Episode 99

142nd Fighter Wing, Oregon National Guard

Phúc Yên Air Base, Vietnam

Major Tinney had been keeping a close eye on the operations shack. He definitely HAD NOT been sulking around as his crew chief had suggested. Definitely not. Nope, he was, uh, keeping tabs on the situation.

Because he had been “keeping tabs on the situation,” he was there when the sergeant manning the satellite communications station stiffened and muttered a soft but clear “oh shit.”

“What do you have there sergeant?”

The sergeant turned to see who was speaking. Recognizing the Major, he answered with an intense, tight smile. “Just got the go-order for Long Snap.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah.”

Major Tinney controlled himself with some effort. There were over a hundred planes sitting out on the ramps and in their revetments just waiting for that order. This is why they had flown out from Brunei. “OK, get the wing moving and pass the word to the other units.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Marine F-35B’s took off first. They had relatively short legs and would need to tank before the mission began. The normal runway takeoff meant they could fly with a heavier load, but they still didn’t have the legs of an F-35A. With their external FAST packs, the F-15’s would be able to complete the entire mission without refueling.

The Avengers went next. Their long sleek shapes looked sinister as they made their way down the taxiway and onto the main runway. Jet engined with twin tails forming a “V” shape, they looked like something a kid would draw when imagining what a future combat aircraft might look like.

Tinney performed a quick walk around his aircraft. He knew that the ground crew had already checked the aircraft, but it never paid to be sloppy about procedure, especially when flying into combat.

“Good hunting sir.”

While the Air Force did not officially condone superstition, pilots the world over firmly believed in luck or whatever it was that kept them alive. Tinney’s crew chief ALWAYS said the same thing before a mission. And Tinney ALWAYS answered the same way. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

As the wing of F-15’s from the Oregon National Guard got into the air, their tactical net came online. Pulling data from orbiting AWACs and other sensor platforms, he could “see” the tactical picture for the entire theater.

It was impressive.

Several hundred Chinese tactical aircraft were currently headed up into North Korea. The Long Snap plan had depended on this occurring so it wasn’t a surprise, but it was still impressive seeing how many aircraft the Chinese could muster when they put their minds to it.

“Redhawk Lead to all Redhawks. Let’s make a spectacle of ourselves. Turn to heading zero two five, ascend to angels thirty.” As the wing turned towards the nearest Chinese fighter base, they ascended to thirty thousand feet where they had a huge energy advantage over any aircraft coming up to meet them. Of course, they were also visible to pretty much every radar in southern China, but that was the idea.

“Sentry Four to Redhawk Lead. Raid warning. Raid warning. We have tactical aircraft rotating from your primary.”

“Acknowledged Sentry Four. We have them also.”

It was tactical doctrine for the USAF to avoid overly long missile shots against fighter aircraft. At least, that had been the tactical doctrine until this war had started. Overall, the kill ratio for these long shots was not good and it wasn’t usually worth the expenditure. Getting a lock on a small target like a fighter aircraft required a very precise radar picture which usually gave the game away. The enemy could tell they were being targeted way before the missiles arrived. While dodging a missile wasn’t something any pilot did for fun, the longer the shot, the more time the target had to maneuver into a position the missile could not reach.

The F-35 combined with the AIM-120D changed all this. Using the AIM-120D, a “missile truck” like the F-15 could fire a large number of missiles from relatively long ranges (over 100 miles in some cases) WITHOUT achieving radar lock. The missile would then fly to the known location of the target without activating its primary radar seeker head. The F-35 could scout ahead and provide targeting information to the missile while in flight. In this case, the F-35s were about fifty miles ahead of the F-15s and had a VERY precise picture of where the Chinese fighters were. Unlike the very unstealthy F-15’s flying behind them, the F-35’s were pretty much invisible to the tactical radars fitted to the Chinese aircraft. The USA had been very active in taking down any of the “Anti-Stealth” radar systems operating in theater and their size meant they weren’t very portable, nor could they be mounted on an aircraft.

All of this meant that the F-35s were effectively invisible to the Chinese pilots and their controllers on the ground. This is not a recipe for success. For the Chinese, that is.

