was dominated by an AIM-120C that appeared to be very serious about killing him. Today would see the first real test of the Rafale’s self-defense suite, with the French acronym SPECTRA.
The capability of greatest interest to Jacques was its supposed ability to do active cancellation. In theory, this worked by sampling and analyzing incoming radar and feeding it back out of phase, which would interfere with the returning radar echo.
As Jacques tried every maneuvering trick he could think of to evade the AIM-120C, all he could think of was that his late father had been right. He had been an NCO in the French Army, and when Jacques had told him he planned to enlist in the Air Force had given him just two words of advice — never volunteer.
Just when Jacques was convinced he would very soon be able to tell his father in person he wished he had taken his advice, the AIM-120C lost its lock and flew off. Had SPECTRA successfully spoofed it? Had it locked onto some other unlucky plane?
Jacques didn’t care. While he had been busy trying to stay alive, the RSAF and QEAF jets had continued flying towards each other, and now he was going to experience what an American pilot had told him was called a
“furball.” He’d said they’d been rare since Vietnam, since missiles had usually settled matters before planes could get close enough for the two key elements to kick in — confusion, and multiple airplanes within cannon range.
The 30 mm GIAT 30M 791 cannon in the Rafale was one Jacques had used several times in exercises, and his score in those had been quite good.
He had also insisted that his students take their training with the GIAT seriously, though he had privately agreed with the ones who grumbled that they’d never use them in combat.
Now he was using his GIAT against an F-15 that his instruments told him was an RSAF plane. Jacques hoped it was true, because though he was close enough to target the jet, he certainly couldn’t see its insignia. Smoke started to pour from the F-15, and he saw the pilot eject as the jet began to tumble towards the desert below.
As soon as he’d survived his encounter with the AIM-120C Jacques had looked for his wingman but hadn’t been able to find him. In the madness of dozens of aircraft firing guns and missiles at each other he hoped Mansour had survived, because at the moment everything was moving too fast for anyone to do more than that.
Just as he had that thought, Jacques watched in horror as two jets slammed into each other and disappeared in a cloud of exploding fuel and ammunition.
He joined every other plane nearby in veering off, since the metal debris from the explosion would spell the end for anyone unfortunate enough to suck pieces into their engines.
Each Rafale pilot had been given the option of which missiles to include with their two Meteors, and Jacques had gone with the MICA IR. Capable of lock-on after launch (LOAL), it meant Jacques didn’t have to wait to fire, making it perfect for the chaotic conditions around him. Even better was that while at least one was on his plane the MICA IR provided infrared imagery to his attack computer, acting as an extra sensor.
Now Jacques saw that an RSAF Typhoon was within MICA IR range, and without waiting for a lock fired. One reason Jacques had decided to use an IR missile rather than radar-homing was that many fighters lacked the ability to detect they were under IR attack. Only the UK, for example, had equipped its Typhoons with a laser warning receiver.
That’s the reason Jacques had picked the Typhoon as a target for his MICA IR.
As it flew closer to the Typhoon Jacques was able to lock the missile on target, and in less than a minute it had detonated near its right engine. Jacques wasn’t sure, but he thought it had been a proximity detonation of the missile’s twelve-kilogram warhead rather than a direct impact hit, since in spite of smoke and flame the Typhoon’s wing appeared intact.
Its pilot, however, apparently concluded that it was best not to wait for further explosions and ejected.
Jacques didn’t have time to waste on self-congratulations, though, as the edge of his scope lit up with dozens of new contacts.
So far, the QEAF had faced Typhoons from King Fahd Air Base and F-15s from No. 55 Squadron, which had been recently transferred to Prince Sultan Air Base. Now joining the battle from King Abdulaziz Air Base near Dhahran were Panavia Tornados from the No. 7 Squadron and F-15s from the No. 13 and No. 92 Squadrons.
The RSAF had the distinction of being not only the sole air force in the world to ever fly the Tornado outside the three-country partnership that had produced it (Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy), it was also the only country that still had it in service. The UK, for instance, retired the Tornado F3 air defense model in 2011 and the Tornado GR4 ground attack model in 2019, replacing both with the Typhoon.
The bad news for the QEAF was that these Tornados had been updated to the latest GR4 model by the British and carried the ASRAAM. Developed by the British as a replacement for the AIM-9 Sidewinder, it flew at Mach 3 at a range of up to fifty kilometers. The F-15s were already firing AIM-120Cs at Jacques and the other surviving jets of the QEAF.
With all his attention focused on survival, Jacques had only a dim awareness that so far casualties suffered on both sides had been fairly even, or thanks to the Meteor salvos maybe even slightly in the QEAF’s favor.
Over half of the aircraft on both sides of the engagement had either been shot down, or in a few cases managed to limp damaged back to base. Prince Bilal’s surviving Leopard tanks were back on the highway to Riyadh, and were about to face Prince Ali’s M1A2 tanks.
The QEAF had accomplished its mission. It had given its armored forces the chance to reach Riyadh.
But with the appearance of three fresh RSAF squadrons, there was no doubt that today would mark the end of the QEAF as a coherent fighting force, even if a handful of planes were able to make it back to base in Doha.
Jacques managed to score one more victory with his la
st MICA IR that must have been an impact rather than a proximity hit against the RSAF
Tornado, because this one exploded so violently he had to sheer off immediately to avoid damage from its debris.
While he was doing that, another AIM-120C found him. Jacques had no time to even attempt either evasion or ejection.
But, Jacques had fulfilled his dream of flying the Rafale in combat. And his few surviving fellow pilots would agree, he had done so well.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Assembly of Experts Secretariat, Qom, Iran
Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Vahid Turani was trying, and failing, to imagine a less receptive audience than the men before him at the Assembly of Experts.
They had been forced into cramped and uncomfortable quarters in the name of security, told nothing after that, and then rousted out of bed in the middle of the night — again in the name of security.
Vahid had already decided to get straight to the point. “The Supreme Leader has been murdered by the Pasdaran, on the orders of Acting Supreme Leader Reza Fagheh. He has also launched an attack on Saudi Arabia without any authorization using Pasdaran forces allied with Qatar’s military, using both nuclear weapons and chemical agents.”
“Where is your proof?” an Ayatollah shouted from the back. Vahid nodded as he recognized one of Reza’s allies.
“Play the first video,” Vahid said to a nearby technician.
The recording filled the large screen in front of the Assembly hall taken by Roya Maziar of the Supreme Leader being shot by a man in Pasdaran uniform.
Into the shocked silence that followed, Vahid said, “The nurse who made this recording with her cell phone is available to confirm its authenticity. Ask yourself this question- who stood to gain from the Supreme Leader’s death, especially with all of you confined for supposed security reasons?”
Another Ayatollah shouted from the back, “Where is the proof Grand Ayatollah Fagheh approved the use of chemical weapons against the Saudis?”