Episode 107

“ACE Four One”

Angels 40, Forty Miles from Shandong Provence, China

“ACE Four Lead, your mission is go. Say again, ACE Four Lead your mission is go.”

Major Weatherly looked over to his co-pilot. “Well, that’s it Billy. Time to go downtown.”

Billy unconsciously tightened his restraints. “Feet dry in five mikes.”

“What does the board look like?”

“We’re good for the next fifteen, looks like we’ll need to detour around this one up here.”

As the two men conferred over the best way to slip through Chinese radar coverage, the rest of Ace Four were doing the same. Sixteen B-2s were currently in the air over China. Considering that there were only twenty one of them in the total air force arsenal, this was an amazing feat of logistics. Two were currently down for maintenance and two had been held back as backups. One was currently out of operation due to a crash landing on Guam. That accounted for all the B-2’s in the arsenal. Not for the first time, Weatherly wondered how the war would have been different with a hundred or two hundred B-2’s. Well, the B-21 would be coming online in a few years and that would change things for sure.

Each of the planes were loaded down with JDAM-ER munitions. While dropping JDAM guided bombs was something that the B-2 had done many, many times, this would be the first time they had been used in a deep strike SEAD mission. The genius of the JDAM program was that it added guidance kits to relatively cheap and plentiful “dumb” bombs. The most recent innovation was the addition of the guidance kit from the AGM-88 “HARM” missile. This made the newest JDAM an excellent anti-radar weapon. In turn, this new upgrade made the B-2 a very potent SEAD platform. Something nobody had envisioned when the B-2 had been designed.

“It’s gonna take me a while to get used to hunting radars instead of running from them, boss.”

“I hear ya, Billy. This is hinky.”

The superbly trained B-2 crews had drilled for years to practice the deep strike mission profile. They understood that their job was to go “downtown,” deep into heavily defended airspace. While not invisible, the low observable features of the B-2 meant that they could fly with some impunity over enemy controlled airspace. They needed to exercise extreme caution because the closer the got to an emissions source, the more likely they would be detected. The USAF had spent the first weeks of the war focused on removing the two main threats to the B-2: airborne radar which had unpredictable patrol patterns and long wavelength radar which was specifically designed to detect stealth aircraft like the B-2. Multiple strikes from B-1’s carrying long range cruise missiles and a concerted campaign by the F-22’s against the airborne radar aircraft had made tonight’s mission possible.

“Anything on the long wave bands?”

“Not so far, looks like the Navy got the last couple.”

“Thank God for that. How are we doing on time?”

“On the nose. We are about fifteen minutes ahead of the cruise missiles.”

While the Navy Tomahawks and the B-52 launched JASSMs had been in flight for thirty minutes already, they had to fly a very indirect path. The B-2s would reach their targets well before the cruise missiles.

In the end, Long Snap was about misdirection and coercion. China was firmly focused on North Korea but this was simply a diversion. The entire reason for the invasion of North Korea was to allow the situation that was occurring over the skies of China right at this moment. The unprecedented level of tactical aircraft activity allowed the USAF to map, with extreme precision, the airfields and support facilities that these planes used. Because China was on high alert, this also meant that their SAM sites were fully manned and operating. Again, this allowed precise mapping of their locations and electronic signatures

Weeks of preparation had gone into this single mission. Hundreds of thousands of troops had been sent into action. All for this one objective: Decimate China’s tactical air capacity. This measured, tactical escalation was a direct response to China’s strategy for attempting to manage the conflict. Basically, the message was, “you are not managing us, we are managing you.” For the first time in the war, the United States was about to do something that China was completely unprepared for.

“Nearing first release point.”

“Roger that.”

“Drop. Now. Now. Now.”

Still nearly forty miles from their primary target, the crew released half their payload of JDAMs. This first release of weapons were all equipped with anti-radiation seeker heads. As each one fell from the aircraft, small wings opened and the guidance package began to fly the bomb onto their pre-selected targets.

Time crawled.

“HIT! Good hits. Emission sources are going offline.”

“Stay focused. We’re not done yet.”

From forty thousand feet, the crew could just make out the explosions of the weapons they had released just moments earlier. Then all hell broke loose.

“GODDAM!”

“You said it Billy. Holy Christ!”

The combined strikes from the Navy and Air Force lit up the night. The Chinese airfield below had been attacked with over one hundred weapons in less than five minutes. With very little warning, Weatherly had to assume that the equipment and men below were taking a beating.

Unlike other strikes, this attack was over very quickly. Short and violent, the strike packed in as many weapons as possible into a short time frame.

The goal was to ensure the smoke and debris cleared in time for the second strike.