“What’s that do to our fuel status?” Jamieson asked.
“It’ll add another hour to our flight time,” McLanahan said. “If we assume that all our divert bases on the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey are unavailable because of Iran’s attacks, that means we either hit a tanker right away over the Arabian Sea on the outbound leg, or we splash down—Diego Garcia goes away as an alternate. No other safe alternates are available.”
“What’s our decision point?”
“Right about now,” McLanahan said. “If we decided to abort from here, we’d reverse course and bug out over Burma, head east, and pick up a tanker just east of Manila. We can probably abort later on in the sortie and bug out over India, but then we’d have to bootleg a tanker out of Diego Garcia to meet us over the Arabian Sea or Bay of Bengal. Any way you cook it, AC, we’ll be skosh on gas from here on in. The last time we’ll have the right amount of fuel on board is right now.”
“Shit,” Jamieson swore on interphone. “You know, this is exactly the situation I warned General Samson not to get into. Don’t get backed into corners. Don’t do stupid stunts. I guess it’s true—you never learn anything new when you’re yakking.” He paused, then looked at McLanahan. “It’s your call, mission commander. I’ll drive the bus anywhere you want.”
McLanahan looked at Jamieson in surprise. “First time you’ve said that without the words dripping in sarcasm, Tiger.”
“Yeah, maybe I should check my oxygen—I might be getting hypoxic.” He shrugged, then nodded. “You’re a pretty good stick after all, Mack. You got us this far. Make the call.”
McLanahan paused, thinking; then: “You know, I just found out I’m going to be a father. Wendy’s pregnant.”
“No shit? That’s great. Congrats. I got three of my own. Those critters will change your life, believe me.” He looked hard at McLanahan. “So you thinking about bagging this mission?”
“Couldn’t think of a better reason He hesitated, thought for a short moment, then added, “… except there’s troops on the ground counting on us. We gotta do it, Tiger. We go.”
“Then we go,” Jamieson agreed. “We’re committed.”
The trip across Afghanistan was quiet and uneventful, but things changed immediately as the Spirit approached southeastern Iran.
Their original chosen flight path had them flying through the less populated parts of the provinces of northeastern Kerman and northern Baluchistan va Sistan, but the closer they got to the Iranian army air base at Zahedran, they realized they could not put the left wing toward any emitters, so they flew east of Zahedan through western Pakistan.
Before reaching the city of Zahedan, they briefly deactivated the “cloaking device” to get a last GPS satellite navigation update to the inertial navigation system, use the SAR radar to input an accurate pressure altitude into the flight computer, and to pick up any last-minute satellite intelligence and targeting data, including updates on the Iranian attacks on the United Arab Emirates and Oman. “The battle is going into phase two,” McLanahan reported as he read the retrieved messages. “Kamza Omani Naval Base on Musandam in the Strait of Hormuz, destroyed.
Sib Air Base in Oman, heavily damaged along with nearly all of Oman’s air force. Mina Sultan Naval Base in the UAE, heavily damaged—that’s where Madcap Magician was based. God, I hope they’re okay.”
“Your spy buddies made it this far, didn’t they?”
“Yep … and I’d say they kicked some butt, too,” McLanahan said with a smile. “Listen: Peninsula Shield reports a counterattack by commando forces out of Mina Sultan on the rebuilt Iranian air defense emplacements on Abu Musa Island. Some injuries, no casualties, but the Iranian defenses were destroyed—two Hawk, one Rapier SAM emplacements, the command-and-control center destroyed, and the runway cratered. That sounds like my friends, all right.”
As the B-2A flew southwest past Zahedan, they picked up the first indications of the air defense radar at Chah Bahar.
“Let’s head on down,” McLanahan said, punching in commands to the flight-control computer. “COLA mode engaged.” He configured his supercockpit display to provide a God’s-eye view of the sky and terrain around the B-2A bomber.
“Ready,” Jamieson said. “Deaf, dumb, and blind, we’re going hunting.” He engaged the autopilot to the new commands being entered into the flight-control system, and the B-2A bomber headed earthward at 15,000 feet per minute. Because the B-2A bomber used BEADS, the so-called cloaking device, it could not use a conventional terrain-following or terrain-avoidance radar system as with the B-52, F-111, F-15E, or B-1B bombers—it could not even use a radar altimeter to measure the distance below it, because BEADS would absorb all the outgoing energy.
Instead, this B-2A bomber used a system developed by the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center called COLA, or COmputer-generated Lowest Attitude. First used on an experimental B-52H bomber nicknamed the “Megafortress”—so called because it had pioneered many of the advanced stealth and attack systems used on future war machines—the B-2A’s flight computers split up the entire globe into one-mile blocks, then had the highest terrain elevation within that block programmed into it. Using its inertial navigation system, accurate to 200 to 300 feet per hour, the B-2A’s flight-control system knew what terrain was coming up all along its flight path, and it would choose the lowest possible altitude while still avoiding the terrain. The flight-control computer could look “into” an upcoming turn, evaluate its airspeed, gross weight, outside air data, and flight performance, and fly as close as possible to the earth—sometimes as low as 100 feet—even though neither crew member could see out the cockpit windows! As the accuracy of the inertial navigation system degraded over time—there was no way to update the inertial navigation system with the “cloaking device” activated—COLA would select a higher altitude to provide a greater margin of safety while still flying as low as possible.
The terrain in southeastern Iran was flat, with occasional high razorback ridgelines plunging down into flat valleys, many with marshes or dry lake beds at the bottom. Fifty miles south of Zahedan, they crossed a major superhighway, the Mashhad-Chah Bahar Highway. Their flight path took them about forty miles west of it, far enough to stay away from any detection from populated areas along the highway but close enough that Jamieson could see it. “Lots of traffic out there, heading north,” Jamieson said.
“Good idea to get away from the coast these days.”
About 180 miles north of Chah Bahar, they picked up the first threat indications from radar sites out in the Gulf of Oman. They saw a bat-wing symbol with a small circle on the apex—the symbol for an airborne early-warning radar. “There’s the Iranian A-10 radar plane,” McLanahan said. “About two hundred fifty miles away—seventy miles offshore. The radar guys say that if they’re going to pick us up, we’ll be within one hundred twenty miles of the second site. That means we might be visible to them for seventy to one hundred miles—ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
Just then, another bat-wing symbol appeared on the scope—not an A-10 radar plane, but an Iranian F-14 Tomcat fighter. “F-14 off the nose, about one hundred miles,” McLanahan said. “Not locked on yet, but he’s headed right for us …”
“It’s that loose screw or rivet or joint on the left wing,” Jamieson said. “It’s screwing up our stealthy stuff. And the F-14’s designed to look for low-flying targets as small as a cruise missile.”
“So let’s start giving them something to shoot at,” McLanahan said. “It’s a little earlier than we wanted, but we’re definitely an item of interest. I’m setting five hundred feet—stand by for missile launch.” McLanahan switched the terrain-avoidance system to 500 feet, then commanded the first launch of an AGM-86C cruise missile. The subsonic AGM-86C cruise missile had a turbojet engine that flew the missile at six miles per minute for 500 miles; this one had no warhead, only radio transmitters that gave it the radar cross-section and electronic profile of a large bomber. The cruise missile made an immediate right turn and headed west toward Bandar Abbas—and the F-14 Tomcat turned west to pursue. “He took the bait,” McLanahan said. “Let’s make a jog east, put Iranshahr off our right wing.” McLanahan reselected COLA on the terrain-avoidance computer, and they recrossed the Chah Bahar-Mashhad Highway again, heading east along the ridgelines.