“Intel, what you seeing?” Major Johnson asked into his chin mike. Two compartments back from Johnson, a young Air Force officer, two noncommissioned officers in their late thirties, and a fortyyear-old National Security Agency civilian listened on headsets and watched on flat screens. The young officer, Lieutenant Judy Moore, answered for the section. “Concur with Sergeant White, sir. Quiet as a mouse on the Iranian side. On the west, the Islamyans have got some of their Patriot radars blinking on every once in a while. First time I’ve seen them up in a long time. But they don’t stay on for long. Must be having problems. And Troy’s right about the two birds circling up by Ar Ar on the Iraqi border. They’ve been ID’ing themselves as Air Islamyah checkout flights. I think they’re both four-engine jobs.” She swiveled in her chair and looked at another flat screen that was showing data relayed from the Global Hawk circling at 65,000 feet over the Straits of Hormuz. “Down south it’s mainly us making noise. Navy is beginning to head out to Bright Star and is really lighting the Straits area up as they go through.”
“Okay, gang. It’s the usual racetrack loop today,” the major confirmed to the crew over the intercom. “We’ll go into Kuwait, do some links down to the U.S. and Kuwait Patriot missile units, make a tight turn, and head back down to Qatar and then...do it again.”
Beyond the range of the AWACS radar, five SU-27 SMK Flanker aircraft took off from the Iranian air force base at Dezful. Each of the twin-engine interceptors carried a combination of eight heat-seeking and radar-guided air-to-air missiles. Two boys on their way to a high school on the edge of Dezful thrilled to see the powerful Russianbuilt fighters launching, even though they had often seen Flankers in the air around Dezful. Today, they agreed, was different. There were five together, instead of the usual two, and they did not do the near-vertical climb on takeoff. Instead, these Flankers clung low to the ground, their radar reflections lost in ground clutter, their ten engines laying down a thick black trail as they headed west. If the boys had looked through binoculars, they would have noticed something else different on this day. The paint scheme was new.
Flying west-southwest, the Flankers left Iranian airspace in a few minutes on a heading taking them into Iraq between Al Kut to the north and Al Amarah to the south. They spread out five abreast at one-mile intervals as they swept 2,000 feet over the Tigris River, still heading southwesterly. Their course took them between the Shi’a holy cities of Najaf to the north and Nasiriyah to the south, right over the Euphrates River. Near the riverbank, a man working atop a cell phone tower saw the unusual five-ship formation to his north and called a friend to see if he could see it, too.
The fertile land around the two rivers had been a battleground for as long as there had been governments on the planet. The land ahead of the aircraft now, however, was empty, vast sweeps of vacant desert. Into it, each aircraft dropped a depleted external centerline fuel tank, lightening its load. They were flying slower than normal now in these unpopulated stretches, trying to compensate for the heavy fuel consumption of low-level flight.
As they approached the border with Islamyah, the aircraft pulled into a close formation and descended lower toward the desert sands. The lead pilot was indicating to his wingmen with hand signals. Their radios, like their radars, were turned on but not emitting. Only the IRST, the infrared search and tracking system, scanned out ahead. At this low altitude it was limited to about a 40-kilometer forward view, but unlike radar, no one could detect it. The IRST showed a clear field of sky ahead.
They crossed the border north of Rafha and south of Ar Ar, with only dunes beneath them. The lead pilot waved his arm to his wingmen, indicating an approaching left bank. The aircraft rose slightly before executing the maneuver, then rolled gently around to a south-southeast heading. There were no surface features below to confirm to them that they were where they were supposed to be, but the Galileo global positioning satellite signal in their cockpits told them they were right on course. The desert town of Baqa was coming up off to their right, off to the south. That also meant that their lowest-level flying was coming up. After they passed Baqa on the right, the twin military complexes of Hafr al Batin and what had been known as KKMC, King Khalid Military City, would be miles off to the left of the aircraft. Both locations had been relatively moribund since the coup that had toppled the house of Saud.
Iranian Qods Force observers dressed as camel herders were near the two military bases. They confirmed for Tehran that nothing had taken off from either airstrip all morning. From their positions outside the fences, they could see the flight lines. No one was even preparing an aircraft. Each observer clicked his small satellite radio, firing off burst transmissions on frequencies being monitored by Qods Force. The signals indicated all clear. There was no need for Tehran to use the emergency satellite link to the Flankers.
