Battle Born (2 page)

North Korea’s vice foreign minister, Choe Su Hon, said in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly that the danger of another Korean War is “getting even more imminent” because the peninsula remains divided. Choe said reunification would remove the danger but called the U.S. military presence in South Korea the major obstacle.

U.S. military strategist William Taylor warned Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are “totally naked” to missile attacks from rogue nations like North Korea. He urged that missile defense systems planning take priority in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul.

A blue-ribbon Pentagon panel is urging the Clinton administration to improve the nation’s nuclear forces for decades to come in the face of Russia’s large arsenal and China’s growing strategic force. The report by the Defense Science Board task force challenges key U.S. arms-control policies, including the ban on nuclear testing, reliance on arms-reduction agreements and monitoring of nuclear-warhead reliability. A major finding is that the Pentagon lacks a long-term planning mechanism for nuclear-weapons programs.

U.S. and South Korean officials agreed to set up a joint psychological warfare unit that will attempt to win over North Korean civilians in the event of war.

As best they can, North Korean refugees drag themselves through snow and bitter cold to reach haven in China. Those who survive their personal exodus disclose horrifying tales of a slowly dying country, where famine is a continuing nightmare. . . . Aid supplies gathered by various agencies and sent to North Korea don’t usually get to ordinary people, despite what international aid agencies proclaim. Most food and medicine is routed to families of the Workers’ Party and the military. . . .

OVER NORTH-CENTRAL NEVADA
APRIL 2000

G
et pumped, hogs!” the B-1B Lancer’s pilot shouted excitedly on interphone. “We’re coming up on the squid low-level. I’m ready to kick some ass! Let’s show them who the top dogs are. I’m going to give us a few seconds on this way point, Long Dong. Thirty knots should do it. I want lots of room to rock and roll when they jump us. Power coming back to give us a few seconds’ pad. I want some shacks!” He pulled the throttles back until the time over target matched the required time over target on the flight plan. Then he pulled off one more notch of throttle until he had a good twenty-to-thirty-second pad.

“Go for it, Rodeo,” the B-1B’s OSO, or offensive systems officer, responded eagerly. He glanced at his flight plan for the time over target, then at the time-to-target readout on his forward instrument panel. Being a few seconds late at this point meant they could fly faster on the bomb run itself, where the threats were likely to be heaviest. They fully expected to get jumped by fighters on this run, which meant they’d be running all over the sky trying to stay alive.

As he made the airspeed adjustment, the pilot strained forward in his ejection seat to look at his wing-man,
a second B-1B bomber in loose formation on his right wing. The B-1 “Bone” (few called it by its official nickname, “Lancer”) rarely fought alone. If one B-1B supersonic bomber was a devastating weapon, two were triply difficult to defeat. They would need every possible advantage to win this battle.

Sure, this was only an exercise, not a true life-or-death struggle. But everyone in the B-1B was playing it as if it were the real thing. As someone once said, “The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.” Besides, in the eyes of these U.S. Air Force heavy bombardment crewdogs, getting “shot down”—especially by the U.S. Navy—was almost as bad as a real-life kill.

Naval Air Station Fallon was the home of the Navy Strike and Air Warfare Center and the new home of the “TOP GUN” Fighter Combat School. All aircraft carrier fighter and bomber aircrews were required to report to Navy Fallon before a deployment to certify their knowledge and skills in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat tactics. The Navy Fallon Target Range comprised over ten thousand square miles of an isolated corner of northern Nevada east of Reno, with some of the airspace restricted to all other aircraft from the surface to infinity, so the crews could practice live air-to-ground bombing, gunnery, and air combat maneuvers. Powerful TV cameras located throughout the range would score each bomber crew’s attacks, and instrument packages onboard each aircraft sent electronic telemetry to range control stations, allowing great scoring accuracy in air-to-air engagements during post-mission briefings.

Because the Navy liked to mix it up with as many different “adversaries” as possible, the U.S. Air Force was frequently invited to “play” at Navy Fallon. For the USAF bomber crews, there was no greater thrill
than to blow past the Navy’s defenses and bomb some targets on their home turf.

