The Saddle Arabia Diaries

Entry 3: The Night the Lights went Out in Zakirabad

Captain Spark

80th Bomb Wing

0034 hours, January 18 2013

The skies above Saddle Arabia

I looked out the window but there was nothing to see, not even when I adjusted my glasses.  The desert passing by only one hundred feet below our aircraft might as well have been miles away, lost under the clouded night skies.  Good.  Darkness was our friend.

The B-1B Lancer was arguably the best bomber in the world for minimum altitude strike missions, and there was no place I’d rather be than sitting at my defensive systems station in the back seat.

Lieutenant Colonel Dust was the pilot.  His helmeted head rested on the seat in front of me.  As unicorns, we were both in the Air Force’s minority.  His deft touch on the controls and my training with electronics made us suited for the low-level penetration bomber role.  Pegasi generally made up the fighter pilot corps, but the natural flying sense of our copilot, Major Winter, was a nice complement to Colonel Dust’s abilities.  Beside me in the back was an earth pony mare named Captain Burster, the offensive systems operator.  Because she was in charge of our ordnance we nicknamed her Boom-Boom, which could have been taken several ways but she didn’t seem to mind.

Our crew had trained together for quite a while.  Even if we weren’t all good friends, which we were, the practice would have honed our group into an effective unit, a cohesive collection of ponies working together in sync.  We’d rehearsed missions like this in the Neighvada desert, a place similar to Saddle Arabia.  Tonight was the real deal.

I checked my systems panel.  Off to the northeast was our set of targets, a SAM [surface-to-air missile] site and an electric substation.  The missiles guarded the power grid for Zakirabad from ponies like us who wanted to take it out.  The intel guys had told me that we were dealing with SA-5’s, a very long range system developed in the old Hooviet Union.

The Lancer was not a true stealth aircraft.  It was a lot harder to see on radar than some things, but that would only help us so much.  Our primary method of staying out of sight was flying in the dirt like Colonel Dust was doing.

In a way, a unicorn pilot was a lot less unconventional than the plane he commanded.  The B-1B was massive, and could carry a 75,000 pound payload- almost a whole semi truck.  Despite that, it looked like a scaled-up fighter, with wings that folded back at high speed to allow it to skim the ground at nearly Mach 1 with no trouble.  The four afterburning engines had power to spare, and the trio of bomb bays could carry just about any mud-moving weapon the Air Force owned.

“Ninety miles to target,” reported Burster, her voice going out on the cockpit intercom.

“Still clear,” I replied, checking the threat board.

Our reports did not leave the airplane.  Part of sneaking in was staying quiet.  Everything about the mission had been planned ahead, and there was no need for the radio.  If we stayed on the correct course and speed, our support would arrive right on time.

Bringing up the rear, miles behind us to the south, was a Navy EA-6B Prowler, a small, slow aircraft with next to no weapons.  What made it valuable were the jamming pods hanging beneath the wings.  In the face of enemy radar and communications, the Prowler could blast the area with a cloud of RF [radio frequency] noise to render electronics useless.

Bucking Navy.  They were just going to hang out and work their little beep-boop computer thing.  Meanwhile, we had to do the heavy lifting- literally.  The Prowler couldn’t carry enough weapons needed for the mission.

Knocking out the SA-5 missiles was first priority for a reason.  They had a very long range and very powerful warheads.  We could sneak under the radar for a while, but the closer we got to the site, the more likely it was that we would be detected.

I checked threat board.  Seventy miles out.  The radar, over the horizon from us, was starting to tickle the upper surfaces of the bomber but not enough for a return just yet.  “I suggest another drop in altitude to evade radar.”

“Gotcha.”  Dust carefully, very carefully, applied a slight magical pressure to the control stick in front of him.  The plane gave up another twenty feet of altitude, dropping us to a mere eighty.  This was technically the autopilot’s job, but I trusted Dust more than a computer.

Funny, then, that my whole job was dealing with electronics.  Maybe my dislike of enemy radars had inadvertently carried over to all electronics in general.  You can’t blame me.  My whole job was defeating detection and keeping the Lancer invisible.

I glanced at the time display, counting down.  We had carefully planned the mission, down to the second.  I watched the time continue.  When a prearranged moment came, my screen flashed into a whiteout with a huge amount of static from the Prowler.  If the jamming looked this bad to me, imagine what the missile operators must be seeing.

“Jamming’s on.”

Dust made a small noise to let me know he had heard.  I wasn’t required to let him know, and he wasn’t required to respond, but both gestures were good for everypony’s confidence.

Still, the jamming wouldn’t protect us forever.  When we got close enough to the radar, its signal would “burn through” the cloud of noise and pick us up anyway.  Dust carefully altered course to spiral us towards the target, reducing our closing rate.  This kept us hidden in the jamming longer and fooled the radar’s range calculators, so it thought we weren’t moving so fast.

The maneuver did make our course longer, however.  Good thing one of our bomb bays had been fitted with a ten thousand gallon fuel tank.  The plane had some pretty long legs to begin with, but this gave us quite a boost.

We spiraled in, staying low and patiently approaching the target.  At thirty miles, it was time for our final attack run.  The Lancer came around, its sharp nose slicing through the desert air directly towards the missiles.

My hooves shook slightly with nervousness as I hit the switches for our electronic countermeasures.  The bomber carried a small jammer of its own, but at this point we were committed to the attack and whatever happened, happened.  I tried to relax, adjusting my glasses again.  There was one final touch to our defenses.  I popped loose the ALE-50 Towed Decoy, a small target that trailed behind the plane and would hopefully attract a missile meant for us.

