GOLAN: This is the Future of War (Future War)

by FX Holden

  “That’s my girls!” Bunny growled. “Still no target. Come on, Ivan, that all you got?”

  Rap watched on his heads-up display in disbelief as his missiles flew wide, arced into a Mach 5 dive and buried themselves into the earth before they could complete their loop and reacquire the enemy drones.

  “Control, Kogot leader, missiles failed to acquire. Firing with end-stage active homing. Out.”

  Rap wasn’t worried. The American drones had evaded, but they hadn’t returned his fire and he had no indication they had a radar lock on his or his wingman’s aircraft. He could see the signal from the Mount Hermon Israeli radar, but it was sweeping over him without staying fixed on his position.

  He was invisible and, against the faceless, pilotless aircraft, felt invulnerable. It was possible they weren’t even armed. That would make sense … the American commanders probably didn’t even trust the men back on the ground in their trailers not to screw up and cause an international incident by shooting down a foreign aircraft inside Syrian airspace. He still had four air-to-air missiles in his weapons bay, and only two targets to worry about. His wingman had another six missiles.

  They could keep this up all night.

  “Kogot leader, I still have a target lock. Missiles armed. Firing one, firing …. two,” he grunted, watching his missiles arc away into the night again. He’d fired them in terminal self-guidance mode this time … they’d guide themselves to their targets using the data from his aircraft and the Growler below, but then about five miles out from their targets they would switch on their own homing radar. It would give the enemy aircraft slightly more warning, but it would also give the missiles a dramatically higher chance of scoring a kill.

  Bunny O’Hare had pulled a screen on a flexible arm closer to her face and was busy with a mouse setting new navigation waypoints for the four F-47s she had skimming the ground inside Israeli airspace, about ten miles back from the Golan Heights ceasefire line.

  “What are you doing?” Kovacs asked her.

  “Sending in the cavalry,” O’Hare told her.

  Kovacs stood up and looked over her shoulder at the navigation plot. “Those waypoints are inside Syrian airspace.”

  “Yup.” Bunny hit a key and the four F-47s began following the track she’d just laid out, spearing east from Israel, across the Golan Heights and into Syria.

  “That’s outside our ROE.”

  “Nope, operational exigency, it’s called. We were fired on by an aircraft inside Syria. We are allowed to return fire in order to facilitate a withdrawal. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Flying into Syrian airspace is not withdrawing.”

  “Nuance, Kovacs,” Bunny said. “That Russian will shoot again. We’ll have a brief window in which to get a reverse bearing on his missiles. Watch and learn.”

  Sure enough, seconds later, her two high-altitude drones picked up targeting radar from incoming missiles. They punched out decoys and dived for the ground again, but they had a fix on the missiles that had been fired on them and Bunny’s combat AI calculated a point of origin.

  Which turned out to be 20,000 feet directly above the four Fantoms she had sent into Syria at sand dune height. With a tickle on her flight stick and tapping her keyboard with her left hand, she sent the four F-47s into a vertical power climb straight up, at the same time as she engaged the search radar on all four machines.

  Floating through the sky directly above them, their fat radar-reflecting underbellies and hot rear exhaust ports exposed perfectly to Bunny’s drones, were the two enemy Felons.

  “Locking targets,” Bunny told Kovacs. “Arming missiles.”

  A radar threat warning screamed in Rap’s ears. His eyes had been glued to his tactical display, waiting for confirmation of the kills on the American drones.

  What the…

  As seconds elapsed without him reacting, his combat AI took control of his Felon, rolled it onto its back and powered into a diving turn that would give the enemy below the lowest likelihood of a good shot. His wingman had already done the same, grabbing his stick, shoving his throttle forward and following the autosteer cue in his helmet visor that told him where to point his plane to minimize the chance he’d be swatted from the sky.

