Battlefield Ukraine

Hardly a Vacation

Major Dale Young, call sign “Honey Badger,” had been stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base for the past two years. His wife (who had been his college sweetheart) loved living in Germany. They were a young couple with no children, and for the time being, they were just enjoying being childless and living in Europe. They had planned on traveling to Sorrento, Italy, for a weeklong vacation along the Amalfi coast when his leave was canceled and his squadron was sent to Krakow and placed on ready-alert for possible military action against Russia.

Dale wasn’t too upset over the change in plans (although his wife certainly was). This is what he had signed up for — to be a fighter pilot and face down America’s enemies. His squadron, the 480^th, had a long and proud lineage that dated back to World War II when they fought against the Nazis. The squadron had recently gone through the transition from being an F-16 squadron to flying F-22s. Dale had been an F-22 pilot at the beginning, so he had been helping the other pilots through the transition and qualification process since he had arrived two years ago.

Being stationed in Germany and flying an F-22 Raptor meant he was certain to see action should the Russians decide to test NATO’s resolve and not leave eastern Ukraine. However, after sitting in his cockpit with the canopy open for the last two hours, he was starting to get tired and bored; he still had another hour left on his alert status before he would be relieved. Since arriving in Poland a few days ago, they had been scrambled twice to respond to Russian aircraft, but each time they had returned to base without incident.

Just as he got to the good part of a book he had been reading, an urgent message came across the radio, scrambling all alert fighters. In that instant, Dale shoved his book into one of the pockets on his flight suit and began to lower the canopy. As the cover closed, he powered up his engines and began to head towards the runway. In less than two minutes, he was at the edge of the runway, lighting his afterburners to get airborne as quickly as possible. While he was working to gain altitude along with his wingman, he heard the air battle manager come over the radio, informing them of possible Russian Su-57 fighters in the area. The E-3 also relayed the number of enemy aircraft in the air and where they were all heading.

As Major Young looked at his radar display, he could not believe the droves of enemy aircraft that he saw heading towards them. It looked like the entire Russian Air Force was attacking Ukraine.

As Dale listened to the voices over the radio, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. One of the E-3s had just been shot down. A couple of minutes later, the American F-15s that had been flying CAP over Ukraine were destroyed. Just as he thought things couldn’t get any worse for them, the E-3 reported that the German Euro fighters that had just taken off from Kiev were immediately blown out of the sky. “What in the blazes is going on?!” he thought. “How did the Russians manage to shoot down ten NATO aircraft in the first five minutes of whatever this fight is?”

“Raptor 66, proceed with all speed towards Sector Six and engage all hostile aircraft,” the air battle manager ordered. A couple of minutes later, the second NATO E-3 was shot down, leaving the NATO aircraft with no air battle managers or airborne radars operational to guide them to the enemy aircraft. Fortunately, the Patriot air defense system at the Kiev International Airport was still operational. They made quick contact with them, and were immediately linked up with their radar feed.

For the time being, the Raptors would leverage the ground radar to guide them to the enemy fighters. Another E-3 was just lifting off from Ramstein Airbase, but it would be at least five minutes before they were at an operational altitude for their radar to be of much assistance. Their distance from the front line meant their signal was not going to be nearly as strong as would be needed if the Russians started to employ a lot of jamming.

Major Young looked to his right as his aircraft continued to gain altitude and saw his wingman, “Iceman,” flying Raptor 67 next to him. “Iceman, I’m not sure we are going to find those Su-57s without AWACS support, so we need to go after those Fullbacks before they can destroy our airfields,” Major Young said. He tried to maintain a calm and reassuring voice while talking to his younger wingman.

“Iceman,” or Captain Jorge Montoya, was a junior captain who had just joined his squadron two weeks prior, fresh from F-22 school, so this was only the second-time Major Young had flown with him. The other two F-22 pilots in his flight were seasoned captains who had been flying Raptors for several years like he had.

In all, there were sixteen F-22s in Poland; twelve other Raptors were quickly being scrambled to get airborne and deal with the Backfire bombers that were heading towards Poland. As their F-22s continued to gain altitude, they headed towards the Kiev International Airport at nearly full speed, trying to intercept the Russian ground attack aircraft before they destroyed the airport. NATO would need that airfield in Kiev.

