Astan didn’t care. He had joined the Iranian Air Force as soon as he was old enough, but the fighting in the Iran-Iraq War had ended the previous year.
Since then, routine patrols and no wars had left Izad with few opportunities to shine. He had no family connections in the Air Force or government, and no sponsor in the clergy.
With forcible retirement staring him in the face, Astan had called in every favor he had left to get assigned to this mission. He had also made sure that his wingman was a first lieutenant who, while an outstanding natural pilot, was far too junior to receive any of the credit from the success of this mission.
So far the mission was totally on track. The two J-20s had crossed into Saudi airspace without detection, and had no trouble locating and shadowing the Chinook helicopter they were assigned to protect. The only real challenge had been following a flight pattern that let them stay in range to protect the Chinook without stalling. It really was remarkable how slow an old cargo helicopter could be, but Astan and his wingman had practiced the necessary flight pattern over the past few days, and had kept up coverage without incident.
Stealth or no, Astan would have been much less confident in their chances if the Saudis’ radar coverage hadn’t been so firmly focused westward. Well, he thought with satisfaction, it appears the ballistic missiles we gave the Houthis have the Saudis’ attention.
Right now Astan’s attention was on two F-15s flying combat air patrol over Riyadh. They gave no sign that they had spotted the J-20s, and could be expected to ignore the Chinook since it had an approved flight plan.
The radios on both J-20s were set to monitor 121.5 MHz, the frequency for International Air Distress. As expected, an urgent message was now being transmitted. Astan just wished it could have been about ten minutes later.
Well, he’d been warned that with experimental nuclear devices perfect coordination would be impossible. It could have been worse — at least they were within striking distance.
“All aircraft, all aircraft, land immediately at the nearest available airfield.
Any aircraft failing to follow this instruction will be fired upon.”
As the broadcast repeated Astan switched it off. No mention of why all aircraft were to land, but Astan was willing to bet that one or both of the nuclear weapons that he’d been told were due to detonate on the Gulf coast had destroyed their target. Good.
Now it was Riyadh’s turn.
There had only been a few other aircraft on Astan’s scope, and they very quickly disappeared from view as each landed. Only the Chinook and the F-15s were now visible, as well as the fact that the Chinook was no longer on its authorized flight path.
Instead, it had turned towards Riyadh.
The F-15s had not only noticed, it was also obvious they had been cleared to engage. Astan murmured to himself “They must be on afterburner,” as the range shrank between the F-15s and the lumbering Chinook.
Time to see if these PL-15 missiles with their active electronically-scanned array radar are as great as the Chinese say, Astan thought to himself. Part of maintaining stealth was avoiding radio contact with his wingman, but launching the PL-15s would make it clear to the Saudis that they had visitors anyway.
“Fire one and two, Target One,” Astan said over the encrypted frequency he shared with his wingman, as he launched two PL-15s.
“Fire one and two, Target Two,” his wingman promptly replied, as he launched two PL-15s at his target.
The range the PL-15s had to cross at Mach 4 was nowhere near its maximum of one hundred fifty kilometers, but it was still far greater than the range of the AIM-120Cs the F-15s were armed with, according to Iranian military intelligence. If that was true, it meant the F-15s would have no chance to fire back, assuming they could even get a lock on the J-20s.
Yes, Astan thought with a smile, this is my kind of dogfight.
Captain Victor Chernin had received extensive briefings on the SU-57’s new capabilities, but had until now never used one of them. That was the active electronically scanned array (AESA) X-band side-facing radars mounted below the cockpit on the aircraft's 'cheeks.' These were to supplement the primarily nose-mounted X-band N036 Byelka (Squirrel) AESA radar.
Chernin was about to use these supplemental radars to strike the J-20s using a technique called “beaming,” when a fighter turns ninety degrees away from an enemy’s pulse doppler radar array. Because such radars use doppler shift to gauge a target’s relative velocity, and filter out low relative velocity objects like ground clutter, the beaming fighter can enter the enemy radar’s
'doppler notch.'
This blind spot is where the radar’s velocity filter sees a target at low enough relative motion from its perspective that it discounts it. So even though the enemy fighter may be moving at high speed, the right angle to the radar means it sees only small amounts of closure, and doesn’t display it as a threat.
This tactic was especially helpful when a fighter pilot was trying to lock up his target in a look-down-shoot-down scenario. Ever since he had detected the J-20s several minutes earlier, Chernin had been slowly increasing altitude to reach an optimal firing position, and was nearly there.
Every other fighter Chernin knew of, including the most advanced American ones, would lose the radar picture of the enemy while “beaming.”
Even worse is that his radar-guided missiles wouldn’t have received mid-course updates. With his side-facing radars, though, none of that was true.
The Americans overcame the disadvantage of lacking side-facing radars with AWACS radar feeds sent to all fighters deployed to a combat zone.
Chernin smiled grimly as he estimated the likelihood that the Iranians had any such capability deployed for this mission.
Zero.
Just before Chernin was ready to fire, he heard the order over the International Air Distress channel for all aircraft to land, and saw the Saudi F-15s turn towards the sole helicopter that had ignored the order. Then he saw the J-20s moving to attack the Saudis.
Chernin had only seconds to decide which target to attack. His preference would have been to hit his primary objective, the helicopter now flying straight to Riyadh which Chernin was certain contained a nuclear weapon.
But, it was still out of range.
He could have fired a hasty shot at each of the J-20s, which would be likely to miss but would probably distract them enough to save the Saudi F-15s. Chernin never even considered this option.
There were several reasons, first because saving Saudi pilots was nowhere on his orders. Next was that while the J-20s were focused on the F-15s, they were far less likely to notice his SU-57. Then there was the fact that if he saved the F-15s from the J-20s, rather than thank him they would immediately try to shoot him down as an unauthorized intruder.
Most important though was that unofficial Saudi money was one of the main forces fueling the Syrian rebellion, which had cost the lives of several good friends. Chernin would not lose a minute’s sleep over the death of two Saudi pilots.
So, wait for the J-20s to launch on the F-15s. Then, fire on the J-20s. By then, I should be able to take out the helicopter, which was using extreme low altitude and terrain masking to make a lock impossible at his current range.
At that instant he saw the J-20s fire on the F-15s.
Excellent, Chernin thought to himself, as he locked in both J-20s and fired his Kh-47M3 Kinzhal missiles. Slightly smaller than the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missile carried by the MiG-31 fighter to let it fit in the SU-57’s internal bay, it sacrificed some range but none of its sibling’s Mach 10 speed.