“Sure, if we only launched two at a time,” Bunny said. “But we have to lift our ambition level Air Boss.”
“Even three, or four,” Rodriguez said. “Against 50?”
“Yeah, what I’m thinking — we launch them all,” the pilot said. “How many do we have?”
Rodriguez thought about it, “We have nine Fantoms, including the one docked on the Pond.”
“Ordnance?”
“Plenty. We could go with Cuda loadouts on all of them if we wanted to.”
“We don’t,” Bunny said. “Say seven carrying Cudas, two configured for electronic warfare.”
“That’s nine in total, O’Hare. Every machine we’ve got. Even with two full crews down here, we couldn’t pre-flight, load and launch any faster than one machine every five or ten minutes. We’ve been averaging two prepped and launched in an hour, you and me. A Fantom only has a one-hour duration at combat airspeeds, so by the time we got the next two up, the first two would have to come back down again.”
“I know, but what if we weren’t bringing any down? And what if we weren’t doing any pre-flight or quality? What if I programmed every drone to autonomous flight, set it to mount a CAP overhead, and you and I are out there on the catapult, pulling down drones, locking them into the Cat and just firing them into the air as fast as that conveyor belt can deliver them? Two Fantoms set to jamming mode, make life hell for Ivan’s targeting systems, alert him that something is up so he comes sniffing around — the others are loaded for bear, with aggressor code activated. They’ll kill anything that comes near us.”
The words ‘no pre-flight, no quality’ were just not in Rodriguez’s lexicon. She was an Air Boss; her job was to ensure the aircraft got off the ground, and back down again, safely. She bit down on her natural instincts. “The Cat can fire and recharge every five minutes, theoretically. I’ve never pushed one that hard. Something is going to fail — the shuttle, the power supply, hydraulics, something mechanical say — it’s inevitable,” she said.
“Best guess then, how many can we get up, inside an hour?” Bunny persisted.
“Say 60 percent, about six of nine,” she said.
“Good enough. So we get a couple Electronic Warfare Fantoms in the air on overwatch, and then we start firing off the Cuda armed Fantoms, set them to form a fighting hex. Any Russian comes near us, it will be like flying into a wasp nest. I tell you ma’am, if we can get them here, and if you are willing to commit all our hardware, we can give Ivan a kicking. A lot worse than if we try a ground attack on a heavily defended air base.”
“Eyes in the air won’t be enough,” Rodriguez said. “You need a way to attract their attention, get them to sortie against us in squadron strength. If they pick up the radar noise of a couple of Fantoms buzzing around overhead they’ll respond proportionately — just send a few fighters over to take a look.”
They both sat thoughtfully. Perhaps Bunny’s plan was all holes and no cheese.
The only sound came from the wash of water on the dock below, and the occasional slap of one of the painters holding the Fantom from the Lavrentiya mission, tied up below.
Bunny snapped her fingers and pointed at it, “That’s it. We pull that Fantom outside and tie it up in plain sight. Unless he’s blind and completely dumb, Ivan is going to see it sooner or later, probably sooner, all the trouble we’ve been making. I can set up a data link, set it up to radiate — use it like a mini radar base station. Two Fantoms in the air pushing out energy, and one on the deck acting like a ground radar… that’s got to get them real curious.”
For the first time, Rodriguez started to believe it might work. It would cost them everything they had, but it could set Russian ambitions back on their heels. If they could destroy just two Russian aircraft for every Fantom they lost, it would be a significant loss for Russia. Pilots lost over this part of the Strait would probably not make it back, even if they survived the destruction of their aircraft. It was a big sea, and cold.
“It’s a plan,” Rodriguez said. “It might even be a damn good one. I need to clear this with CNAF, we'd be burning this base for good.”
“Navy already wrote us off ma'am," Bunny reminds her. "We were decommissioned and on a sub to Nome a week ago."
“I'll make the call,” Rodriguez said. “You start pulling that decoy duck down toward the cave entrance.”
That had been in the morning. After Anadyr and Lavrentiya, Rodriguez had some credit in the bank, so when she argued they’d already pushed their luck beyond expected limits, Admiral Solanta had given them a green light for one last roll of the dice. He authorized them to commit all of their remaining aircraft and send any survivors east to Juneau’s civilian field.
“I can’t lift you out of there anytime soon, you know that Lieutenant Commander?” he’d asked.
“We do sir,” Rodriguez had replied. “But using this base as a honeypot is our best chance of dealing some serious hurt.”
Solanta approved because he knew something Rodriguez didn’t. If her plan worked, she would be dealing a big blow to Russian air power in the Operations Area at the same time as it was being dealt a political shock by the test off the Kurils. Together, the double whammy might be enough to check Russian ambitions.
They had paddled the floating Fantom out into the bay and lashed it to the mast of a sunken fishing boat. It hurt Rodriguez sorely to leave it out in plain view, but that was the point. While Bunny set up the Fantom as a ground-based early warning radar, Rodriguez went into the automated launch delivery system and queued up every aircraft they had. She set up the launch sequence as Bunny had described, with two electronic-warfare Fantoms, followed by six dedicated air-air Cuda-armed Fantoms. The aircraft would be automatically fueled and primed for engine start, loaded with either jamming pods and/or A2A ordnance. And Bunny had configured the electronic-warfare Fantoms with her ‘berserker’ combat AI algorithm. They might be light on weapons, but on her command, they would do everything in their power to lock up an enemy and destroy it, and once they were out of missiles and guns, they would become the ordnance!
BERSERKER ALGORITHM II
“This American covert base has cost you hundreds of men, dozens of aircraft, tons of supplies,” General Potemkin said.
“Comrade General,” Bondarev explained. “Lavrentiya was a mosquito bite. Unlike at Anadyr we lost only a few personnel, and no critical capabilities. Our Nebo-M unit was operating at full capability again within ten hours of the American strike. I have already given orders for the aircraft of the 573rd to be assigned to the crews of the 6983rd. There will be no impact on ground support for LOSOS.”
Potemkin looked unimpressed and Bondarev could sense his second in command, Colonel Artem Akinfeev, shifting his weight nervously beside him. “You misunderstand, Major-General. First Anadyr, now Lavrentiya. These attacks have cost the VVS political capital, and the respect of our peers. I want to see this American base dug out from under that island and obliterated.”
Arsharvin was looking at the map of Little Diomede. “If they can fly a drone out of a hole in that cliff face, then we can put a missile down their throats General.”
“It would be better to land a detachment of special forces,” Lieutenant Butyrskaya said. “They could deal with US security, secure the base. There may be valuable intel, not least examples of these new amphibious drones.”
General Potemkin coughed, “I commend the Comrade Lieutenant for her professionalism. However, we can glean whatever intelligence can be gleaned from the burning sunken wrecks of these American floatplanes. I do agree though that special forces will be needed to ensure the complete destruction of this base. We don’t know what is in there, or how it is defended.” He turned to Bondarev, “Major-General, I authorize a combined-forces attack on Little Diomede immediately. You will use whatever assets are required to eliminate the threat, and achieve the complete destruction of the enemy base.”