Episode 54

34th Fighter Squadron

Angels 30, 100 Miles Northwest of Fiery Cross Reef

The Chinese strike force was HUGE. Lieutenant Colonel Williamson had never imagined seeing that many enemy planes all at once. Even during the culmination of Red Flag when the entire training group did one huge exercise, he had never seen this many planes in the sky at once. It was scary as hell. Focus on the mission Timmy boy. They are just dots on the screen.

His wingman was obviously thinking similar thoughts. “Lordy, those ChiComs are not fucking around, are they?”

While Williamson was pretty close to crapping his pants, there was no way in hell he would ever admit it. “I prefer to think of it as a target rich environment.”

“Roger that.”

And that was how the game was played. Everyone got scared. Everyone was afraid of dying. But letting your team down was worse. He had seen grown men breaking down in tears after combat. He had nearly died twice just in training. However, until now the idea that he would lose an air to air battle was just not something he had ever considered. While everyone knew in theory that a war with China or Russia would be a huge challenge for the Air Force, it was very different seeing it right there on the sensor readouts. Focus on the mission. The haze means that visual range is only a mile or so. This is Panther weather.

“Ram lead to Hatchet. Execute Alpha Bravo.”

“Hatchet, wilco Alpha Bravo.”

Alpha Bravo was the plan that they had practiced many times during Red Flag but never in actual combat. The testing in the desert said it would work, but nobody really knew how good the Chinese radar was or what their response would be.

On his screen, he could see the friendly aircraft moving into the Alpha Bravo formation. Spread over a hundred miles of sky, groups of F-35’s and F-16’s moved into an odd formation. In each case, a group of F-35s led a group of F-16’s by about fifty miles. Usually, four to six F-35’s followed by a full squadron of F-16’s. As the groups fanned out, it looked like the F-16’s were trying to spread out the Chinese fighter screen and increase the likelihood of penetrating the bomber formations following.

In reality, the F-35’s were the “Peepers” and the F-16’s were the “Shooters.” Alpha Bravo was an attempt to increase the lethality of the much more numerous F-16 fleet. Each of the over 100 F-16s was armed with six AIM-120D AMRAAM missiles. With a range of almost 100 miles, the AIM-120D had the ability to take out the attacking bombers from a huge distance. However, as the Chinese had found out, having a very long range missile didn’t mean you could simply snipe your opponent from long range. The odds of getting hits from that range was very low. In this case, with over 100 aircraft inbound the Americans couldn’t simply launch and pray. They needed to get hits and they needed to focus on the bombers BEFORE they launched their cruise missiles.

Thus, Alpha Bravo. In this case, the “A” group of F-35s would get close, within twenty-five miles of the attacking planes. The “B” group of F-16’s would then launch at 75 miles range. Because of the very high speed of the missiles, they would catch up and pass the “A” group quickly and then lock onto the enemy aircraft. Because the F-35s at that point would be relatively close, they should be able to guide the missiles extremely precisely in the terminal phase.

All of this assumed that the Chinese would not be able to target the F-35’s at that relatively close range of fewer than 20 miles. A very big assumption indeed.

“I am approaching threshold values here Coco.”

“Same. Thirty seconds.”

“Fuck, I hope this shit works or this is gonna suck.”

“Outhouse or castle, Skippy.”

The next thirty seconds were the longest of Williamson’s’ life.

“SHOOT! NOW. NOW. NOW.”

The ChiComs HAD to see that. Almost four hundred AIM-120D’s blasted off the rails of the F-16’s and came screaming up behind the F-35’s at Mach 4 plus. It was alarming to Williamson and they weren’t even aimed at him. Having a crap ton of missiles coming up your six wasn’t a great feeling even if they were “friendly.”

The launch had been noticed. The previously orderly formations began to break up as pairs of planes broke left or right to get out of the firing line. They were close enough now that the F-35s were able to distinguish fighters from bombers. Williamson and the other pilots were busy designating targets for the missiles. Even at Mach 4, it would take the missiles almost a minute and a half to travel 75 miles. An eternity in modern air combat. As the enemy planes maneuvered, this time would increase or decrease during the flight. This very long flight time was the big reason why such long range shots were usually not practical in combat. It simply gave the opponent too much time to maneuver.

In the meantime, the F-16’s, relieved of half their ordnance, had turned away from the raid to assume a CAP over Fiery Cross. They would be the next line of defense for any cruise missiles that “leaked.”

“Holy crap! I think this is working. They are so focused on the incoming, they’re not shooting at us!”

“I don’t think they see us Skippy.”

“Well, Hot Damn!”

