His lessons applied to a bygone era though. Bondarev and his men were almost certainly going into combat against soul-less robots, not flesh and blood men or women. There were no moral dilemmas in the destruction of silicon and steel, only tactical ones. In a ritual that never varied, Bondarev crossed himself, and muttered under his breath, “Be with me Dedushka.”
“Fourth Cuda bird away!” Rodriguez called, bent double and panting. She was ready to collapse, had no idea how Bunny was still standing. The stocky, well-muscled aviator had stripped to her singlet, uniform trousers, gloves and boots. Her black, short-cropped hair glistened with sweat and it ran in rivulets down her back between her shoulder blades. As they watched the sixth Fantom depart, Bunny arched her back. Rodriguez handed her a bottle filled with electrolytes and high dose caffeine and she chugged it hungrily.
Bunny looked over at the command trailer, “Ivan will be overhead any minute,” she said. “And my babies will still be trying to form up. I want to get into that trailer and get them through the shitstorm they’re flying into.”
“If those S-FADs don’t do their job, and Russian ground attack aircraft break through, the shitstorm will be in here, not out there,” Rodriguez reminded her. They both watched wearily as the loading crane lifted another Fantom cartridge off the belt and dropped it on the catapult rails. So far, the only mechanical failure had been a catapult locking mechanism on the second Fantom that didn’t want to engage. They had talked through what they would do for nearly every possible failure scenario, and for this one, their only option was to push the malfunctioning drone down the rails and into the Pond at the end of the deck, losing not only a machine, but precious time. Just as Rodriguez was about to call it, the Fantom shuttle had clunked into place. “I’ve seen your code in action,” Rodriguez said. “Your ‘babies’ can look after themselves.”
Of course Bunny wanted to be at her desk, head in her virtual-reality helmet, guiding her machines through the engagement but she couldn’t be in two places. She had been forced to launch them in autonomous mode and leave them to fight or die on their own. The algorithm she had plugged in was hyper-defensive at the merge though — her electronic warfare birds and her fighting hex would seek altitude and try to ‘spot’ targets for the S-FADs, which would be pulling data from the drones, their own targeting systems and ANR to triangulate the Russian aircraft. Only when the S-FADs reported they were weapons dry and disengaging would Bunny’s drones engage and even then they were programmed to only engage with missiles, evade and then bug out for recovery at Juneau.
That’s what she’d told Rodriguez anyway. It wasn’t exactly dishonest, but she might have omitted to tell her CO that she had also programmed her Berserker algorithm into the two electronic-warfare drones. It would be triggered if they were engaged and were in a guns dry state. Her logic was that if the engagement got to the state where her electronic-warfare machines were still engaged after the S-FADs and her fighting hex was out of the fight, things were desperate enough to justify a little suicidality.
“Well, they’re going to need all the friends they can get,” Bunny sighed, looking at the next Fantom in line. “Are we just going to stand here doing the girl talk thing, or are we going to get this hex launched?”
The first Cuda armed Fantoms formed up north of Little Diomede and started creating a fighting hex. Their neural networks linked to share data, their passive and active targeting systems scanned the sky for targets to feed to the submersibles. The two electronic-warfare Fantoms already airborne were sending data to the hex and the S-FADs about both the Airborne Control aircraft and its escort, but also a new group of aircraft entering the combat area which were radiating fearlessly, clearly confident and bent on detecting the US stealth aircraft. The two electronic warfare Fantoms had reached 30,000 feet and were climbing for 50. Bunny had programmed the flight waypoints for the electronic-warfare Fantoms to be staggered between the Russian Airborne Control plane and Little Diomede, and Fantom electronic-warfare 1 was jamming the Airborne Control aircraft undetected from a distance of only ten miles. It had a perfect lock on the Airborne Control plane and one of the S-FADs designated it as a priority target, allocating secondary status to the approaching Russian fighters.
As Bondarev’s flight of six Sukhois flashed by underneath it, the S-FAD flooded its missile bays and launched. Fired from below the surface using high-pressure steam the launch canisters of seven missiles broke out above the water and the SM-6/E booster engines fired, accelerating the missiles to three and a half times the speed of sound. One launch canister failed to release, sending its missile into a cartwheeling death across the surface of the sea. The other six missiles arced straight into the sky. Pulling on the data from three remote sources, coupled with their own active seeker systems, they took just over ten seconds to cover the 30,000 feet to their targets.
The Beriev A-100 Airborne Control aircraft was able to detect surface ships out as far as 300km, and had registered no US warships in the target area, or even within surface-to-air missile range. The first Bondarev knew that his airborne control crew was under attack was a brief radar tone, the appearance of an enemy missile icon on his heads-up display showing a contact below him, then the flash of light and ball of flame on the horizon behind him that signaled the 160m dollar AWACs' destruction.
Before he could even react his combat AI took control of his aircraft, automatically fired flares and chaff and began to maneuver radically.
His formation split like a starburst, every pilot looking desperately for the source of the attack, threat warning HUDs ominously empty of enemy aircraft but his blurred vision could see the threat marked on his heads-up display. Ground launch!? His head swiveled quickly, looking for the tell-tale contrail of a missile to tell him where it had been fired from. He was over the open ocean, so whatever ship had killed his airborne control aircraft must be close. He felt as much as saw a missile scream past his port wing and explode overhead. Simultaneously, left and right of him, he saw four of his wingmen hit, dissolving in bright yellow balls of fire.
As his machine pulled out of a near vertical dive he saw what must be the wreckage of the Beriev spiraling down to the sea, trailing ugly black and brown smoke behind it and around him, nothing but clear blue sky. Far below, a parachute bloomed, then another. That meant little. The aircrew still had to survive landing in the freezing sea below. Bondarev cursed and took back his stick. His threat display was only showing a general vector to a jamming signal over the Diomede islands. Threat display empty, sky clear! He flipped his radar to ground scan mode. Nothing! Where had the attack come from?! He flung his machine around the sky, bullying it down toward the relative safety of the waves below.
For the first time in multiple missions, Bondarev was at a loss. “Spruce Leader to Spruce flight, report!”
“Spruce 5,” a single voice replied. “Forming up Major-General. Orders?”
Bondarev checked his tac display, “I have a strong lock on a stationary radar signature by Little Diomede,” he said. “Do you copy?” The only threat on his board was an American radar broadcasting by the eastern side of the island. His AI had tagged it as an F-47 signature, but it was not moving. Perhaps it was the aircraft Arsharvin’s drone had photographed, either landing or preparing to launch? It didn’t feel right. On the edge of his display he saw his follow-on flight entering the combat area, another six Su-57s followed by 12 Mig-41s. Behind them should be six ground attack configured Okhotniks.