  Rap panted, shoved back in his seat by the acceleration, pushed up against the side of the cockpit by the force of his aircraft’s turn. In his ears he registered the tone that marked one of his missiles striking home, but his vision was starting to grey out and he was waiting for the higher-pitched warbling tone telling him an enemy missile was arrowing toward him.

  When it didn’t come, Rap quickly decided an American drone kill was not worth dying for and pulled his machine into a high-g turn back into Syria.

  “Damn,” O’Hare muttered. “We lost one of our top cover birds. But we spooked those Felons, they’re bugging out.”

  “You didn’t engage,” Kovacs observed. “You had them dead to rights.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” O’Hare said. “I can actually follow orders, you know. The CO said not to engage from outside Israeli or Golani airspace, and I didn’t. I’m pulling back the low-level element now. Keeping the remaining high-level element on station over the Golan so Ivan can see we aren’t abandoning the high ground.” She opened a channel to the US Bombardier Global 6000 AWACS. “Falcon Control, Valor flight leader, did you copy that engagement?”

  “Valor leader, Falcon copies. We registered four missiles fired by hostile aircraft, one Valor bird lost.”

  “Valor confirms. You want us to stay on station, Falcon?”

  “Affirmative, Valor leader. Losses are within acceptable parameters. Continue your patrol.”

  Kovacs kicked the footplate in front of her seat. “Acceptable parameters? Acceptable to who?”

  “Thirty percent expected attrition per sortie, right?” O’Hare reminded her. “We’re only at fifteen percent so far.”

  After the adrenaline-fueled few minutes they had just been through, the quiet inside the trailer felt strained, unreal.

  “That engagement was a success, you realize that, right?” O’Hare asked Kovacs. “An unseen enemy got four missiles away at us, and we lost only one machine. We spooked them so badly it looks like they’ve pulled back. And we still hold the skies over the operations area.”

  “When one of your babies is dead, it’s hard to celebrate the other five still being alive,” Kovacs told her.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be sitting in this trailer, then,” O’Hare said, not without feeling. “I mean, if you’re that invested? These aircraft are built to fly, fight and die. That’s what they do. Sometimes we’ll win, sometimes we’ll lose. It may not feel like it to you, but that was a win.”

  “I know, I know,” Kovacs said. She ran a hand through her hair. “But I can learn more sitting here watching you fly my machines in the real than I would from a thousand hours of reviewing flight data and video recordings. I never in my wildest dreams thought we would get to a state where one pilot could fly six aircraft in a combat engagement, but it just happened.”

  Bunny was running her eyes across her displays and reached out her hand to tap a few keys before responding. “Still happening. We’re still on patrol.”

  Kovacs sighed and fell back in her chair. “What are the Russians doing now, do you think?”

  Bunny scratched her cheek, thinking about it. “They made their point, they scored a kill. They got spooked though. Those pilots are checking with their commander, getting orders, like we did. They can still see our aircraft patrolling over the Golan Heights, but now they know we have more aircraft in the operational area than they can see.”

  “You think they’ll attack again.”

  “For sure. In strength. But they have to know it would be like punching a wall made of Jello. It might make you feel good, but you aren’t going to get rid of it just by punching. Aircraft can’t take and hold ground, so at some point they’ll either need to back off or transition to kinetic ground op
erations.”

  “But today?”

  “My guess? They’ll start sending ground-to-air missiles at anything they can get a lock on. Why risk piloted aircraft like they just did when they can sit on the ground and try to swat us from the sky that way?”

  As though it had heard her speaking, a warbling tone filled the trailer.

  Bunny pulled up her threat warning screen. “Annnnnd here it comes. That’s their Growler.” She twitched her stick, and the simulated cockpit view showed their top cover aircraft rolling onto its back and diving for the ground.

