by James Rosone
“Death Dealers Three and Four, you are cleared to taxi to runway one-niner,” came the voice from the control tower.
“That’s a good copy, Control. Taxiing to runway one-niner,” Ian replied. He turned and saw Hani give him a thumbs-up.
Ian gave his Raptor a little juice, and it started moving. As he approached the end of the runway, he saw his wingman pull up next to him. They’d take off moments apart from each other.
“Death Dealers Three and Four, you are cleared for takeoff,” came the voice from the control tower.
Ian didn’t wait around once he’d been given the go. He moved into position. Turning his aircraft to face down the runway, he released the brakes and gave the aircraft as much power as he could, lighting up his afterburners. His aircraft shot down the runway like a missile, and in moments he was airborne.
Once in the air, Ian gained altitude rapidly. He reached a cruise altitude of ten thousand feet and then started looking for the tankers. Four tankers were waiting for them not too far from the base.
Ian’s flight mates started lining up, one after another, to top off their tanks. Behind the Raptors was a squadron of Eagle drivers. They would stay closer to the coasts and help protect the bombers as they entered and left the battlespace. Once they had their fuel tanks topped off, they would climb to thirty-five thousand feet and take up their station over Cuba.
“Listen up, Death Dealers,” said their mission commander. “We have two AWACS that’ll be providing us with coverage over the Gulf, Florida, and Cuba. You will break off into your hunter-killer teams and move to your assigned boxes. When you run out ordnance or fuel, radio in your status before leaving your assigned box. When we’re getting close to leaving our station, our sister squadron, the 27th, will take our place. Remember, pace yourselves. This will be a long couple of days. Out.”
With their pep talk finished, the mission commander ordered them to their assigned boxes. For Ian and his wingman, that meant Pinar del Río, a mountainous region in the western part of the island that was rumored to be where the Chinese had set up their command-and-control function. Once the site had been hit, they’d transition over to central Havana. The Raider was going after a command-and-control bunker deep underneath the Ministry of Interior building. Once those targets had been hit, if they still had fuel and missiles, they would continue to loiter over the area until it was time to swap out with the next squadron.
“You ready for this, Racer?”
Turning to his right, Ian saw his wingman, Major Hans “Hani” Riggens. With their running lights off, it was somewhat hard to make him out, but the predawn light was helping.
“About as ready as I’m going to be, Hani. You?”
“Hell yeah. It feels good to be back in the air again,” he replied excitedly.
Hani had only been with the squadron for two months. He had recently requalified on the F-22 and had just been getting back up to speed when hostilities had broken out. Doing a check ride every three months for two years had been tough on the guy. Unfortunately, every pilot had to pull staff duty somewhere if he wanted to rise through the ranks. Hani had been lucky enough to get his at a joint command, so he checked two boxes off on that one.
As they flew out over the Gulf, their screens filled up with friendlies. The attack force was moving in.
Hani broke into Ian’s thoughts. “Damn, Racer. Check out Cuba. My RHAW is going crazy right now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many enemy radars light up at once like that. You think it’ll help them or make them easier to find and kill?”
The radar, homing, and warning system or RHAW told the pilots what threats were in the area.
“DD Three, DD Four, Big Bird Two. We’re tracking four J-11s near Mariel. Sending you the targeting data now. How copy?” came the voice from their AWACS further behind them.
“This is DD Three, that’s a good copy. Moving to engage,” Racer replied for them both.
“Hani, when we get in range, go ahead and engage them. I’ll fly overwatch for you,” Racer ordered.
Ian wanted the kills himself, but he also knew Hani was getting back into the flying saddle again. It was more important for his wingman to gain his confidence back than it was for him to score a kill.
“Um, OK. Are you sure?” asked Hani.
“There’ll be plenty of fighters for me to shoot at,” Racer replied. “Now let’s take these bastards out. We have no idea where the Raider is or how close those fighters are to it.”
