"Brown, Dale - Patrick 7 - Battle Born" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

The base's fleet also included a number of Frenchbuilt Mirage Fl fighters, American-built F-5 fighters for daylight intercepts-the North Korean Air Force was ill equipped to fight at night-and American-built F-4E Phantom jets for both bombing and air defense work. The alert fleet of twelve F-4Es was loaded with highexplosive and incendiary "firestorm" bombs specifically targeted for low-level, high-speed bombing raids of key selected North Korean targets, should the expectedmany said inevitable-invasion from the North take place.
At the sound of the Klaxon, all alert crews went to their fighters and bombers, started engines, and monitored the air defense network. Even though they were in a heightened state of alert, no planes launched. A "launch on alert" could set off an uncontrollable military escalation between North and South in minutes. With engines running, the entire alert force could be in the air in less than two minutes. With planes talking off every fifteen seconds from the main runway and the two taxiways, twenty-four warplanes could be in the



sky from this base alone in less time than it took a highspeed attacker to fly ten miles.
The crews listened and waited. Was it the actual invasion this time? Was this the big showdown between the Communists and the South here at last?
"Unidentified aircraft heading south at three-fourzero degrees bearing from Wonju, fifteen miles, you are in danger of crossing the Demilitarized Zone at your present heading and airspeed," the South Korean air defense controller warned. "This is your final warning. If you cross restricted airspace, you will be fired upon. Unidentified aircraft, turn north immediately or you will be fired upon." At that same moment, two green lights flashed on the flight-line ready board. The first two South Korean F-16s had launch clearance.
As soon as they were airborne, the lead pilot switched his wingman to the air defense controller's call-up frequency. "Sapphire Command, Tiger flight of two, passing three thousand, check."
"Two," his wingman replied.
"Tiger flight, Sapphire Command reads you loud and clear," the controller responded. "Switch to blue seven."
"Tiger flight going to blue seven now." After receiving a curt "Two" from his wingman-any good wingman will answer all calls with little more than his position in the formation-the two pilots changed over to a secure HAVE QUICK radio frequency. The channel "hopped" to different frequencies at irregular intervals, making it difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop. "Sapphire, Tiger flight with you passing four thousand, check."
"Two."
"Tiger flight, this is Sapphire Control, read you loud and clear," the air defense controller responded, his voice now slightly garbled by the computer-
controlled frequency-hopping algorithm. "Say position from Solar."
The lead pilot flipped his navigation system to the Solar way point, an imaginary point from which they could give position reports without revealing their position to outsiders. "Tiger flight is zero-six-three degrees bearing and one-niner miles from Solar."
"Roger, Tiger flight. Fly heading two-niner-five and take base plus one-four." Base altitude today was ten thousand feet, so the F-16s started a climb to twentyfour thousand feet. A few minutes later, when they were less than twenty miles from the DMZ, the controller called, "Linear."



The lead F-16 pilot activated his APG-66 attack radar, and seconds later the radar locked onto a target directly off the nose. "Tiger flight is tied on, bogey bearing two-niner-seven, range thirty-two, low, speed threezero-zero."
"Tiger flight, that's your bogey," the controller replied.
The F-16's APG-66 pulse-Doppler radar could track several targets simultaneously, but just for good measure the lead ROK pilot broke lock on the target and let the radar scan the sky again. No more targets. A lone invader from the North? The North rarely flew singleship. A tight formation of many invaders? The Communist fliers were not known for their formation flying skills in daytime, and they rarely flew at all at night, much less in formation.
But the ROK pilot had learned never to rely on such assumptions. It was always better to assume there were numerous attackers out there. "Tiger flight, tactical spread, now."
"Two." The second F-16 left his leader's right-wingtip and spread out several hundred feet laterally and two hundred feet above, close enough to keep his leader



