Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  Tychina was proud to be part of this vital mission and happy to be commanding this large air patrol, but a little worried as to exactly why they were up here. He knew that relations were strained to the point of war between Russia and two of its Commonwealth of Independent States’ allies—Moldova and the Ukraine—over a tiny enclave of Russians living in the Dniester region of Moldova (what used to be the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic). And just last month, Moldova had blasted that Ilyushin-76 Russian transport right out of the sky. Still, that little skirmish was between Moldova and Russia. Or was it?

  Tychina finished his northward leg with nothing showing on radar. “Task Force Imperial lead turning,” he reported. The rest of the formation was supposed to time their turns with him, but it was easy to get out of sync. One by one the pilots reported their turns to their orbit-mates. The formation was staggered a bit, no more than a minute or two off—the Belarussian border was still being covered. Tychina turned his radar to STANDBY on the southbound leg, started a stopwatch to time his next turn, did a cockpit check, made a few fuel calculations—about twenty minutes left before they headed for home—and settled in his narrow, uncomfortable ejection seat to wait. The next shift of fighters should be calling airborne from L’vov in about ten minutes, and in thirty minutes he’d be back on the ground. They’d be down long enough for a refueling, a bathroom break, a quick snack, and another plastic bottle of apple juice before launching for the second shift.

  The young pilot went back to thinking about the mess that seemed to be drawing former allies into battle. One thing he knew for sure: it was important for the Ukrainian people to secure their own borders and get out from under the shadow of their former master. This air patrol, although probably insignificant, was still important. No one, especially Russia, should be allowed to push anyone around, especially an ally.

  These round-the-clock patrols were staged more for Moldova’s and Romania’s satisfaction—and for the Ukrainian people—rather than for any tactical military considerations. Romania and Moldova were charging the Ukraine with siding with Russia in the Dniester dispute, and this was a way of showing them it wasn’t true. More importantly, the newly elected liberal government in Ukraine needed support for its policy of international cooperation and openness. So this was a way of showing the world how much they desired peace—and a way of showing the Ukrainian voters how tough they could be.

  Yeah, right, he mused. As if throwing a few old fighters up against the cream of Russia’s crop showed anything but how desperate you were. Well, if nothing else, this was flying time, and logable formation-lead time, as well as task force leader time. More points toward promotion to Major of Aviation, which young Pavlo Grigor’evich Tychina could expect in—

  “Inbound, inbound,” a voice suddenly came over the radio—in English, of all languages! “This is Lubin air traffic control center on GUARD, aircraft at zero-seven-three degrees from Lubin at one-three-eight kilometers at one-two thousand meters, descend and maintain one-zero thousand meters, contact me on frequency one-two-seven-point-one, and squawk four-two-two-five normal. Acknowledge all transmissions. Welcome to Poland. Over.”

  Tychina shook his head, totally confused. Lubin was a Polish air traffic control sector, about a hundred kilometers west of the Ukrainian border—but the location of the unidentified aircraft they were talking to was in the Ukraine. The Polish air traffic controller was obviously giving the Ukrainian jets a friendly “heads-up” about the intruders, disguising it as a standard initial call-up to an inbound flight. But night flights by commercial aircraft were prohibited at night over most of Eastern Europe. Who was out there?

  Tychina hit the radio button on his throttle: “Amber Two, this is Blue One, you have contact on that unknown?”

  “Say again, Blue One?” the pilot of Amber Two, Aviation Lieutenant Maksim Fadeevich Ryl’skii, replied. Ryl’skii’s voice plainly sounded drowsy. Good thing all the aircraft were separated by at least fifty kilometers or else they’d be running into each other for sure.

  “Christ, Mak, aren’t you monitoring GUARD?” Tychina yelled. “All Imperial aircraft, check your switches and monitor GUARD channel. Lubin air traffic control called unidentified traffic over our airspace, and he wasn’t talking about us. Northbound Imperial flights, configure for aircraft above one-zero-thousand meters and sing out if you see anything.”