The two pilots angled their aircraft in for the attack. They still had their active radars off. The AWACS fed targeting data to them from further back. Hani opened his missile bay under the belly of the aircraft and then activated two AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles. He made sure they had a lock on the targets and then depressed the pickle button twice, releasing the missiles.
“Fox Three,” Hani called out. He paused, then repeated, “Fox Three.” The two missiles streaked out after the enemy aircraft. As soon as Hani released the missiles, the pilots of the enemy aircraft apparently knew they had been locked onto and began evasive measures.
Hani closed his missile bay doors and pulled away from the scene of the crime in case someone spotted him. Racer was flying in the trail position and had a good view of the two missiles as they raced toward their targets.
The J-11s broke hard toward the ground as they increased in speed. It appeared they were trying to lose the missiles in the ground clutter below. Not a bad strategy, but the AIM-120 had been improved a lot over the years, so this wasn’t likely to work.
“Hey, we got a problem, Racer,” Hani said frantically over the radio.
Racer was already on it. Several additional ground radars not far from them had been activated. A pair of HQ-9 or Red Banner-9 SAMs went active with their search radars.
These Red Banner surface-to-air missile systems were particularly nasty because they integrated multiple types of radar systems into their overall tracking process. This allowed the operators to see a host of different types of radar signatures. The main radar was the LLQ-305B, which employed sixty 350mm waveguide feeds, allowing it to attack dozens of threats at the same time.
The real threat to the Raptors and the stealth bombers, though, came from the integration of the YLC-20 passive sensor. This last radar configuration incorporated a sensitive system the Czech Republic had built as part of a secretive NATO project to detect and intercept stealth aircraft. The Chinese had gotten a hold of this system in 2006 and reverse engineered it, and it had been integrated into the HQ-9 radar systems in 2015. The YLC-20 passive sensor had been specifically built to counter the American F-22, F-35, and B-2 stealth aircraft.
“I see it,” Racer replied, stress in his voice as he tried to gain some altitude and put distance between himself and those two SAMs trying to track him.
“Splash one!” called out Hani in excitement. “It looks like one of the guys evaded the other missiles. Should we attack him again?”
Hani and Racer’s aircraft had passed twenty-eight thousand feet when both of their threat boards lit up.
“Damn it! That ground system locked us up. Go to afterburner and climb. See if we can somehow shake him,” Racer called out.
He angled his aircraft up sixty degrees and increased power. His speedometer was now passing twelve hundred miles per hour.
“He’s off me. He lost missile lock. I’ll come around and see if I can find that J-11 and get another missile lock on him,” Hani called out as he turned his aircraft back toward the ground below and started searching for the Chinese aircraft.
“DD Three, Big Bird Two. We’re tracking eight additional J-11 aircraft taking off to join the fighters already in the air. We’re also tracking two flights of six J-10 aircraft taking off from Fidel Air Base. How copy?” The AWACS operator probably had no idea Racer was trying to shake the missile lock from a ground-based SAM right now. All he knew was they were closest to the enemy aircraft trying to join the fray of the battle.
“That’s a good copy. I�
��m being engaged by ground-based SAMs—please pass the target package to another hunter team. Out,” Racer replied.
Ah crap. They fired a missile, Racer realized. Damn it, that’s more than a single missile.
“Hani, I’m in trouble. They must have a decent enough lock on me. They fired three missiles at me. Not sure what they are, but I’ll take them high and then outrun them if I can. I’ll link up with you once I shake them.” The last outcome Racer wanted was to attract one of these missiles.
“Go high and then dive to the deck. See if you can’t outmaneuver them,” Hani called back. He was already angling in to finish off that original J-11 before more aircraft joined the fray.
Looking at his radar display, Racer saw the missiles closing the distance between him fast. If memory served him, these bad boys had a speed of Mach 4.2 with a range of two hundred kilometers.
