“Moving to four o’clock, twenty-five miles,” the DSO replied. “He’s not locked on… wait, he’s got a lock! Notch right, reference heading two-four-zero!”
“Aces, notching right!” the pilot shouted on the interplane frequency. He then honked the B-1 into a tight sixty-degree bank turn to the right, changing course ninety degrees to their original track and placing themselves on the back side of Dixie Peak. Most modern-day fighters like the F-15, F/A-18, and F-22 used pulse-Doppler attack radars, which acquired targets based on relative speed. Turning ninety degrees to the fighter’s flight path made relative speed equal to the fighter’s speed, causing the fighter radar’s computer to analyze the target as a terrain feature and squelch the target. The turn would also complicate the fighter pilot’s attack geometry and give the bomber a chance to hide behind terrain. The B-1 descended to less than three hundred feet above the desert floor, flying over six hundred miles per hour.
“Lost the bandit,” the DSO reported. “He’s somewhere at five o’clock.”
“Rog,” the pilot said. He knew that Dixie Peak was between him and the fighter, and the longer he kept it there, the closer he’d get to his target before the next attack.
“Clear to the IP, pilot,” the OSO shouted. “Center up, steering’s good.” The pilot started a left turn back toward the target area, drawing a mental picture of the air situation.
It was not a favorable attack setup for him and his crew, but these Navy air intercept exercises were usually one-sided affairs. Austin One Military Operating Area, or MOA, acted as the “funnel” of airspace that led to the three restricted areas where practice targets were attacked with live weapons. Navy fighters could chase a bomber all the way down as low as it could go in Austin One. Fighters could continue the chase in the restricted areas, but had to fly no less than a thousand feet above the ground to stay clear of bomb explosions. The Ranch MOA at the western end of the run was the “recovery zone,” where the bombers and fighters had to disengage and establish safe altitude separation while the bombers turned around. The bombers were required to fly through the restricted area again and clear their bomb bays of all other weapons before they could exit the range complex.
The Navy pilots knew all this, of course, so all they had to do was wait at the bottom of Austin One for the bomber to enter the restricted areas. It gave the fighter jocks a little less time to intercept before bomb release, but they were almost assured of a kill. The first fighter they encountered was probably a young jock on one of his first fighter-intercept exercises, hoping to score an early kill while the bomber was at high altitude.
Well, the B-1B Lancer was not that easy to kill. It had almost the same agility as a jet fighter, it was just as fast, and it had one-half the radar cross section. Down low, no fighter in the world could keep up with a B-1—if it dared even to fly down close to the dirt.
The pilot released the trigger on his control stick, and the bomber made a relatively gentle thirty-degree bank turn toward the IP, or initial point, the start of the bomb run itself. The air-to-air TACAN read six miles — just right, about thirty seconds apart. “Lead is two NAP from the IP,” he radioed on interplane.
“Copy,” the wingman replied. “We’re seven NAP. We’re popeye.”
“Bandits at seven o’clock, no range,” the DSO announced.
“Hold steady,” the OSO called out. “Let me get my ACAL and get a patch.”
“Range nine miles, five o’clock,” the DSO shouted. “I think he’s got a lock. Notch right, reference three-zero-zero.”
“Got my ACAL, guys,” the OSO said on interphone. “Clear to notch!” The pilot complied with a sharp right turn. Staying on a straight-line course for more than a few seconds with enemy defenders in the area was deadly for a bomber. The bombing computers needed accurate altitude data to compute bombing ballistics, and the OSO had to fly over a specific point on the route, usually the initial point of the bomb run, to calibrate altitude. There were several ACAL points on the route, but the one prior to the bomb run was the most important.
“AI’s down,” the DSO shouted. The fighter had turned off his radar, knowing he would disappear from the bomber’s radar threat sensors. “He might have a visual on us!”
“ADF zero-three-zero, pilot!” the OSO shouted. The pilot turned hard left back toward the inbound track line to the target. By “ADF’ing” the course, he would return to the original inbound heading to the target, making it easier for the OSO to find the target on radar.
As soon as the pilot rolled out of his turn, the OSO switched to the target itself. Exactly as predicted, the first target appeared right under his cross hairs. “Got you, you bitch!” he crowed. “Pilot, give me twenty right, and I’ll get a patch.” When the pilot rolled out on his new heading, the OSO moved his cross hairs directly on the box, clicked the left button on his radar controller down twice, then clicked the button up.
The high-resolution synthetic aperture image on his digital display resembled a black-and-white photograph. The clarity was startling — he could actually make out the outline of a large tractor-trailer vehicle. “Hogs, I got a big mother trailer-sized vehicle — looks like a Scud missile reloading operation.” He centered the cross hairs directly on the image. “You’re cleared to the target! Let’s nail that puppy! We’re seven seconds late. Give me twenty more knots, pilot.” The pilot goosed the throttles a bit more — they were now screaming inbound to their target at almost ten miles per minute. “TG twenty seconds.”
“Bandits four o’clock, twenty miles and closing!” the DSO shouted. “Notch right!”
The pilot yanked the control stick right…
“No! TG fifteen! Wings level!” the OSO responded. “Stay on the bomb run!”
Suddenly, they all heard a faster-pitched deedle deedle deedle tone, no longer playful at all. “SA-6 up!” the DSO shouted. The SA-6 was a mobile Soviet-made medium-range surface-to-air missile system, widely exported all over the world. Its mobility, its top speed of almost three times that of sound, and its all-weather, all-altitude capability made it a deadly threat. The SA-6 fired a salvo of three missiles that were almost impossible to evade. “Three o’clock, within lethal range! Trackbreakers active!”
At the same moment, several white arcs of smoke traced across the sky, the thin white trails aiming right for the B-1, and the warning tone on interphone changed to a fast, high-pitched deedledeedledeedle. “Smoky SAMs!” the copilot shouted. Smoky SAMs were little papier-mâché rockets, no threat to the bomber by themselves, but signifying a missile launch against the bomber crew. It meant the crew hadn’t done their job protecting their bomber.
“Simulated SA-6 launch!” the DSO shouted. “Uplink shut down! Chaff, chaff!” Clouds of thin tinsel shot out of canisters along the Bone’s upper spine, creating a radar target several hundred times larger than the 400,000-pound plane itself.
“Hold heading!” the OSO shouted. “TG ten! Doors coming open!”
The copilot watched as one of the simulated SAMs passed directly overhead. Talk about the “bullet between the eyes,” he thought grimly — if that had been a real antiaircraft missile, they’d have been dead meat. And he would have watched the final stroke all the damned way.
“Ready… ready, now! Bombs away!” the OSO shouted. One cluster bomb canister dropped free of the aft weapons bay. At the precise instant, it split apart and scattered the bomblets across the target area in a direct hit on the trailer.
“Bomb doors closed!” the OSO shouted. “Clear to maneuver!”