From their lowest-level flight, the Flankers planned to climb quickly after they were south of KKMC and banking left, toward the Persian Gulf south of Kuwait. The lead pilot checked his fuel gauge. He had consumed a little more than he had planned for at this point in the mission, but only a little. His eyes went to the Russian Phazotron Zhuk coherent-pulse Doppler radar screen. It was warmed up, but not yet switched to emit. When he did flick that switch, it would give him a track-while-scan capability and a lookdown/shoot-down system linked to his missiles. It wouldn’t be long now before that would happen. As he looked at the radar screen, he caught the electronics intelligence screen to its left blinking an icon on. Then quickly it was gone. The lead pilot thought he had seen that happen a few minutes earlier as well. He had ignored it then. Now he tapped the button below the screen to call up a readout. The data showed that four times in the last sixteen minutes a signal had hit the Flanker, but too briefly to cause the automatic alarm to come on. He tapped the control again for a diagnostic of the signal.
“APY-2,” the screen read. That made no sense to him. The APY-2 was the signal he would home in on in a few minutes, the powerful, sweeping radar atop the U.S. AWACS aircraft. He looked at his watch: 0835. If the U.S. AWACS was on its usual, highly predictable schedule, it was coming up the Islamyah coast right now about fifteen minutes south of Khafji, about twenty minutes from Kuwaiti airspace. That would place the Americans to his east. Yet the ELINT screen placed the origin of the signal to the northwest. AWACS signals were also usually sustained, not quick little bursts. These readings made no sense. The Russian ELINT system was so unreliable.
Now his navigation system beeped. The flight of Flankers had come to the GPS coordinates where they were supposed to begin their climb. He signaled to his wingmen and then throttled back with pleasure, making the Flanker almost stand on its tail as it soared up from below 1,000 feet on a climb out to 40,000.
As the g-force pressed him back into his seat, the Iranian struggled to hit a digital tape machine jerry-rigged to his radio. The radio began to transmit the tape of several fighter pilots speaking in Arabic, coordinating their formation, headed toward a target. It would make the Iranian jets seem to be Islamyah fighter pilots, if anyone was listening.
Sergeant White was reading a Sports Illustrated spread across his lap, glancing up occasionally at the radar screen in front of him. “Whoa, looks like KKMC damn come alive,” he yelled into his chin mike as he dropped the magazine on the floor. “I gots me three, four, five fighters on a fast climb out headed east toward Khafji. I thought those motherfuckers been dead for a while. Guess they done come back from the crypt.”
“Keep it clean,” Major Johnson responded, looking up at his own screens. “Intel, what you make of that?”
“They are twin-engines. I’d say they’d be some of the F-15s that Islamyah can still get working. But I am not getting a radar emission from them, so maybe not everything’s working,” Lieutenant Moore answered. She paused while the NSA civilian, headphones still on, passed her a note. She read it and continued her report: “Confirm Islamyah Air Force chatter from several fighters on climb-out. Keep you posted.”
/> The Iranian Air Force has sent fighter interceptors into the general vicinity of the AWACS a few times, just to let us know they are there, Johnson thought, but Islamyah had not done so before. Maybe they are going to do it now too. He thought he’d better remind the aircraft commander to review the procedures for dealing with visitors. Although she was junior in rank to Major Johnson, the pilot, Captain Phyllis Jordan, was the aircraft commander. He was just the mission commander. Another example, Johnson thought, of the tyranny of the pilots in the Air Force. He touched his mike. “Captain Jordan, we may have bogeys visit us in a little while before we enter Kuwait airspace. It could be a first for these guys; it’s Islamyah this time.”
“Roger that,” the aircraft commander replied. “We’ll keep an eye out. Right now, no joy.” The unarmed AWACS continued to lumber north.
Listening to that exchange and now watching his screen intently, Sergeant White saw another surprise. “Major, they keep a-comin’,” Troy White barked. “I swear I got six more coming like bats out of hell from the north, climbing out of angles twelve for twenty. Don’t know where these bad boys came from.”
