It would be over four hours before all his remaining F-35s would be prepped and refueled for operations. He would have Seahawk support from the three ships in his destroyer screen in half an hour, and that was his first order of business. No one really knew where the Russian sub was now, which made him edgy. He inwardly chided himself for not ordering those destroyer Captains to make their helos ready for ASW operations, as he never perceived any threat from the men of this era. Instead, both Takami and Kongo had sent out their birds for simple maritime surveillance. That gave them the longest endurance, and they did the job of locating the Russian battlecruiser. Unfortunately, they had no idea Kazan was in the game, and that blind spot had cost them a ship, and 23 lives.
Now the Admiral considered his options as the ship’s chronometer rolled through 14:00. He had three hounds up front, and they were now running at 30 knots. A Russian helo was up at 16,000 feet, staying well outside SM-2 range, and keeping an eye on his ships. It was now approximately 230 nautical miles from Kaga, and he reasoned that the mother ship, Kirov, was probably somewhere south of that position. How far south? He had six planes loading out with the JSOW package, and that would give them a 290 mile strike radius. If Kirov was able to get outside that radius, then he would be forced to close the range considerably before he launched another strike.
“How we doing on fuel?” he said to Captain Jenzu.
“We’re burning a lot running full out like this, but we can do it for another 3 days and four hours. If we slow down that endurance will extend dramatically. As for those destroyers out there, they’ll have shorter legs, less than three days fuel if they run at 30 knots as they are now.
“The problem is, this Russian ship is rated for 32 knots, and they don’t have a fuel issue with those nuclear reactors.”
“You believe they broke off to run out our leash?”
“Sure seems that way. At this point, even our fighters may not be able to get to them. We’ll have to maintain speed like this just to stay in the hunt, but we may not be gaining any range on them if they’re running at 32 knots. In fact, we could be falling behind. For that matter, they could have turned, and so we can’t even compute a possible intercept course until we locate them again. We just got caught flat footed. We had helos on the destroyers ready for maritime surveillance, and when that sub turned up, the air crews started to load them out for ASW. So there we sat, with a big window where all we had was that single bird up off Kongo. Once it had to return to the ship, we lost its radar assist and Kirov slipped away.”
“Sir, Akagi has two planes fully loaded out with the GBU/53, and they have a 450 nautical mile strike radius.”
“Hold them for the moment, but let’s get a fighter up to see if we can find that ship. Send it south, and if that damn Russian helo is still up there, tell them to shoot it down.”
“Aye sir, that’s a given.”
Twenty minutes later that fighter was well on its way, and vectoring in on the easily spotted radar signal of Turkey 1. It wasn’t long before the sophisticated AN/ASQ-239 Barracuda sensor suite on the F-35 also got wind of the skunk they were after. They made contact at 14:18, and two minutes later that was refined to the assurance that they had again relocated Kirov.
“Got him!” Captain Jenzu reported. “Recon 1 has him at 236 nautical miles, south by southwest. Our present heading is pretty good for an intercept, but I recommend we come five points to port.”
“Make it so. Do we have target course and speed?”
“Not yet. We’ll get that as our bird gets closer. See what a good sensor suite and elevation does for your day?”
“Right,” said Kita. “Now we go after that Russian helo.”
The pawn game was as interesting and important as anything else in chess. That single fighter was carrying four AIM 120-D missiles that could reach out 75 nautical miles, and the Russians had a problem.
Turkey 1 had been quite brazen in activating its primary search radar, for that was its purpose. The Kopio-A, or “Lance” radar system it employed would give good medium range coverage out to 135 nautical miles at the maximum altitude of the helo, which was about 16,000 feet. But it was having great difficulty seeing the F-35’s. In fact, it had allowed two of the three strike groups to fly right through that coverage sphere completely undetected, and at that moment, it did not see the fighter bearing down on it either. That shortfall was compounded by the fact that the Kongo was aggressively jamming, and the Russians found their equipment was having difficulty in that environment. When it came to the actual electronics, the West still enjoyed a clear edge.
Turkey 1 had been up a good long while, pegged the position of the three Japanese destroyers, and now it was turning for home, beginning a slow descent. At 14:32, Recon-1 sent the Brevity code “Fox Three” home to Kaga to indicate he was engaging, and went after that Turkey with 2 missiles. The Russian radar saw those Amrams, but it could still not locate the plane that fired them! The Russian helo pilot nonetheless knew he was now in real hot water. He switched off his Lance radar system, activated offensive ECM and dove for the deck, wanting to get as low as possible before those missiles came looking for him.
The AIM-120 was a fire and forget weapon, very fast at Mach 4, and it used inertial guidance and terminal active radar to find its prey. Kirov was over 80 nautical miles away when they saw them on Rodenko’s screens, arcing up to an extreme altitude over 90,000 feet. They would then fall like meteors toward their target. Adjusting for the 60 plus kilometer range, and the agility of that helo as the pilot desperately maneuvered to avoid the missiles at the last minute, the 95% kill probability fell to a little under 60% by the time the missiles got close. The pilot evaded the first missile, but the second had locked on and would not be fooled.
Admiral Kita had cooked his Turkey.
The KA-40 exploded in a yellow orange fireball, and plucked out one of Kirov’s long range eyes. Throughout the whole of that engagement, the F-35 was never seen, lending weight to the claims that stealth kills more than anything else in a modern air-sea engagement. If you can’t see something, you simply cannot take any active defensive measures against it. Evasive maneuvers, chaff, and jamming were about all you had, and they would only give you a slim margin on defense.
The result of that attack, however, was significant, and when Karpov got the news, he knew that in spite of his 100 nautical mile lead on his closest pursuers, the danger the enemy presented remained very real.
“Damn!” he swore. “They took out our KA-40. Why can’t we see their fighters?” He looked at Rodenko, but the Lieutenant simply shrugged.
“That F-35 is stealthy. It’s what really gives it the edge over a good Fourth Generation fighter. Too bad we don’t have the Admiral Kuznetsov around.”
Yes, thought Karpov. You fight a carrier with another carrier at sea, or with a submarine. That was what he had to do now. Without further hesitation, he had Nikolin send out a coded message to Gromyko on Kazan. First he congratulated him on his initial kill, for getting Takami was a real help. Then he asked him to backtrack north and look for the enemy carriers, but soon learned that Gromyko had already done this when he was updated with the sub’s present course and speed.