by Dale Brown
“Yes, starboard side.”
“Good. Get your cameras ready, boys.”
“Echo-Fox radar has intermittent lock-on, Golf-band radar not locked on. Carrier’s one o’clock, ten miles.”
“Where are the fighters?”
“Six o’clock, thirty miles, fifteen thousand feet.”
“We’ll make the pass, then climb north to clear the fighters,” Boxer said. “Any fighters on the catapults?”
“Yes, two moving onto the forward cats.”
“I’ll stay a little farther out in case they decide to launch them,” Boxer said. “It’ll spoil the picture but they should still get a nice shot.”
“American attack bomber, this is the carrier Putin,” the Russian controller radioed once again. “This is your final warning, alter course away from this task force immediately. Acknowledge!”
“I thought you already gave us your final warning, Comrade,” Boxer said on intercom. “Just one more flyby and we’re outta here. I expect to see the pictures on the Internet by the time we get home.”
“Admiral, American B-1 bomber on the port stern quarter, eighteen kilometers, altitude less than one hundred meters, approaching at Mach one-point-one-five!” the captain of the Putin shouted into the phone.
“Is he radiating, Captain?”
“Defensive electronic jamming signals only. No attack radars.”
The admiral paused for a long moment; then: “How close has he come to the task force, Captain?”
“He flew supersonic less than a kilometer from the destroyer Vysotskiy at ninety degrees bank. I thought there was going to be a collision! The Vysotskiy tried to warn him away with their close-in weapon system-the gun’s guidance radar was completely jammed.”
“What about electro-optical tracking? It is daylight, Captain!”
“The crewman manning the optical tracker took cover-he thought the bomber was going to crash right into him. Several men were injured by the shock wave.”
Another pause; then: “I think the American bomber is hostile, Captain,” the admiral said in a remarkably calm and even voice, as if he was reading from a script. “Sound battle stations, full tactical engagement…all weapons released.”
The pass by the aircraft carrier was farther away, but they were still well within a half mile when Boxer made her supersonic high-bank right turn in front of the carrier. Frodo felt as if his arms weighed a hundred pounds each as the g-forces increased.
“Okay, Frodo, fun time’s over,” Boxer said. She started a left turn and headed away from the Russian task force, staying one hundred feet above the ocean. She pulled the power back to full military power to conserve as much fuel as possible-she knew she was already eating into her reserves by doing the low-altitude, high-speed maneuvers. “Where are those fighters?”
Frodo activated the laser radar. “Closest formation is southeast, twenty miles, fifteen thousand feet,” he reported. “The other formation is…” He paused as a warning tone sounded. “India-Juliet-band target engagement radar active!” Frodo shouted. “It’s locked on!”
Suddenly the threat warning computer blared, “Warning, warning, missile guidance, SA-N-6!”
“Here it comes!” Boxer shouted. She immediately punched the throttles into full afterburner.
“Countermeasures active!” Frodo shouted. Boxer punched the buttons on her control stick to eject decoy chaff and flares, then rolled into a hard left turn, pulled the throttles out of afterburner, and pulled on the control stick to make the turn as tight as she could. There was a bright flash of light out the right cockpit window, and both crewmembers were jerked violently to the right from the force of the exploding missile. Their supercockpit displays flickered, and the right side of Frodo’s screen went blank.
Boxer rolled out of the turn before all of her airspeed bled off in the break, then selected full afterburner again…but then brought the rightmost throttle back. “Compressor stall on number four!” she shouted.
“Warning, warning, missile guidance, SA-N-4, four o’clock!” the threat computer blared.
“Is the active defensive system up?”
“No-all ECMs faulted. I’m rebooting.”
“Hang on!” She punched out chaff and flares again, hoping the ejectors were working, then rolled into a hard right break, using the underpowered number four engine as an air brake to tighten the turn. “Can you see the missile?”
Frodo frantically scanned out his window, then shouted, “Climb, now!” Boxer pulled the control stick until all they could see out the front windscreen was sky, then pushed wings-level and reversed the turn. She saw a flash of light below and to her left.
