ten thousand miles, has ten multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, and is extremely accurate — it can threaten targets all across North America and even as far as the Hawaiian Islands.
“According to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty number two, the Russian SS-24s and the American Peacekeepers were supposed to be dismantled or converted to single-warhead missiles. Although we no longer have any Peacekeepers on alert, the rockets themselves are still stored in their silos, without any warheads, awaiting removal and disposal. The Russians claim that this is a technical violation, so they said they would keep an equal number of SS-24s on their launchers, without warheads. The Russians recently started moving these SS-24s around, like they move the SS-25s around, so we have to track them as well.”
“Is that a problem?”
“The Seventieth has a pretty good record of finding both missiles,” Griffin said. “The SS-24s mostly stay in their garrisons. The SS-25s are much harder, because they’re road-mobile and they have a fairly good off-road capability and can fire from just about anywhere on the road, thanks to an inertial-navigation system augmented with satellite positioning.”
“We have several airborne sensors that can scan wide areas of all sorts of terrain for targets like this,” Patrick said. “The Megafortresses have synthetic-aperture radar that can pick out something as large as an SS-25 launcher from three hundred miles away — even concealed in a forest or under netting — and see inside a garage at one hundred miles.”
“We can sure use them in treaty-compliance missions — not much chance of them authorizing us to fly a high-tech stealthy bomber over their missile-silo fields, though,” Griffin said. “Our imaging satellites do a pretty good job overall, and we correlate signals intelligence with vehicle movements to spot most movements — we keep the count up as high as eighty percent. Weather hampers their movements a bit, especially in the Far East theater, and many units traverse the same areas every time during routine deployments. The good thing is that for the past few years the SS-25s have stayed mostly in their storage areas.”
“Reason?”
“It’s four times as expensive to maintain the road-mobile missiles than it is the silo-based weapons,” Griffin explained. “In addition, the transporter-erector-launchers were built in Belarus, so the Russians have had a hard time getting spare parts and replacements after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The START II treaty limit of just one warhead on every land-launched missile means that the SS-25 has less ‘bang for the buck.’
“Of course, its survivability gives it a big edge, and the missiles can be fired from their garages as well, so they all have to be monitored even while parked. We watch the garrison areas carefully for any sign of movement, and we use satellite-based visual, radiological, and thermal identification methods for tracking and identifying each convoy. We think there are only two regiments, a total of eighty missiles, actually deployed in the field at any one time.”
“I think I need to get a status briefing from the Seventieth right away,” Patrick said. “What else does the Seventieth monitor?”
“Test launches,” Griffin said. “There is a missile test-firing range north of Bratsk that has been used in the past to test-launch mobile missiles, so no one was surprised at that DSP detection warning. But Russia hasn’t fired a missile into the old Kazakh test ranges since shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union — they usually fire shorter-range missiles north to the Pol’kino instrumented target complex, and longer-range missiles east to the Petropavlovsk Pacific range complex. Kazakhstan hasn’t specifically banned use of their old target ranges, but they haven’t allowed it either.”
Patrick nodded as he studied the DSP satellite data. After another few moments, he asked, “Can the DSP satellites give us the speed and direction of the missile?”
“Not exactly,” Griffin replied. “Lots of folks say that DSP has a ‘tracking’ function, but in fact it’s just a series of detector activations. Certain users, like NORAD, can derive speed and ground track from the detectors, but DSP itself doesn’t provide that information. Since DSP is a warning-and-reporting system, not a target-tracking system — ground-based radars like BMEWS and the new National Missile Defense System are meant for tracking missiles — and since the system is designed to track missiles inbound to North America, not to Central Asia, we don’t have that info.”
“I’d like to find out how fast that missile was going when it was first detected,” Patrick said.
“It may not be a very accurate number,” Griffin warned. “In essence, DSP looks directly down at Earth when it spots a missile exhaust plume. Because most missiles go up awhile before heading down-range, the speed turns out to be zero for the first minute or two. That’s why we sometimes get excited even when we detect a forest fire or oil-well fire in Russia — they all look the same for the first couple minutes, which is why NORAD is usually quick to blow the Klaxon if it sees a hot dot anywhere in-country.”
“Find out for me,” Patrick said.
“Sure. What are you thinking about, Patrick?”
“I’m thinking that uncorrelated target has something to do with the attack on Bukhara,” Patrick said. He drew an electronic line on the screen between the DSP target-track data points to plot a course — and they saw that the missile’s flight path took it directly to Bukhara.
“That could be a coincidence,” Griffin said. “The track also goes through the Kazakh missile ranges. We don’t know where the missile went after its motor burned out….”
“But you said the Russians haven’t been shooting missiles into Kazakhstan — which makes sense,” Patrick said. “Kazakhstan cooperates as much with the U.S. as it does with Russia. And we don’t exactly know where the missile or its payload impacted — we’re
“What else could it be?”
“An air-launched missile,” Patrick responded. “Ever hear of anything like that before?”
“An air-launched Mach-eight missile that can fly almost eighteen hundred miles? I seem to recall something like that, but it’s better to ask the expert.” Griffin picked up Patrick’s secure phone. “This is Colonel Griffin. Get Chief Master Sergeant Saks secure at NAIC, ASAP,” he asked Patrick’s clerk. To Patrick he said, “Don Saks is one of our ‘old heads’—he’s been around longer than just about everyone. He’s the NCOIC at the National Air Intelligence Center at Wright-Pat, which collects and disseminates information on enemy air-and-space weaponry. If it exists, ever existed, or was once on the drawing board, he’ll know all about it.” A few moments later, Griffin punched the speakerphone button on the phone and returned the receiver to its hook. “Chief? Tagger here, secure. I’m here at Lackland with General McLanahan.”
“Saks, secure. Hello, sirs. What can I do you for?”
“You’re the walking Russian threat encyclopedia and the Air Intelligence Agency’s
“Easy. What is the AS-X-19 ‘Koala’?” Saks answered immediately. “A combination of the obsolete AS-3 ’Kangaroo’ air-to-surface missile and the naval SS-N-24 long-range hypersonic ship-launched antiship missile. Russian designation Kh-90 or BL-10. First test-launched in 1988. Rocket-boosted to Mach two, then ramjet- powered, speed in excess of Mach eight, range in excess of fifteen hundred miles, cruises at seventy thousand feet altitude. Too big to fit inside a Blackjack bomber, but the Tupolev-95 Bear could carry two externally. The Tupolev- 22M Backfire could carry three, although over very short distances — the suckers were supposed to be more than thirty feet long and weigh in excess of eight thousand pounds. The program was canceled in 1992, but rumors persisted that the Russians were going to build a shorter-range conventional-warhead version.”
“You mean, this AS-X-19 was supposed to have a
“Every Russian air-launched weapon designed before 1991 was supposed to be able to carry a nuke, and the Koala was no exception, sir,” Saks replied. “The Koala was inertially guided, but the Russians had terrible inertial nav systems back then — the missile needed a nuke in order to destroy anything. They were experimenting with GLONASS-navigating ultraprecise missiles when the program was canceled. Why, sir?”
“We’re looking into a recent Russian missile launch to see if it was an air-or ground-launched bird.”
“Got radar data on it, sir?” Saks asked.
“Negative.”
“Any data on it? DSP perhaps?”
“That we got.”
