The Intruders popped up at a range of thirty miles, just outside range of the SAMs, and loosed four Standard-ARM missiles each, which homed in on the Russian search radars. The Russian radar operators faced a cruel choice. They could leave their search radars on and almost certainly have them destroyed or turn them off and lessen the chance-and completely lose track of the overhead air battle. They chose a middle ground. The Soviet SAM commander ordered his men to flip their systems on and off at random intervals, hoping to confuse the incoming missiles while keeping tenuous coverage of the incoming strike. The missile flight time was just over a minute, and most of the radar crews took the time to switch their systems off and leave them off-each misunderstanding the order in the most advantageous manner.
The Phoenixes arrived first. The MiG pilots suddenly lost their ground-control guidance, but kept maneuvering. One aircraft had four missiles targeted, and evaded two missiles only to blunder into another one. The major in command swore at his inability to hit back as he tried to think of something that would work.
Next came the Standard-ARMs. The Russians had three air-search radars and three more for missile-acquisition. All had been turned on when the first alarm sounded, then all had gone black after the missiles had been detected in the air. The Standards were only partially confused. Their guidance systems had been designed to record the position of a radar in case it did go off the air, and they homed in on those positions now. The missiles killed two transmitters entirely and damaged two others.
The American mission commander was annoyed. The Russian fighters were not cooperating. They hadn't come out even when the Intruders had popped up-he'd had more fighters waiting low for that eventuality. But the Soviet radars were down. He gave the next order. Three squadrons of F/A-18 Hornets streaked in low from the north.
The Russian air-defense commander ordered his radars back on, saw that no more missiles were in the air, and soon picked up the low-flying Hornets. The MiG commander saw the American attack aircraft next, and with them, his chance. The MiG-29 was a virtual twin to the new American aircraft.
The Hornets sought out the Russian SAM launchers and began to launch their guided weapons at them. Missiles crisscrossed the sky. Two Hornets fell to missiles, two more to guns, as the American fighter-bombers scoured the ground with bombs and gunfire. Then the MiGs arrived.
The American pilots were warned, but were too close to their bombing targets to react at once. Once free of their heavy ordnance, they were fighters again, and climbed into the sky-they feared MiGs more than missiles. The resulting air battle was a masterpiece of confusion. The two aircraft would have been hard to distinguish sitting side by side on the ground. At six hundred knots, in the middle of battle, the task was almost impossible, and the Americans, with their greater numbers, had to hold fire until they were sure of their targets. The Russians knew what they were attacking, but they too shrank from shooting with abandon at a target that looked too much like a comrade's aircraft. The result was a swarming mix of fighters closing to a range too short for missiles, as pilots sought positive target identification, an anachronistic gun duel punctuated by surface-to-air missiles from the two surviving Russian launchers. Controllers on the American aircraft and the Russian ground station never had a chance to direct matters. It was entirely in the hands of the pilots. The fighters went to afterburner and swept into punishing high-g turns while heads swiveled and eyes squinted at familiar shapes while trying to decide if the paint scheme was friendly or not. That part of the task was fairly even. The American planes were haze-gray and harder to spot, allowing easier target identification at long range than at short. Two Hornets died first, followed by a MiG. Then another MiG fell to cannon fire, and a Hornet to a snap-shot missile. An errant SAM exploded a MiG and a Hornet together.
