Olapenko had not lied. The Kosmos satellites were not intended to kill other satellites.
They were made to blind them.
Alicia Rodriguez was blind. Her bedside alarm was ringing, she had to get to school, but she couldn’t see it to turn it off. She panicked, flailing around her, trying to find her alarm clock. She was going to be late for school again!
She opened her eyes. Same dumb dream again. But there was an alarm ringing somewhere. She swung her legs out of bed and hit her bedside light. It was the comms alarm — an incoming call. She fumbled for the handset on her bedside table.
“NCTAMS-A4,” she replied, rubbing her eyes. She looked at her watch. She’d been asleep 3 hours. It was 0400. She and Bunny had planned another three hours sleep then breakfast and another day flying their drones out. As the voice on the other end spoke, she realized that wasn’t going to happen.
“NCTAMS-A4, this is ANR control,” the voice said. “Major Del Stenson, who is speaking please?”
“Rodriguez, Lieutenant Commander, what’s up Major?”
“Ma’am, I need to bring you up to speed with events and then check your operational status,” the major said.
“Our operational status? We are decommissioned Major,” Rodriguez told him. “We are four days from bringing the boom down on this base.”
“Negative ma’am, I have a new Operations Order for you. The situation is that Russian air forces have attacked Eielson and Elmendorf-Richardson air bases. Damage was limited, but both airfields are going to be offline for at least the next 48–72 hours. We have moved air assets south to Kingsley Fields, Portland and Lewis-McChord.” He paused. “We have nowhere to receive your drones right now ma’am, and besides, we need them back in the game.”
“Major, there are only myself and one aviator remaining on this base. We can launch, but we can’t recover, refuel and rearm those drones at anything like the speed that would be needed for combat operations. If you are asking us to go to war, I need the full complement of base personnel back here stat.”
“That’s also negative ma’am,” Stenson said. “All available Naval units have been re-tasked. We are responding to multiple simultaneous threat vectors Lieutenant Commander. You are on your own. A mission package is being sent through as we speak. You are to review it and respond. Questions ma’am?”
“Plenty,” Rodriguez said. “But let me look the package over. I’ll get back to you on what we can do.”
“Yes ma’am. ANR out.”
Rodriguez cut the connection and hit the button that connected her to O’Hare’s quarters.
“O’Hare speaking. Yes, ma’am?”
She sounded like she was already awake.
“We have new orders Bunny,” Rodriguez said.
“Yes ma’am,” the pilot replied. “I heard the comms alert. Briefing in the trailer?”
“Five minutes,” Rodriguez confirmed. “And O’Hare?”
“Yes ma’am?”
“You will be wearing more than just black nail polish, understood?”
“Aw, you are such a buzz killer ma’am,” O’Hare said. “As you wish.” She cut the line.
Rodriguez smiled and reached for her trousers. Then she thought about what they were being asked to do, and the smile faded from her face.
Yevgeny Bondarev had a broad smile on his face as he stood in his own operations room, eyes running over reports of the morning’s operations and bomb damage assessments. Around him, his staff were going about the business of destroying the US armed forces’ ability to respond to the planned landing in Nome.
He had been ordered to achieve air supremacy, not just air superiority. Air superiority meant temporary control of the airspace over an operations area. Supremacy meant the effective destruction of the enemy’s ability to oppose the operations of friendly forces. The Russian commanders were not dreamers, they knew Lukin’s 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command could not defeat the entire US Army, Navy and Air Force once it had been completely mobilized. But it had to establish dominance of the air for the duration of the invasion and that meant creating an effective air-front over Alaska all the way to the Canadian border so that any attempt by the US to penetrate Alaskan airspace resulted in the complete destruction of American aircraft in the combat area.
The airfield denial operations against the two major US Air Force bases in Alaska had been a spectacular success, with the first wave of missiles being intercepted but performing their task of overwhelming the American defensive systems so that the second wave of mine laying cluster munition armed warheads would be able to penetrate. Russia had learned through many wars that blowing holes in enemy airfields was a pointless exercise, because even a twenty-foot crater blown in a concrete runway by a deep penetrator bomb could be filled in a matter of hours and overlaid with metal mesh patches so that flight operations could quickly resume.
So the Bra-Mos III missiles that had made it through the defensive perimeter of Elmendorf Richardson and Eielson air bases had streaked across the airfield scattering thousands of area-denial anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines. Within seconds each airfield was littered with 5.5lb RDX explosive armed proximity-triggered submunitions. Once the mines were scattered, the missiles buried themselves in their terminal targets — usually hangars, radars and control and command facilities. It might only take a few hours to fill a crater or get a new mobile command center up and running, but it would take days to clear all of the unexploded mines at the two air bases.
He had lost none of his Su-57s or Okhotniks, but all six Backfire bombers had been quickly shot down. That had been expected and their pilots and crews had been volunteers, knowing the mission would likely result in their deaths. Bondarev wasn’t sentimental, but the sacrifice of such men in the service of their nation stirred his blood. He would use their example to encourage his own men to do their utmost.
With no US carrier task force within range, that meant that unless Canada allowed the US to base its aircraft out of British Columbia, America had to fly its combat aircraft from airfields in Oregon, Washington State and Idaho, and ten years of US bullying over trade and tariff disputes meant that without evidence of an actual invasion yet, Canada wasn’t looking disposed to choose sides. That meant US aircraft could only reach the combat area with the help of in-flight refueling, which gave Russian radar and satellites precious time to detect them and respond. It was time Bondarev planned to use well.
The second prong of the initial attack had not been Bondarev’s responsibility but belonged to the Russian Aerospace Forces. Their small 100kg satellites parked over the pole had maneuvered within range of eight critical NORAD surveillance satellites and were blasting out radio signals at frequencies calculated to jam the ability of the American satellites to send or receive. If they were working as planned the US 213th Space Warning Squadron based at Denali Borough in Alaska — the eyes and ears of NORAD — should be blind and deaf.
His staff advised it would take at least six and up to 18 hours before the US could re-task other nearby satellites to fill the void or find workarounds to mitigate the jamming.
That gave Bondarev a solid window in which his Okhotniks could roam the skies over Alaska seeking out and destroying US land-based radar and air defense units, while his Su-57s ran combat air patrols overhead. Several of his units were actively engaged in combat with the US fighters that had managed to get airborne before the missile strikes. He had lost nine aircraft, with two pilots dead and six down, but his intel indicated 23 enemy combatants destroyed, both fixed and rotary winged aircraft. After trying to engage the incoming cruise missiles, most of the airborne US aircraft were low on fuel and ammunition and were retiring to US mainland air bases or inadequately equipped civilian fields. The Americans had not yet martialled aircraft for a major counter-attack, but Bondarev was certain it would come, probably in the form of another blizzard of cruise missiles launched from naval vessels or strategic bombers.