  “For controlling a single aircraft I’ve programmed the stick with a range of standard flight maneuvers,” she told Kovacs. “So I’m not actually flying it, I’m sending it commands telling it what I want it to do. Eight directions on the gimbal, three buttons on the stick gives 32 standard maneuvers. Each pilot can program their own favorites. For me a clean down and left means execute an evasive maneuver to port and head for the dirt.” They watched as an infrared image of the ground below grew larger in their sights until the aircraft leveled itself out and started skimming across the dunes. “Growler takes 9 to 10 seconds to get a lock and launch a missile. Plenty of time for us to pull our bird down to dune level, reposition and then pop up again,” Bunny said. She reached out her arms and cracked her knuckles. “I call this tactic Fantom whack-a-mole.” She twitched her stick again, sending her Fantom back up to altitude. “A few hours of this, they are reeeeeally going to hate us.”

  All Domain Attack: Insurrection

  Buq’ata, Golan Heights, May 18

  “Somebody really hates you,” Jensen told the Israeli woman whose forehead wound Bell was cleaning as she leaned back against the wall in her hallway. After dealing with the two shooters, Jensen had left Bell to help tend to the wounded while he fetched his squad from down on the highway. There was still no sign of their UNDOF connection. They had tried their cell phones, but the network was down. At a house near the highway they’d asked to use a landline but were told that both telephone lines and electricity were down, which Jensen did not take to be a coincidence.

  It was turning into a Bad Day in multiple ways.

  The Israeli military had moved into the town and set up down by the highway. It had looked like they were waiting for orders before moving in, so Jensen and his squad skirted around them without attracting attention – he was not in the mood for explaining their presence, not yet, anyway. He’d put his people to work helping the walking wounded and shifting the bodies.

  “Yes. There have been incidents,” the woman said, wincing as Bell dabbed her wound with disinfectant. “Since the Syrian civil war. Bad feeling between pro- and anti-Assad factions, and lately, between the Syrian Druze and Israeli settlers. Around 2020 the government declared that Israel was a Jewish State, which didn’t help relations.” She gestured at the people around. “But there has been nothing like this.” She gestured at the ruined buildings around the intersection. “These are Druze businesses. Syrian Arabic. But Israeli settlers would not do this.”

  Bell finished working on her wound. “Best I can do for now, ma’am,” he said. “You should get antibiotics soon as you can.” Bell pointed at himself, then Jensen. “Corporal Calvin Bell, US Marine Corps, and the big ugly one is Gunnery Sergeant James Jensen.”

  The woman held out her hand to shake. “My name is Amal Azaria,” she said. “I am a Corporal in the IDF. This is…” she looked out the shattered doorway at the street beyond where cars were still smoldering, “… this was my brother’s furniture shop. I need to get in touch with my unit to report this. Can you stay and help the wounded?” she asked Bell.

  Jensen nodded to him.

  “Sure, ma’am.”

  Jensen sized her up, taking a real look at her for the first time. She was about five ten or eleven, wearing jeans, a black t-shirt and a military-style jacket, looked to be in her mid-thirties, had raven black hair and olive skin, with a spray of freckles across her nose. And she didn’t appear at all fussed that her face was still covered with her own dried blood.

  “I saw some IDF troops gathered at the outskirts of town, looked like they were waiting for orders to push in.”

  “They will have a radio,” she said, standing. “Where?”

  “I’ll show you,” he said. “I need a radio too, to get in touch with our UN contact.”

  They walked around a line of bodies and past the still smoking wreck of a car. “You have no idea who did this?” he asked.

  “No. Feelings have been running high but there has never been this kind of violence between Israeli settlers and Druze Syrians,” she said.

  “Druze Syrians? Buq’ata is not Israeli and Jewish?”

  She looked at him curiously. “Who are you, that you do not know this?”

  “Ma’am,” he said tersely, “we literally stepped straight off a flight from Kobani and into your firefight, so you’ll excuse my ignorance.”

  “I’m sorry. But I’m glad you were here today.”

  “You are pretty handy with an assault rifle yourself, for a shop owner,” he observed.

