“Yes, sir,” Patrick replied. “Engels and Blagoveshchensk were the two known Blackjack-bomber bases in Russia. The last verified inventory of Blackjacks at Engels had their full complement — twenty-eight planes, most transferred from Belarus. Two were recently verified destroyed, and two more damaged. That’s at least twenty-four survivors. Blagoveshchensk had its full complement as well — twelve bombers, transferred from Ukraine and refurbished.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, McLanahan,” Major General Gary Houser said. “Those hangars at Aginskoye could be housing anything — other transports, supplies, even oil-pipeline equipment or derricks. You’re seeing a big building and assuming there’s a couple Blackjack bombers in it.”
“The reinforced runway adds to my suspicions, sir,” Patrick responded. “Although it’s true that Aginskoye’s runway could have been reinforced to handle Condor transports, and the hangars could be storage buildings, their dimensions still leave room for doubt. It could be a coincidence, or they could be bomber hangars. The only way to verify it is to check it visually. We’re going to need some eyes on the ground to look it over.
“Aginskoye is about a hundred miles from the Mongolian border, about two hundred miles’ driving distance by the most direct route, or nine hundred miles from the Sea of Japan.”
Gary Houser turned away without further comments; no one else had anything to add.
“Colonel Griffin has some suggestions to make in a moment; I have one more item to present,” Patrick said. “We were able to launch a second constellation over Russia, shortly after launching the first over southern Russia,” he went on.
This time Houser made an expression of pure disgust, not trying to hide it at all.
“The targets were higher-latitude military bases on the Russian Pacific coast, as well as bases farther in the southwest and in former Soviet republics.” Griffin changed PowerPoint slides. “Here is the former bomber base at Magadan. This base has always been the Russian equivalent of their far east tanker task force, but the number of Ilyushin-76 and Tupolev-16 tankers there is astounding — well over forty planes are now based there. The imagery also gave us a good look at the submarine base at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka, which also has seen an increase in the number of Tupolev-95 strategic bombers in recent days. All in all, we’ve seen a three hundred percent increase in the number of strategic bombers and tankers in the Russian far east theater.
“One more observation was made in these latest images: up here, in the provincial capital of Yakutsk. Yakutsk is the largest northern city east of the Urals and the center of the Siberian oil and natural-gas industry. Air service is the life blood of this city, and we’d be accustomed to a lot of air traffic year-round. The orbit of the second string of satellites didn’t cover Yakutsk as well as we’d like, but we were able to get some pretty good oblique pictures — yet even in these shots, it’s obvious that air traffic into Yakutsk has more than tripled since official counts were made about a year ago.
“Now, this could be a result of higher oil prices making Siberian crude more valuable, and hence a push to develop the Siberian fields, but this rate of increase has been surprising to all of our analysts,” Patrick summarized. “We’ve seen an overall increase in all types of air traffic, but most notably in military cargo and resupply flights. It’s hard to categorize accurately because Aeroflot does as many civil and government flights as it does military, but we regard the increase in air traffic into Yakutsk as significant. And since it coincides with the increases in military activity in other far east locations, we can conclude that the buildups in strategic air assets in the far east theater and the buildups in Yakutsk are related and not just coincidental. We feel that the Russians are engaged in some sort of massive high-tech buildup of strategic air-attack assets, including supersonic and subsonic bombers and air- refueling tankers. The recent attack by Backfire bombers in Turkmenistan could have been a test of some of these assets.
“Most notably we feel that the Russians are building up Tupolev-22M Backfire bombers and Tupolev-160 Blackjack bombers, in violation of Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty rules. The reason for this is obvious — conventional thinking has it that these aircraft are not threats to North America; the Backfires supposedly had insufficient range, and there were only six Blackjacks in the entire Russian arsenal with intercontinental range. The Nine-sixty-sixth feels that these conclusions are no longer valid. We feel that there may be as many as twenty to sixty Backfire bombers with intercontinental range and cruise-missile capability, and between twenty and perhaps thirty Blackjack bombers also with intercontinental range and cruise-missile capability, including nuclear-tipped weapons.
“We don’t know precisely what these forces will beusedfor,” Patrick concluded, “but our guess is that these forces pose a significant threat to our Asian allies — and a direct and credible threat to the United States as well. We feel that these bombers, with the massive number of tankers in the theater as well, could easily reach targets all across North America, primarily above forty degrees north longitude and west of ninety-five degrees west longitude — only one-fourth of the United States, but within striking distance of fifty percent of our land-based bombers, fifty percent of our ballistic-missile submarines not presently at sea, and
The battle-staff conference room rumbled with low murmurs and sounds of utter disbelief — but the loudest voice came from the head of the table. “
“It may sound unbelievable, sir, but—”
“It doesn’t sound unbelievable, McLanahan — it sounds completely
“The Bear bombers are relics, McLanahan,” interjected Major General Ralph Nowland, the deputy commander of the Air Intelligence Agency. Nowland had been in AIA longer than almost anyone else and had convinced everyone else that he was the expert on any possible subject concerning the Russian military. “We’ve never received any credible evidence that the Russians are modernizing the Tupolev-22M Backfire as an intercontinental strike platform — the Russians have been yanking Backfires in favor of continued development of the MiG-29S and Sukhoi-35 fighter-bombers. And for good reason: The Fulcrum and Flankers have more capability, are far less costly to maintain and deploy, and have similar range and combat performance. As for the Blackjacks, there’s no evidence whatsoever in any documentation or imagery that proves they’ve been reactivated and their air-refueling capacity restored enough to give them true intercontinental capability. That’s an unsubstantiated rumor only.”
“And you haven’t given us one shred of evidence or even any plausible conjecture that the bomber that struck Bukhara is some sort of supersecret refurbished Backfire,” Houser said. “No one has been able to recover the missile that went off course — the Russians are all over the impact area, so it’s unlikely we’ll ever get a look at it. We have scoured the intercepts and technical literature coming out of every lab and every aircraft-manufacturing bureau in Russia, and there’s not one mention of any programs to upgrade the Backfire fleet. If it exists, it’s under a level of secrecy and compartmentalization that hasn’t been seen in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union.” He shook his head. “So let’s get down to the bottom line, General: You still don’t know where those Backfires came from, is that it?”
“Sir, my guess is that the bombers came from Bratsk,” Patrick responded.
“And how did you deduce that?”
“By the number of nonmilitary flights coming in and out of Bratsk,” Patrick said. “The Russians have made a big deal out of hiding all their Backfire bombers from satellite view of every base, but the number of Aeroflot flights going into Bratsk has increased almost threefold since the raid on Bukhara. The number of government and civil flights going into Bratsk has increased from an average of twenty per day to an average of sixty-three per day since the raid. Bratsk is a major city on the Trans-Siberian Railway and is a major oil-transshipment point, but its air traffic has remained fairly constant for the past few years — except for the past few days, when all of a sudden its civil air traffic spiked.”
“That’s
“Sir, these additional flights going into a base that hasn’t seen much activity in years could be significant,” Patrick said. “It simply raises more questions — and it warrants a look around with HUMINT resources.”
“More spy missions inside Russia, is that it?” Houser asked derisively. “McLanahan, you have a lot to learn about the Air Intelligence Agency. We’re not the CIA, and we’re not a bunch of James Bonds ready to get an