Kyle Johnson spun his head around to the screen. He saw the new icons moving fast from the west. They broke into two groups of three, one flight on either side and in trail of the group of fighters they had spotted a few minutes ago. At the rate they were moving, they would not be trailing for long. So there were now almost a dozen fighters racing toward the coast, racing toward his AWACs. “Major, intel here,” Judy Moore called.
“Whatcha got, Jude?” Major Johnson answered.
“Sir, I have two airborne radar signals coming from near Rafha. Sir, it’s two AWACS. The Islamyah Air Force AWACS,” she said with incredulity in her voice.
“Well, we did sell the Saudis five AWACS, but I thought intel said only one of them was operational. And you got two up and, what, flying in formation?” Johnson asked.
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what we’re seeing. Don’t know where they came from. They just all of a sudden appeared. They are at forty thousand,” the intelligence section chief reported out. “And this second group of fighters are definitely F-15S birds. Their radars are working and pinging out strong.”
Johnson was suspicious. He hit the keyboard on his console, merging intelligence and radar data onto one screen, focusing the cursor near the city of Ar Ar, and running the tape backwards like a TiVo. He would now see what had happened a few minutes earlier, what they might have missed. There on the screen were the two icons they had designated as “Probable Air Islamyah A-340 or 747.” Neither aircraft seemed to be emitting a radar signal. Then, briefly, a narrow radar beam shot out westward, then another to the southwest. The automatic diagnostic software labeled the radar beam “ASY-2 AWACS.” He moved the tape ahead. Suddenly three radar icons bloomed from the 747, or AWACS, or whatever it was. The icons moved away quickly. The diagnostics software quickly labeled them “F-15S,” the version of the U.S. Air Force Eagle that had been sold to the Saudis.
Then, as Johnson watched, the other big aircraft also seemed to eject three icons, and they were quickly labeled “F-15S.” What he had assumed were two airliners on checkout rides had actually been two Islamyah AWACS flying in tight formation with three F-15s each hiding right beneath them. Now, Johnson thought, the six fighters were headed his way. As were the five others.
He hit the mike. “Phil, you might want to think about diving to the deck and speeding up toward Kuwaiti airspace.” He wondered if there were U.S. fighter aircraft on alert in Kuwait. He checked for the call sign of the detachment there and switched to their frequency. “Kilo Light, Kilo Light, this is Quarterback Golf, request CAP ASAP, repeat, request CAP ASAP. We have multiple bogeys, possible hostiles . . .” He needed U.S. Combat Air Patrol protection to scare these fighters away.
Before he could finish his transmission, a loud horn blared in his cabin. A tape-recorded female voice spoke the alarm: “Alert. Missile radar lock-on. Alert . . .” The fighters had not launched their missiles—not yet, anyway. As the Flankers were closing on the U.S. AWACS, their radar-guided missiles still sitting on their launch rails, had started to track the AWACS at a distance.
Major Johnson felt the 767 airframe lurch forward as the aircraft commander put the big plane into a dive. In the cockpit, that commander, Captain Phyllis Jordan, was also flicking three countermeasure switches in quick succession, spraying aluminum chaff in the air, shooting infrared flares out the side of the aircraft, and sending electronic warfare signals back toward the fighters on the same frequencies that their missiles and radar used. Johnson now heard the U.S. detachment in Kuwait responding to him: “Quarterback Golf, this is Kilo Light. Say again your request.”
The lead pilot in the Iranian Flanker was still climbing when his radar warning receiver started beeping. The flat screen flashed on, with an orange background and the letters “ASY-2 AWACS.” Then, as he watched, three different headings appeared. He was being painted by three AWACS radars, only one of which was the American target. He checked his own targeting radar. It had locked on the American AWACS out over the Gulf, still well beyond his firing range. Then the radar warning receiver beeped again, faster and in a higher tone. The screen switched to a red background and the words “APG-70 lock-on.”
That meant an American F-15 was out there. Multiple F-15s. Or, he thought, maybe the Saudis? What was happening back there? he wondered as he sped eastward. He switched on his radio and turned it quickly to low power, enough power to reach his wingmen. Then he called in Farsi to two of the four Flankers with him, “Break off. Clear our tail. See what’s back there.” He flew on. The radar lock-on he had on the AWACS was blinking on and off. He laughed. The American aircraft was trying to jam him, but the 767 was too big a target for his powerful radar to miss. He turned up the gain on the target acquisition mode.
