Author: admin

944th Fighter Wing, 52nd Squadron, Air Combat Command

Flight Level 40, San Bernardino County, CA

“Apple Valley Traffic, Air Force Flight Ninja One Niner, Ten Miles East at 4,000 Feet, inbound for landing, Apple Valley”

Lt. Colonel Nguen hadn’t landed at an uncontrolled airport with no air traffic control since he was a teenager in a rented Rockwell Commander.  He was pretty sure that no air force fighter had ever landed at the Apple Valley airport.

Until half an hour ago, he didn’t even know that Apple Valley airport existed.  He had to look it up in the nav system.  There it was, SPV.  Most amazing of all is that the small civilian airport out in the middle of the California desert had a six-thousand-foot runway.  More than enough to handle his F-35A.  Even more importantly, the three C-17s following him could also land there.

“Apple Valley Traffic, Air Force Flight Ninja One Niner, entering left downwind for runway three six, Apple Valley.”

Keeping a sharp eye out for traffic, Nguen brought his heavily armed F-35A into a gentle landing.  He had no idea how he would get any spares if he did something dumb like blowing a tire so he kissed the runway as gently as he could.

Rolling down runway 36, he glanced to his left and saw a sign reading “MAG Aviation Fuel.”  He hoped the FBO had a fuel truck or two; rolling the entire squadron up to a fuel pump was going to be a bitch.

Turning left at the end of the runway, the followed the taxiway back towards the FBO office.  Finding a spot on the ramp, he stopped, hit the brakes and popped the canopy.  Taking off his helmet, he looked down and saw an older man standing beside the plane.

“You lost, boy?”

“No sir, looking for gas.  JetA?”

“Well fuel we have, son.”

“You take a DOD Fleet Card?”

“First time for everything.”

“I got thirteen more thirsty birds, right behind me.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

The man turned around and shouted.  “Frank!  Get your lazy ass off that phone and fire up the other tanker truck.  We’ve got company!”

Getting out of an F-35 by yourself isn’t exactly easy.  It took Nguen a full five minutes to shut down the aircraft, get his helmet off, get his safety harness off and finally make his way down the ladder that extended down from the side of the aircraft.   By the time he had all that done, a fuel truck had driven up with a confused young man driving.  Nguen assumed this was Frank.  Nguen ducked under the nose of the plane and opened the door hiding the fuel inlet on the right flank of the stealth fighter.  Underneath was the same type of valve that civilian jet aircraft used.  Nguen watched carefully as Frank filled his fighter with JetA.  It wasn’t exactly the same thing as the JP-8 the F-35 normally used, but it was close enough.

By this time, the rest of the wing had begun to arrive, with one plane landing every minute.  Within twenty minutes, a full squadron was lined up neatly.

Nguen found his second in command supervising the refueling of his aircraft.  “Jim, take command here, marshal the squadrons one at a time and then get them lined up on the apron over there.  I want fifty second squadron on plus five ready to go.  I need to figure out where to park the maintainers and their gear.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nguen found the FOB operator refueling another of the fighters a few hundred feet away.  “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Carsten, Colonel.”

“Are you prior service?”

“Yes, sir.  Did my twenty and got out an E-6.”

“Well, Sergeant, consider yourself called back to active duty.”

Carsten stopped what he was doing and turned to face Nguen.  “Shit, sir.  If you need me back, it must be the mother of all ratfucks.  Sir.”

Jesus Christ, doesn’t he know what’s going on?  Nguen had been pretty busy since the attack but he assumed the internet was going insane at the moment.  “There are Russian and ChiCom regular army in Mexico and the CONUS just got fucked up the ass by ChiCom hypersonic missiles.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.  This squadron took out two ChiCom SAMs in Mexico that took down one of our birds and we just had to evacuate Luke to avoid ballistics inbound.”

“Well, fuck me.”

“Yeah.  So, I have a shit ton of spares and weapons along with all my maintainers coming in three C-17s.  I need your help to figure out where to put them.”  Nguen pointed at the tiny terminal building.  “I hope there is a bar in there; you’re about to be ass deep in Air Force.  You guys are now my FARP.”

Carsten took off his stained baseball cap with Titan Aviation Fuels written on it and scratched his head.  The idea of setting up a forward arming and refueling point at his airport didn’t seem to bother him.  “You’d have more room over at George.”  He pointed vaguely in the direction of Victorville and the former George Air Force Base.

“We were headed there.  Command in all of its infinite wisdom decided that as a former air force base, it might still be targeted.  The idea is to disperse to locations unlikely to be attacked.”

Carsten laughed.  “Well, if there is one place I reckon less likely to be attacked by the ChiComs than this here airport, I can’t think of it.”

In the end, they decided to simply move the two civilian aircraft currently on the ramp.  This gave them enough space (barely) to unload one of the C-17s.  After quickly setting up all the gear needed for a FARP, the first plane left and the second landed.  It was tight, but they were able to make it work.

I hope command gets their thumb out of their ass soon.  It’s not doing my birds any good sitting out here in the desert, thought Nguen.

United States Northern Command

Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, CO

“Beale is off the air, sir.”