“Redhawk lead to all Redhawks. Launch on command. Shoot, shoot, shoot!”

On command, all thirty surviving F-15’s of the 142nd launched eight AIM-120D missiles each. The high altitude of the F-15’s also had the advantage of adding energy to the flight path of the missiles as they flew down to the Chinese jets sill coming up from their bases.

“That’s it gentlemen, RTB.”

Tinney was about to become the least glamorous ace in USAF history and the first since Vietnam.

VMFA-121 (The Green Knights)

Angels 30, People’s Republic of China, 50 miles north of Vietnamese Border

Captain Charles whistled to himself. Almost one hundred Chinese aircraft were coming up to meet the F-15’s of the Oregon National Guard. None of them seemed aware of the Marine F-35 squadron, which was a VERY GOOD THING by his estimation.

Another VERY GOOD THING was the two hundred plus AIM-120D’s currently inbound. Unlike his previous aircraft, the Harrier, the F-35 had a massive amount of automation to make things like targeting 100 aircraft with 200 missiles possible. The squadron of F-35s also talked to each other so that each aircraft was automatically assigned a subset of enemy aircraft to target.

Passing over the Chinese fighters, he caught a glimpse of a few of them, thousands of feet below. As expected, they appeared to be J-10s which were basically the Chinese version of the F-16. They even looked similar. A multi-role aircraft, they were the most common tactical aircraft in the Chinese inventory. Similar to the F-16, they were relatively cheap and very flexible.

Unfortunately for the Chinese pilots, they were simply unprepared for the lethality that stealth brought to the modern battlefield. Derided by the Russians and Chinese publically, stealth had completely changed air combat forever. It was no longer sufficient to be fast or have a high turn rate. If you could not detect your enemy, you could not predict where the missiles would come from and you couldn’t target the opposing planes. All of these factors meant that stealth aircraft like the F-35 or F-22 are utterly dominant in the skies.

“Romeo, Romeo, pick your targets and engage.”

As the automated systems in the Marine’s F-35B aircraft sorted out the Chinese aircraft and the incoming American missiles, they automatically handed off targeting to the members of the squadron.

“Hit! Hit! That’s a hard kill!”

The incoming wave of missiles decimated the Chinese fighters. With little or no warning, they were unable to maneuver or deploy countermeasures. For many of them, their first warning was the impact of the missile. The LPI radar on the F-35B was not something that the J-10 was designed to fight against and they had no way to detect or defend themselves against the threat. The small missiles had not lit off their radars until the last seconds and the antiquated radar in the J-10 was not up to the task of detecting such small objects.

“Holy Crap, Kit Kat! There are less than twenty left!”

“Romeo Flight, pair up. Get the stragglers. Do not, repeat, DO NOT ENGAGE in a turning fight. Shoot and scoot or so help me I will fucking bust your ass down to PFC!”

The one thing they did not want to do is to get into a turning fight with the very nimble J-10. Even though the F-35B was a capable dog-fighter you did not engage in a fight where your enemy had a chance. At Beyond Visual Range (BVR) the F-35B was simply untouchable. To date, the Chinese had bagged several F-35’s and each time it had been in a short-range fight where the Chinese pilot could see the F-35 visually. While American pilots had not engaged a “get on his six” dogfight since Vietnam, short-range missiles were still very deadly, even to stealth aircraft.

In pairs, the F-35B’s dove down and flipped 180 degrees, effectively reversing their course and approaching the Chinese aircraft from the rear.

“Hit!! Hard kill!!”

Over the next ten minutes, the twelve Marine F-35B’s scored an additional ten kills. The opening minutes of the “Great Chinese Turkey Shoot” was going well for the Americans.

Of course, all of this was just a diversion. The real attack was coming from the Avengers. They had been loaded to their limits with JDAM precision strike munitions. Each JDAM had been precisely targeted on key PLAAF infrastructure. Not every bomb hit their mark, but enough did to completely destroy the majority of hangars, machine shops and other infrastructure that the Chinese used to maintain their air force in southern China. Of the five bases targeted, three were damaged to the extent that their aircraft were diverted to other fields and the remainder were severely degraded. The Avengers then moved on to fulfill their primary role in the attack.