They were flying at two thousand feet over the dark waters of the Philippine Sea, threading the needle through what appeared to be two long lines of Chinese warships arranged north and south to protect the east coast of Mindanao. Twice now they had opened the dual side-by-side bomb-bay doors and deployed the two pods on their hydraulically operated arms, left them in the slipstream for a few minutes, then retracted them again. And they knew that with each passing minute, every time they lowered those pods they were exposing themselves to incredible danger that would only increase the closer they flew toward Mindanao.
The two pods were not weapons, but reconnaissance systems housed in aerodynamic pods that resembled a fighter’s standard 330-gallon external fuel tanks. In the right bomb bay they had an ATARS pod, which stood for Advanced Tactical Air Reconnaissance System. It housed two electronic charge-coupled device reconnaissance cameras and an infrared line scanner to photograph large sections of the sea in all directions in just a few minutes. In another pod in the left bomb bay, on a longer hydraulic arm that would project it eighteen inches lower than the ATARS pod, was a UPD-9 synthetic aperture radar pod that would take high- resolution radar images for fifty miles in all directions. All of the images were digitized, then transmitted via NIRTSat back to Andersen for analysis. They also had their usual complement of radar warning receivers and countermeasures systems, but on this flight they used high-speed digital data links to transmit the threat information they received back to Andersen.
Although the pods were incredibly effective and relatively small, they had one major drawback — they had a radar signature thousands of times larger than the B-2 carrying them. Every time they were lowered out of the bomb bay, Cobb and McLanahan lost all their stealth capabilities — and it was time to do it again. “Stand by for pod deploy…”
Suddenly, a huge yellow dome appeared on McLanahan’s Super Multi Function Display, not very far to the north of them — the dome nearly touched the B-2 icon, meaning they were very close to being within detection range of the radar. “Charlie-band radar… Sea Eagle air-search radar, either on a frigate or destroyer,” McLanahan reported. “We may be inside detection range now — if we lower the pods, we’ll definitely be in range.”
“Then let’s get it over with,” Cobb said. It was one of the few words he had said throughout the entire flight — obviously he wished he were someplace else right now.
“Rog. Pods coming down…”
True to his word, the second the two pods were deployed, the computer re-evaluated their new radar cross-section, remeasured the Sea Eagle radar’s output power, and redrew the radar’s effective detection range “dome” — this time placing it squarely over the B-2 icon at the lower center part of the SMFD. The radar cross-section of the two pods was so large that Patrick estimated they’d have to fly at least forty miles to get out of enemy radar coverage. “Air-search radar got us, three o’clock, range… range forty miles.”
As the UPD-9 pod finished its first circular sweep, more details of the area surrounding them appeared — including one very unwelcome one. “Surface target, nine o’clock, ten miles, no radar emissions, looks like a patrol boat… shit, we got another patrol boat at twelve miles, two o’clock position. Jesus, we’re surrounded by Chinese patrol boats…” McLanahan commanded the pods to retract immediately before any one of them got a lock on the B-2.
“Air target warning! Bearing one-eight-eight degrees, range seventy-four kilometers… no speed or altitude reading available… search radar active…”
“What? Are you sure? Get a track on that last contact!” the skipper of the
“Negative track… target disappeared, sir. Lost contact.” The new radar contact puzzled the destroyer commander, but it was obviously an anomaly or a very small target, like a flock of birds. The real quarry was still driving closer. “Status of the U-2.”
“Range approaching seventy-five kilometers… now.”
“Very well. Combat, bridge, commit forward HQ-91 system, stand by on DRBR-51 missile-guidance radar… now. Order
At that order, two HQ-91 missiles were fired from the forward twin launchers of the destroyer