  Seconds later, Tychina heard, “Imperial, this is Amber Two, I have radar contact at zero-two-zero degrees and thirty kilometers from Reference One, altitude one-two thousand meters.” Reference One was the city of Kovel, about seventy kilometers south of the Belarus-Ukraine border … the unknown aircraft was definitely in Ukrainian airspace.

  Thank God for the Polish air traffic controllers, Tychina thought—the Ukrainians liked to make fun of the Poles, but they may have just saved their asses.

  “How many you got, what direction, and what speed, Amber One?” Tychina demanded. Come on, damn you, Tychina cursed silently. Don’t go to pieces on me now—give me a proper radar report. Some fighter jocks always sounded so macho, so competent, until a real emergency happened, then they turned to putty.

  “I got multiple inbounds, headed south, at seven hundred kilometers per hour,” Ryl’skii replied several moments later, his voice shaky. He had never seen so many unidentified aircraft on his radar screen before. The Sapfir-23D J-band attack radar in the MiG-23s had been recently upgraded to allow more autonomous air intercepts—the older system was made for ground-controlled intercepts, but that was useless if you no longer had many ground-controlled radar systems. “Andrei, get your ass up here and help me … my God, there must be a dozen inbounds up here!”

  “Relax, Amber Two,” Tychina radioed. “Amber One, you start your turn yet?”

  “Affirmative,” Aviation Captain First Class Andrei Vasil’evich Golovko in Amber One replied. Golovko was an experienced pilot and a former flight commander, sent back to pushing a jet because of one drunken episode several months ago. Tychina thought the demotion was unwarranted but was glad to have Golovko in his unit. “I have got you and the bogeys on radar; Amber One, you can turn off your exterior lights. Pavlo, we have got multiple inbounds heading south. Jesus, at least fourteen … what the hell is going on? … Pavlo, I’d call ’em hostile. There could be jokers in the deck. What do you want to do?”

  For the first time since leading these patrols, Tychina had to make a real command decision. Their orders were to intercept and, if necessary, destroy any unidentified foreign aircraft crossing the border. The caveat “if necessary” disturbed Tychina—it was anyone’s interpretation what that might mean. It would also be virtually impossible to get a visual identification. Some of the MiG-23s, including Tychina’s plane, were equipped with the TP-23 infrared search and track system, and they could use it for a visual identification if they could safely close within about ten kilometers. But closing in that much meant possibly tangling with the “jokers” Golovko was warning him about—enemy fighters. If this was a flight of Russian bombers, it was very possible that they’d bring along fighter escorts.

  Pavlo Tychina paused, then ordered, “Amber One, keep the aircraft and Amber Two in sight. Take a high patrol perch if you can. Break. Blue Two and Green Flight, rendezvous with me over Reference Two; I will be at base altitude plus four, so join in the block.” Tychina knew that, other than landing in poor weather, most aircraft accidents occurred during night-formation rejoins. He would try to bring his wingman and the two planes in the adjacent orbit areas over to a reference point, stacked one hundred meters below his “base altitude” plus four thousand meters, then hope they could all use radar and visual to join on him.

  They practiced a lot of night rejoins, but Tychina could start to feel his own pulse quicken and sweat start to pop out on his own forehead—the rejoin would be difficult and very dangerous under normal training circumstances, and all the harder with hostile aircraft nearby. “All other flights in task force Imperial, I want you to stagg
er your patrol orbits westward fifty kilometers and shorten your orbits to increase surveillance time along the border. Purple One Flight, contact L’vov and tell them to get task force Royal airborne as soon as possible. Out.”

  With a steady stream of prompting (as in swearing, yelling, vectoring, and cajoling) from Golovko, the two Amber Flight aircraft joined, climbed to fourteen thousand meters, and approached the unidentified aircraft. They were operating at the very upper end of their altitude capability—a MiG-23 could not fly much above fifteen thousand meters’ altitude, and even at fourteen thousand the possibility of flameout or compressor stall was very good—and so far the intruders weren’t descending.

  Tychina wasn’t having the same luck rejoining Blue and Green flights. Suddenly everyone’s Doppler navigation systems were running away or frozen, their radio navigation beacon receivers weren’t operating correctly, their intercept radars were blanking out, or their identification beacons weren’t painting on radar.