The mare beside me had her weapons ready to go.  She checked the readouts and compared our location to the drop zone.  I felt Dust pull back on the controls to get the bomber to mission altitude.  It was at that moment my panel lit up with acquisition.  They had locked us up with fire control radar.

Had a missile been launched right then, we would have been dead.  There was a moment’s hesitation as if the radar operator could hardly believe his eyes.  Then- launch.

I couldn’t see the missile site in the dark, but the satellite photos of the site that the intel guys had shown us before the mission depicted it as a six-pointed star like the old Hooviet doctrine.  Each point on the star had a couple of missile launchers facing outwards.  The radar, command center, and generators were at the middle of the star.  Even if we didn’t manage to take out the missiles themselves, they would be useless without the other things.

The fiery rocket motor of the launched weapon went streaking by my window as the plane passed the missile’s minimum engagement distance.  It hadn’t had time to arm, and disappeared harmlessly behind us.  At the same instant, Boom-Boom shook loose two dozen Mark 82 Snakeye bombs.  The Lancer jerked higher with the sudden drop in weight.

Each weapon packed five hundred pounds of high explosive and was fitted with tail fins that slowed it down, letting our low-flying airplane get away before the bombs exploded on the ground and damaged us.

The radar disappeared from the threat board under the onslaught of twelve thousand pounds of destruction.  I touched Boom-Boom’s shoulder, wordlessly congratulating her on a job well done, but didn’t take my eyes off the board.  The night wasn’t over yet.

Dust pulled back on the stick, lifting us away from the ground to where any surprise anti-aircraft gun emplacements couldn’t get us.  Our next target was only a few minutes away, a substation that controlled critical infrastructure for Zakirabad.  While it didn’t provide electricity to the whole city, it was an important target because eliminating it should cause a domino effect that took down the entire power grid.  That was why we had to destroy a serious missile defense system to get to it.  Speaking of, I cut loose the decoy.  There were no more radar sites out there to take advantage of its distraction.

We did have to worry about Anti-Air Pegasi, but they had to have daylight to see us or be guided by a ground control station painting us with radar.  This low, this fast, it wasn’t a problem.  And once we turned tail for home, none of them would be able to catch up.  The last time I checked, the only pegasus who could break Mach 1 was Rainbow Dash, and she was one of our pilots.

The substation was a worthy target even if it wasn’t as inherently dangerous as a missile site.  A blackout in Zakirabad would give our troops a big advantage.  We had planned for darkness.  The enemy hadn’t.  Not to mention the loss of all the electronics the Saddle Arabians normally took for granted.

The Prowler ended its jamming and turned away.  The hard part of the mission was over.  The Navy aircraft would get home before we did, but I consoled myself that at least I would be returning to a nice runway instead of a ship.

Over our next target, the rotary bomb racks installed in the belly of the Lancer spun to the correct position and unleashed a couple of special weapons.  They were cluster bombs, loaded with reels of fine graphite wire.  Over the target, the conductive filaments would spread out like a spiderweb and short-circuit the entire substation.  It limited collateral damage and death of any civilians in the area, and destroyed electronics just as well as a bomb.

I glanced out the window.  The glow of Zakirabad’s lights on the horizon were suddenly snuffed out as if the city had never existed.  Mission complete, the bomber slowly banked into a turn, heading for home.

A warning tone sounded in my headset, alerting me to a new radar that had just turned on.  I frantically checked my equipment, surprise and fear quickening my movements.  The signal was fighter-based, and coming in on our tail.  “We’ve got a big problem!”

I searched my memory for an aircraft that matched the radar return I was getting, deciding that we probably faced a Mirage F1.  It was an older fighter, but that didn’t make it any less deadly.  The Lancer was fast, but not fast enough to run.  It certainly couldn’t outmaneuver the smaller plane.

That didn’t mean we were going down without a fight.  Dust shoved the throttles forward and pointed the nose at the ground.  We slipped through Mach 1 and kept accelerating.  Forced to follow to get a good radar picture, the Mirage mimicked our path.

From what the blinking lights of the threat board were telling me, the fighter was getting close to missile range.  I threw all the power I could into our meager jammer and fired a few rounds of decoy chaff and flares to confuse the Mirage’s sensors.

Did I say buck the Navy?  I take it back.  While the fighter’s radar wasn’t as powerful as the SA-5 site, the Prowler detected it and turned back to give us a helping hoof.  The blanketing RF jamming effectively shut down any hopes the fighter pilot had of locking us up with a radar missile.

I knew that the Mirage could still track us by the glow from our afterburning exhaust.  The fighter was able to carry heat-seeking missile to home in on that, too.  Less serious but still something to think about were the fighter’s machine guns.  The jamming had bought some time, though.  Our assailant would have to get a lot closer to use those other weapons.

With a practiced eye, Dust hauled back on the stick, pulling the Lancer out of its dive under as many g’s as the airframe could stand.  We leveled out over the desert at fifty feet and Mach 2.

And then the Mirage disappeared.  I blinked, hardly believing it.  Cautiously, Dust pulled the throttles out of afterburner and we made a slow spiral up to altitude.  I squinted through the window, making out a plume of flame in the night.  Our pursuer had slammed into the desert sand.

“We got a maneuver kill!” I cheered on the open airwaves.  “Nopony ever beats the ground!”

Under wartime flying rules, any way you could destroy an enemy aircraft was acceptable, including tricking them into crashing.  This was one of the very few times that a bomber could claim credit for killing another airplane.

“Hang on there, Air Force,” came the voice of a Naval Flight Officer sitting in the back of the Prowler.  “It was our jamming that confused his radar altimeter into thinking he wasn’t so close to the terrain.  If anything, you got the assist.”

Buck the Navy.