Ever since the B-1Bs arrived in Reno, there had been a heated competition between the Air Force and Navy about who were northern Nevada’s best military aviators. The competition would be even hotter today, because the B-1 unit in the box was the Nevada Air National Guard’s 111th “Aces High” Bomb Squadron from Reno-Tahoe International Airport, just a few miles west on Interstate 80 from Navy Fallon. The 111th was one of only three Air National Guard wings to fly the sleek, deadly B-1B Lancer. Some serious bragging rights were on the line here.

“Get us some range clearance, Mad Dog,” the pilot ordered.

“Rog,” the copilot responded. On the discrete “referee’s” radio frequency, unknown to the defensive players, he announced, “Fallon Range Control, Fallon Range Control, Aces Two-One flight of two, Austin One Blue inbound, requesting range clearance.”

“Aces Two-One flight, this is Navy Fallon bomb plot,” came the response. “Aces Two-One cleared hot into Navy Fallon ranges R-4804, R-4812, R-4810, Austin One MOA, Gabbs North MOA, and Ranch MOA routes and altitudes, maximum buzzer. Altimeter two-niner-niner-eight. Remain this frequency, monitor GUARD.”

“Two-One, cleared into-04,-12,-10, Austin One, Gabbs North, and Ranch, two-niner-niner-eight, coming in hot and max buzzer, check,” the copilot responded.

“Two,” the second B-1’s pilot responded. The less a wingman said on the radio, the better.

On interphone, the B-1’s copilot announced, “We’re cleared in hot, maximum buzzer.”

“Let’s go fry us up some squid, then!” the pilot
shouted again. There was no response. The rest of the crew was getting ready for the action.

Two systems operators, the OSO and the DSO—the defensive systems officer—sat behind the pilots in ejection seats in a small compartment just above the entry ladder hatch. As his name implied, the OSO handled the bomber’s weapon and attack systems. The DSO’s job was to call out threats as they appeared, monitor the system to make sure it responded properly when a radar threat came up, and take over operation of the defensive gear if the computers malfunctioned.

A tone sounded over interphone, a slow, almost playful
deedle . . . deedle . . . deedle.
“E-band early-warning radar, gang,” the DSO announced. “Bad guys are searching for us. No height finder yet. Time to go low.”

“Copy,” the pilot said. On the interplane frequency, he radioed, “Trapper, take spacing. Keep it within eight miles.”

“Rog, Rodeo,” the wingman’s pilot responded, and began a slight turn, letting the distance between the two bombers increase. Although they would both be flying the same route and attacking the same target, they would fly slightly different paths, separated by at least thirty seconds. This would hopefully confuse and complicate the defender’s task. The two bombers also used air-to-air TACAN to monitor the distance between them, and they had emergency procedures to follow if the distance dropped below three miles and they didn’t have each other in sight. “See you in the winner’s circle.”

“Radar altimeter set
AUTO
, bug set to 830, radar altimeter override armed,” the copilot announced on interphone. “Both TFR channels set to one thousand hard ride. Wings full aft. Flight director set to
NAV
, pitch mode select switch to
TERFLW
, copilot.”

“Set pilot.” The pilot was flipping switches before the copilot read each step. The command bars on his center vertical situation display, or VSD, dipped to twenty degrees nose-down. “Twenty pitch-down command. Here we go.” When he pressed the TERFLW, or terrain following, switch on his Automatic Flight Control System control panel, the B-1 bomber dove for the hard desert earth below like an eagle swooping in for the kill. In the automatic TERFLW descent, the 350,000-pound bomber was screaming earthward at over fifteen thousand feet per minute.

“Min safe altitude nine thousand,” the OSO called out. “Looking for LARA ring-in.” Just as he announced this, the low-altitude radar altimeter locked onto the earth. Now that the bomber knew exactly where earth was, it descended even faster. Dirt, dust, a piece of insulation, and a loose flight-plan page floated around the cabin in the sudden negative Gs of the rapid descent. The OSO felt like breakfast was soon going to follow, and he pulled his straps tighter.

