Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (68 page)

Chinese destroyer
KAIFENG

Two hundred and fifty miles
southeast of the city of
Davao

Mindanao
,
the
Philippines

Monday, 10 October 1994, 2351
hours local

           
It had been hanging around for so
long now, big, slow, and galumphing, that they had humorously dubbed it
Syensheng Tz,
Old Gas. They could see
the thing easily, almost a hundred miles away and at high altitude—a single,
unescorted, vulnerable B-52 bomber. It was cruising westward at a leisurely
four hundred and twenty nautical miles per hour. Although it was definitely
getting closer, on its present course it would pass well out of HQ-91 missile
range of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy missile destroyer
Kaifeng
.
It was obviously giving the Chinese ships a
wide berth.

           
Even so, if the aircraft carried
antiship missiles, it was still a substantial threat: it was within Harpoon
missile range of the destroyer, yet outside the range of the destroyer’s
missiles, and there were no fighters nearby that could reach it. The commander
of the destroyer
Kaifeng
,
a Luda-class destroyer with over three
hundred men on board, wanted very close tabs kept on this intruder. “CIC,
bridge, status of that B-52,” the commander of the
Kaifeng
requested.

           
“Bridge, CIC, air target one still
at seventy-eight-nautical- miles range, altitude ten thousand meters, speed
four-two- zero knots, offset range six-zero nautical miles. No detectable radar
transmissions from aircraft. It is within Harpoon missile range at this time.”

           
“Copy.” The commander was carefully
trying not to let his frustration and impatience show. American B-52s had been
flying these “ferret” missions for many days now, passing just inside missile
range of the destroyer’s missiles, then hightailing it out when
missile-guidance signals were aimed at it. It was always one bomber, always at
thirty thousand feet, always challenging in this same location. It stayed high
and relatively slow—very nonthreatening despite being within extreme range of
Harpoon antiship missiles it might be carrying. It was obviously collecting
intelligence information—it was probably crammed with sensors and recorders,
hoping to intercept radio messages or analyze missile fire control radar
signals . . .

           
... or it was crammed with antiship
missiles, ready to strike. “Comm, bridge, any response from that plane about
our air-defense warnings?”

           
“None, sir,” the communications
officer replied.
Kaifeng
,
as well as other ships in the South
Philippines Task Force commanded by Admiral Yin Po L’un, had been warning all
aircraft to stay away from this area for days now. The area over the
Celebes Sea
had been a very well used airway for
travelers heading to
Brunei
,
Malaysia
,
Indonesia
, and
Singapore
through
Samar
International
Airport
, but the People’s Liberation Army Air Force
had refused all access to the region, and air traffic to and from
Manila
was tightly controlled. All air traffic was
forced to fly farther south through the sparsely populated islands of northern
Indonesia
.
Philippines
supply routes in the
South China Sea
were virtually isolated. But with the
nuclear explosion near
Palawan
and
the extreme danger of radiation poisoning and contamination, these areas were
being studiously avoided anyhow.

           
The American Air Battle Force,
however, was obviously ignoring all warnings.

           
“CIC, bridge, position of our
fighter coverage.”

           
“Sir, Liang-Two flight of eight J-7
fighters are over Nenusa Archipelago, one hundred eleven kilometers northwest
of the B-52. They are less than ten minutes from bingo fuel and have already
received permission to return to Zamboanga for refueling. Sichuan-One-Zero
flight of four Q-5 fighters are three hundred kilometers northwest of the B-52,
headed southeast to take over for Liang-Two flight.”

           
Damned sparse fighter coverage,
Kaifeng
’s
commander thought to himself. Because that
bomber was a “ferret,” running away at the first sign of trouble, they were not
giving it as much fighter attention as they should. Well, that was going to
stop right here and
now.

           
“CIC, bridge, chase that damned
plane out of here,”
Kaifeng
’s
commander ordered. At this point chasing
“Old Gas” out of antiship-missile range was more important than revealing radar
frequencies. “Hit them with the fire-control radar.” That was usually plenty to
make the B-52 turn and run.

           
“Yes, sir,” the combat information
officer responded. “Shall I recall Liang-Two flight to provide air cover?”

           
“Get a fuel state from them. If they
have not reached bingo fuel yet, have them engage. If they have reached bingo,
engage with the HQ-91 system. Then vector in Sichuan-Ten flight and have them
chase that B-52 out past two hundred kilometers.”

           
The warning tone over the interphone
system for a missile acquisition radar was different from a search radar—in
general, the more serious a threat, the faster and more insistent the tone. The
appearance of a “Search” radar gave a rather leisurely
“Deeedle
. . .
Deeedle
.
. .
Deeedle. ”
When the Chinese
Golf-band air-search radar changed to an
India-
band missile acquisition radar, the tone
was a fast, loud
“Deeedledeeedledeeedledeeedle!”
At the same time, “Missile Warning” lights illuminated at every station of the
EB-52C Megafortress bomber orbiting at thirty thousand feet over the
Philippine Sea
.

