“If those units on the ground aren’t firing up antiaircraft systems,” Nancy observed, “we can assume that either those vehicles don’t know they’re there — in which case they could’ve been bombed pretty easy — or the vehicles on the ground are Chinese as well.”
“Good point,” David said. “Looks like we got a Chinese ground invasion under way, supported by some air cover. We might get some action tonight, after all.”
“Great,” Rebecca said, tightening her straps even more. “I felt pretty good up here — until now. I feel totally naked now.”
“Your fuel looks good — about an hour before you bingo,” Patrick said. “Electrical, hydraulics, pneumatics, CG in the green. Looks like the fighters are going to stay at midaltitudes. Want to go up high?”
“Sounds good to me,” Rebecca said.
“Let’s do it,” Patrick said. In less than five minutes they had climbed up to thirty-four thousand feet, at least ten thousand feet higher than the Chinese fighters. The Japanese MiG-29s had descended below the Megafortress bombers as well. “HAWC has acknowledged our data transmissions and passed along a tactical alert to Space Command and Pacific Command,” Patrick went on. “We saw it first — good work, guys. The Grand Island and the Boone are listening in with us on real-time and have gone to general quarters.” Patrick and Nancy looked at each other at the exact same moment. They could both feel the excitement and tension running hot.
“Okay, we’re picking up a full-scale air defense alert being broadcast in the clear to all Korean military units,” Patrick reported. “Air defense radars are lighting up… we should be able to tap into them any minute. We’ll have peninsula-wide radar coverage pretty soon.”
As the battle developed, it was obvious the Korean defenders were on the defensive all the way. Even combining the old North Korean air assets — a mixture of a few modern MiG-23 attack jets and MiG-29 fighters and many more older, obsolete ex-Chinese aircraft — with South Korea’s Western-designed aircraft, the Korean forces were at least numerically outgunned.
The Korean F-16CJ aircraft led the main attack group. They stayed at fifteen thousand feet, flying high enough to stay away from antiaircraft artillery, presenting themselves as inviting targets. The idea was that they should have drawn fire from Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries, at least a squeak on radar, enough so that they could open fire on any enemy search or tracking radars with their AGM-88 HARMs (high-speed antiradar missiles).
But the Chinese armor and infantry units were smart enough not to take the bait. They knew that if they didn’t activate any radars, the Korean F-16CJs did not have anything to shoot at. The Korean F-16s flew right up to the Chinese tanks — and never even received a rifle shot in their direction. They could do nothing but orbit over the area and wait for targets to pop up. A few tried to go low to drop cluster bombs on tanks and self-propelled artillery, and those planes were hit by optically and low-light TV-guided antiaircraft artillery and heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles. The Koreans lost four aircraft to enemy fire before being forced to retreat.
The F-16 Block 52 attack jets went in next, armed with infrared-imaging AGM-65D Maverick antitank missiles, followed by MiG-23 fighter-bombers carrying gravity bombs and target-marking rockets. But the Chinese J-6 fighters had arrived over the battlefield by now, outnumbering the Korean fighters by six to one. Even with those odds, the Korean jets were racking up impressive kills, but soon they began to run out of missiles and the numbers of Chinese jets just didn’t seem to be diminishing. Before long the Korean jets were on the defensive and forced to run south. Several formations of Korean F-4E Phantom II bombers tried circumnavigating the entire Chagang Do battlefield and tried to cut in from the west, but they were intercepted by Chinese fighters out of Dandong and chased off as well. Both sides lost a handful of planes, but it wasn’t a stalemate or tie — every plane Korea lost composed a major percentage of the fleet, while four fighters could replace even the most obsolete Chinese fighter.
Even though both the Koreans and the Chinese lost a fairly equal number of planes, the first Korean counter-offensive was a complete failure. The massive numbers of Chinese armor and mobile infantry units in the three Korean northern border provinces were barely scratched.
Five F-16s and six F-4s lost or damaged, sir,” the command operations officer summarized. “We have reports of confirmed hits on just thirteen Chinese main battle tanks and nine artillery pieces. Our weapons list was in excess of two hundred Maverick missiles, forty antiradar missiles, and over one hundred sticks of gravity weapons. Our surviving forces are rearming and refueling.”
“Those losses are completely unacceptable!” Minister of National Defense Kim Kun-mo shouted. “Five percent! Five percent of our strike fleet was destroyed or damaged in just the first wave! How can we expect to drive out the enemy with losses such as this?”
“Sir, we are gathering more tactical reconnaissance and rebuilding the target list,” General An Ki-sok, chief of the general staff, replied. “But the Chinese Air Force has simple numerical superiority over Chagang Do province right now. The Chinese fighters do not engage our F-16 fighters — they merely shoot and run, shoot and run. They do this because they know there are four or five more fighters entering the battle for every one that retreats. Why risk being shot down in an engagement with a superior force?”
“What are you planning on doing about it, General?” Kim asked.
“We can do little at night without better photo intelligence,” General An replied somberly. “Only one-third of our F-16s can carry Maverick missiles, and they cannot do their job very well if we do not control the skies. In daytime, we can use the F-5 Chegong-ho fighters for air defense and the Hawks and Mohawk planes for attack.” He paused, then looked at his commander with a painful expression. “But it will do little good, sir,” he admitted. “China’s Air Force is qualitatively far inferior to ours, but they will have the numbers on their side no matter how good our pilots are. We may never get control of the skies over Chagang Do province.”
“This is unacceptable! Completely unacceptable!” Kim shouted. “We have struggled too hard and have come too far to be turned back. If we cannot defend our own land from attack, what good are we as a nation?” The hot line phone began to ring. Kim ignored it for several long moments, and a stern glare warned General An not to touch it either. Finally, Kim answered it:”
“What is it?”
“This is the president,” Kwon Ki-chae said angrily. “What is going on? My staff tells me we are attacking the Chinese troops!”
“I had no choice, Mr. President,” Kim said. “I assembled a strike package and executed a conventional weapons attack against the spearhead of the Chinese armored units. I also conducted a probe to try to determine what kind of air defenses they had set up in Chagang Do province.”
“This was completely without authorization!” Kwon shouted. “You will launch no more attacks tonight! Is that understood?”
“Sir, we lost eleven aircraft to the Chinese,” Kim said bitterly. “They continue to move south and are threatening to break out of Chagang Do province. By this time tomorrow they can have four brigades of tanks on the outskirts of Pyongyang. If we do not stop them, they will be knocking on your door at the Blue House in three days.”
“General, don’t you realize we cannot hope to defeat the Chinese People’s Liberation Army by military means?” President Kwon asked incredulously. “Don’t you realize what happened here? We achieved a major victory over the Communists not by the use of force, but by the use of reason and truth. North Korea fell because the people threw off the dictatorship that was slowly killing them, not because we used our military might to subdue them.”