Franklin drew his eyes to the heads-up display on the front of the cockpit window. The F-22A cockpit was a continuous piece of specialized tempered glass, giving Franklin a 360-degree view without any obstruction.
He looked at the weapons load-out, hit the status-check button, and was satisfied with the result. The Raptor had four internal weapons bays for missiles. For close-in combat and ground support for the troops, he had an M61A2 20mm cannon mounted in the wing root area. The barrel of the 20mm cannon was hidden behind a cover that opened and closed in millisecond synchronization with the bullets coming out. The finger pulling the trigger inside the cockpit controlled all of this. Raptor pilots wondered aloud what would happen if the cover ever failed to open in synch with the shells. But that curiosity never dampened their confidence in this phenomenal fighter aircraft.
Everything about the Raptor was designed for superiority in the air, much like the Navy’s command of the seas. Everything the Air Force, the scientists, and the developers could think of for hiding the aircraft in the skies had been used on this aircraft, including locating the missiles and the cannon inside the skin of the Raptor.
Both he and Johnson carried a standard air-to-air combat missile load-out. His consisted of two Sidewinder AIM-9L and six AMRAAM 120C missiles. The Sidewinder was a legacy air-to-air missile still in inventory, upgraded with modern fire-control technology. Designed for rear-hemispheric attacks with its sophisticated infrared detection and lock-on capability, the modern Sidewinder also had an active seeker. If it lost the infrared signature, the missile started pinging with its fire-control radar. This was the same class of missile that had barely missed shooting Walters down, but did hit the burning North Korean Y-8 on the deck of Sea Base.
The AMRAAM stood for Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile. It had state-of-the-art active seekers designed to lock on and drive the missile to a target. The internal radar and logic head gave the AMRAAM the ability to act independent of the aircraft fire-control radar once it was locked on a target.
The pilot didn’t have to keep his or her fire-control radar locked on the target. This gave the fighter pilot the fighting flexibility to launch the AMRAAM and go on to another target. It could fight its own air-to-air engagement. The AMRAAM was truly a “fire-and-forget” weapon. But the target was unable to forget as the supersonic AMRAAM 120C shot toward it. Whether the missile achieved its mission or not, while the AMRAAM was on its tail, the target was out of the combat picture.
The Air Force knew the value of both in combat and cost. The smaller, faster AMRAAM cost nearly $400,000 each, while the legacy Sidewinder cost a miserly $85,000 each. Both were supersonic and both were long: AMRAAM, the more sophisticated and costly missile, was over eleven feet in length, while the cheaper, slightly less technical Sidewinder was a little over nine feet in length.
These deadly missiles carried by the Raptor were arrayed internally. When the fighter pilot selected the weapon, the missile electronics prepared to fight. When the pilot hit the launch icon, the missile bay doors opened just long enough to fire the missile. The doors closed before the missile was an aircraft length on its journey. During this time when the doors were open, the F-22A was vulnerable to radar.
Thinking about the two Sidewinders caused Franklin to think of Fast Pace. He and Ronny “Fast Pace” Walters had been a team for over a year. The events that nearly killed Fast Pace were as fresh today as they were last month. North Korea beating its war drums. Sea Base sailing into the Sea of Japan. Everyone knew Sea Base was a prototype; an experiment; something unproven in combat. A Congressional pork addendum added to the defense bill to provide perks in forty-six states. It’s hard to defeat representatives and senators aligned together from forty-six states.
Franklin and Walters had been returning from a defensive fighter patrol two hundred miles ahead of Sea Base. Both had been riding on fumes by the time they reached Sea Base. But Franklin had to bitch about low fuel, so Sea Base landed him first. His aircraft ran out of fuel as it taxied to the parking apron. Good argument for landing, but it did nothing to salve the feeling of guilt over what happened to Fast Pace.
So Walters, riding his own fumes, took the action against the inbound North Korean transport. It had been Walters’s aircraft that had sucked in a piece of the Y-8 exploding as Walters’s cannon tore through it. It had been Walters’s engine the piece of metal tore up, creating a blaze that stretched for yards behind the Raptor. It had been an irate Sidewinder minutes later fired by a Royal Navy F-35 fighter chasing another North Korean transport that locked on Walters. The inbound missile forced Walters to take drastic maneuvers that sent Franklin’s teammate and friend crashing onto Sea Base. A crash that burned his trapped friend for seconds—long sec-onds—before Chief Willard and Captain Nolan fought their way through the flames to pull him from the cockpit. In times such as that, time seems to slow. Seconds stretch into what seem minutes, and a minute seems forever.
Both Willard and Nolan carried the burn scars from the incident, a constant reminder whenever Franklin saw them. But they were nothing compared to the third-degree burns covering Walters’s body. If not for the fire-retardant flight suit and the quick actions of those two men, it would have been a burned body carried from the aircraft.
“Blackman, wake up! Are you listening to me?” Johnson shouted.
“Sorry, ma’am; say again.”
“I said it’s time to show those squids what we can do,” she repeated, miffed. “You ready or you daydreaming?”
“I will follow your lead.”
“Eighty-degree angle.”
The two aircraft turned on their tails. Franklin shoved the throttle forward, keeping position on the left side of Johnson’s tail. Within seconds, the two aircraft passed twelve thousand feet, sparse cloud cover at this altitude quickly disappearing beneath them.
“I love this,” Johnson said.
“Makes two of us, DETCO,” Franklin said, squinting his eyes shut as soon as he said “DETCO.” Why me, Lord? Is this my penance for Fast Pace? Johnson was the Detachment Commander, but demanded to be addressed as Commander. Not DETCO, the Air Force term, but Commander, which was reserved for the “real” Commanding Officer of the squadron.
Tradition is a hard animal to kill. Her being unpopular and going against Air Force tradition should be wearing her insistence down, but she persisted. After all, she was the DETCO—oops! The commander. Franklin smiled.
Several seconds passed; then Johnson’s voice came over the circuit. “Call me Raptor Leader once we get off the private circuit, Blackman, or you can call me Pickles.”
He winced. Another Air Force tradition rumor had Johnson thumbing her nose at. The pilots refused to call her Pickles. The rumor was she refused to accept the ritual naming tradition at the officers’ club. She was awarded “Flat Cheeks,” didn’t like it, and changed it to “Pickles.” Where in the hell she got Pickles from was the big question they would all like to have answered, but no way anyone would ask. They were afraid she’d tell them, and the idea of having to listen to the story appalled the men.
“When we level out, let’s increase our separation. Half a length, left side about two hundred feet.”
Everyone had a story. He’d like to know hers, but like the others in the Ready Room, he wasn’t going to be the one to ask her.
“Raptor Leader, Raptor 10. Wouldn’t separating that far increase our radar detectability?”
“Shouldn’t, Raptor 10. It should increase our radar reduction profile because by separating we reduce the chance of radar signals bouncing off each other’s aircraft and returning to the sender.”