Twenty-three kilometers and closing…
Not recalling if the SAM fired radar-homing or heat-seeking missiles, Racer dispersed a chaff canister along with a batch of flares before he banked his aircraft hard to the left and dove in a hard-arcing spinning move, hoping the missiles would either go for one of his countermeasures and explode or sail right past him.
The first missile sailed right through the countermeasures, not exploding. It kept going straight like it was going to fly off into orbit. The second missile went for the chaff cloud that had fully expanded out. That missile exploded harmlessly a few kilometers away. The third missile also missed, but this one was now in the process of making a course correction that would lead it back down and after Racer’s Raptor.
Being conscious of his fuel expenditures, Racer let gravity do most of the work as he was still angled into a steep dive. His threat warning systems came on with a new warning.
“Hani, I’ve got more trouble. Those freaking SAM radars vectored in some of those new J-11s that joined the fun. If I have to bail, I need you to make sure you plot where I go down so the CSAR can find me.”
“Hey, hey, don’t talk like that, Racer. We’ll get you out of this. I splashed that other J-11. I’m repositioning to go after that next group. Right now, let’s focus on keeping you alive as the bait while I swoop in and take ’em out,” Hani countered in a soft and reassuring tone.
“Missile warning. Missile warning,” the electronic voice in his helmet started blaring. That’s all I needed, more missiles, thought Racer.
Racer noticed the new missiles weren’t coming from the ground. These were coming from the enemy fighters. They had fired four Thunderbolt missiles. The PL-15 missiles were their state-of-the-art next-generation active-radar-guided long-range missiles. They had a dual-stage booster, allowing them to reach speeds of Mach 4 with an unheard-of range of three hundred kilometers.
Racer banked his aircraft hard to the right this time as he leveled out his fighter at two thousand feet. He tried to get as close to a ridgeline and valley as possible, hoping he might be able to lose some of the missiles among the ground clutter or maybe get one or more of the high-flying missiles to slam into the ridge as he maneuvered out of the way.
What concerned Racer most about this missile wasn’t its range or speed—it was the missile’s endurance. A range of three hundred kilometers meant it had a lot of fuel. It could chase him around the area until it either got lucky and blew him up or collided with an object.
As the first two missiles got within ten kilometers of his Raptor, Racer rolled to the left as he increased speed. At this point he was headed right for the side of a ridge. With his collision warning alarm screaming in his ear and warning lights flashing on his HUD, he pulled up hard and lit his afterburner.
Two of the PL-15 missiles blew up in the trees below. One of the missiles pulled up, but it sailed right under Racer and kept going. The fourth missile exploded a few hundred feet behind his Raptor.
Racer felt his aircraft shake hard from the explosion. He saw a couple of cracks in his canopy from the explosion and realized if his canopy had taken a few pieces of shrapnel, then chances were his aircraft had as well.
As he leveled the Raptor out, several yellow warning lights warned of the sustained damage, including hydraulic fluid leaking in one wing. His left rear stabilizer was sluggish too.
“Missile warning. Missile warning,” the Raptor system controls blared.
Racer looked around briefly, trying to figure out where this other missile was, when he spotted it. It was that damn HQ-9 missile from that SAM. It had circled back around and eventually found him. The ground radar still guided it to him.
Pulling hard on the stick, Racer tried to turn to the right and apply pressure to the throttle to get the heck out of there when the next warning came on.
“Eject, eject, eject,” resounded the Raptor system controls.
Screw it, thought Racer.
Racer grabbed for the ejection handle and gave it a good pull. Moments later, his damaged canopy blew away from his fighter and his seat shot several hundred feet into the air and away from his Raptor.
The plane, his plane, flew on for another second or two before he saw the HQ-9 missile close the distance. Its proximity warhead then exploded, ripping his aircraft apart. Had he hesitated for even a second, chances were, he’d be dead. Luckily, his chute had opened, and he was now descending to the ground below. He knew he needed to do his best to stay out of sight until a CSAR team recovered him. He just hoped they’d be able to recover him sooner rather than later. He sure as hell didn’t want to become a Chinese or Cuban prisoner.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Black Unicorns
30,000 feet above Cuba
28th Bomb Squadron “Black Death”
The B-21 Raider sliced through the cool night air of the Caribbean, its deadly cargo hidden within.
