Dushak's MiG-29 was one of eight from the 1st Squadron of the 176th Proskurovskiy Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment being prepared for this particular mission. Two flights, each with four fighters, would be escorting a strike group against an improvised NATO airfield near Ingolstadt. The Germans and Americans had converted a length of Route 16 to the west of Ingolstadt into an airfield from which they were flying A-10 attack aircraft. The A-10s had been hitting at Soviet ground columns during the fighting for the Danube bridgeheads for the past day or so. The army was demanding that they be stamped out. The proximity of the Ingolstadt field allowed the A-l0s to make many sorties each day, and they had been wrecking the pontoon bridges and engineer equipment as fast as they were erected. The bitter complaints from the front commander had led the Air Force to allot two squadrons of the prized Su-24 attack bombers to the mission. The Su-24 was a two-seat strike aircraft with very sophisticated navigation and electronics. It resembled the American F-111 strike bomber. The Su-24 was not usually assigned to simple tactical strike missions, unless they had high priority. The strike force would be rounded out by a flight of Su-22s configured for the ECM jamming role. The Su-22s were sometimes called "Zubr" (Bison) by their crews due to their rotund shape and arched fuselage. Laden with jamming pods, they would be sluggish and vulnerable.
Dushak's fighter regiment had been brought into Milovice two days before from its normal operating base outside of Lvov in the Ukraine. Fighter losses in the past few days of air fighting had been heavy. It wasn't only the NATO fighter planes, it was also the damn SAM missiles like the Hawk and Patriot. The missiles were forcing the Soviet aircraft to operate at low altitudes, where NATO radars couldn't find them in all the ground clutter. But it was dangerous to fly below 1,000 meters. The terrain along the border was mountainous, and it was easy to run into a hill if you weren't careful. And at low altitude you attracted the attention of everybody with a gun. Modern jet aircraft are rugged, but at high speeds, even small damage can be lethal. A single bullet, in the wrong place at the wrong time, can bring down a multimillion-dollar jet. A bullet down the air intake, impacting the turbine blades, can lead to a catastrophic engine failure. A ruptured hydraulic line can lead to a loss of control. Such losses to small arms fire are not very common. Jet aircraft have been known to absorb more than a hundred small-caliber bullets and fly safely back to base. But when flying at low altitude, the "golden bullet" that can wreck your plane is always a worry.
Modern air defense missiles are another matter. Missiles like the Hawk or Patriot are so large that if they lock onto your fighter with their radar, your chances are not good. Electronic jamming is possible, but difficult. And the warheads on these missiles are so large that they nearly ensure an aircraft loss if they explode close enough. They are a major worry on a strike mission like this, since so many aircraft provide a juicy target. By staying at low altitudes, the strike group can stay under their radar cover. Without radar acquisition, the missiles are useless. It's a trade-off. If you go in high, you can avoid small-caliber gunfire and Stingers, but then you are out in the open against the Patriot and Hawk batteries. In view of the losses of Soviet aircraft to Hawks and Patriots in the past few days, this attack mission would be going in low.
Either way, the flight could be attacked by enemy fighters. The main problem in this area was F-16s, which were present in abundance and were a real menace. The F-16 was smaller than the MiG-29, but its performance was similar. Some were armed with the deadly AMRAAM radar-guided missile, but many still had only Sidewinders. The Sidewinder used infrared homing, and fighters were usually within visual range before the infrared seeker could lock onto the target. This limited their attack envelope. The AMRAAM was a different matter entirely. It was radar guided and didn't require illumination from the enemy fighter's radar like the older Sparrow. These were undoubtedly the most lethal weapon in the recent fighting, and more than one Soviet squadron had been massacred by AMRAAMs. Some F-16s had been modernized to fire these, but the F-15 was the primary AMRAAM platform. The F-15 was bigger than the F-16 or MiG-29. The F-15 pilots preferred to kill their adversaries at long range with the AMRAAM rather than mix it up in a messy dogfight at close range with the smaller MiG-29.
Dushak checked his own panel to make certain his missiles had been properly mounted. He carried the usual weapons load. There were two R-72 radar-guided missiles on the inboard pylons. These were like the NATO Sparrow missiles. You illuminated the enemy aircraft with your RP-29 radar, and the missile homed in on the radar reflections from your target. They were good missiles, with good range. But you had to keep your radar locked onto your target the whole time — from missile launch to missile impact. If you had to break off the engagement due to the presence of enemy fighters, the missile would not hit. It also meant you could engage only one target at a time. With the AMRAAM, the missile had its own little radar and didn't need the aircraft to radar illuminate the target. And you could engage several aircraft at once, which was not possible with either the NATO Sparrow or the Soviet R-72. The other four missile pylons on the MiG-29 had R-60 infrared missiles slung from them. The R-60 operated like a Sidewinder, homing in on infrared energy from the target aircraft. It could even be launched from head on, picking up the leading edge of the fuselage and wings that had been heated by air friction. The main problem in dogfighting with the R-60 was that it had less range than the Sidewinder. The Soviet Air Force had the old K-13 with good range, but its seeker was not very sensitive. There was the new R-73 infrared missile with performance similar to that of the R-60, but it wasn't common yet, and Dushak's squadron had to make do with the older R-60s.
For real dogfighting, the MiG-29 had a 30mm autocannon in the left wing root. This was a very destructive weapon: A few solid hits could destroy most modern fighter planes. The gun was linked to a laser range finder, which told the pilot if the enemy plane was in range. Through the computer and heads-up display (HUD), it told the pilot how much elevation or deflection was needed. The HUD in the MiG-29 was a real advance as far as Dushak was concerned, especially over the old sights in the MiG-23. The HUD is an optical data system that is located in front of the pilot. The main element is a tilted glass panel that has data from the aircraft computer projected onto it. The main attraction of the HUD is that it allows the pilot to keep his eyes looking forward, through the canopy, and still be able to get vital information. In older fighters, you had to look down into the cockpit to get information from the various flight instruments. This was very distracting in a dogfight: You could lose your grasp of the situation while you were looking at the dials and gauges.
By the time Dushak's MiG-29 had been wheeled out of the revetment, the sun was creeping its way up the southeastern horizon. Dushak noted its position. The sun could be an ally in any dogfight, and a fighter pilot had to remember where it lay. Attacking with the sun at your back was one of the oldest dogfighting tricks. Even in the age of computers and missiles, it was still an excellent tactic. It is hard to see into the sun, and this blind spot can be exploited by a skilled pilot. Dushak had used this tactic often during peacetime training. He was about to find out whether peacetime training was anything like the real thing.
The warrant officer who headed the flight crew signaled to Dushak that everything was ready.
He started the engine and closed the cockpit canopy. It made a solid clunk, and he locked it shut. He had already adjusted the aircraft radio to the mission frequency and was awaiting further instructions. Dushak's flight would be using the radio call sign Shashka (Sabre); the other MiG-29 flight would use Molot (Hammer). The Su-24 squadron was using the call sign Kirka (Axe), and the countermeasures flight was using Pika (Pike). Dushak's aircraft was Shashka 3; the flight leader, Sniper Pilot Nikolai Vlasov, was Shashka 1; his wingman, Pilot 3d Class German Burlakov, was Shashka 2. Dushak was the second pair leader, and his wingman, Pilot 2d Class Sergei Kostenko, was Shashka 4. Sergei "Seryozha" Kostenko was a younger pilot than Dushak, twenty-eight years old. Dushak had flown on MiG-23 fighters in the 1980s, before transitioning to the new MiG-29 in 1991. Kostenko had flown the MiG-29 ever since he had been a combat pilot.