Strike Force

“Condor, exfil point Bravo loks like it’s compromised,” Kai Raydon radioed from Armstrong Space Station. “We’re sending Dasher to point Foxtrot. Dasher” was the MV-32 PAVE DASHER tilt-jet transport aircraft that would come in to pick up the four Condor commandos. The jet variant of the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor transport, the MV-32 was larger, faster, more heavily armed, and could carry more troops or equipment. It had been deployed secretly to Iraq to assist the Air Battle Force ground ops team, but now that the Condor aircraft were going to be abandoned the MV-32 was now tasked with picking up the commandos after their mission.

The four commandos all reported successful raids and clean kills so far…but about three-quarters of the way through their circuits, they saw Shahab missiles rising through the sky. “Faster, guys,” Hal ordered. “We’re letting some get away!”

“You can’t get them all, One,” Patrick radioed from the White House Situation Room. “Do the best you can. I want all of you back in one piece. Remember you’ve got an extra three miles to go to reach Foxtrot. Watch your ammo and batteries.”

ABOARD HEADBANGER FIVE-ZERO,

OVER EASTERN IRAQ

THAT SAME TIME

A tone sounded and a blinking icon appeared on the mission commander’s supercockpit display. “Missiles airborne,” Air Force Reserve Brigadier-General Daren Mace announced. Mace was the operations officer and second in command of the Air Battle Force at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. The twenty-four-year veteran Air Force navigator-bombardier leaned forward in his ejection seat excitedly. “Looks like Four-Zero picked up some missile launches.” He quickly designated the missiles, identified as Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, on the screen. “There’s your steering, Margaret. Go get ’em!”

“Got it, General,” Air Force Reserve Captain Margaret “Mugs” Lewis responded. She was more than twenty years younger than her mission commander, flying her first operational mission with the Air Battle Force, but she was a veteran B-1B Lancer aircraft commander and knew how to make the big supersonic bomber dance. But every minute aboard this variant of her beloved B-1 known as the EB-1C Vampire was a delight for her.

The sleek, supersonic Vampire bomber’s three bomb bays were completely loaded for this cover mission. The forward and middle bomb bays were combined into one and contained a rotary launcher with eight ABM-3 Lancelot air-launched anti-ballistic missiles. Resembling the Patriot anti-aircraft missile, the Lancelot was designed to destroy ballistic missiles in the boost, mid-course, or terminal phase. It had a range of almost one hundred miles, a top speed of Mach six, and a precision terminal seeker radar as well as guidance from the Vampire bomber’s powerful attack radar.

The Vampire’s aft bomb bay was loaded with four AGM-177 Wolverine cruise missiles. The 2,000-pound weapons had a small turbojet engine, a maximum speed of just 300 knots, and a maximum range of only 50 miles. But the cruise missile was special because of its three weapons bays, each containing a different type of submunition — anti-armor, anti-personnel, and area-denial cluster bombs — and its millimeter-wave and imaging infrared seekers that could locate, identify, track, attack, assess, and even re-attack its own targets. Finally, the little Wolverine cruise missile could attack one last target before its fuel ran out by kamikaziing into it and detonating its 50-pound warhead.

The laser-projection heads-up display in front of Lewis depicted a sequence of squares angling off to the right, and so she steered the EB-1C Vampire until the aircraft icon was right inside the squares. The squares represented a “highway in the sky” route computed by the attack computers to get the bomber into perfect attack position, and a graphical bar chart told her what power to set to reach the optimal launch point on time, so she pushed the throttles up until the bars matched. “Excellent, Captain,” Daren said. “About ten seconds for a LADAR launch fix.”

At the proper time the Vampire’s LADAR, or laser radar, automatically activated. The LADAR used high-speed electronically scanned laser beams to “draw” a picture of everything in the sky, on the ground, or even in space for two hundred miles quickly and with very high precision, presenting it on their supercockpit displays in incredible detail. “LADAR down,” Daren said. “Lancelot missiles counting down…ten seconds…doors coming open…missile one away…missile two away…doors closed. Okay, we’re shifting targets to the launchers.”