Ricky had been living the wild life as a young hotshot Air Force bomber pilot, spending his time chasing women and boozing it up. Then he met his wife and they had a daughter, and his whole world changed. He began to realize that he needed to take care of a family and became a lot more career-focused. He almost didn’t get selected for Major because he had not pursued his master’s degree, but being a B-2 pilot almost made it a certainty. Had he been a fighter pilot or the pilot of some other airframe, he might have been passed over.
Suddenly, Ricky put his flash cards back in his pocket. “Pappi, you think their air defense systems may pick us up when we open the bomb bay doors?” It was a thought they both had been having, and neither of them felt really happy about the response they had received from their superiors before they left for the mission.
“Well, they say that we won’t be visible, but frankly, I’m not confident with that,” remarked Pappi. “Fortunately, we are only dropping two bombs, so we won’t have to have the doors open that long. If their radars do get a lock on us, they should lose it once we close the doors again.” Colonel Fortney tried to reassure his young compatriot that they probably didn’t have too much to worry about. Deep down though, he had his doubts… but he would keep those to himself. It was incumbent upon him, not just as the aircraft commander, but also as the 13th Bomb Squadron Commander, to lead by example and show no fear.
As they approached the drop point, they readied the bombs, arming them and making sure the coordinates were locked in. The United States’ GPS satellites were still down, but the NSA had managed to hack into the Russians’ own GPS satellites without them realizing it. Ironically enough, it would be a Russian GPS satellite guiding this bomb down on the National Defense Control Center. The irony of it was not lost on the pilots.
Looking down below, the pilots could see that Moscow was still lit up with lights. This wasn’t like World War II, where all the cities’ lights were off at night to help confuse Allied bombers from using them to guide them into their targets. In today’s modern world with GPS and satellite imagery, you didn’t need lights to direct you to your target.
“Bombs are ready, Pappi,” Ricky said nervously. Ironically enough, this was Ricky’s first combat bombing mission. He had been in training when the B-2s were last used in Iraq and Afghanistan, so this was the first time he had flown over enemy territory.
Nodding, Pappi ordered, “Open bomb bays.”
“Bomb bay doors open,” Ricky replied hoping fiercely that they could get the bombs out before they were detected.
Pappi lifted the weapons lock cover up and depressed the button, arming the bombs for release. He then moved his hand back to the red and yellow button that would release the bombs and depressed it. In a second, he felt the aircraft lift slightly as the weight of the two 30,000-pound bombs fell free of his aircraft. Without waiting to be told, Ricky closed the bomb doors since their deadly cargo had finally been released.
Pappi immediately turned the aircraft for home. Just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, their warning systems came on, letting them know they had just been acquired by a Russian Surface-to-Air Missile system. Pappi chided himself, “Ugh! I shouldn’t have turned the aircraft so soon. I should have waited to make sure the bomb doors were fully closed first. There must have been a sliver of the doors open and it gave away just enough surface area for the SAM to acquire a lock. Crap!”
In the less than sixty-seconds it took for LTC Fortney’s B-2 to open its bomb bay doors and release the two MOPs, a Russian S-500 anti-ballistic-missile system detected both his aircraft and the two bombs it had just released. The S-500 acquired an immediate lock on the bombs and began to fire off missiles to intercept them. A nearby SA-21 fired off two missiles at the B-2 before it disappeared from their radar screen.
The S-500 then detected the two bombs dropped by the Spirit of Indiana, the second B-2 on this bombing mission. The SA-21 was not able to acquire the bomber before it closed its bomb bay door, slipping away.
The men manning the S-500 then had four falling objects and one enemy bomber that it was engaging. The operators immediately launched a series of missiles at the bombs and two missiles towards the B-2. The missiles raced out of their launchers, accelerating to Mach 4. Within ten seconds of launch, the two missiles heading towards the B-2 lost acquisition of their target, although they continued to fly towards what the targeting computer estimated the B-2’s position to be when it reached the same altitude.
This was the first time the Russians would be using the new Lenovo targeting system, which, if successful, might finally be the key to defeat the American stealth systems. The Lenovo looked at the acquired target’s speed, altitude, and current flight path, and then calculated the path the missile should travel to intercept it. It then had a proximity sensor built in, so when it detected an object consisting of metal, polymers or other aircraft-type materials, it would cause the warhead to explode. While this specific technology was not new, what was new was the aero displacement reader. When an object flies, it displaces air, just as water is displaced when something travels through it — the Lenovo continually looked for the displacement of air caused by highspeed objects, like an aircraft, missile, or bomb, and then guided the missile towards the source. When the object came within its roughly 2,500-meter detonation radius, it would explode.
While the two missiles targeted at the B-2 lost the radar acquisition, they continued to head towards the B-2’s projected path. As the missile sped away after the B-2, the other missiles headed straight towards the four bombs. Unlike most guided munitions, the GBU-57B also had a rocket motor, to assist the bomb in generating the necessary speed to be able to punch through earth and concrete to get at the bunkers deep below. While the Russian missile interceptors were racing at Mach 4 towards the bombs, the GBU-57Bs themselves were racing towards the earth below at speeds of nearly Mach 3.
As one of the missiles came within a few hundred feet of one of the GBU-57B, it detonated its warhead, hitting the bomb with enough shrapnel that it caused the warhead to go off. The detonation of 5,000-pounds of high explosives made for a thunderous bang in the night sky, briefly lighting it up for anyone who happened to be looking in that direction. The second missile also intercepted its mark and destroyed the bomb as well. The third bomb was thrown slightly off course but was otherwise undamaged, although it would miss its primary target and land nearby. The fourth bomb, however, was able to evade the air-defense system; it pulverized its way through floor after floor of the National Defense Control Center building’s east tower.
The bomb drove through the building’s twelve floors and three basement levels before it detonated its 5,000-pound warhead, throwing flame and destruction up through the hole it had just created. As designed, once the GBU-57B sensed that it had impacted something, the tail end began to release a heavy fuel-air mist until the bomb came to a complete stop. The volatile mixture ignited, causing even more devastation. A 100-foot radius around the initial entry hole burst into a blazing inferno, causing significant structural damage to the building. Fires began to spread throughout the east side of the building. As the flames found their way to the gas lines that ran throughout the building, numerous secondary explosions erupted.