As they moved closer to the Ukrainian border, Major Young spotted dozens of Russian aircraft flying over the international airport at varying altitudes, all carrying out a variety of attacks against ground targets. He was in shock as he saw aircraft swooping down, dropping cluster bombs. Clouds of smoke and debris were billowing up. Cruise missiles streaked through the sky; so many were flying, that it created what would have been a beautiful type of spider web in the air (if it weren’t so deadly).

Then the Patriots’ radar went offline, indicating that they had probably been destroyed. Despite their best efforts to get there ahead of the Russians, they had too much ground to cover and not enough time.

There were only four F-22s to engage what looked to be about 33 enemy aircraft. Major Young quickly spotted the MiGs being vectored towards them, and identified them as the first aircraft they would engage. Although they were heavily outnumbered, Dale maintained some optimism. The targeting computer on the Raptor helped to make it very deadly. Besides being able to track and engage dozens of targets simultaneously, it could also sync with the other fighters in its group to ensure that none of the pilots fired missiles at the same aircraft unless it was planned.

Their squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Lesley Philips, call sign “Gold Digger,” had just gotten airborne, along with the rest of their squadron. He affirmed Young’s assumptions when he got on the radio and ordered, “Engage the enemy MiGs over Kiev. The rest of the squadron will focus on going after the Backfire bombers.”

As they closed to within sixty-five miles of the enemy MiGs, Major Young and the rest of the Raptors began to fire off their missiles. Each aircraft launched their complement of six over-the-horizon air-to-air missiles before turning to rush off to the safe airspace of Poland to reload and get back into the fight. As Dale turned to head back home, he saw the MiGs begin to fire off their own missiles. His heart beat quickly in his chest, pounding with adrenaline. Seconds later, his on-board sensors calmed him down again by confirming that none of the enemy missiles had achieved lock. Once the F-22s had closed the weapon bays that dispensed their missiles, their stealth technology once again made them invisible to the enemy radar; Major Young felt like he had cheated death.

Meanwhile, the 24 air-to-air missiles the Raptors had fired destroyed 17 of the attacking MiGs. Unfortunately for the Americans, some of the MiGs had managed to evade the remaining missiles.

In the opening hours of the air battle over Ukraine, the Russians lost 49 of 247 aircraft. However, they had succeeded in shooting down 16 Ukrainian aircraft and 12 NATO aircraft, including both of their E-3 AWACs aircraft. The NATO Patriot air defense systems had also met their demise. The Russians had also succeeded in destroying the runways at the Kiev International Airport and four other Ukrainian military airbases.

The Fullbacks had destroyed the fuel bunkers at the Kiev Airport, which would further hurt the operational capability of the airport once NATO had repaired the runways. The most disastrous attack came from the eight super-sonic Blackjack bombers and the 80 Backfire bombers.

Two of the super-sonic Blackjack bombers headed towards the NATO military headquarters building at Mons, Belgium. Once they got within range of their cruise missiles, they rose in altitude and proceeded to release their twelve AS-15 'Kent' cruise missiles. The projectiles streaked through the air, reaching their cruising speed of Mach.75 and dropping down to a mere 300 feet above the ground as they raced towards their target.

The missiles flew for nearly an hour, until they reached the NATO Headquarters, where they began to pummel the Allied Command Operations Building, along with several other support buildings. Within minutes, the NATO command facility had been pulverized, killing hundreds of member state military representatives.

The remaining bombers headed towards the American airbases at Spangdahlem and Ramstein, releasing their 72 cruise missiles. Those cruise missiles were specifically targeting the aircraft hangers, parking ramps, fuel dumps, and communication centers. They avoided cratering the runways, since those could be quickly repaired. The loss of aircraft, however, could not be replaced quickly, and for a short period, this would leave the US and NATO with very few fighter aircraft to stop the Russian ground forces from securing their initial objectives.

The 80 Backfire bombers split off into eight attack groups of ten, each carrying a total of ten AS-16 "Kickback" air-to-surface missiles. These missiles had a much smaller range of only 300 kilometers, so they were sent in during the second wave of the attack, after the Blackjacks and other fighters had already cleared the air of NATO fighters. These bomber groups hit two Ukrainian airbases, three Polish airbases, and three German airbases. Within the first couple hours of the Russian attack, they had effectively neutralized the NATO air forces for at least a full day — maybe two or three — before new aircraft could be flown in from other NATO members and the US.

The attack caught the US, Poland and Germany completely by surprise. Until then, they had believed that while Russia was posturing more forcefully than before, they would ultimately back down and not follow through on their threat of force. The assault also proved how woefully unprepared the NATO members were for a potential conflict with Russia.