The rest of the intercept was a piece of cake. Another lock-on, and this time he couldn’t miss. The bomber made a few more steep turns during the attack, but again nothing overly aggressive. Maybe a student crew?
Both sides went back to opposite sides of the range and tried the engagement again, this time with the second F/A-18 Hornet in the lead. The strange little bandit didn’t make another appearance, and the second Hornet claimed a kill just a few minutes later.
“Hey, Bobcat,” the lead Hornet pilot radioed after the exercise concluded, “how about a photo op?”
“Sure,” the bomber pilot replied. “You’re cleared in to close formation.” The Hawkeye air intercept officer gave the pilots a vector, and the two Hornets joined up on their quarry. It was an Air Force B-1 bomber, long and sleek, with its wings almost completely swept back along its fuselage.
“We’re going to tuck in tight and get some close shots, Bobcat.”
“Stand by,” the pilot said. “We’ve got our little friend rejoining us. He’s directly below us.”
“Say again?” But moments later they could see what he was talking about: A tiny aircraft, resembling a fat surfboard, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It rose until it was directly underneath the bomber. The bomber’s bomb-bay doors opened, and a long basket thing appeared. The little aircraft scooted up inside the basket, which closed around it, and moments later it was gone — snatched up into the bomb bay. “That was
“Affirmative.”
“Shit, I was shot down by a robot,” the wingman said disgustedly. “That’s gonna cost me big time at the bar.”
“Stop by the Owl Club in Battle Mountain Friday nights at nine, and the first round’s on the Bobcats,” the pilot said. “Okay, Devils, you’re cleared in.”
“Devil flight moving in.”
As surprised as the Marine Corps pilots were about seeing a drone being recovered by a B-1 bomber, that was nothing compared to their next discovery. The Hornets moved in close enough to get a picture of the bomber’s pilots looking back at them…
Until they realized
“Move forward?”
“Yeah… so we can see your faces out the windscreen?”
“Sorry, Devils, but you’re not going to see any faces through our windscreen,” the voice responded, “because there is no one inside the cockpit.”
“You’re shitting me!” the Hornet pilot exclaimed. He inched closer. It was no lie — there was no one sitting in either pilot’s seat. “Where’s the damned crew?”
“Back at Battle Mountain,” the voice replied. “You’ve been playing with two unmanned jets the whole time.”
“You’re flying a B-1 bomber—
“Yep. And I was just about to turn it over to my mission commander, go outside, and take a piss,” the voice said. “Have a nice day.”
What else they didn’t know was, had this been an actual engagement, neither of the Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets would ever have gotten a shot off at the B-1 bomber, because, orbiting in an adjacent range over 150 miles away, an AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser aircraft had been “shooting” at both F/A-18 Hornets during their simulated missile attacks.
Captain William “Wonka” Weathers, the wing munitions chief, sat in the jump seat between the aircraft commander and mission commander in the cockpit of the AL-52, watching in utter fascination. The mission commander, Major Frankie “Zipper” Tarantino, had locked up each Hornet at least a dozen times with the Dragon’s adaptive-optics telescope that magnified the visual image in incredible detail. Tarantino was able to precisely place the crosshairs on any part of the Hornet, no matter how hard it maneuvered.
“What do you think, Wonka?” asked Colonel Nancy Cheshire, the Fifty-second Squadron’s commander and the aircraft commander on today’s mission.
“It’s unbelievable,” Weathers said. “Simply unbelievable. And how many times can you fire the laser?”
“About two hundred times,” Tarantino said proudly, “depending on the targets we attack. Shooting through the atmosphere or hitting hard targets like tanks requires more power, which requires more fuel, which decreases the number of shots we can take. Check this out.” He punched in commands, and the image on his supercockpit display changed. Now he was locked on to a pickup truck speeding across the desert. “I found this guy a few minutes ago, off-roading in the restricted Fallon bombing range. With a press of a button, I can update his position to the Navy military police who are out after him.” He indicated another software button on his supercockpit display. “And if I pressed
“Amazing. Do you still have the ground team locked up?”
“You bet.” He hit another button, and the image shifted to a section of desert terrain, where two individuals could barely be seen on opposite ends of the display. Tarantino zoomed in to the one on the left and magnified the image. It was a commando in a Tin Man battle suit, carrying an electromagnetic rail gun. Seconds later the commando jet-jumped several dozen yards across a gully. Tarantino hit his radio button: “Fist Two, wave hello.” The commando raised his right hand, and Tarantino was able to zoom in close enough to see his upraised middle finger. “Be nice, now — we’ve got brass on board.”
“My God! We can see the guy giving us the finger from… what’s the range?”
Tarantino checked his readouts. “One hundred forty-three point one-nine-three miles,” he replied.
“And the laser…?”
“I don’t think the laser has enough power to hurt a guy in BERP battle armor at this range,” Nancy said, “but I think we’d make him
At that moment they heard on the command frequency, “Bobcat Two-one, Control.”
Nancy keyed the mike button: “Bobcat Two-one, go.”
“Set condition Gold.”
“Roger that,” Cheshire replied. She switched radio frequencies. “All Bobcat and Fist units, set condition Gold. Acknowledge.”
Weathers could see the Tin Man commando stop, look to the east, and jet-jump back in the direction of a waiting MV-32 Pave Dasher tilt-jet aircraft. One by one all the other players acknowledged the call and began heading toward designated recovery zones. Weathers could hardly sit still as Nancy Cheshire banked the AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser hard toward Battle Mountain, and Frankie Tarantino cleared out of the range and got air- traffic-control clearance back to Battle Mountain.
As simply as that, the Air Battle Force made ready to go to war.
“Baku Control, SAM One-eight-zero, level at flight level three-niner-zero.”
“Roger, SAM One-eight-zero,” replied the ex-Soviet air-traffic-control center at Baku in the Azerbaijani Republic, which handled all flights going in and out of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It had been many, many years since he’d handled an American “SAM,” or Special Air Mission — American diplomats did not come to this part of the world very often, especially since the new American president, Thomas Thorn, had entered office. “Be advised, sir, International Notice to Airmen Zulu-Three has been published regarding the airspace you are flight-planned to enter. Are you in receipt of this NOTAM?”
“Affirmative,” responded the pilot of the American C-32A Special Air Mission aircraft. “We are an American diplomatic mission on official government business, and we have received permission from the Turkmen government to enter their airspace. Over.”
“SAM One-eight-zero, I confirm you are in receipt of NOTAM Zulu-Three,” the controller said. “Be advised, the NOTAM is nonspecific, sir. Even though your diplomatic credentials are verified, you are still in great danger if you proceed into the prohibited area as outlined in the NOTAM because of the state of the conflict in central Turkmenistan. I strongly advise you to reverse course.”
“Thank you for the warning, Baku, but we will proceed on our flight-planned route,” the pilot said.
