attacker could launch a missile without having a radar lock-on.
Splash one, Crowbar.”
“Thank God — and thank the propellerheads,” the mission commander aboard the U.S. Air Force MC-130H Combat Talon transport plane, Marine Corps First Lieutenant Ted Merritt, said half aloud with a rush of relief. He felt as if he hadn’t taken a breath of air in several minutes, and his throat was dry and scratchy. A veteran special- operations officer of the Twenty-fourth Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable, Merritt was accustomed to handling any kind of contingency on the ground — what he couldn’t handle was being engaged by the enemy while still aboard the transport plane.
Merritt was leading a force of forty-eight Marines on a covert insertion mission deep inside Russia. Their MC-130H had lifted off from Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico, shortly after being given the warning order from U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. Its seven-member crew flew to Camp Pendleton, California, and embarked Merritt’s Marine Special Purpose Force platoon of fifty-one men, including three thirteen-man infantry squads and three four-man fire teams, that were part of the Fifteenth Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Fifteenth MEU had just completed its twenty-four-week qualification course and had just earned its Special Operations Capable designation before preparing to deploy on a six-month Pacific Ocean cruise.
The Marine Special Purpose Forces, once known as Direct Action Platoons, were composed of highly trained and experienced special-operations soldiers who specialized in light, mobile, and highly destructive missions deep inside enemy territory. Their job was to go in ahead of a Force Reconnaissance battalion or other heavy Marine unit to map out the forward edge of the battle area, hunt down and kill enemy scouts, pinpoint and relay locations of air defenses and fortifications, and create diversions to confuse, exhaust, and harass enemy forces.
The MC-130, using in-flight refueling, had flown nonstop since leaving Camp Pendleton, receiving hourly intelligence briefings and mission updates and plans via satellite while en route on the torturous fifteen-hour flight across the northern Pacific. The plane made several inflight refuelings, with the last one just north of the Aleutian island of Attu, right before entering Russian radar coverage. Once within range of Russia’s long-range airborne early-warning radars at Kavaznya and Petropavlovsk, the MC-130 descended to just a few hundred feet above the ocean using its satellite-navigation system, then used its terrain-following radar once over land to stay at treetop level.
Merritt was hopeful: They hadn’t had one indication of any threats during the entire long overwater cruise through Russian offshore airspace. But just minutes after going feet-dry and hugging some of the roughest terrain on the entire route of flight, where they should be the best protected from radar, they were jumped. Combat Talon II birds had an extensive electronic defensive suite, including jammers and decoys that were effective against ground and airborne threats, but the highly modified C-130 turboprop transports were very large, slow, inviting targets.
Thank God for their guardian angel. He was out there somewhere, blazing a trail for them.
The threat-warning receiver blared once again. The second MiG had already found them.
Control, Three-three, my wingman is hit, repeat, my wingman is hit!” the lead MiG-23 pilot shouted. “Give me a vector! The second target is somewhere at my twelve o’clock! Do you see him?”
“
He was alone — no wingman, and now no ground controller. It sounded as if the controller was going to vector in some help, but at maximum speed it would take them over fifteen minutes to arrive.
The MiG pilot activated his radar. There, right in front of him, was a radar target. Again he didn’t hesitate. He immediately got a lock-on, centered the aiming pipper on the lock box, and squeezed the trigger just as he got a IN RANGE indication on his heads-up display. He reached down to select his second radar-guided missile.
When he looked up, his radar was a jumble of targets that filled the entire scope. The radar lock box on his heads-up display was flitting from one false target to another, whichever one it thought was the strongest return or the most serious threat. The MiG pilot hit a button on the radar panel to activate the electronic counter- countermeasures mode. That cleared up the radar screen — but only for a few sweeps, and then the enemy jamming signals locked on again to his radar’s new frequency and started false-target jamming it all over again. He had no idea where his missile was heading. For all he knew, it could be heading back toward
“Control, Three-three…” he tried, but the radio was still unusable, a hopeless jumble of screeches, pops, and whistles. The MiG pilot immediately started a climb and made a slight right turn — he’d been on that one heading too long, exposing himself to attack. What in hell was it? An enemy fighter over eastern Siberia with both air-to-air weapons
He had just a few minutes of fuel left before he needed to head back to base. Without a ground controller, he had only one option left: try to find his original target on his own. Kill something before he had to get out of there — or before
His original target was slow-moving, flying very low but not terrain-masking, and pretty much flying in a straight line. Maybe he would still be doing the same thing now.
The MiG-23 pilot turned slightly left and aimed the nose of his jet slightly nose-low, aiming for the spot he imagined the original target had moved toward. His guess was that the first target was a large American turboprop special-ops aircraft, like an MC-130 Hercules, probably loaded with troops and fuel but having to stretch that fuel a long way — which meant he was going to continue to fly slow and low and not make a bunch of course reversals, climbs or descents, or even very many turns if he could avoid it. Maybe if he was concerned about—
Suddenly a dot appeared on the TM-23 electro-optical sensor screen.
He had no definite idea how far away he was from the target — he was relying strictly on his own internal “radar screen” as he selected his R-60 heat-seeking missiles and closed in. All he had to do was keep the dot centered and continue moving in — the R-60 would report to him when it had locked on to a hot enough heat source. It had to happen any second now. His situational-awareness “chart” told him he couldn’t be any farther than five or six kilome—
A red light flashed on, and he flipped open the safety cover and squeezed the launch button — before, realizing that it wasn’t the IN RANGE indicator, but the MISSILE LAUNCH warning. The Sirena-2 radar threat detector had picked up the specific frequency of a radar-guided missile in flight. He had to get out of there! He had only a fraction of a second to react.
But at that same moment, he heard the raspy growl of the R-60 locking on to its target, and moments later he saw the IN RA—
The AIM-120 AMRAAM missile plowed into the center of the MiG-23’s fuselage, tearing open its fuel tank and blowing the fighter into pieces in the blink of an eye. The pilot stayed conscious long enough to grasp his ejection handles before the fireball created by his own exploding jet engulfed him, instantly vaporizing him.
Splash Atwo, Crowbar,” Matthew Whitley radioed a few moments later. He was also the “game boy” for the unmanned EB-1C Vampire “flying battleship” bomber, flying in protection mode to cover the MC-13 °Combat Talon II transport as it flew through long-range radar coverage from Anadyr and Kavaznya along the Russian coastal area.