Wilkes was getting frustrated.  Everything they tried to do to understand the current situation was blocked in some way.  “I don’t care what we don’t have.  Tell me what I do have.”  He raised his voice so everyone in the large ops center could hear him.  “People, we are facing the most serious threat to our nation in our lifetimes.  This isn’t about what missions a unit is SUPPOSED to do.  Let’s focus on what we CAN DO.  We need intel and we need it RIGHT NOW.”

“Sir, Johnson Space Center is answering.  I believe that they have at least one WB-57 flight ready.”

OK, a fifty-year-old British bomber was not what I had in mind, thought Wilkes.  However, when in need.  “Give them the go, I want a flight along the US-Mexico border.  Radar if possible, visual if not.  We need to know if those reports about Chinese armored units in the Sonoran desert are true and if they are moving.”

“SIR! VP-4 reporting in.  They are airborne, asking for tasking!” 

Thank God.  “OK, let’s get one of their birds overhead the Bougainville and another to the Mexico border.”

“Yes, sir.”

VP-4 or “Aircraft Patrol 4” in the unique naming system (V is aircraft) is a P-8 squadron based in Washington state.  However, the P-8 is a maritime patrol aircraft.  Great at finding ships and submarines, but not really designed for surface vehicle tracking.  That mission had been trying to find a home since the retirement of the USAF JSTARS aircraft.  Ideally, they would use drones flying out of Beale AFB in California, but Beale was off the air. 

“Are any of them AAS-equipped?”

“Checking….  Yes, sir, one of them.”

“OK, have that one assigned to the border mission.”  The obliquely named Advanced Airborne Sensor (AAS) was a side looking AESA radar developed to allow the P-8 to peer into places like Hainan Island.  It should be able to detect any movements of armored vehicles from at least a hundred miles away.  “Where are our E-3s?”

“We have two checking in from Europe and one just rotating out of Diego Garcia.”

“OK, recall all three.  I want them up as far north as we can, West Coast Whidbey, East Coast Andrews.”

“Sir!  JADOC reporting in.”  JADOC, the Joint Air Defense Operations Command, is the only permanently manned SAM unit in the entire US military.  It has the job of defending Washington, D.C. from potential air attack.  Continuously manned since 9/11, it had the ability to track and engage anything within a hundred miles of Washington, D.C.

“Push our flight plans to them and put them in charge of FAA liaison.  I want all commercial flights grounded.”  Wilkes glanced at the main status board.  No Air Combat Command (ACC) aircraft were showing there.  “Is EADS or WADS online yet?”

“No, sir.”  Eastern and Western Air Defense Sectors basically split air defense of the USA between the two of them.  The two commands are part of Air Combat Command (ACC) but permanently assigned to North American Aerospace Command (NORAD).  All of the structures, communications and processes so painstakingly created since WWII were supposed to protect the USA in case of an event like this but at the moment almost none of them were working.

“I want you to assign a team to walk down every fighter squadron in the USA.  Start with those closest to the Mexican border and work your way north.  I want EVERY SINGLE ONE deployed to a civilian airfield.  Not a civilian field with a Reserve unit, I mean a civilian airfield.  Got me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wilkes pointed randomly to one of the army officers in the operations center.  “I want you to do the same thing for Brigade Combat Teams.  Start in Texas.”  The BCT is the basic deployable unit for the US Army.  Mobile and lethal, a fully worked up BCT could take on most formations up to and including a full-on Chinese Division.  “I want to see a plan for army aviation.  I want to see a plan to FARP them at least one hundred miles from the Mexican border with fallback positions 200 miles back.”  An Apache attack helicopter has a combat radius of about 200 miles, so 100 miles was pretty much their maximum distance from the border if they were needed. 

“Yes sir.”

“Any word from Fort Bliss?”

“No, sir.”  Fort Bliss, Texas was less than ten miles from the Mexican border in El Paso, Texas.  It was also home of an entire armored division, a big part of III Corps’ striking power.  The pre-war battle plan had called for III Corps to take the brunt of any southern invasion simply because of the mass of firepower sitting there in El Paso.  “I do have 1st Infantry.  They are reporting strikes at Fort Riley, but they are mission capable.”

“OK, get them moving south, starting with their aviation units.  Let’s assume for a minute that we have an invasion coming over the Mexican border.  I want to hold the line at the Texas state line.”

“I Corps reporting in, sir.”

“Excellent.  They are west coast.  I want them in Northern California, Pronto.  We hold the line at the central valley and all the way out to Las Vegas.  Get them moving.  In the meantime, see if we have any guard units we can place as blocking forces between San Diego and LA.”

“Blocking forces, sir?”

“If they do come north, there is no way we defend San Diego.  Our only hope is to slow them down enough to allow I Corps to get positioned.”

“That will be rough on the guard units.”

“It’s them or we lose the LA basin without a fight.”

“Roger that, sir.”

Moving an entire Army corps was not a trivial task.  It would probably take days if not a full week to get their forces in position.  In the meantime, forces on the ground would be largely on their own until the USAF could get re-organized.

For the second time in a decade, the USA was headed to war.  This time, it was going to be fought on American soil.