“Missile guidance, SA-N-6, six o’clock!”
“Our airspeed is almost gone,” Boxer said. “I can’t do any more breaks or else we’ll spin into the ocean. How’s the ECM-”
“Coming online now!” Frodo shouted. The right side of his supercockpit display was on once again, and his fingers were flying across the touchscreen. “ADS active!” The Vampire’s ADS, or Active Defensive System, was a pair of free-electron laser emitters, one atop and one underneath the fuselage. When the laser radar detected an incoming missile, the ADS lasers would slave themselves to the LADAR and attack the missiles with beams of white-hot laser energy powerful enough to destroy the thin dielectric nose cap of most surface-to-air missiles at long range. They had to fight off at least a half-dozen Russian missiles fired from the carrier’s escorts.
“Airspeed’s finally picking up,” Boxer said. “I’m going to see if number four is back with us.” She gently advanced the throttle of the number four engine, watching the exhaust temperatures to make sure the fire that was in the engine wasn’t going to reignite-and sure enough, the exhaust-gas temperature in the engine began to spike, and she pulled the throttle to idle, then to “CUTOFF.” “Looks like number four is dead, Frodo-a fire starts in the burner can when I advance the throttle,” she said. “Let’s get on the radio and see if our tanker can-”
“Bandits!” Frodo yelled. “Su-33s, three o’clock, twenty-five-”
Just then the threat warning computer blared, “Missile guidance, AA-12, three o’clock!” Boxer punched out chaff and flares and did another hard left break…
…but it was too slow with the lost engine, and there wasn’t enough airspeed to keep the break in to defeat the missile. They felt a hard whummp and the entire tail section of the Vampire skidded to the left. Boxer had to fight the control stick with both hands and stomp hard on the right rudder pedal to keep the plane straight and prevent a roll right into the ocean.
“Boxer…?” Frodo shouted.
“I got it, I got it!” Boxer shouted. She knew that’s probably exactly what most bomber pilots said right before they crashed after being hit by a missile, but she truly believed she could maintain control. She released the control stick with her left hand long enough to raise a red-colored switch guard on her side instrument panel, raised a switch inside to the “ARM” position, then climbed slightly. “Nail those fighters, Frodo!”
Frodo activated his “MASTER ARM” switch on his side instrument panel. As soon as he did, the supercockpit display changed from a view of the Russian fleet to a three-dimensional depiction of the airborne threats around them. The laser radar detected and began tracking all of the Russian Sukhoi-33 carrier-based fighters, and the fire control computer quickly prioritized each one in order of threat. As soon as the first fighter came within range, the computer opened the forward bomb-bay doors and ejected an AIM-120 AMRAAM missile into the slipstream.
The missile descended about fifty feet as it stabilized itself. Boxer hoped the Vampire was not side-slipping too much or the missile would likely fly right into it, but it separated cleanly, its digital gyros restoring stability in the badly disturbed air around the bomber. Its rocket motor fired, and it streaked after the first Sukhoi. The missile used laser guidance signals from the Vampire bomber, so the Su-33 had no threat indications that it was being trac
ked or a missile was in the air until seconds before impact, when the AMRAAM activated its own terminal guidance radar. By the time the Russian pilot knew he was under attack, it was too late.
“Formation two is heading back to the carrier-they must be low on gas,” Frodo reported, his voice strained. “The last guy from formation three is orbiting over his leader. Looks like we’re in the clear.”
Boxer looked over at her mission commander and saw his fingers shake as he tried to type in instructions on his supercockpit display. “It’s okay, Alan,” she said softly. “You did good.”
Frodo raised his oxygen visor. He sat quietly for a few moments, staring at his lap; then: “You could have gotten us killed, Boxer,” he said in a low, trembling voice.
Gia didn’t know what else to say except, “Sorry, Frodo.”
His head snapped over toward her, and his eyes were blazing. “Sorry? You’re sorry? That’s it?”
“I guess so.”
