With a ripple of microhydraulically controlled skin, the Wolverine missile turned on a dime and headed for its first target. Once lined up on target, it activated its radar for just two seconds and compared the range to the target received from the radar to the range to target on its navigational flight plan — the two figures were within seven feet of each other. The missile sampled the GPS navigation information again, then took a longer radar fix of the target, getting bearing as well as range— now the two were within two feet of each other. Satisfied, the missile signaled back to the EB-52 Megafortress that it was on course and ready to attack.
Patrick McLanahan opened a new computer window on his large supercockpit display, then ordered the sensor feed from the missile displayed in the window. The radar image showed a bright white rectangle, with the missile’s sensor’s crosshairs centered on it. McLanahan switched to imaging infrared, and a small orange speck appeared; magnified, McLanahan could discern the long, gracefully swept bow, tall amidships superstructure, and huge bow-mounted 100-millimeter gun of the big Chinese Jiangwei-class guided-missile frigate. McLanahan ordered the missile to alter course to align itself with the longitudinal axis of the Chinese frigate for its attack.
Just then, a bright orange circle superimposed itself on the Chinese frigate’s icon on the supercockpit display; simultaneously, Vikram called out, “Foxtrot-band air search radar up…” Then, a few seconds later, along with a slow-paced deedle… deedle… deedle! warning tone: “… India-band target tracking radar…”
“Looks like they’re locked onto all four Wolverine missiles,” McLanahan said.
Suddenly they heard a fast-pitched deedledeedledeedle! warning tone in their headsets. “Missile launch!” Vikram shouted. “No uplink bearings in our direction… second missile launch… three, four missiles in the air, tracking the Wolverines… X-band gun control radars up on the patrol boats, looks like they got a lock-on too. Shit, looks like every Wolverine missile is an item of interest.”
“Pick up my window numbers twenty and twenty-one,” McLanahan suggested, “and watch the Wolverines in action.”
The instant the first Hong Qian-61 antiaircraft missile left the Chinese frigate’s rails, the Wolverine missile immediately matched bearings to the uplink signal’s bearing, which meant that both missiles were heading nose-to-nose. Then, an instant before impact, the Wolverine missile accelerated to its top speed of 600 miles an hour, released bundles of radar-decoying chaff and infrared-decoy flares, and jinked away, using its mission-adaptive fuselage to turn twice as fast as the antiair missile could possibly turn. The HQ-61 missile still had a solid radar lock and hit— on the cloud of chaff.
As soon as it executed the first twenty-G turn, the Wolverine missile immediately dropped more chaff and flares and executed another turn toward its first target. It picked up the “Round Ball” fire-control radar trying to track it, and dropped more chaff and flares. The gunners aboard the Chinese Huangfeng-class patrol boat opened fire with their 30-millimeter guns, shredding the chaff cloud with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Seconds later, the Wolverine missile, untouched, sped overhead and dropped its first bomb-bay load of thirty-six baseball-size bomblets. The Wolverine missile couldn’t fully align with the vessel’s longitudinal axis after evading the gunfire, so only about half of the bomblets hit the vessel — but it was enough to cause a fire in two of the patrol boat’s Hong-Yang-1 anti-ship missile canisters. With the two port launch canisters on fire and the two starboard canisters damaged, the skipper of the patrol boat had no choice but to stop his attack run and jettison all four of his missiles overboard before they exploded and sank his ship. With nothing but his 30-millimeter gun remaining, he was effectively out of the fight.
The same Wolverine missile did better on the second and third PLAN patrol boats. Instead of crossing perpendicular to the target’s path, the missile scattered its second load of bomblets directly down the second vessel’s centerline. The two aft HY-1 missile canisters exploded, driving the vessel’s stern down, then flipping the 173-ton patrol boat end- over-end through the air before crashing down into the sea. The Wolverine’s third target, a lightly armed but faster sixty-eight-ton Houku-class patrol boat, managed to start a fast turn toward its stricken partner just as the Wolverine began dropping bomblets, so only a few of the one- pound bomblets hit the ship, causing minor damage. The Wolverine’s final suicide-attack target, the lead Jiangwei-class frigate, finally stopped it with a double punch from two HQ-61 antiaircraft missiles and murderous fire from the frigate’s two starboard 30:millimeter guns.
But even as advanced as the Jiangwei-class frigate was, its biggest fault was its downfall — its lack of antiaircraft armament. The Jiangwei had a single Hong Qian-61 sextuple missile launcher forward — only six missiles, and no magazine reloads. The frigate fired one missile at each Wolverine missile shortly after they got within range, then fired the last two at the first Wolverine missile to get close. It stopped that Wolverine — but two more Wolverines, attacking from different directions, struck the frigate with 250-pound warheads after successfully attacking their assigned primary targets with bomblets.
The fourth Wolverine missile used the success of its three brothers to score the biggest hits. With all of its previous targets already hit and disabled, the fourth Wolverine had the luxury of expending all of its weapons — three bomb bays full of cluster bombs, plus a 250-pound penetrating blast warhead — on the Jiangwei-class frigate alone. McLanahan switched his supercockpit window to the sensor view of the fourth Wolverine missile; the rest of the crew called up repeater views of the strike sensor on their multifunction displays and watched as the last Wolverine dropped its first load of cluster munition directly on centerline, circled around, dropped again, circled in the opposite direction, dodged some cannon fire, dropped its last load of cluster bombs in the stern area of the frigate, executed an impossibly sharp triangular course reversal, and plowed into the frigate just a few feet above the waterline, directly amidships on the starboard side.
“Shit! Did you see that?” Nancy Cheshire shouted. “That thing was alive! I saw at least a dozen fires on that ship before the last hit! Excellent!”
“Oh… my…,” was all Vikram could say.
“Let’s get out of here, pilots,” McLanahan said. “We’re supposed to be on our way to the air refueling track.”
“High-speed aircraft climbing rapidly, now at two o’clock, twenty- three miles, heading north,” Emil Vikram reported. Vikram’s threat scope was a duplicate of McLanahan’s God’s-eye view, but it displayed only air-borne targets — the sudden appearance of two high-performance fighters less than thirty miles away were the main targets. “Nav radars fired up on the carrier, bearings locking on the Kin Men—I think they might be able to use their nav radars to target the Taiwanese frigate. That carrier might be ready to let go with a big salvo. Sun Visor fire-control radars from the second destroyer locking on the Kin Men too.”