The software on the F-35 was truly amazing. Unlike the F-16 that Williamson had flown over Germany for the first half of his flying career, it was highly automated. The system was automatically finding, prioritizing and targeting just the bombers as per the mission objectives. It could tell the difference between the different type of aircraft and could automatically split the target load between the F-35’s in his squadron and the other F-35 squadrons. The current flight of 40 F-35A’s was the largest collection of F-35A’s anyone had ever seen and had required scraping up squadrons from all over the USAF and even into NATO. Despite this, all the aircraft were working as a team, sharing information digitally and ensuring that each squadron was maximizing “their” missiles as they streaked into the Chinese formations.

“Launch warning! LAUNCH WARNING! Multiple Vampire Launches!! Bearing Three Zero One, 15 miles your position.”

The Chinese planes were at the maximum range for their missiles which would play havoc with their accuracy, but they evidently had no plans of going home with ordnance on the rails.

Letting those missiles fly by was the hardest thing that Williamson had ever done. He knew his mission was to target the bombers. However, he didn’t know how many of his four AIM-120 missiles he would need for that task. His mission brief was VERY clear. He was not to expend ordnance on incoming cruise missiles. That didn’t mean he was happy to see them fly by.

Finally, the missiles from the F-16’s were coming into final attack range of the Chinese assault. Many of the aircraft had been able to power out of the missile’s engagement envelope. However, most of them had not.

“Hit!! That’s a hard kill!”

The Italians were getting their licks in also. “Ne ho ucciso uno! Ancora uno!!”

Overall, the first wave of missiles took down at least twenty of the attacking bombers. That meant that the second phase could begin.

“Alpha Leader to Alpha Strike. ENGAGE.”

With that command, all the F-35’s immediately launched two AIM-120D’s each. During the long wait, the F-35’s had closed to almost knife fighting range, just beyond visual range but well within the AIM-120D’s optimal range. The missiles quickly identified their targets and streaked off to claim more bombers.

However, all of this activity had not gone unnoticed by the Chinese fighter force. Unlike the F-22 which had a rapid ejection system for it’s air to air missiles, the F-35 had a general purpose weapons bay. This meant that the bay was larger and was open for a longer period of time when launching air to air missiles. This critical period left them vulnerable to radar locks from opposing fighters or SAMs.

While the bay was still open, Williamson’s threat receiver lit up. Missile tracking him from three o’clock low. Immediately, he reefed his jet into a punishing high gee left turn and punched the afterburner, passing Mach 1 in seconds.

Unlike his old F-16, the F-35 told him exactly where the missile was. When he turned his head, he could also SEE it projected onto his visor. Because the jet automatically fed the external video camera feeds into his $400,000 custom fitted helmet he could actually see right through the jet. The system was amazing but had required a complete re-think of how pilots operate a fighter aircraft.

Instead of trying to maneuver for a shot against his opponent, he only had to worry about avoiding incoming fire. Any offensive action could normally be taken without any sort of maneuver. This meant that his fighter only had to do half the work of a normal plane. In normal combat aircraft, you had to make a choice, EITHER you went on the offensive OR you went defensive to avoid enemy fire. In the F-35 you could do both at the same time.

Before he had completed his defensive maneuver, the aircraft had automatically highlighted the fighter which had launched the missile at him on his display. He could “see” the enemy plane below him right through the plane. With a click of a button in his control sick, he accepted the target, selected a weapon, and with a press of a trigger fired on the enemy plane. All of this while also selecting the optimal vector to avoid the incoming missile.

Finally, the bay doors closed and the plane resumed its stealthy configuration. As he completed the maneuver, he realized that the enemy missile had lost track on him when the bay doors closed and the violent maneuver had ensured that it was going to miss.

The Chinese pilot wasn’t so lucky. His generation 4 fighter was a sitting duck for the AIM-120D at this range. While still technically a “Beyond Visual Range” or BVR shot, the two miles to target was a chip shot for the advanced missile.

“Splash one.”

The battle was quickly winding down. With most of the bombers taken out in the first ten minutes, the fighters had nothing to defend. Trying to take out an F-35 in a BVR fight from a non-stealthy aircraft was simply suicide and the surviving fighters quickly bugged out.

Williams shook his head in disbelief. It looked like they had lost only one F-35 and NONE of the F-16’s. The most one-sided air victory he had ever heard of.

“Ram lead to Zulu Tango. Mission complete. The ChiComs are breaking off but you have a large number of Vampires inbound.”

“Zulu Tango. Roger that. We have them on our scope. Command says ‘WELL DONE AIR FORCE.'”

“Ram flight, RTB.” That assumed they had a base to return to.