“You should’ve bugged out when they started to lock us up,” Frodo said. “We should’ve turned around when we found out they were serious.”
“Our job was not to turn around, Frodo-our job was to probe the fleet and report,” Boxer said. “I’m not the kind of person to turn tail and run at the first sign of danger.”
“But why the high-speed passes? We could’ve flown right into one of those close-in cannons. Hell, we were flying so low they could’ve hit us with a damned mop stuck out a porthole!”
“They pissed me off, and I wanted to show them they couldn’t scare me off,” Boxer said.
“They almost shot us out of the sky! They almost killed us! I’ve got two sons at home, Colonel. You could’ve made them fatherless, and for what-because you got pissed? Thanks a lot, Colonel.”
“Don’t worry, Major-I’ll tell the review board you objected to going in and recommended we turn around,” Boxer said. “You won’t take any flak for my actions. Just find us a place to land.”
“Armstrong to Fracture Two-One.”
Boxer switched her comm panel to the primary control frequency. “Two-One, go.”
“Everyone all right?” Jessica Faulkner radioed from Armstrong Space Station.
“We’ve been better,” Boxer replied. “We lost number four, lost the rudder, probably lost most of the horizontal stabilizer, and I feel a bad vibration in the tail. We’ll do a controllability test before we try air refueling or landing, but I think we’re going to end up ditching or crash-landing.”
“We’ll pass that along,” Gonzo said. “Your tanker is about three hundred miles east, heading toward you for the rendezvous. We have limited coverage on you right now, but as of three minutes ago, your tail was clear. If you can’t tank, the closest air base is Salalah, Oman, about four hundred and fifty miles east-northeast. Got enough gas for that?”
“Barely.”
“That’s your only hard-surface runway for a thousand miles, guys, unless you want to try Al Mukalla, Yemen,” Gonzo said, “but the Russians might spot you and try for some payback. We’ll keep an eye out for you as much as possible and pass along your information. Good luck.”
It was not looking good as the Air Force KC-767 aerial refueling tanker rolled out in front of the Vampire bomber. “Rudder control is almost zero,” Boxer said as she slowly, carefully pulled the throttles back. “Elevator control is about fifty percent-it looks like the mission-adaptive system is having to work overtime to compensate for the loss of the tail stabilizers.” She started to bring the power back, but the vibrations increased below 400 knots, and below 350 knots indicated airspeed, the vibration almost made the plane uncontrollable. “Looks like our limit is three-fifty, Milkman,” Boxer radioed to the tanker. “What’s your max?”
“Our published max is three hundred,” the pilot responded, “and the most I’ve ever done in an emergency is three-twenty. The plane gets real twitchy in pitch above that.”
“And we’re not too responsive in pitch ourselves,” Boxer said.
“I’m willing to give it a try,” the tanker’s boom operator said.
“Thanks, but I think we’ll divert to-”
“Bandits!” Frodo shouted. “Two Su-33s…no, two formations of Su-33s, six o’clock…damn, just fifteen miles, with the second formation three miles in trail! My rear LADAR array must be shot off-I picked them up on the threat receiver only!”
“Time to bug out, Milkman,” Boxer said. “We’ll hold them off for you.”
Just then, the threat-warning computer blared: “Caution, caution, radar tracking, Su-33.”
“He’s right on top of us!” Frodo shouted.
At that moment they heard a heavily accented Russian voice radio, “American bomber, this is Russian Southern Fleet patrol aircraft on GUARD. We have you and your tanker aircraft on our radar and long-range optical sensors. We have more fighters in pursuit. You cannot escape. Your aircraft is badly damaged.”
“I can’t see them except on the threat receiver,” Frodo said. “I can’t launch an AMRAAM as long as they stay in the rear quarter.”
“Can we try an over-the-shoulder launch and have the missile track on its own?” Boxer asked.
“It needs an initial bearing and distance from the fire control computer to launch-it won’t take info from the threat receiver,” Frodo said. “The AMRAAMs are deadweight unless they appear on the lateral arrays.”