  Technically it was illegal to join aircraft that had inoperable radars or beacons—but Tychina wasn’t going to put up with any shit from his timid wingmen. He performed several 360-degree turns with all of his position and anticollision lights on full bright, shouting on the radio, “Green flight, dammit, I got a visual on you—you should be able to see my lights … Blue Two, I’ve got you on radar, I’m at your four o’clock, six klicks—open your eyes, dammit … Blue One rolling out heading three-zero-zero, Blue Two, I’m right ahead of you and above you, c’mon, let’s go.”

  It was a mess and getting worse—no one could do anything right.

  “Imperial, this is Amber One, I’ve got the easternmost bandits in sight,” Golovko radioed. Tychina smiled in spite of himself—Golovko, who had visited quite a few Western air bases and even attended a NATO fighter weapons training class in Germany, liked to use American fighter slang like “bogey” and “bandit” a lot. “I have got a Tupolev-95 bomber, repeat, a Tupolev-95 Bear bomber.” The nickname Bear was a NATO reporting name, but of course Golovko would prefer to use it. “I see weapons mounted externally. Moving in for a closer look. Stand by.”

  “Don’t move in until you locate and identify any defensive weapons,” Tychina called over. “Have your wingman hang back on the opposite side.”

  “Copy,” Golovko replied. “Amber Two, you are cleared to the high perch. Keep me in sight.”

  “Amber Two copies.”

  Blue Two had finally joined on Tychina’s right wing and was hanging close—he had no IRSTS (Infrared Search and Track System) pod, so he had to rely on Golovko’s position lights to stay in formation. Green Flight was taking its time joining on Tychina. “Green Flight, do you have radar contact on me yet?” A few long, irritating moments later, he replied that he had radar contact and that Green Two had him in sight and was closing in. “Blue Flight is climbing to base plus seven and increasing speed.”

  “Imperial, this is Amber One, I can see a ventral gun turret, repeat, I see a belly turret with twin guns. No tail guns in sight. I call it a G-model Bear. The weapons mounted externally appear to be cruise missiles, I repeat, cruise missiles, probably AS-4, one on each wing. How copy, Imperial? I need instructions immediately. Over.”

  Tychina swallowed hard. The AS-4 missile was an older-design cruise missile, first developed over thirty years ago, but it was capable of flying over four times the speed of sound—even faster than the R-23 and R-60 air-to-air missiles the MiG-23s were carrying—and from its current launch altitude the AS-4 could fly over five hundred kilometers. It carried 900-kilogram high-explosive warheads, devastating enough to destroy a large office building—or it could carry a 350-kiloton nuclear warhead.

  “Amber Flight, this is Imperial, confirm the weapons loadout … Andrei, are you sure they’re AS-4 missiles?”

  “No doubt about it, Pavlo,” Golovko said. “I am pulling back to trailing position. What do you want to do?”

  Tychina found his throat as dry as an old boot and his breathing was rapid.

  Russian bombers.

  They were carrying cruise missiles, powerful weapons that could devastate L’vov, or Kiev, or Odessa. He had never thought about the possibility of attacking a Russian aircraft …

  … But what were they doing here?

  What was going on …?

  “Pavlo, get with it,” Golovko radioed. “What are your—”

  “Fighters!” Ryl’skii in Amber Two shouted. “Fighters launching missiles, Andrei! Break right! Get out of there!”

  Tychina cobbed the throttle to max afterburner and swept his wings full aft to help gain speed. The Russians had just made his decision for him: they indeed had fighter escorts, and they waited at very high altitude until Golovko started moving into attack position. Tychina shouted on the radio: “Imperial Flight, this is Imperial lead, attack inbound Tupolev bombers and unidentified fighters. Check your beacons and lights. Purple Flight, radio to base in the clear, Imperial Flight is under attack by large formation of Russian bombers and unknown numbers and types of fighters. Tell them to declare an air defense emergency! Break. Andrei! Amber Two, what is your condition?”