Two of the Iranian Flankers broke from their formation, one right, one left, rising and looping, rolling over in modified Immelmanns. As soon as they had righted themselves, the Flankers each had a visual through their long-range cameras of six Islamyah F-15 Eagles speeding toward them. One of the Iranian Flanker pilots radioed his commander, asking for two more of their squadron to turn around and join what was about to become a major dogfight. Coward, the squadron leader thought, but I can do this on my own. He ordered his remaining wingmen to break off and go after the Islamyah F-15s on his tail.
As the U.S. 767 dove lower, the detection range of its sensors dropped, too, but the northern Global Hawk had moved from scanning into Iran and was now augmenting the AWACS. Major Kyle Johnson saw the “Missiles Away” alarm pop up on his screen. He quickly keyed a text message in and hit Transmit: “CRITIC: Air-toAir Missiles Launched.” A message slugged CRITIC would literally ring bells in command posts all the way to the White House Situation Room. Then Johnson realized the missiles had not been fired at his AWACS. The fighters were firing on one another!
“Major, I have an ELINT readout that says at least one of those fighters is a Flanker, Russian export version. Islamyah doesn’t have Flankers.” It was Lieutenant Moore back in intel. “Could be Syria or Iran, maybe even Iraq.”
Johnson switched the display on his screen to see how close they were to Kuwaiti airspace. They had leveled off at 3,000 feet over the Gulf immediately south of Khafji, a few minutes from feet dry over Kuwait. As he watched, an icon blipped on the map at Khafji: “SAM: PATRIOT (X).” Now a Patriot missile’s air defense radar was emitting, one of the export versions the U.S. had sold the Saudis. The neighborhood had gone from quiet to chaotic pretty fast. What the hell was going on out there? He called to Troy White at the master radar console.
“Major, its fuckin’ amazing. They—whoever they are, the second group of fighters—splashed one of the first group at range with a Slammer, AIM-120. Shot ’em down! And now they’re all mixing it up. There are a bunch of ALQ-135s jammers fuckin’ up some of the lock-on radars. But Major,” the sergeant said, catching his brea
th, “one of these guys is still coming at us.”
Two of the Islamyah F-15S Eagles soared to 40,000 feet and hit afterburners, sending them into supersonic flight toward the fleeing Iranian Flanker. Below them, four Eagles and three Flankers had begun firing close-in heat-seeking missiles at one another and using their guns as they banked and rolled, weaving in and out in a confused interlaced dogfight. Then the lead Islamyah Eagle got radar lock-on of the lone Iranian Flanker still heading toward the Gulf. The F-15’s flat screen flashed “Probability of Kill: 60%.” The Islamyah pilot was trained to wait until he was closer, had at least 80 percent, but his fuel light was blinking red. The afterburners had drained what was left of his tank. He flicked back the safety cover over the firing button on his joystick and hit Launch. The Slammer missile shot off the wing, leaving a trail of smoke as it sped toward the Flanker.
Below, on the beach near the Kuwait border, another Islamyah officer was watching the chase and the aerial ballet on a flat screen in a tan camouflaged trailer. He was the commander of a Patriot missile battery that had just set up there the day before. He had a cursor over the icon for the Iranian Flanker as it moved closer to the U.S. AWACS. “Fire two,” he said and almost instantly heard the whoooshh of missiles leaving launchers behind sand berms to his right and left.
In the Iranian Flanker, “Air-to-Air Missile Away” and “Surface Missiles Away” messages were flashing. A horn and a beeper were blaring in the pilot’s ears. His radar lock-on with the AWACS was intermittent. There was intense jamming, and he suddenly had four distinct radar images for the 767. He had no idea which one was real or where the missiles would go if he fired. He punched anyway. A missile left each wing, one heading left and the other banking straight up. He thought he could see the AWACS below and in the distance, through the glare. If he went to afterburners, he could get a gun kill with the Flanker’s cannon....
The Scorpion's Gate Page 22
