Dale Brown - Shadows of steel

ABOARD AIR VEHICLE-01 I “It worked once before—let’s see if they work again,” McLanahan said. “Missile launch, ready … ready … now … doors open …

one away … two away … doors closed …” At that instant, there was another missile launch warning from the SA-10 site—again, when the bomb doors were open, the B-2A bomber was at its most vulnerable position.

The SA-10 Grumble missile flew a high ballistic flight path over the rugged terrain of southeast Iran, flying up to 50,000 feet before starting its terminal dive into the “basket,” where its quarry was supposed to fly. When it turned on its active terminal radar and flashed it into the target “basket,” it acquired the B-2A bomber immediately. The SA-10 Grumble missile actually had two seeker heads—an active radar seeker in the nose and, since the missile actually flew “sideways” into a lead-computing intercept, it also had an infrared seeker head mounted in the body of the missile that looked sideways at its target as it got closer, acting as a backup and as a terminal fine-tuning device for a precision kill. With two seeker heads, the SA-10 was very difficult to decoy.

But the bomber’s HAVE GLANCE laser immediately destroyed the infrared seeker, allowing the IR seeker’s computers to deliver false aim-correcting data to the missile—just for about a second, but long enough to knock the missile out of its nice, smooth intercept. At the same instant that the HAVE GLANCE laser hit, Jamieson threw the bomber into another hard left break, just as McLanahan dumped chaff. The SA-10 missile wobbled, reacquired, locked on to the chaff, decided it wasn’t moving fast enough and rejected that lock, reacquired the bomber—and hit the right wing, near the tip just forward of the trailing edge. The shaped-charge missile warhead punched a two-foot-wide hole in the wing, destroying the right wing ruddervators and rupturing the right wing fuel tank.

The B-2A bomber heeled sharply to the right, flipping over at nearly a ninety-degree bank, throwing the bomber nearly into a full accelerated stall. Jamieson tried to correct the turn, but had trouble controlling the aircraft. “Controls not responding!”

he shouted at McLanahan. “We lost the right niddervators …

c’mon, dammit, give it to me, give it to me!” It took both men on the control stick, then full left rudder trim, to straighten the bomber out.

“Lost the right ruddervators,” McLanahan confirmed. “Left ruddervators are deployed fifty, sixty percent. Power plants, all other systems OK. Fuel looks like it’s draining out the right wing … right wing valves are closed, all engines feeding off the left wing, boost pumps on, system still in AuTo but I’ll watch it.

Hydraulics OK.”

Meanwhile, the two JSOW cruise missiles were on their way, and as expected, the “screamers” did their magic once again. Two JSOW “screamers,” one east and one west of Chah Bahar, created so many false targets, emergency radar locks, and close-in automatic engagements that a dozen air defense sites within twenty miles of Chah Bahar opened up all at once—and all of them shooting east or west, instead of north, toward the B-2A.

At ten miles from Chah Bahar, McLanahan and Jamieson launched the next two missiles—these were AGM-88 HARMs (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles), supersonic radar seekers loaded with a 150-pound conventional high-explosive warhead with tungsten alloy steel cubes embedded in the explosive to triple the warhead’s destructive power. The rotary launcher ejected two HARM missiles out into the slipstream, the missiles fired ahead of the bomber, then quickly locked onto the Chah Bahar radar straight ahead and homed in. With the radar at Chah Bahar on full-cycle duty to counter the JSOW “screamers” and direct Chah Bahar’s murderous antiaircraft defenses, the HARM missile had a clear shot all the way, and seconds later the search radar had been destroyed for good.

“Okay, Mack,” Jamieson said. “We’re at the IP. We can turn back and hightail it for the hills, and we got a pretty good chance to make it outta here. We can E and E through the Pakistani or Afghan hills, then bug out over the Gulf of Oman and catch our tanker.”

“You don’t want to do that, Tiger,” McLanahan said. “You want to see that carrier go down. So do I.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jamieson said. “Hell, I didn’t want to live forever anyway. Let’s take care of business and get the hell outta here.” He began pushing up the throttles to full military power while McLanahan cut off the COLA terrain-avoidance system, and they started a steep climb over the Gulf of Oman toward the carrier.

ABOARD THE KHOMEINI THAT SAME TIME “The radar at Chah Bahar is down,” Badi reported to Major Admiral Akbar Tufayli. “We are resynchronizing with the A-10 radar plane and our own search radar. He is repositioning his orbit fifty kilometers further north to compensate for the loss of the shore station. We have requested that another A-10 take up a position to back up our A-10 on station; his ETE is thirty minutes Stand by …” It took only a few moments. “We have reacquired the target, sir, bearing zero-one-five, range ninety-six kilometers, speed six hundred kilometers per hour—it appears to have slowed down considerably.”

“Possibly damaged,” Tufayli said. “Now may be the time to commit our forces to hunt that bomber down and destroy it forever!”

“Range ninety kilometers, speed five-ninety, altitude now reading … sir, altitude is increasing. He’s climbing … now passing three hundred meters, four hundred … range eighty kilometers, passing six hundred kilometers in altitude. We have a solid lock-on, sir … seventy-five kilometers and closing, speed down to five hundred kilometers!”

“Engage at maximum range,” Tufayli ordered. “Launch the alert fighters. Get everything we have airborne. Where is that bomber now?”

“Still climbing, sir … Interceptor flights Twenty and Twenty-one engaging target, range sixty kilometers and closing..

“Twenty? Twenty-one? Where are those flights from’?” Tufayli asked.

“Those are the air defense F-4 Phantoms from Chah Babar, on station with the A-10.” He stopped and looked at his commander.

“The A-10? Could that bomber be going after the radar plane?”

“Get him out of there! Have him take evasive action!” But it was too late. The B-2A bomber launched two more AGM-88 HARM missiles, which horned in straight and true on the A-10 radar plane, sending it quickly spinning into the Gulf of Oman.

“He’s … he’s gone, sir, off our radar screens,” Badi reported.

“Interceptors have lost the target.”

“No!” Tufayli shouted, slamming a fist on his seat in anger. The F-4s had poorly maintained radars, with few spare parts, and were not as reliable as the Sukhoi-33s or the MiG-29s. “Not now! We were so close! Badi, I want every fighter we have in the air right now! I do not care if we shoot at every bird or every cloud in the sky that even remotely looks like a bomber on radar. I want it done, and I want that bomber on the bottom of the Gulf of Oman! Now!”

ABOARD AIR VEHICLE-01 I Nose pointed down to the sea, throttles to idle to present the smallest possible thermal cross-section astern, the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber plunged down into the darkness of the Gulf of Oman.

As it passed through 5,000 feet, following the computer’s projected track to where it thought the carrier Khomeini was, McLanahan saw a tiny spot of light—on the ocean—soon he saw others. “SAR coming on he announced, “now … SAR standby. Got the carrier, directly ahead, fifteen miles … last four missiles are programmed and ready to go.”

“Punch those ‘Elmers’ out and let’s go home,” Jamieson said.