Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

to top off for the final run into Thailand.

At the moment, each group was doing different things to prepare the aircraft for the planned embargo of the North, as well as staying ready for any trouble from the Vietnamese off to the west. The ROE were Warning Yellow — Weapons Hold, which allowed the fighters to defend themselves if they were threatened in any way. The UN resolution clearly allowed them to do so, though everyone in the formation was quietly hoping that this contingency would not involve any expenditure of ordnance or loss of life. The F-15Es were testing their LANTIRN targeting pods, and were using their APG-70 radars to shoot a series of radar maps to help with the target planning that was already going on in Fast-3, the command-and-control KC- 135R of the 22nd ARS, which was already coming in to land at U-Tapao. The F-15Cs were testing their JTIDS data links to make sure that they functioned as advertised. And the F-16Cs of the 389th were calibrating their HTS pods and Improved Data Modems (IDMs) on known SAM sites along the Vietnamese shore to their right. The F-16s were all 'netted' together, and the leader of the second flight had just turned on his gun camera video recorder when the radar warning receiver began to bleep. 'What the ****,' Captain Julio 'Frito' Salazar, lead pilot of the second flight of F- 16s, said. 'Somebody down there is tracking us!' The frigates Dau Tranh ('Struggle') and Giai Phong ('Liberation') were the pride of the Vietnamese Navy. Originally built for the Soviet KGB as heavily armed Krivak-III maritime patrol vessels, they had been acquired by Hanoi for little more than their scrap value and carefully refitted with French weapons systems and Japanese electronics, though they retained the twin ZIF-122/SA-N-4 Gecko missile launcher forward. The cost of maintaining the ships was high, but the Party leaders judged that the political cost of conceding control of the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea was even higher. Following standing orders, the ships fired up their gas turbine engines and raced out to sea at the first sign of trouble, lest they be trapped in Haiphong harbor by mines. Rear Admiral Vu Hung Van, flying his flag in Dau Tranh, had mission orders to blockade the southern Vietnamese coast, isolating the rebels while the People's Army crushed them.

'Admiral, aircraft bearing thirty degrees, at least ten, maybe more, in tactical formation. Definitely not friendly. If they maintain course and speed they will be within missile range in about five minutes.'

'That will be our old friends the Americans,' said the admiral, as an enigmatic smile crossed his weather- beaten face. 'Let us prepare to welcome them.' CNN had provided live coverage of the first movements of the American aircraft, and he knew what was coming. He also knew his duty and orders, and punched the button on the console for General Quarters.

Things began to happen at electronic speeds, beyond the range of human reflexes. As the fire control computers on the Vietnamese frigates began to develop target solutions, they commanded the tracking radars to switch to a higher pulse rate. At the same moment, HTS pods on the F-16s immediately detected this ominous development and alerted the pilots flashing the code STA 8 in two spots in the corner of the digital display of their ALR-56M radar-warning receivers (RWRs). It also told them that the Pop Group fire control radars of the two ships were in a firing mode, ready to launch. Captain Salazar reacted quickly. He immediately called a warning to the other aircraft of the package, and began to rapidly move his fingers over the HOTAS controls on his control stick and throttle. As he did, he called to his wingman, 1st Lieutenant Jack 'the Bear' Savage, to hit the northernmost target with his HARMS, while he took the southern one. The IDMs linked the data from the HTS pods, and in a matter of seconds both aircraft had range and bearing solutions to their targets. It took only a few seconds more for the two pilots to set up the HARM missiles and launch them. Then the pilots turned on their jamming pods, set up their countermeasures dispensers, and made ready to evade the SAMs of the two frigates.

Ten seconds after the General Quarters alarm sounded, four SA-N-4 Gecko/4K33 missiles rose from the ships, while the four HARM missiles descended from the planes. The range was down to 5 miles/8.2 km. as the 100mm gun turrets of the frigates began slewing toward the black specks in the clear tropical sky. Diving in at over 4,500 feet per second/1,372 meters per second, the HARMs won the race. The proximity fuzes detonated above the ships, showering them with thousands of tungsten fragments and chunks of still-burning rocket motor fuel. Admiral Vu and his bridge crew were dead before they knew what had happened. The fragments from the HARMs' warheads virtually shredded the two frigates, starting fires in the forward weapons magazines of both ships, as well as rupturing the fuel tanks. The SA-N-4s, deprived of terminal guidance, followed a graceful ballistic arc until the fuzes timed out and they self-destructed.

