334th Fighter Squadron
South China Sea
“You Gotta Be Shitting Me.”
The unofficial motto of the USAF Wild Weasel squadrons is attributed to Jack
This phrase was going through the mind of Lt. Colonel James “Cookie” Cook as he finished tanking up from the KC-46. With the entire 4th Fighter Wing committed to this attack on Woody Island, he had plenty of company. The 334th had drawn “low man” duty this day with the 333rd flying “high cover.”
The reality is that the F-15E was not the right platform for taking on a heavily defended target like Woody Island. While dropping a crap ton of JDAMs wasn’t really a problem, the issue was the SAM coverage that the Chinese had been busy building up over the last few years. Ideally, a flight of EA-18G’s would go in and take out the radar sites first but the attack on the Vinson and CSG-1 had effectively removed the Navy from this part of the ocean.
In the USAF, the “wild weasel” mission was normally flown by F-16’s. In the tight confines of Western Europe, this was an ideal aircraft for the job. However, with the nearest air base over 500 miles away, it was going to be difficult for the F-16’s to get in and out without heavy tanker support. Even the F-15E with their 500-mile range required a full tank halfway to ensure a full combat load at that distance.
Tankers had proven to be the Achilles heel of air operations in the Pacific. The Chinese knew that they had to take out the tanker force. With early successes attacking the tanker fleet, alternative tactics were required by the USA to achieve
In this case, making the F-15E a “wild weasel” aircraft which it had never been designed to do. Once again, Cook cursed the moron responsible for retiring the EF-111 “Raven” also known as the Spark ‘Vark. As a former ‘Vark driver, Cook knew EXACTLY how he would have gone after Woody Island in the big bird. His current ride was not really up to the task, but the Chinese hadn’t given them much choice and the brass hadn’t asked his opinion on the matter.
The plan was simple enough. One-third of the wing would go high to flush out any Chinese AWACs birds and the other two thirds would go low to evade ground-based radar coverage. Flying down on the deck would significantly reduce the range at which the Chinese SAMs could track and engage the F-15’s. Of course, it would also mean giving up the most important advantage in any dogfight: altitude. Cook told himself firmly that his job was NOT to dogfight today. Get down low and deliver the HARM payload. That was all.
At two hundred miles, they started dropping down. By one fifty, they were wavetop height. It was thrilling going that fast so low to the sea. It was also very, very dangerous.
His backseater was not amused. “Cookie, let’s get some breathing room here.”
“Relax Stretch, I got this.”
“Yeah boss, I know. I just worry we may be the first aircraft in the history of the USAF to get taken out by a fish strike.”
“You worry too much Stretch.”
“Keeps me alive boss.”
Cook advanced the throttles to the maximum non-after burner setting. The burners would waste too much fuel, but he wanted to get into range as fast as possible. The rest of the squadron had spread out to approach Woodie Island from a very broad front. Ultimately, they would converge from 180 degrees of the compass, making it as difficult as possible for the SAM crews to engage…
“SHIT! Chinese frigate at 2 O’Clock!!”
Not good news. The whole idea was to sneak up on the island and get a shot off before being discovered. Running across a random Chinese PLAN ship wasn’t in the mission profile. In a moment, the frigate was on their right-hand side and past. The speed of the aircraft suddenly becoming very
“Breaking Left!”
Cook brought the F-15 into a tight turn to the left and lit the afterburners. In five seconds, the aircraft passed Mach 1. The resulting sonic boom would have been deafening if anyone had been close by.
“They are painting us!!”
Cook called out to his wingman. “Spooky, split now and join up down range. Watch for SAMs.”
“Roger that Cookie..”
The two F-15’s split up, trying to make the firing solution more difficult for the Chinese frigate. Unfortunately, they were on their toes.
“SAM, 6 o’clock!”
The Chinese had launched radar-guided Surface to Air Missiles in the few seconds that the aircraft had been in their radar window. The only way they could have done that was if they were already on alert. Not good news for the F-15’s.
“I have radar from the SAM. It is homing. Attempting to jam.”
Cook fired off chaff and then a set of flares, just in case. Most likely, this was a radar homing missile but flares were cheap. His only chance was to jam the radar on the incoming missile and maneuver to the point where the missile lost lock. At the speed they were going, chaff wasn’t very useful since it was a long way behind them very quickly. The only good news was that he was going Mach 1 directly away from the attacking missile. The bad news was that the missile was capable of Mach 4 and was directly on his tail.