“Wow, the sky is lit up with fighters, bombers, cruise missiles, and enemy search radars. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before,” Exotic said aloud.
Colonel Josh “Miser” Grimes saw the radar screen and agreed with a nod. In all his years flying, he’d never seen such a large gathering of American warplanes and enemy radars. The US Air Force and Navy were about to put the smack down on the Chinese and the Cubans. They might have sucker-punched the US, but they were about to learn that the Americans had more than one way to make their enemies feel the pain.
Turning his head to look at his copilot, or co for short, Miser pointed down at the radar scope. “You see those? More than a hundred Greyhounds are heading in ahead of us. They’ll impact in the next ten to twenty mikes all across the island. When that happens, Exotic, they won’t know what hit them. I just hope they’ll see reason and throw in the towel quickly and not make us have to invade and occupy them.”
Exotic turned to look at the more senior pilot as she asked, “After all of the preparations they’ve clearly put into this, do you really think they’ll surrender?”
Miser thought about that for a moment before replying, “You may be right. I think the Cubans won’t last long. The Chinese, on the other hand, they’ll fight. How well they’ll fight…that remains to be seen. The ChiComs haven’t fought any recent wars, so there is that.”
Ten minutes went by as they flew in relative silence. Each of them ran through their normal duties, getting the bomber ready to penetrate some of the most heavily defended airspace in the world.
To aid in their penetration of the airspace, they took a surreptitious route to their target. Instead of taking the most direct route across the Gulf of Mexico, they flew across the southern half of the US and approached Cuba from the eastern Caribbean to penetrate from this angle. The thought was that the Chinese radars would be facing the US, not the eastern or southern Caribbean.
Until a few weeks earlier, the US military and intelligence community had had no idea that the island of Cuba had been turned into an unsinkable aircraft carrier. What astounded Miser was how they had done this without anyone knowing until it was too late. The ChiComs had ringed the island with
multiple layers of surface-to-air missiles, radars, anti-aircraft guns, antiship missiles, and a variety of missile defense weapons to protect it all. It was like peeling away the layers of an onion to get at the specific target you wanted.
Miser mentally compared this to the opening days of the Iraq War but decided it was more like attacking Hanoi or Berlin during the height of those wars. This was a heavily fortified target that would require a lot of trickery and luck to take out.
A couple of alarms started buzzing as their passive electronic detection systems picked up threats to the aircraft. Minutes later, their own radar and targeting computers populated with new real-time data coming in from the shared link with the AWACS and the satellites above, at least the ones that were still working. Even the satellite network was coming under attack.
Exotic chimed in, “We’ve synced with the God-elements. I’m starting to receive new data.”
The so-called God-elements consisted of the targeting and radar data coming in from both the AWACS further away in the Gulf, the remaining satellites above them, and the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone loitering over Cuba. The combined picture these assets provided them and the B-2s was extremely comprehensive.
It took a moment for their computers to catch up. “Wow, this is good but scary,” Exotic commented. “The threat data from God One is starting to come in. Oh, damn, that’s not good, Miser. It’s showing six groups of multiple—probably four—aircraft spread across the island. We have three groups of J-10s, and three J-11s. Two of the groups have their search radars on, the other four are passive. I’m also showing six active Red Banner-9 radar sites in search mode.” Exotic paused for a second before adding, “It looks like they might be expecting some company.”
Laughing at the comment, Miser replied, “I think you might be right, Exotic. You can bet if the Sentinels found us six active radar sites, there are probably a dozen or more in passive mode waiting to go active. Make sure you program in those radar sites. See if they match the other sites in our target package. If they don’t, then add them so we can hit them later. Once we start our attack run, things will get crazy.”