  She gave him a slight smile. “Every Israeli serves three years in the People’s Army. I am a communications reservist in Golani Brigade, Palhik Signals Company. But the shop is my brother’s. In real life I’m a robotics engineer.”

  “In that case, you are pretty handy with an assault rifle, for a robotics engineer.” Jensen pointed. “The roadblock was down here,” he said.

  She frowned and followed as he led the way back down the main road to the south. “Why have they not come in to help?”

  He shrugged. “How many Israelis live here?” he asked.

  “Most of the population are Syrian Druze,” she said as they walked. “The Druze are a separate religious group, not Jewish, not Muslim. Buq’ata became part of Israel in the 1980s and about ten percent of the population is Israeli now. The other ninety percent still think of themselves as Syrian. They accept Israeli resident status, but most won’t take citizenship or carry an Israeli passport.”

  “Doesn’t exactly sound like a friendly neighborhood.”

  “We have lived in peace most of the time,” she said. “The Druze religion has much in common with Judaism. We say there is Covenant of Blood between us…”

  “I saw that today,” Jensen said wryly.

  “Not usually bad blood,” Amal replied. “Today was … something different. Something new.”

  They turned a corner and saw the roadblock that Jensen and his Marines had bypassed – two military vehicles drawn up across the road, and several soldiers in dark green uniforms – but he noticed immediately that there was an officer with them now. Although they were still about thirty yards away he could tell from the number of stripes on the man’s shoulders that he was a colonel.

  Which seemed to be a very high rank for a guy manning a roadblock. The officer saw Jensen and Amal at about the same time. He also saw that both of them were carrying assault rifles. Reaching behind himself he motioned for a bullhorn and called out something in Hebrew.

  Amal took her rifle from her shoulder. “He says we should lay down our rifles and approach.” She bent to put her rifle on the ground. “It is standard procedure until we identify ourselves.”

  There was something wrong with the picture. Jensen’s blood was still pumped full of adrenaline, so maybe he was overreacting, paranoid … but shouldn’t that colonel and his men have been in the center of the town, checking on the situation, trying to restore order, as Amal had expected? Why were they back here, manning a roadblock? “Wait,” Jensen said, going down to one knee beside her as though putting his rifle down too. “Do you recognize him? The officer?”

  She looked up quickly. “No. The uniform is Golani Brigade. Recon Battalion, I think. Why?”

  Jensen nodded at the troops behind the colonel, all of whom had stopped lounging around and were now standing with weapons at the ready.

  “And those men?”

  She squinted.
“Those are … not Golani. They’re Sword Battalion, Druze soldiers. But the Sword Battalion was disbanded. I haven’t seen those uniforms for years. That’s strange.”

  Strange. That was all Jensen needed to hear. “Pick up your rifle.”

  “What?”

  “Get up slowly. Pick. Up. Your. Rifle.”

  As she rose to her feet again, Jensen raised both hands in the air, one of them holding his rifle high so they could see it. “American! United Nations!” he yelled. “I want to speak with your commanding officer.”

  “What are you doing?” Amal asked.

  The officer lifted his bullhorn again. “I am commander here. Put down your weapons and approach,” he repeated.

  “Get behind me,” Jensen told her. He looked over his shoulder. The street corner was about ten yards behind them.

  “Why?”

  “When did you ever see a full colonel in charge of a damn roadblock?” he asked her in a low voice. “He must have seen or heard that blast. Or even heard the gunfire from here. These men should have moved up by now. Something isn’t right here.”

  Jensen raised his voice again, calling out to the troops on the roadblock. “We need medical help, in town! Come with us!” Jensen waved his free arm, pointing back the way they had come.

  The Israeli colonel turned and handed the bullhorn to a man behind him, and barked an order. Walking out from the barricade, he moved quickly toward Jensen and Amal, exuding calm and confidence. Behind him, though, Jensen could see his men had taken up firing positions and were covering him.