“Stretch, fire up the MALD.”
“Cookie, without the MALD, we are mission abort.”
“I can’t shake this bitch, we need some cover.”
“Roger that Cookie.”
The MALD-J (Miniature Air Launched Decoy) was designed to mimic the radar and electronic signature of various aircraft in the US inventory. The idea was to flood enemy radar with fake aircraft and draw enemy fire away from the real aircraft. However, in this case, the idea was to give the homing missile something to lock onto so that the F-15 could live to fight another day.
“MALD away. MALD is slowing to subsonic.”
“I have another 30 seconds of burner before we need to slow down or we won’t make it back to the tanker.”
“Roger that Cookie.”
Cook banked the fighter hard right, taking them out of the line of sight of the oncoming missile, punching out chaff every few seconds. Hopefully, the MALD would present a more attractive target.
“Aspect change, the missile is taking the bait.”
“Fuck me, that was close.”
“Do we abort?”
“Hell no. We came all this way. We make it back to Clark with missiles on the pylons, we will hear about it for months.”
“What about the SAM site on Woody? No MALD means we don’t have a diversion.”
“Let’s hope the others were luckier.” Cook keyed his radio. “Spooky, you with me?”
The silence on the digital radio was deafening.
“Spooky?”
“Cookie, I think he bought it. There were two other SAMs that locked on him.”
“Goddammit.”
“Let’s get this mission done Cookie.”
“Roger that Stretch. Let’s kill some of those motherfuckers.” While Cook normally prided himself on his professionalism, the idea of losing his wingman was tough to take. It was supposed to be about getting the job done, but that wasn’t always true. Losing a friend hurt. You had to be inhuman not to feel that. Training meant he could still do the job but humanity meant that he took it personally. Anger and fear melded into a tight ball in his belly.
Flying at just under the speed of sound, the F-15 continued at very low altitude towards Woody Island and the waiting SAMs. Not a very smart thing to do.
“Cookie, I’m getting radar warnings. I think that the Chinese have the MALDs. TRESPASS, S-Band at 12 o’clock. I am getting tracking radar and fire control. Looks like Intel was correct, at least one HQ-9 battery.”
While Cook and his wingman had been extremely unlucky, most of the remaining fighters in the squadron had been able to release their MALD-J decoys as per the mission brief. Because the MALD-J was able to both mimic USAF combat aircraft and jam enemy radar, the defenders on Woody Island were completely convinced that the MALD’s represented the attacking fighters and targeted them with their SAMs. While they were good radar targets, they were much smaller than a real F-15 and many of the attacking missiles missed. This further confused the defenders and gave the F-15’s time to fire their radar killing missiles.
“Distance to launch point?”
“Five miles.”
“Roger that, I’m going to pop up to one thousand feet to let the missiles acquire then fire.”
“Gotcha Cookie. Feeding tracking info to the birds now. Range in three, two, one. Execute! Now, now, now!”
Cook pulled the F-15 into a steep climb. The very maneuverable aircraft gained altitude extremely quickly. “Firing.” The AGM-88E HARM was a very intelligent weapon. Capable of locking onto an electromagnetic radiation source at over 100 miles distance, it would automatically track and home in on either a radar source or even a radar jammer. Unbeknownst to the pilots of the 334th, the Chinese had deployed multiple decoy sites in addition to the actual radar sites on the island. While the four missiles fired by Cook would not be enough to take out Chinese radar emplacement on Woody island, the forty missiles fired by the ten surviving members of the squadron were more than enough. Even though half the missiles were fooled by decoys, that still left twenty missiles homing in on five targets.
Cook and the rest of the squadron withdrew, heading for the planned tanker rendezvous. While they had committed a flight of the very rare F-22’s to guard the tankers, there was no guarantee the tankers would be there. The Chinese had moved to long-range missile attacks on the tanker fleet to discourage them. No tankers in the air meant no threat from US tactical aircraft.
The 334th had taken a beating, losing four aircraft in the process, but the SAM radar on Woody Island was out of business. For now.
Interesting that the J 20 has yet to make an appearance to target AWACs and Tankers…
There are only about 20 J-20’s in existence. Not enough to commit them so far from mainland China. Very early days of the J-20 program.