But turret hits were fatal. So were multiple hits at or around the same spot on the Leopards’ top armor. Bomblet explosions directly to the sides of the Leopards did nothing to the crews inside, but damaged or destroyed their tracks and even more critically their wheels. Without functioning wheels to attach them to, replacement tracks were worthless.
Bilal’s orders were, on balance, responsible for saving many of his tanks.
Not all the DT-X microdrones were able to make the rapid course adjustment necessary to follow their Leopard, and others lost the laser lock on their tank due to dust and smoke.
However, Bilal’s orders were a blessing for the DT-Xs in one other regard.
Even at the Leopards’ fifty kilometers per hour the microdrones had been falling behind, because the tiny plasma jets that powered them were quite weak. The DT-Xs’ laser illumination range was impressive, but not infinite.
If they had continued on the highway, at least a few locks would have probably been lost.
The DDV–X footage of the attack would later serve as the justification for increasing its battery size to increase the DT-Xs’ top speed. But it was agreed by all analysts that if the Leopards had remained on the highway, fewer would have survived.
One of the Tomahawks had malfunctioned in flight and been destroyed remotely by Oregon, bringing the number of bomblets deployed slightly below four thousand. Two other Tomahawks successfully deployed their bomblets, but lost their DT-X provided lock, and exploded harmlessly into the desert sand.
Two of the Tomahawks and a dozen DT-Xs had been assigned to the S-300s.
The remaining nineteen Tomahawks found their Leopards, and successfully injected air into their remaining fuel just before impact to produce a thermobaric explosion. The scientists at Los Alamos who had worked on the project had projections for the explosive force that would be released, and later assessed that based on the DDV–X footage of the attack if anything, their projections had been too conservative.
This observation was bolstered by the fact that several of the Leopards were flung into the air by the Tomahawk’s explosion, and one actually somersaulted.
The entire attack took less than three minutes.
After five minutes, Bilal ordered his surviving forces to report.
Twenty-seven Leopards had either been completely destroyed or were not repairable in the field. Another fifteen had damage to their tracks that could be fixed. Over half of the remaining tanks had lost all or part of their modular armor, leaving them more vulnerable to a subsequent attack.
Both S-300s had been destroyed, in explosions so violent that five MOWAG Piranha MK-II 8x8 APCs had also been destroyed. Originally designed and built by the Swiss company MOWAG, there was licensed production in many NATO countries including the US, where the Marines used a variant called the LAV-25 with a propeller attached allowing it to ford shallow waters. Qatar’s version mounted a Cockerill 90 mm gun, one 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun, and another 7.62 machine gun on the turret. Each had a crew of three and carried five infantry soldiers.
The question now was whether Bilal would continue to Riyadh after this setback with his remaining one hundred fifty-eight Leopards and twenty-nine Piranha APCs, and no S-300s.
Bilal never even considered turning back. Qatar had implemented mandatory military conscription in 2015 with an average of 2,000 graduates per year in response to growing Saudi pressure to change its foreign policy, and the blockade starting in 2017 had just increased the resolve of its leadership.
One way or another, the blockade was going to end.
Bilal reached for his handset to call his headquarters in Doha. With the loss of both his S-300s, it wouldn’t be long before he had company in the skies above his force. If he and his men were to have any hope of survival, the Qatari Emeri Air Force would have to prove that its recent purchases were money well spent.
Captain Jim Cartwright looked at the feed displayed on one of the USS Oregon’s screens relayed by the DDV–X thoughtfully as it showed both the DT-Xs’ capabilities and limitations.
“So, Lieutenant, it looks like any tank those little drones could lock onto had a bad day ahead. But, it’s also clear that some of the tanks were difficult for them to get a lock on,” Cartwright said.
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Fischer replied, his head nodding up and down emphatically. “Some tanks appear to have been equipped with camouflage that was effective against an IR lock. However, as you say if the DT-X could get a lock, it meant one or more hits followed. Any tank hit directly by a Tomahawk was a definite kill, and it looks like the thermobaric warhead performed perfectly. As expected, not every bomblet scored a kill, but we can see many tanks suffering multiple hits that received catastrophic damage.”
Cartwright cocked his head. “Define catastrophic, Lieutenant.”
Fischer shrugged. “The tank has either flipped, or is missing its turret.”
Cartwright laughed and said, “Well, no one will be able to accuse you of inflating the numbers. Do we have a final tally yet?”
Fischer shook his head. “No, sir. First task is already done, designating targets that suffered catastrophic damage. Next is underway, distinguishing mobile from immobile targets. Then we’ll see which immobile targets have repair attempts made, as opposed to just checking for injured crewmen. We have software to help automate that task, for example by tracking the time crewman are visible near a target. I’ll be able to give you some rough numbers within the next half hour.”
Fischer hesitated and then said, “Those tanks took a real hit, sir. But I don’t think we stopped them.”
Cartwright nodded, and patted Fischer on the shoulder. “That’s fine, Lieutenant. I don’t think anyone expected us to. I’ll bet, though, that we just made life a lot easier for our Saudi friends.”
Fischer looked up from his screen and smiled. “Yes, sir. I think our Tomahawks just got a lot more valuable.”
Cartwright smiled back. That was exactly the sort of assessment an attack sub captain wanted to hear. He'd read that a Virginia class submarine cost a bit more than two and a half billion dollars to build, and about fifty million dollars a year to operate. He thought back to the video footage he'd just seen.
Not for the first time, he nodded to himself and smiled.
Worth every penny.
Captain Jawad Al-Dajani was just as frustrated as his commander, Prince Ali bin Sultan. First, he’d lost an M1A2 tank to an ambush with that cursed decoy. He’d just had another M1A2 tank replaced that had been lost to a Tosun anti-tank guided missile, an Iranian-built variant of the old Soviet 9M113 Konkurs. Two of the crew of that tank were also killed, though he took some satisfaction in the success of his own M1A2 tank in chasing down the Tosun fire crew, despite their having fired from over three kilometers away. Those three Houthis wouldn’t bother any other Saudi tanks, ever.
But it was a trade-off he knew the Saudi military simply couldn’t afford.
The Iranians could give the Houthis dozens of Tosuns for the cost of a single M1A2 tank. And there were certainly more Houthis in Yemen than there would ever be Saudis sent to fight them. He and all the other tank commanders were doing the most effective thing they could to avoid repetition of that incident, by sitting in their cupolas and looking for Tosuns or other threats, while the gunner relied on the view provided by the M1A2’s thermal and optical sensors.
Even worse was that so far, his platoon hadn’t been able to stop the firing of a single ballistic missile aimed at the Kingdom. Every potential launch site they’d been sent to investigate had been either nothing of the kind, or the launch had already happened, leaving nothing behind but smoking debris.