“You are trying to think of a way to escape,” the Russian fighter pilot radioed. “We noted you shot down one of our brothers, so you have defensive weapons, but the fact that we have come well within missile range of you undetected means that your defensive weapons are unusable, at least right at the present moment. We are in firing position now on both yourselves and your aerial refueling aircraft. We applaud your courage and exceptional fighting and flying skills on your high-speed pass through our task force. We have a proposal for you, warrior to warrior.”
“Armstrong, Fracture.”
“Go ahead.”
“We got intercepted by Russian fighters from that carrier,” Boxer said.
“Oh God,” Gonzo said. “We have limited sensor coverage of you for the next three minutes, Fracture, and you’re out of range of Salalah radar. We’re almost blind right now.”
“Pass our situation along to Central Command,” Boxer said.
“Ask if there are any Omani fighters at Salalah that can chase these Russians away.”
“Roger. Stand by.”
“Our proposal is this, American bomber: Eject out of your damaged bomber and let us have our fun with it,” the Russian pilot radioed. “If you do this, we will let your tanker aircraft stay in the area to assist in recovering you from the ocean. If you do not respond, or if we see you make any turns or see your bomb bays open, we will open fire on both of you. You have sixty seconds to reply.”
Boxer angrily flipped over to the GUARD channel: “Hey, bastard, you would be a cowardly chickenshit if you downed an unarmed tanker!” she shouted.
“Ah, the woman bomber pilot,” the Russian pilot said. “Greetings, madam. That unfortunately is the spoils of war, my dear. You have fifty seconds to eject.”
“Let us get closer to shore, closer to Yemen.”
“You are much closer to shore now than our comrade was when you shot him down,” the Russian said. “Forty seconds.”
“Frodo…”
“There’s nothing I can do as long as they’re directly behind us,” Frodo said. “I can jam their radar side lobes with the lateral emitters, but I can’t touch the main beams. Besides, they’re well within heater-missile range, and even if we could decoy them with flares, they can close into gun range in seconds.”
“We can turn into them, lock them up, and shoot.”
“The second we turn, they’ll fire. We might be able to get one before they launch, but the other three will nail us and the tanker.”
“Thirty seconds, madam.”
“Can the jammers protect the tanker?” Boxer asked on intercom.
“Not against heat-seekers or guns,” Frodo said. He started to tighten his ejection-seat straps in preparation for bailout. “Dammit, Boxer, this is all your fault! If you hadn’t gone down after that task force, we’d all be safe! Now we have no choice but to punch out to save the tanker!”
The Russian fighter pilot radioed, “Twenty…” But at that instant Boxer saw an incredibly bright streak of light shoot across the sky coming from directly above, and the transmission was cut off. Another streak of light erupted seconds later, this one seemingly aimed directly at them but passing behind them, missing by what seemed bare inches.
“What just happened? What were those things? It looked like they came in from above us!”
“The lead fighter in the first formation disappeared!” Frodo said. “The wingman isn’t transmitting yet.”
“Nail those bastards, Frodo!” Boxer shouted, and she threw the Vampire bomber into a tight left turn, flying between the fighters and the tanker. As soon as she did so, the lateral laser radar emitters locked onto all three Russian fighters, the forward bomb-bay doors opened, and in fifteen seconds three AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles were in the air. At the same time Boxer popped chaff and flares to decoy any missile launches that might be aimed at the tanker.
Two of the Vampire’s AMRAAMs hit their targets…but the third missed. The surviving Su-33 fighter accelerated and fired two missiles at the KC-767 tanker. Both radar-guided missiles were decoyed away from the tanker by the cloud of chaff billowing through the sky and by the Vampire’s heavy jamming…
…but when they detected the jamming and the chaff, they automatically switched to infrared guidance and locked onto the biggest heat source in their line of sight: the EB-1C Vampire bomber. The two missiles exploded above the exhaust nozzles of the number one and two engines, blowing the left wing completely apart. The stricken bomber cartwheeled several times vertically through the sky, flipped upside down, then spiraled into the sea.
