Air Battle Force

targets below. The white-hot blobs of molten copper could pierce steel up to three-quarters of an inch thick. But as the copper slugs pierced the outer armor they cooled, preventing them from blowing out the opposite end. The result: Each blob of molten copper became thousands of red-hot BB-size pellets that ricocheted around inside at the speed of sound, creating an instantaneous but deadly meat-grinder effect.

On Engels’s runway, taxiways, and aircraft-parking ramp, the result was devastating. Each SFW canister could hit as many as ten targets — aircraft, vehicles of all sizes, or buildings. Each bomb bay on the Wolverine cruise missiles held nine SFW canisters. The Wolverine would eject one SFW canister every few seconds as it cruised across the airfield, emptying one bomb bay per pass. Then it would orbit away from the base, turn around, fly down the runway or taxiway from a different direction, and drop another bomb bay — ful of SFWs.

The timing of the attack was perfect: The ramp and taxiways were choked with thirty-two Tu-22M Backfire and Tu-160 Blackjack bombers preparing for takeoff.

For the next twenty minutes, the eight Wolverine cruise missiles assaulted the base, staggering their attacks so that they deconflicted each other and so that the SFWs would not attack the same target. The results were spectacular and horrifying at the same time: When a Wolverine missile made a pass, the ground below it would suddenly erupt into a carpet of stars as the SFW did its deadly work, followed by explosions and a burst of flame; then the effect was repeated a few dozen yards away as the next SFW detonated. The Wolverines’ orbits changed slightly each time so there was no risk of a missile’s being targeted by ground fire or of its attacking targets that had already been struck. When the Wolverine’s three bomb bays were empty, the missile itself plunged into a final fixed target, detonating its internal high-explosive warhead on support buildings and hangars near the runway, power substations, communications buildings, nearby bridges, and weapon-storage areas.

While the Wolverines did their damage, Rebecca Furness and Daren Mace had their own job to do — get their Vampire bomber out of Russia alive.

Daren activated the Vampire bomber’s LADAR, or laser radar, arrays, which instantly “drew” a high- resolution picture of the world around the bomber in all directions for a hundred miles. Each LADAR “snapshot” took only two seconds but produced an image that was of nearly photographic quality — accurate enough to measure objects, compare their dimensions with an internal catalog, and identify them within moments.

“LADAR picked up a flight of four MiG-29s, five o’clock, thirty-three miles, our altitude,” Daren reported. “Second flight of two MiG-25s at nine o’clock, high, forty-seven miles, coming in at Mach two.” The Vampire bomber automatically turned slightly right to present a thinner profile to the MiG-29s and to point its hot exhausts away from the MiGs as well in case they attempted a shot with a long-range heat-seeking missile.

“Come and get us, kids,” Rebecca said. She hit the voice-command button. “Best speed power profile.”

“Best speed power,” the computer responded. The computer immediately set full military power and started a steep climb. The higher it flew and the faster it reached a higher altitude, the greater its average speed would be.

“MiG-29 radar lock-on, twenty-five miles,” Daren said. He hit his voice-command button. “Attack commit MiG-29s.”

“Attack commit MiG-29, stop attack,” the computer responded. It immediately turned farther right, almost going head-to-head with the MiGs, then opened its forward bomb-bay doors and ejected four AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missiles. The missiles dropped several yards below the Vampire, then ignited their solid-rocket motors, shot ahead, picked up the datalinked steering information from the Vampire, and began the chase. As soon as the missiles were away, the attack computer turned the bomber to the left and back on course.

The Scorpion missiles followed the steering signals until about ten seconds from impact, then activated their own onboard radars. The Russian MiG-29 pilots never realized they had been fired on until that moment, and their survival depended on their reaction. In combat-spread formation, each pilot had a specific direction to evade and enough room to do it. All he had to do was execute, without more than a moment’s hesitation.

