“We’ve got a little rolling terrain about twenty miles to the west, and nothing but Davao Gulf and another destroyer off to the east,” McLanahan said. “Otherwise it’s flat, flat, flat. The fighters are at our twelve o’clock… getting a range estimate now of twenty-two miles. They’ll be in missile range soon.”
“We go west then,” Cobb said. He banked his B-2 hard to the left, scurrying across the wide valley for the relative safety of a hilly ridge.
“Fifteen minutes until we reach that ridge… about two minutes,” McLanahan reported. “Bandits one o’clock, fifteen minutes…” At that moment one of the yellow arcs representing the enemy’s radar swept across the B-2 icon, and the yellow instantly turned to red as the radar locked on. “Shit, shit,
The heads-up display on the Chinese JS-7 first locked onto the air target briefly, and the attack radar quickly computed the target’s altitude, heading, airspeed, and closure rate — but it was the A-5K’s low-light TV sensor that first caught a glimpse of the enemy. The sensor’s contrast-tracking function immediately locked onto the warm object and began to track it…
And, as the target made a slight turn to the west, there was no mistaking its identity — the pilot of the A-5K saw the distinctive boomerang profile of an American B-2 bomber. “A stealth bomber! Stealth bomber!” the A-5 pilot shouted excitedly on the command radio. “Very low, heading west…” He was so excited that he forgot to give a proper report…
… And he also forgot he was in formation with another airplane. The two Chinese planes almost collided as the A-5 pilot turned westward to try to keep the fast-flying bomber within his low-light TV’s field of view.
But as they did, extremely heavy jamming from the B-2 continually broke radar-lock — the massive energy even put the Cyrano-IV radar in “Reset” twice.
“Affirmative,
“I’m receiving heavy jamming and I can’t maintain a radar lock. Close us within PL-2 missile range. You have the lead.”
“I have the lead.” The JS-7 pilot could feel the tension grow in his arms and shoulders as he made the dangerous transition from following his radar cues and searching out the windscreen for terrain to picking up the A-5K’s dim formation-lights. He used a few notches of airbrakes to slide back and ease into a comfortable position on the A-5’s right wing, but he immediately edged away from the fighter- bomber in a momentary panic when he thought he was getting sucked in too close. It took several moments of adjusting before he could inch back in to proper wingman position.
At night, only a few meters away from another fighter loaded with weapons, traveling over sixteen kilometers per minute close to the ground, chasing down a heavily armed and dangerous intruder — it was some of the most dangerous flying around.
The two crew members of the B-2 Black Knight stealth bomber only seventeen miles ahead of the Chinese pilots might have disagreed.
Cobb had the power up to full military thrust, trying desperately to make it to the cover of the hills to the west. “Fighter’s crossing behind us,” McLanahan told him. “They found us… fighter radar’s down now. They might be engaging visually or by IR.” He set the B-2’s MAWS system from “Passive” to “Active.” MAWS, or Missile Approach Warning System, used small passive infrared sensors to search for nearby aircraft that might be a threat. Once a threat was located, it would lock onto it and continue to track it. If MAWS detected a second flash of light from that same target — indicating the ignition of a missile’s rocket motor — it would activate the bomber’s ALQ-199A Doppler radar missile tracking system to track the missiles and begin active countermeasures.
“I’m launching the SLAM missiles — at least we’ll take out the radar before these bozos get us.” McLanahan touched the weapon icons at the bottom of the Super Multi Function Display, overrode the mission timing schedule of the computer that deconflicted weapon releases for the entire strike package, then commanded the two Standoff Land Attack Missiles to launch. Cobb had to allow the bomber to climb an excruciatingly high one hundred extra feet before the missiles would start their countdown: “Altitude hold off… missile one counting down… doors open… missile one giway… launcher rotating… missile two away… doors closed… altitude hold back on, descend back to one hundred feet TFR.”
Although they still had two SLAMs and two HARM antiradar missiles remaining, their primary mission was completed — as the old bomber pilot’s saying goes, once the bombs are gone, you’re not flying for Uncle Sam anymore; you’re flying for yourself.
