Until they realized there were no pilots visible in the bomber’s cockpit! “Uhhh… Bobcat, can you guys maybe move forward a little?”
“Move forward?”
“Yeah… so we can see your faces out the windscreen?”
“Sorry, Devils, but you’re not going to see any faces through our windscreen,” the voice responded, “because there is no one inside the cockpit.”
“You’re shitting me!” the Hornet pilot exclaimed. He inched closer. It was no lie — there was no one sitting in either pilot’s seat. “Where’s the damned crew?”
“Back at Battle Mountain,” the voice replied. “You’ve been playing with two unmanned jets the whole time.”
“You’re flying a B-1 bomber—from the ground?”
“Yep. And I was just about to turn it over to my mission commander, go outside, and take a piss,” the voice said. “Have a nice day.”
What else they didn’t know was, had this been an actual engagement, neither of the Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets would ever have gotten a shot off at the B-1 bomber, because, orbiting in an adjacent range over 150 miles away, an AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser aircraft had been “shooting” at both F/A-18 Hornets during their simulated missile attacks.
Captain William “Wonka” Weathers, the wing munitions chief, sat in the jump seat between the aircraft commander and mission commander in the cockpit of the AL-52, watching in utter fascination. The mission commander, Major Frankie “Zipper” Tarantino, had locked up each Hornet at least a dozen times with the Dragon’s adaptive-optics telescope that magnified the visual image in incredible detail. Tarantino was able to precisely place the crosshairs on any part of the Hornet, no matter how hard it maneuvered.
“What do you think, Wonka?” asked Colonel Nancy Cheshire, the Fifty-second Squadron’s commander and the aircraft commander on today’s mission.
“It’s unbelievable,” Weathers said. “Simply unbelievable. And how many times can you fire the laser?”
“About two hundred times,” Tarantino said proudly, “depending on the targets we attack. Shooting through the atmosphere or hitting hard targets like tanks requires more power, which requires more fuel, which decreases the number of shots we can take. Check this out.” He punched in commands, and the image on his supercockpit display changed. Now he was locked on to a pickup truck speeding across the desert. “I found this guy a few minutes ago, off-roading in the restricted Fallon bombing range. With a press of a button, I can update his position to the Navy military police who are out after him.” He indicated another software button on his supercockpit display. “And if I pressed that, he’d be a smoking hole in the desert, even at this range. We can even punch a hole in a tank, but we’d have to be pretty close — maybe thirty or forty miles.”
“Amazing. Do you still have the ground team locked up?”
“You bet.” He hit another button, and the image shifted to a section of desert terrain, where two individuals could barely be seen on opposite ends of the display. Tarantino zoomed in to the one on the left and magnified the image. It was a commando in a Tin Man battle suit, carrying an electromagnetic rail gun. Seconds later the commando jet-jumped several dozen yards across a gully. Tarantino hit his radio button: “Fist Two, wave hello.” The commando raised his right hand, and Tarantino was able to zoom in close enough to see his upraised middle finger. “Be nice, now — we’ve got brass on board.”
“My God! We can see the guy giving us the finger from… what’s the range?”
Tarantino checked his readouts. “One hundred forty-three point one-nine-three miles,” he replied.
“And the laser…?”
“I don’t think the laser has enough power to hurt a guy in BERP battle armor at this range,” Nancy said, “but I think we’d make him very uncomfortable very quickly.”
At that moment they heard on the command frequency, “Bobcat Two-one, Control.”
Nancy keyed the mike button: “Bobcat Two-one, go.”
“Set condition Gold.”
“Roger that,” Cheshire replied. She switched radio frequencies. “All Bobcat and Fist units, set condition Gold. Acknowledge.”
Weathers could see the Tin Man commando stop, look to the east, and jet-jump back in the direction of a waiting MV-32 Pave Dasher tilt-jet aircraft. One by one all the other players acknowledged the call and began heading toward designated recovery zones. Weathers could hardly sit still as Nancy Cheshire banked the AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser hard toward Battle Mountain, and Frankie Tarantino cleared out of the range and got air-traffic-control clearance back to Battle Mountain.
As simply as that, the Air Battle Force made ready to go to war.
“Baku Control, SAM One-eight-zero, level at flight level three-niner-zero.”
“Roger, SAM One-eight-zero,” replied the ex-Soviet air-traffic-control center at Baku in the Azerbaijani Republic, which handled all flights going in and out of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It had been many, many years since he’d handled an American “SAM,” or Special Air Mission — American diplomats did not come to this part of the world very often, especially since the new American president, Thomas Thorn, had entered office. “Be advised, sir, International Notice to Airmen Zulu-Three has been published regarding the airspace you are flight-planned to enter. Are you in receipt of this NOTAM?”
“Affirmative,” responded the pilot of the American C-32A Special Air Mission aircraft. “We are an American diplomatic mission on official government business, and we have received permission from the Turkmen government to enter their airspace. Over.”
“SAM One-eight-zero, I confirm you are in receipt of NOTAM Zulu-Three,” the controller said. “Be advised, the NOTAM is nonspecific, sir. Even though your diplomatic credentials are verified, you are still in great danger if you proceed into the prohibited area as outlined in the NOTAM because of the state of the conflict in central Turkmenistan. I strongly advise you to reverse course.”
“Thank you for the warning, Baku, but we will proceed on our flight-planned route,” the pilot said.
“We cannot be held responsible for continued flight into the prohibited airspace, sir,” the Baku controller warned. “I will continue to provide radar service, but I am not in contact with any of the Russian aircraft, and I cannot ensure safe separation from them. I have also observed considerable meaconing, interference, jamming, and intrusion on my radar displays and on all my air-traffic landline and wireless communications channels. I cannot be held responsible if communications are lost, for any reason. Again, I strongly advise you to turn back. Do you understand, sir?”
“I understand, Baku,” the pilot responded. “Are you in contact with the Russian controllers or agencies who filed NOTAM Zulu-Three?”
“Negative, SAM One-eight-zero,” the controller replied. “We are monitoring them on GUARD emergency frequency, but they have not responded to any of our calls.”
“Roger, SAM One-eight-zero.” The pilot turned to his first officer and asked, “So our closest emergency-divert base…?”
“Baku, Azerbaijani Republic, almost directly under us,” the first officer replied, punching up the Global Positioning System navigation information. “I’ll give them a call right now.” The first officer used the secondary radio to give the approach controllers at Baku notice that they were in the area. “We’re checked in, but we do not have clearance to land. That will only be issued if we need it.”
It was indeed a strange situation: International NOTAM Zulu-Three, issued by the Russian Federation, was one of the most strongly worded messages in years, warning all aircraft away from Turkmenistan’s airspace and further saying that any aircraft flying within five hundred kilometers of the capital of Turkmenistan, Ashkhabad, would be fired upon without warning. But at the same time Turkmenistan was still allowing flights to cross into its airspace; the government of Turkmenistan was not restricting transit for any civil air carriers, even in and out of Mary, the scene of the heaviest fighting so far. Ashkhabad International Airport was still open, as were the civil airfields at Krasnovodsk, Nebit-Dag, and Chärjew.