As planned, Bai’s flight of Flankers was overtaking the H-6Ks 5,000 feet below. The fighters would sweep ahead and possibly engage escort vessels, clearing the way for the bombers with the big YJ-83 air-launched, ship-killing cruise missiles. The biggest job for the fighters was to provide launch-on-bearing-line info to the bombers, and then to launch their own cruise missiles. The antiship missiles would fly down their assigned bearings as if rabid dogs, rejecting all vessel silhouettes until they found a match with one that was long and flat with a little square on it… an American carrier. If none were detected, secondary images of American surface combatants would fulfill mission computer tasking.
Military observers on Palawan saw the formations heading southeast, and, aided by the long contrails of many individual aircraft, determined a raid count. They also estimated course and speed before calling Manila on a secure landline. By the time word got to the American Embassy — then Washington, then Camp Smith, and then John McGill aboard Blue Ridge—over an hour later, this threat to the Hancock strike group had passed.
Now in the Sulu Sea, the eight Flankers flew in a wall formation and accelerated ahead of the bombers. They expected they would find an American combat air patrol in the sea west of Mindanao. Once Palawan was in their rear-view mirrors, an element of J-11s ramped down hard to streak in low on the water and under the radar horizon.
While there was no American CAP in the Sulu Sea, an American group of 16 aircraft, including two F-35s on loan from Solomon Islands, was transiting the sea under strict EMCON as Weed led the morning “strike,” another probe against Heaven’s Shield. Cyber warriors in Hawaii and Florida, working around the clock, thought they had a way to degrade the UCAV network. They were able to inject spurious inputs into the network that blinded its low-band radar and its ability to move autonomously where needed. Weed’s strikers would lob AMRAAMs at them and cruise missiles at Stingray Reef to learn just how well the cyber attack had succeeded.
The JSFs trailing Weed saw the wall of J-11s first, and the Super Hornet link displays showed them off to the west-northwest at 60 miles. Weed’s formation was below them, below the contrail altitude, and he held his northwest heading to let the aspect build. With this new and unexpected development, he had to defend the carrier from this swarm. He at once decided to bring eight jets with him and send the other eight to tickle and to chip away at Heaven’s Shield and Stingray. Hundreds of miles behind them, the trailing E-2 alerted Hancock that strikers were inbound, and Blower set GQ and took a course of south. Cape St. George and Earl Gallaher went to meet the threat, what the sailors called a “gangbang” attack.
Bai’s flight of four — he was number three — screamed out of altitude in a 40-degree dive as they went supersonic toward Mindanao and the American ships beyond it. Above and behind them at eight o’clock high, the fight was joined.
Through his cueing-system helmet, Weed locked his AIM-9X on the northern-most Flanker, high and going right-to-left across his nose. He visually IDed three against the stratus clouds above them, and they didn’t appear to notice him. His division was in loose-deuce combat spread now, with his trailing division of Rhinos three miles behind, also in a tactical formation — not optimum, but, given the short time line, it would do.
Fighters on both sides had all-aspect heatseekers from which, once off the rail, there was little chance of escape. Shooting first — and remaining unseen — was vital to survival. The last thing Weed wanted was a turning engagement with even one J-11, much less three. Weed wanted a summary execution, like an assassin, with no warning, no civilized rules of “fairness.” Kill or be killed, and, once Weed and his wingmen fired, they could pull down hard and get out of the J-11 launch acceptability regions. Then his trailing division, flying the two-seat FA-18F, could lock any survivors with radar-guided AMRAAMs. Weed called on strike common.
“Sniper two-zero, tally three Flankers, two-five zero for three, thirty-thousand! Snipers engage with heaters and bug southeast to the deck. Broncos, engage leakers with AMRAAM.”
Behind him, the Bronco lead rogered him as all twelve sets of eyes and ears in eight jets absorbed the information presented on their link displays, outside their canopies, and in their brains as they flicked switches and locked on the way DCAG wanted them to. In the two-seaters, the Weapons Systems Officers checked behind the enemy formation for trailers of their own. At the moment, the American “sixes” were clear.
Out of habit, Bai Quon, steady in his dive, looked over his left shoulder and was shocked to see enemy fighters pulling into his mates. He keyed the mike:
“Enemy Hornets nine o’clock high!” he blurted out, too late to direct the J-11 sweep fighters to the proper geometry.
Now twelve sets of Chinese eyes looked high and left, when the enemy Bai was trying to direct them on was below them. Seconds later, it didn’t matter; fiery American AIM-9X Sidewinders trailing thin plumes of white smoke shot toward the J-11s, and, by human instinct, the pilots max-performed their jets to avoid the threat.
For the Flankers on the left side of the formation, it was too late. One frantic pilot pulled up hard into the oblique, and another pulled down to throw them off, but the missiles remained locked and did not even shudder as they tracked the Flankers in graceful arcs. The missiles detonated behind the cockpits of each — one J-11 absorbed two missiles in rapid succession — and there were no ejections. Flames and black smoke poured from each as they plunged earthward, breaking up as they did. Weed and two others in his division were diving straight down as they pulled power and watched the action from out of the top of their canopies.
One in Weed’s division did not.
Lieutenant John-Boy Jones was still fishing for a lock on a J-11 that was just visible — and this Flanker was pulling hard with a tally on him. John-Boy got a tone as the J-11 did, and both pulled their triggers at the same time. The American AIM-9X and Chinese PL-9 streaked past each other to engage their targeted fighters, and neither had a chance of escaping.
With John-Boy in the way, the Bronco division could not release their AMRAAMs, and seeing John-Boy’s Rhino explode further delayed their action. All the Americans saw him shell out seconds after flames blossomed on his fuselage, which snapped the Bronco pilots out of their funk. With no time to target or sort, the four fighters locked any target of opportunity, and one jet got two missiles off on two linked contacts. Like Weed’s division, the Bronco flight pulled down — the now-active missiles could guide on their own — and the radio was alive with calls ranging from bandit activity to radar warnings to the status of John-Boy in his chute. Five missiles downed three Chinese fighters, and the survivor fled southwest on his own. One of the Flankers got a radar missile off at the Americans, but when his aircraft was destroyed, the missile went stupid.