  “I’m in deep shit, that’s what, Pavlo,” Golovko radioed back. His voice was as icy-calm as if he were sitting in church—the only giveaway that he was locked in aerial combat was the occasional heavy grunting sounds he would make as he strained his stomach muscles against the G-forces to try to keep blood in the upper part of his torso and keep himself from blacking out. “Maksum got hit right away. No radar warning indications—they’re firing heat-seekers, slashing down from high altitude, then popping up for the tail shot. I think they’re MiG-29s. Go after the bombers, Imperial Flight. Don’t try to mix it up with the fighters—they’ll eat your lunch for you. Go in fast, take a shot at the bombers, and break up their formation. One bomber turned back already when he saw us coming in—I think they’re primed to go home. Come in fast, shoot, and extend. Don’t—”

  There was a loud bang!, a screech of static—or was it Golovko screaming?—and then the transmission abruptly ended.

  Two Ukrainian fighters gone in the space of about fifteen seconds.

  By then Tychina had passed Mach-one and had moved to within radar range of the Tu-95 bomber formation. His radar picked out two of them. They were still at high altitude, cruising at relatively high speed on the same track as was first reported by the Polish air traffic controller. Straight-and-level attack run—the Russians must’ve thought they weren’t going to encounter any resistance.

  At forty kilometers, he armed his first R-23 and locked on to the bomber. The MiG-23’s normal armament was a 23-millimeter cannon, two medium-range R-23R radar-guided missiles, and four R-60 heat-seeking missiles. But because there were so many planes involved in this patrol, the IRSTS-capable fighters had been given only two R-60s per plane tonight; the planes without IRSTS had only radar-guided missiles and no heat-seekers, because they would not have enough intercept guidance to maneuver into IR missile position. Tychina hated not having a full-up load of missiles. He knew things were bad in his country, but there was usually no shortage of defensive weapons like guided missiles. He had heard rumors about the black market stealing weapons and equipment.

  Pay attention to what’s going on, Pavlo, he reminded himself, trying to stay calm. He had passed Mach-1.5, and the R-23 radar-guided missile had a speed limit of Mach-1.2. But Tychina didn’t care: speed was life, and he wasn’t going to slow down. He did pop the afterburner off to conserve fuel and keep the Russian fighters from picking up his afterburner plume, but he aimed his nose directly at the lead bomber. As he picked up more targets, he adjusted his radar lock-on, always aiming for the leader. If the wingmen saw their leader go down, they might be more inclined to break off their attack.

  At exactly twenty-four kilometers he got a steady ping—ping—ping indication in his helmet headset, indicating that the R-23 missile was in range and ready for launch. Tychina pressed and held a safety switch on the side of the co
ntrol stick, which resulted in a rapid ping-pingping warning tone. The missile’s fins were uncaged, the missile was ready to fly.

  The entire world seemed to erupt into fire at that very moment. An R-73A heat-seeking missile fired from another attacking Russian MiG-29 fighter missed Tychina’s right engine by less than a meter, flew over the fuselage until it was several meters away, then detonated its fourteen-kilogram warhead. The top and top front portion of Tychina’s canopy shattered, sending hundreds of razor-sharp shards of glass into the young pilot’s head and upper torso. Tychina’s helmet was nearly sliced away from his head by the force of the explosion, by the sudden cockpit decompression, and then by the supersonic windblast. Incredibly, the majority of the cockpit canopy stayed intact.

  To his own amazement, he was alive and still conscious. The windblast pounded away at his body, but he could no longer hear the thunderous roar. He was protected from the direct supersonic windblast by what remained of his canopy. The subzero air was somewhat soothing, freezing the blood vessels in his nose and face shut and preventing any serious blood loss.

  And, more importantly, his jet was still flying, the controls still responded, the engines were still turning—and when he pressed the launch button on the control stick, an R-23 radar-guided missile leaped from its rail on the left underwing pylon. It wobbled frantically as it tried to stabilize itself—now Tychina understood why there was a speed limit on the missile—but just as he thought it was going to spin off out of control, it steadied out and tracked the radar beam. He had to keep his nose aimed at the Tu-95 Bear bomber so the missile could track, but he was rewarded several seconds later with a large flash of light, then darkness, then a stream of fire off in the distance.