           
“Missile warning,
twelve o’clock
,” the electronic warfare officer, First
Lieutenant Robert Atkins, announced. “
India-
band radar . . . ‘Fog Lamp’ SAM director
for an HQ-91 missile. This’ll change to missile launch at any second.” Atkins’
voice became squeakier with every passing moment—he was an engineer, not a crew
dog, and he never thought he’d be taking these behemoth modified B-52s into
battle.

           
“Don’t sweat it,” Major Kelvin
Carter, the Megafortress’s pilot, said, trying to project the most confident
voice he could. “They’re just trying to scare us out. Easy on the jammers until
the shit starts rollin’.”

           
Carter’s words did little to calm
young Atkins down, so he turned back to the peace and security he usually got
from the one thing that he
knew
he
could trust in this screwed-up world—his equipment. Designed at the High
Technology Aerospace Weapons Center several years ago by a nearmythical
engineer named Wendy Tork, Atkins had improved on Tork’s groundbreaking designs
and produced what was probably the best electronic warfare suite ever to leave
the ground.

           
Atkins was sitting before a complex
of multi-function displays on the Megafortress Plus’s upper deck, scanning the
skies for enemy radars and programming the bomber’s array of jammers against
each one. His ECM system automatically processed the electronic signals,
analyzed them, identified them, pointed out their range and bearing from the
Megafortress, and selected the appropriate jamming packages to use against
them. It could do the same with a hundred other signals from very long ranges.
The system would also automatically dispense decoys against radar or
heatseeking missiles to protect them from missile attacks.

           
A B-52G or -H Stratofortress bomber
had performed all the other “ferret” flights from
Guam
in the past few days, but tonight it was an
EB-52 Megafortress pulling the unenviable task of drawing the attention of the
Chinese Navy and assessing the threats present around eastern
Mindanao
—a regular B-52 was hardly qualified to take
such a risk.

           
All in all, the system relegated
Atkins to a “verbal squawk box” role—what the others called “crew coordination”
was still a foreign concept to him, since everything on the Megafortress was so
automated—as it should be, of course. Why risk an extra human life on board,
when a computer could do the job faster, better, and cheaper anyway?

           
His directed defensive weapons were
designed to operate automatically as well. The Megafortress had eight AGM- 136A
TACIT RAINBOW antiradar cruise missiles in clip-in racks in the forward part of
the bomb bay, plus a rotary launcher with eight AGM-88B HARM High-Speed
AntiRadar Missiles in the aft bomb bay. The electronic countermeasures system
would automatically program both the HARM and TACIT RAINBOW missiles for a
particular enemy radar system they encountered. In case that particular radar
was shut down during a TACIT RAINBOW attack, the missile would stay aloft for
several minutes, search for just that radar, home in on it, and destroy it
after reactivation. If another ship tried to shoot down the subsonic

           
TACIT RAINBOW cruise missile with
radar-controlled guns, Atkins could launch supersonic HARM missiles at the
radar and destroy it.

           
The bottom line: he had designed all
this to be totally automatic, and it was obvious that he didn’t fit in with
this crew. Why in hell then was he here?

           
Seated beside Atkins was the
Megafortress’s “gunner,” Master Sergeant Kory Karbayjal. Karbayjal and the
other noncommissioned officers flying that position still liked the name
“gunner” or “bulldog,” although the term was an anachronism—the old .50-caliber
machine guns or 20-millimeter Gatling gun of other, more conventional BUFFs
were gone, replaced by the EB-52’s array of defensive missiles. The
Megafortress carried twelve AIM-120C AMRAAM missiles on wing pylons, and it
carried fifty small Stinger rear-firing heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles in
the tail launcher.

           
That was another job that could be
done by computers, too, although Karbayjal obviously enjoyed his work.
Karbayjal, a twenty-six-year veteran of the B-52, had flown the old D-model
BUFFs, the ones where the gunner sat in the tail in a tiny compartment with his
machine guns and used only his eyes to spot enemy fighters. He took it upon
himself to look after young Atkins just as much as he looked for enemy
fighters, something that Atkins resented as well.

           
The navigators, Captains Paul Scott
and Alicia Keller- man, were downstairs keeping track of their position and
preparing for fighter combat—the four Megafortress strategic escort bombers on
this mission carried no ground-attack weapons because they were all designed to
blast through enemy defenses and give the other strike aircraft a better chance
of reaching their targets. Scott could use his attack radar to designate and
track targets for their AIM-120 air- to-air missiles, while Alicia Kellerman
controlled the dorsal ISAR radar and kept track of all other aircraft and enemy
ships in the area. The pilots, Major Kelvin Carter and Lieutenant Nancy
Cheshire, were very quiet—they were obviously steeling themselves for the
battle that was about to begin.

           
Using the large dorsal side-looking
radar in ISAR (inverse-synthetic aperture radar) mode, Kellerman had already
identified the largest ship ahead as a Luda-class destroyer even before its
weapons radars came up, so Atkins had already anticipated what kind of radars
and weapons the vessel had and how to deal with each one. The Megafortress’s
ISAR system had also mapped out the locations and movements of the other
vessels in the south and west groups of Chinese ships and had passed that
information to other aircraft.