The pilots that survived were the ones who reacted immediately when the threat warning blared — dropped chaff and flares and turned to their evasion heading as fast as they possibly could. Once the Scorpion missile switched to its own internal terminal guidance radar, it was easily spoofed — akin to walking along normally at first, then walking while wearing blinders. The Scorpion’s radar locked on to the biggest, brightest, and slowest-moving radar reflector within its narrow field of vision — which for two of the four MiG-29s happened to be the cloud of the radar-reflecting tinsel called chaff they left in their wake. But the other two MiG pilots were more worried about losing sight of their leaders or screwing up their formation work than about saving themselves, and the Scorpion missiles clobbered them easily.

Daren flashed on the LADAR once again after the Scorpions’ missile-flight time ran out. “Two Fulcrums down,” he reported. “Man, we sure—”

“Warning, missile launch MiG-25 AA-10, eight o’clock, high!” the threat computer reported.

Rebecca immediately threw the Vampire bomber into a tight left turn. At the same time Daren ordered, “Attack commit AA-10 and MiG-25!”

“Attack commit AA-10 and MiG-25, stop attack,” the computer responded. As soon as the bomber rolled almost wings-level, the attack computer opened the forward bomb doors and launched four AIM-120 Scorpion missiles. The first two were aimed at the large radar-guided AA-10 air-to-air missiles fired by the MiG-25 “Foxbats.” The Foxbats immediately peeled away after launching their missiles. Like the Scorpion missile, the Russian AA-10 missile had its own radar and locked on to the EB-1 Vampire when less than ten seconds from impact. Heading nose-to-nose with the oncoming AA-10, Rebecca started a series of vertical jinks, trying to get the Russian missiles to overcorrect and blow past the Vampire.

Successfully attacking an air-to-air missile with another air-to-air missile was a long shot — and in this case completely ineffective. Both Scorpions harmlessly detonated well away from the faster Russian missiles.

The first AA-10 missile flew just a few yards under the Vampire and hit the towed array as it homed in on the jamming signals from the array. The second AA-10 looked like it might miss as well, passing over the Vampire by a scant few feet, but it steered itself on target at the last moment and detonated right between the fuselage and the trailing edge of the right wing.

“Crap, we lost the number-four engine, and number three looks like it has a compressor stall,” Rebecca shouted. But the power-plant computers had already reacted: They had shut down the destroyed engine, brought the power on the number-three engine back to idle, then trimmed out the adverse yaw in the bomber by adjusting its adaptive skin. The computer also shut down the affected hydraulic, pneumatic, fuel, and electrical systems. Seconds later it automatically attempted a restart. “Damn it, number three’s not restarting. I think the computer’s going to shut it down in a sec—” Just then the fire number 3 warning light winked on, then off as the computer shut down the engine and cut off fuel. “There it goes.”

“Looks like a flight-control fault on the right. We’re losing both the number two and the emergency hydraulic systems,” Daren reported. “Weapon computers reset… bomb-door malfunction… looks like no more Scorpions today.”

“Base, this is Bobcat.”

“We see you, Rebecca,” David Luger said from Battle Mountain. “Continue your left turn to heading two- niner-five. Your bogeys will be at your twelve o’clock, sixteen miles, same altitude, two MiG-29s. We’re trying to analyze the malfunction in the number-three engine. If we can find it, we’ll attempt a restart from here.”

“You got some help up here for us, Base?” Rebecca asked excitedly. At that instant, they saw a spectacular flash of light directly in front of them, followed by a spiral of fire that spun down into the darkness below. “Never mind, I see it.” An unmanned Vampire bomber orbiting over Kazakhstan’s airspace miles southeast of Engels Air Base had fired ultra-long-range AIM-154 Anaconda air-to-air hypersonic missiles at the MiG-29s from over 130 miles away. The missiles had been fired at maximum range almost two minutes earlier and were just now finding their targets.

But at that extreme range, even with a sophisticated laser-radar attack system and ultraprecise guidance systems, the weapons were not perfect. The Anaconda missiles fired from the unmanned air-defense Vampire missed the fourth MiG-29 and one of the MiG-25 Foxbats bearing down on the stricken Vampire bomber — and moments later the MiG-29 opened fire from short range with two AA-11 air-to-air missiles. The AA-11 missile was Russia’s most maneuverable and most reliable antiaircraft missile — but it didn’t need to be to hit Rebecca and Daren’s EB-1C Vampire bomber. One missile detonated just aft of the number-one and — two engines; the other