rating of about ninety percent, meaning that in ideal conditions, nine out of ten would hit what they were aimed at.
In warfare, conditions are never ideal. Badger-J electronic-warfare aircraft were accompanying the bomber formations, and they were able to kill or blind a number of AIM-54s before they reached their targets.
Seventy-eight struck, however, all but annihilating the first wave of bombers.
All four Phoenix missiles were gone, but Coyote still had two Sidewinders and two AMRAAMs slung beneath the wings of his Tomcat. Pushing his throttle forward, feeling the click of each detent as he went all the way to zone-five afterburner, Coyote hurtled toward the southeast. His F-14's computer automatically slid the aircraft's wings back, adjusting drag and lift for maximum speed. A moment later they slipped past the sound barrier with scarcely a shudder in the big Tomcat's airframe.
'That's… a… kill!' Cat called from the back seat, her words and breaths coming in short bursts as she labored against the transverse-Gs pressing her back against her seat. 'Splash… four!'
'Send it,' Coyote told her, cutting back the F-14's power and dropping below Mach 1 again. Ahead, the ragged gray coastline of Norway was stretched along the sea at the horizon. Numerous threads of white crisscrossed the blue sky, Phoenix contrails from a dozen F-14s. 'Mustang, where the hell are you?'
'Coyote, Mustang. I'm on your five at six miles. Going for Phoenix launch!'
'Okay. Dump your load, then close up. I'm naked up here.'
'Roger that, Two-oh-one. Here we go. Lock and… fox three!'
Coyote switched to ICS. 'Cat! Gimme a vector! Gimme something to shoot at!'
'Shit, Coyote, take your pick. Ah… come right five. Looks like a large target at angels ten, range four-two miles.'
He picked out the target on his own display. 'Got it. We'll take it with AMRAA.M.'
The AIM-120A, also called the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile or AMRAAM for short, had been a long, long time in coming. With Phoenix to hit targets up to a hundred miles away, with the Sidewinder heat-seeker to take on close targets out to ten miles or so, a medium-range missile was needed to fill the gap between the two extremes. Since the 1950s, the Navy's medium-range missile had been the AIM-7 Sparrow.
For the men who'd had to rely on them, the AIM-7 had never been entirely satisfactory. They were SARH- guided ? semiactive radar-homing ? which meant they homed on radar energy reflected off the target by the firing aircraft.
That meant that the aviator who locked on to an enemy target and fired a Sparrow at it had to keep his aircraft flying straight and level, continuing to paint the target while his missile completed its flight ? as much as sixty-two miles in later versions of the AIM-7.
And while he was doing that, he was vulnerable, unable to maneuver without breaking the radar lock and wasting his shot.
Coyote switched his heads-up display to medium-range-missile mode, selecting an AIM-120. On his HUD, a small rectangle drifted across his field of view, the target designator. To the left, beneath the vertical line of his airspeed indicator, ARM M2 appeared, showing he had two missiles ready, while to the right, just inside the altitude scale, a vertical line gave the target's closing speed and range. The target was twenty-five nautical miles away now, closing at 512 knots.
Dragging his stick over, he merged the designator box with the target pipper; the letters ACQ let him know that the target had been acquired by the missile's radar. There was a beat as computers calculated firing conditions, angles, and probabilities… and then the rectangle blinked to a circle embracing the letter m.
A tone shrilled in his ear. 'Radar lock!' Cat called from the RIO's seat.
'Fox one!' Coyote answered, and he squeezed the firing trigger.
AMRAAM represented a whole new type of air-to-air missile, carrying its own radar-guidance system as well as extremely sensitive infrared sensors for terminal homing. Cost overruns and unexpected technical difficulties had delayed the missile's production for the better part of a decade, and with the first production models going to the Air Force, the new missile had been slow to reach Navy combat units.
With a roar, the AIM-120 detached itself from the Tomcat, boosting on a trail of flame to Mach 4 in seconds. On Coyote's HUD, beneath the altitude scale, the characters IN RNG and 28 glowed in silent affirmation. The AMRAAM would reach the target in another twenty-eight seconds.
With the missile away, Coyote immediately brought his stick hard to the right, dropping into a starboard turn away from the target that would have been impossible with the old AIM-7.
'I've got a target,' CAT told him. 'Bearing one-eight-five at three-one nautical miles.'
Coyote pulled back on his stick, easing out of the turn. 'Got him!' he said. 'Set the next one for AMRAA.M.'
At first, as the long-range Phoenix missiles streaked in from the U.S.
fighter screen, the Russian fighters escorting the bombers couldn't even hit back. The best air-to-air missile they possessed was the semi-active radar-homing AA-9 'Amos,' carried as a stand-off interceptor by the MiG-31 and having a range of about eighty miles. Production of the AA-9 had been plagued by problems even worse than those endured by the AMRAAM, however, and they were not as reliable as the AIM-54 Phoenix they'd been designed to emulate ? especially in a hostile ECM environment.
Nor were there as many of them. Most of the air-to-air missiles protecting the Russian bomber force were big AA-6 'Acrids,' carried by MiG-25 Foxbats and having a lock-on range of about sixty-two miles, and the modern AA- 10 'Alamo,' with a thirty-mile range.
As the two air armadas closed with one another, more and more of the Russian weapons began coming into play. But if the Russians were beginning to concentrate their forces, so too were the Americans. While the basic unit of naval warfare was the carrier battle group, a common strategy involved combining two or more CBGs into a carrier battle force, or CBF. During the Gulf War of 1991, four separate carrier groups had united in the Persian Gulf, forming a single battle force of unprecedented firepower.
Now, off the northernmost tip of Norway, two carrier battle groups were in the process of joining forces. Though the surface elements of CBG-7 and CBG-14 had not yet merged, the moment orbiting Hawkeyes had spotted the approaching Russian air armada, the Eisenhower had thrown her defensive cordon of Tomcats and Hornets into the sky along Jefferson's threat axis, combining and bolstering the defenses for both carrier groups. Tomcats from the Eisenhower loosed their AIM-54Cs at targets still deep in the Kola Peninsula; Hornets vectored in to provide air protection for Jefferson Tomcats that had already expended their missiles.
Despite the reinforcements, however, the battle was still so scattered that it was in reality a large number of separate, isolated clashes between tiny groups or even individuals, all fighting for their lives.
'Tone! Fox one!'
Their second AMRAAM slid from its launch rail, tracking a Russian bomber that had already passed Tomcat 201's position and was now almost thirty miles ahead, between Coyote and the fleet.
There were more aircraft in the sky now. All of Jefferson's Tomcats were in the air, and more and more of the Hornets from her two F/A-18 squadrons were arriving in the battle zone.
In addition, new Tomcats were vectoring in from the northwest, F-14s launched earlier from the U.S.S. Eisenhower.
Coyote was glad to see the extra talent arrive, but there was scant time for celebration. Seconds after his second AMRAAM struck home, Cat cut in over the ICS.
'Coyote,' she said, sounding worried. 'I've got a threat tone here.'
He glanced down at his own console and saw the glowing light on his threat-warning receiver. A radar-guided missile had just locked onto his aircraft, was tracking them now from astern. 'I see it. Do you have it on your TID?'
