Rogue Forces

“Do it! Do it!” the TD said.

The TAO furiously typed commands into his targeting computer, ordering Patriot to engage the closer, slower targets. “Patriot engaging!” he reported. “The fast movers are accelerating to supersonic…sir. Sector Four reports the drones have left their orbits, descending, accelerating, and are heading into our sector!”

“Can they engage?” But he already knew the answer: one Patriot radar couldn’t sweep into another’s because of interference, which created false targets that the engagement computer might launch against. Only one radar could handle an engagement. Their battery would have to take on all twenty-two targets…

…which meant they would run out of missiles by the time the fast movers arrived! “Reprogram the engagement computer to fire only one missile!” the tactical director ordered.

“But there’s not enough time!” the tactical action officer said. “I’d have to terminate this engagement and…”

“Don’t argue, just do it!” The TAO had never typed as fast as he did then. He managed to reprogram the engagement computer and reengage the batteries…

…but he couldn’t do it fast enough, and one radar was hit by the cruise missiles. The missiles, which were AGM-158A JASSMs, or Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missiles, were turbojet-powered air-launched cruise missiles with thousand-pound blast fragmentation warheads and a range of over two hundred miles.

Now one radar had to handle the entire engagement. Patriot radars didn’t sweep like conventional mechanically scanning radars, and didn’t have to be steered, but they had a specific section of sky that was assigned to them to avoid interference problems. The remaining radar, located at Batman Air Base sixty miles east of Diyarbakir, had been assigned to look south, into Iraq, and not westerly toward Diyarbakir. On their current heading—actually tracking through Syria—they were on the extreme edge of the radar’s airspace.

“Order the Batman radar to turn west-southwest to cover that flight path,” the tactical director ordered. The TAO relayed the order. The AN/MPQ-53 radar array was normally trailer-mounted, and although it was fairly easy to move to cover a new section of sky, it was generally never done, especially when under attack. The Batman emplacement was different, however: even though Patriot is designed to be mobile, the Batman site was set up semipermanently, which meant its radar array could be easily moved as necessary.

“Radar reset, good track on the fast movers,” the TAO reported a few minutes later. “Patriot engaging—”

But at that moment, all radar indications went out. “What happened?” the tactical director shouted.

“The Batman radar is off the air,” the TAO reported. “Hit by a cruise missile.” A few moments later: “Ground observers reporting two fast-moving low-altitude jets flew overhead from the east.” Now it was obvious what had happened: turning the radar to look farther to the west had reduced coverage to the east. Two jets had simply slipped in through the gap in radar coverage between Batman and Van and attacked the radar.

Diyarbakir was now wide open.

ABOARD FRACTURE ONE-NINE

THAT SAME TIME

“Fracture flight, this is One-Niner, your tail is clear,” Lieutenant Colonel Gia “Boxer” Cazzotto radioed to the rest of her little squadron of B-1B Lancer bombers. “Let’s go get them, what do you say?”

“Fracture One-Nine, this is Genesis,” Patrick McLanahan radioed via their secure transceiver. “Are you getting the latest downloads?”

“Buckeye?”

“Roger, I got ’em,” the offensive systems officer, or OSO, replied. “The images are great—even better than the radar.” He was looking at ultra-high-resolution radar images of Diyarbakir Air Base in Turkey, taken by NIRTSat reconnaissance satellites only moments earlier. The images downloaded from the satellites could be manipulated by the B-1’s AN/APQ-164 bombing system as if the bomber’s own radar had taken the shot. They were over forty miles to the target, well outside low-altitude radar range, but the OSO could see and compute target coordinates well before flying over the target.

The OSO got busy grabbing target coordinates and loading them into their eight remaining JASSM attack missiles, and once all the missiles had targets loaded, they coordinated launches by time and azimuth and let them fly. This time the turbojet-powered cruise missiles flew low, avoiding known obstacles using inertial navigation with Global Positioning System updates. The six B-1 bombers each released eight JASSMs, filling the sky with forty-eight of the stealthy cruise missiles.