9th Reconnaissance Wing
Beale Air Force Base, CA
“They want WHAT?”
“An airfield.”
“Where?”
“North Korea. At least fifty klicks from the border of China.”
“Well, damn.”
Master Sergeant Williams had expedited some very specific tasking orders over the last few weeks, but this one was a beauty. She wasn’t supposed to speculate about why command wanted to find a specific airport at a specific place in North Korea, but she wasn’t dumb. There was really only one reason why the Army wanted an airfield in North Korea.
“OK, have you reached out to NRO yet?”
“Yeah, they’ve got a couple of possibles.” Senior Airman Russel put some photos down on the table. “I like this one the best.” He pointed to the photo labeled Taechon. “It’s almost seventy klicks from the border and it’s a military base. No civilians around.”
“What the fuck are those?” Williams pointed incredulously to a group of airplanes parked just off the runway.
“I believe those are AN-2 biplanes.”
“What the hell?”
“Intel says that they use them for low and slow insertion of spec ops forces. The idea is to go deep into South Korea and drop insurgents behind the lines. Those things are mostly wood and fabric. They fly so low and so slow you can’t hardly pick them up on radar.”
“And what is that?”
“Looks like a bomb crater.”
“From the Korean war?”
“Probably. That’s why this came down to us. Hard to tell from satellite intel if that runway is safe for a heavy lifter.”
“We aren’t putting F-16’s down on that strip, I can tell you that.”
“No, the goal is to put C-17’s in there.”
Williams studied the images carefully. One of the lesser known missions of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing was to determine where the Air Force could or could not operate, globally. In this case, the strip looked to have been paved at one time, but it seemed to be in a very poor state of repair. How bad was difficult to determine from space. This would require a recon pass from MUCH lower altitude.
Traditionally, such missions were flown with optical cameras during light conditions that allowed shadows to be picked up. If you know what time of day it is, you can measure the shadow and then determine the height of the object. Today, a very sensitive Synthetic Aperture Radar called “tactical reconnaissance and counter-concealment-enabled radar” or TRACER could be used to build up three-dimensional maps with millimeter-level accuracy.
“I don’t think we can get a Global Hawk or one of the Predators in there.”
“Nope. No way. The DPRK is on very high alert.”
“Right. Let’s get Creech on the phone. We need to have the RQ-180 rigged for TRACER.”
“The North Koreans will detect the mapping. Too much radar signature to hide.”
“Nothing for it.”
“OK. I’ll give them a ring.”