in sight in the darkness but still be able to move and react quickly if the tactical situation changed. The Communist pilot might be able to see two targets on his radar screen-if he bothered to turn his radar on. So far, there was not one squeak from the threat-warning receiver, meaning he was not using his attack radar. Some of the North's advanced J-7 and MiG-29 fighters purchased from China had infrared tracking devices and infrared-homing missiles, so radar wasn't necessary close-in, but it was still very strange for an attacker to charge blindly into enemy territory without using radar.
The target continued across the DMZ without the slightest change in airspeed, altitude, or heading. The Communists had just committed an overt act of war, breaking the fragile truce between North and South.
The second Korean War was under way.
To the ROK pilot, this was not just an act of warthis was an act of barbarism. The two nations had been struggling for years to make peace and eventually reunite their two countries. Covert probes by North Korean special forces and provocative but nonaggressive border "incidents," meant to trip the South into reacting with force for propaganda purposes, were bad enough. But this was a deliberate air-attack profile.
There was plenty of mutual distrust to go around. The South was accused of building up an invasion force by buying or license-building American fighters, warships, antiaircraft systems, radars, and high-tech precision-guided weapons. The North was accused of continuous spy missions and of deploying improved surface-to-surface missile systems capable of bornbarding Seoul with chemical, biological, or even nuclear warheads. Everyone knew the arms race between the two countries had to stop, but neither side wanted to make the first substantive move.
Both nations tried "baby steps" toward peace. The
North agreed to dismantle its breeder nuclear reactors in favor of light-water reactors, less capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material. The West promised huge grants of cooking and heating oil so the North would not be tempted to trade weapons for oil from unfriendly Middle East nations such as Iran. The South canceled joint U.S. and Japanese military maneuvers, removed Patriot and Rapier air defense systems from the DMZ, and reduced U.S. military presence to less than ten thousand troops. But the distrust continued.
The ROK pilot wanted nothing more than to see the entire Korean peninsula


reunited once again-under a Korean, not a foreign, flag. That had been the dream of all Koreans since the Chinese and Japanese occupations. But what he wanted didn't matter right now. Right now his homeland was under attack, and it was his sacred responsibility to stop it.
He scanned an authentication encoder-decoder card strapped to his left thigh. Even though the pilots and the controller were on a secure frequency and had already verified each other's identity, they were entering a critical phase of this mission. Careful coordination and verification was an absolute must. The card was changed every twelve hours and would provide positive .command validation for all upcoming orders: "Sapphire Command, this is Tiger flight, authenticate Tango-Alpha. Over."
"Sapphire authenticates Alpha."
"Authentication received and verified. Tiger flight requests final intercept instructions."
"Stand by, Tiger flight," the controller responded. The wait was not long. "Tiger flight, you are ordered to attempt to make visual contact to verify the target's identity. If it is a hostile aircraft, or if identification is not possible, you are instructed to attempt to force the



aircraft to land at a category Charlie, Delta, Echo, or Foxtrot airfield, military or civilian. If the hostile will not respond, or if you are approaching any category Bravo airspace, you are authorized to destroy the hostile aircraft." Then the controller read the current datetime group and authentication code, and it matched.
The F-16 lead pilot called up the coordinates of the closest category Bravo airspace, which happened to be Seoul itself. They were only fifty miles north of the edge of the thirty-mile Buffer Zone around the South Korean capital. At their current airspeed, the pilot had only about seven minutes to convince the Communist invader to turn around or land before he had to shoot him out of the sky.
He tried the radio first. In Korean, then in broken Chinese, he radioed, "Unidentified aircraft seventyeight miles northeast of Seoul, this is the Republic of Korea air defense flight leader. You have violated restricted airspace. I have you in sight and am prepared to destroy you if you do not reverse course immediately. I warn you to reverse course now." No response. He tried the universal emergency frequencies on UHF, VHP, and HF channels as well as several known North Korean fighter common frequencies, but there was still no response.
It took two minutes for the F-16 pilot, with his wingman flying high cover position, to maneuver alongside the hostile aircraft. Thankfully, it was only a single plane, not an entire attack formation. It was easy to intercept the intruder visually because he had all of his outside navigation and anticollision lights on-and, the ROK pilot soon realized with surprise, he had his landing gear and takeoff flaps still down too! Incredibly, this pilot had launched and flown hundreds of miles with his gear and flaps down. He was sucking fuel at an enormous rate, and at over three hundred knots had