Suddenly, the DSO shouted, “Bandits eleven o’clock, thirty miles and closing fast! Looks like a Hornet!”

“Shit!” the pilot cursed. He was hoping they wouldn’t find them so early. “Hang on, crew.” With his gloved right index finger, he pulled the trigger on his control stick to the first detent, then rolled the B-1 up on its left wing until they were almost sideways. The sudden loss of lift from the sleek, blended fuselage made the bomber plummet from the sky even faster.

“Passing twenty!” the OSO shouted a few seconds later, after pinching his nose through his oxygen mask and blowing against the pressure to relieve the squeezing in his ears. “Passing fifteen! C’mon, Sonny, let’s get down there! Push it over!” The pilot didn’t roll the bomber upside down, but he did increase the bank angle
to well over ninety degrees. It roared out of the sky like a lightning bolt.

Just seconds before it would have hit the ground, the pilot rolled out of his steep bank with a fast yank of the control stick. The big but nimble bomber snapped upright with the speed and agility of a small jet fighter and leveled off less than a thousand feet above the ground. Its AN/ASQ-164 multimode radar displayed a profile of the terrain out to ten miles ahead of the aircraft on both pilots’ VSDs. The B-1 punched through a layer of clouds at six thousand feet—and before their eyes was the high-terrain, snow-encrusted Dixie Peak staring right back at them, nearly filling the windscreen. “Damn!” the pilot shouted, banking left again to fly around the peak. “I hate letdowns over mountains!”

“That cumulogranite might’ve just put the fear of God into that squid pilot chasing us,” the OSO reminded him. “Let him try to chase us now, with Dixie staring in his face!”

With the valley floor in clear sight, the rest of the descent went smoothly. The Offensive Radar System electronically scanned ten miles ahead and to both sides, measuring the width and height of the entire terrain and providing pitch inputs to the autopilot so the bomber would clear it by the selected altitude. The pilots first selected TF 1000 and accomplished a fast check of both redundant TFR system channels, then stepped the clearance plane down to its lowest setting of TF 200. They also selected “hard ride,” which would command steeper climbs and descents over the terrain so they could hug the earth even closer.

Now that they were clear of clouds and could see the ground, after checking the TERFLW system for a few moments, the pilot deactivated automatic navigation and used visual contour procedures to guide the huge bomber. Instead of gripping the control stick, he
pushed on the sides of it with an open palm, dodging and cutting down and between any significant terrain features while allowing the automatic TERFLW system to guide them over high terrain. Flying in a straight line only made it easier for defenders to find them. Hugging terrain contours while letting TERFLW keep the B-1B as low as possible was the best and safest tactic. “Where’s that bandit, D?” the pilot shouted.

“Moving to four o’clock, twenty-five miles,” the DSO replied. “He’s not locked on . . . wait, he’s got a lock!
Notch right
, reference heading two-four-zero!”

“Aces, notching right!” the pilot shouted on the interplane frequency. He then honked the B-1 into a tight sixty-degree bank turn to the right, changing course ninety degrees to their original track and placing themselves on the back side of Dixie Peak. Most modern-day fighters like the F-15, F/A-18, and F-22 used pulse-Doppler attack radars, which acquired targets based on relative speed. Turning ninety degrees to the fighter’s flight path made relative speed equal to the fighter’s speed, causing the fighter radar’s computer to analyze the target as a terrain feature and squelch the target. The turn would also complicate the fighter pilot’s attack geometry and give the bomber a chance to hide behind terrain. The B-1 descended to less than three hundred feet above the desert floor, flying over six hundred miles per hour.

“Lost the bandit,” the DSO reported. “He’s somewhere at five o’clock.”

“Rog,” the pilot said. He knew that Dixie Peak was between him and the fighter, and the longer he kept it there, the closer he’d get to his target before the next attack.

“Clear to the IP, pilot,” the OSO shouted. “Center up, steering’s good.” The pilot started a left turn back
toward the target area, drawing a mental picture of the air situation.