The lead Strike Eagle had captured the whole engagement on the videotape recorder of his LANTIRN targeting pod. Two hours later, just a few minutes after he touched down in Thailand, the imagery of the first shots fired in what was now being called Operation Golden Gate was being relayed by satellite datalink to Washington. The good parts were rushed through declassification by a rather sharp Pentagon PAO, just in time to make the evening news. The Vietnamese would regret firing the first shots at the 366th. Giai Phong limped into Cam Ranh Bay, where the surviving crew mutinied and joined the rebellion. Dau Tranh blew up and sank when the fires reached the forward missile magazine. A Chinese freighter picked up the survivors a few days later. They were neither grateful for the rescue nor well treated by their rescuers.

Hanoi, Vietnam, May 7, 2000, 1500 Hours

The Military Committee of the Party had ordered all senior cadres to study diligently the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War. If the Americans, or even worse, the damned Chinese came again (they had attempted an invasion of Vietnam in 1979), the command-and-control centers of this nation would not be caught sitting around the capital waiting to be decapitated. The top-secret dispersal and evacuation plan was worked out in detail, but the details were changed at random intervals, and there were never any practice exercises, to reduce the risk that a high-level defection could fatally compromise the plan.

The first lesson of the 1991 Persian Gulf War for the leadership of bandit nations was that underground bunkers were a trap. They would be pinpointed by satellite reconnaissance, targeted, and smashed by precision- guided penetrating bombs. So the Party would take refuge in the vast network of natural caverns that abounded in the mountains north and west of the city. Centuries of bat droppings were cleared out, and carefully camouflaged remote antennas for French-built spread-spectrum cellular phone systems were installed; but otherwise, preparations were kept to a minimum, and no road construction was permitted in the vicinity of the cave entrances.

Following the incident between the frigates and the 366th's A+ Package, the UN Security Council voted another resolution, this one designating the Hanoi regime as an outlaw government and authorizing the use of force. When word of this was received from the Vietnamese delegation in New York, the leadership evacuation plan was activated. The plan was executed so smoothly that the foreign diplomatic and journalistic community in Hanoi never got a hint that anything was amiss until virtually the entire Party and Government structure had vanished from the city. Thus it came about that elderly members of the Central Committee found themselves being winched down in darkness from rickety old Mi-8 HIP helicopters through the forest canopy and into tiny clearings, where National Security Force guards led them to underground hideouts connected by comm links that were difficult to intercept and almost impossible to jam.

The White House, Washington, D.C., May 7, 2000, 1800 Hours

'Mitch, I'm going to have to fulfill a few legal obligations to make this enforcement business happen the way you and the UN Security Council want it done,' the JCS Chairman said to the National Security Advisor in his office.

'What might those be, Jack?' the National Security Advisor asked coyly.

'I'm talking about assassination, Mitch. Not that it's illegal; but we do have to do some paperwork to make it all nice and okay. Especially the part about a signed Presidential National Security Finding showing that the continued existence of the Hanoi regime is a clear threat to the security and safety of the region,' replied the annoyed JCS Chairman.

'Will this do?' said the NSC Advisor, handing the big Marine a leather binder with the seal of the President on it. The JCS Chairman looked it over carefully, taking his time as he flipped through the pages. He stopped abruptly when he reached the last page with the signature blocks.

'Nice touch having the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate endorse it… makes it all nice and bipartisan,' the general observed.

'We thought it would add a certain moral conviction to the effort, especially since most of the veterans killed at the Caravelle were from the senator's home state,' replied the National Security Advisor. 'It just took some time to staff it through the Justice Department and the UN Security Council. Everyone wants to keep this most nasty of