Battlefield Ukraine

Midnight in Moscow

Lieutenant Colonel Rob Fortney, “Pappi,” was hoping that the Russian air defense systems over Moscow did not detect them when they went in for their bomb run. They were less than ten minutes away as they crossed over into what their briefers had said was the most highly-guarded airspaces in Russia. This was not a comforting thought as he began the arming process of the two bombs he was carrying today. “What am I doing here?” he wondered.

After 25 years in the Air Force, he was set to retire in five months and join the ranks of United Airlines as a commercial airline pilot. However, instead of a cushy Boeing 747, that night he found himself flying the Spirit of America (a B-2 stealth bomber) into the heart of the Russian empire on a very dangerous mission — a mission his aircraft had specifically been built to conduct nearly thirty years ago.

In the 1980s, the B-2 had been designed to be a deep penetration stealth bomber that could rain nuclear missiles or bombs across the Soviet Union. Years after the Cold War had ended, Pappi was carrying two 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs with 5,000-pound warheads in his aircraft, completing the plane’s original purpose; the Pentagon hoped this would be a decapitation strike. Decapitation strikes were always dangerous. They required use of new and sometimes untested ordinance, and the pilots would have to fly directly into the heart of enemy territory.

His bomber, along with another B-2 from his squadron, would be dropping the relatively new GBU-57B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) on the National Defense Control Center in hopes of killing President Petrov and crippling the Russian military leadership. These MOPs they were carrying could penetrate some of the deepest bunkers known to man; however, the B-2 could only carry two of these massive explosives, so a second bomber needed to accompany him on this dangerous mission.

The rest of the squadron had already fired off their AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles at the Russian air defense systems around Moscow and near the Ukrainian battle front. LTC Fortney hoped that these long-range cruise missiles, each packing a 1,000-pound warhead, would have taken out enough of the Russian Surface-to-Air Missile systems and anti-aircraft guns that he could survive this mission.

Colonel Fortney looked at his co-pilot, Major Richard “Ricky” James. “So… you think one of these bombs is going to kill that megalomaniac Petrov?” he asked his friend.

Ricky just grunted. “I don’t know. Maybe. Then again, who cares? The war will still continue on without him and right now, I just want to drop our bombs and get the heck out of here.” Ricky wasn’t too much of a talker. He was working on getting his Masters in Aeronautical Engineering and Fluid Dynamics, so he spent most of his time (including when they were flying) with his head in a book or writing a paper. Fortney didn’t fault the young guy for it. He had just made major, and everyone knew if you wanted to make the next grade, you had to get your master’s degree done. A lot of guys started this process when they were captains, but not Ricky.

Ricky had been living the wild life as a young hotshot Air Force bomber pilot, spending his time chasing women and boozing it up. Then he met his wife and they had a daughter, and his whole world changed. He began to realize that he needed to take care of a family and became a lot more career-focused. He almost didn’t get selected for Major because he had not pursued his master’s degree, but being a B-2 pilot almost made it a certainty. Had he been a fighter pilot or the pilot of some other airframe, he might have been passed over.

Suddenly, Ricky put his flash cards back in his pocket. “Pappi, you think their air defense systems may pick us up when we open the bomb bay doors?” It was a thought they both had been having, and neither of them felt really happy about the response they had received from their superiors before they left for the mission.

“Well, they say that we won’t be visible, but frankly, I’m not confident with that,” remarked Pappi. “Fortunately, we are only dropping two bombs, so we won’t have to have the doors open that long. If their radars do get a lock on us, they should lose it once we close the doors again.” Colonel Fortney tried to reassure his young compatriot that they probably didn’t have too much to worry about. Deep down though, he had his doubts… but he would keep those to himself. It was incumbent upon him, not just as the aircraft commander, but also as the 13th Bomb Squadron Commander, to lead by example and show no fear.

As they approached the drop point, they readied the bombs, arming them and making sure the coordinates were locked in. The United States’ GPS satellites were still down, but the NSA had managed to hack into the Russians’ own GPS satellites without them realizing it. Ironically enough, it would be a Russian GPS satellite guiding this bomb down on the National Defense Control Center. The irony of it was not lost on the pilots.

Looking down below, the pilots could see that Moscow was still lit up with lights. This wasn’t like World War II, where all the cities’ lights were off at night to help confuse Allied bombers from using them to guide them into their targets. In today’s modern world with GPS and satellite imagery, you didn’t need lights to direct you to your target.

“Bombs are ready, Pappi,” Ricky said nervously. Ironically enough, this was Ricky’s first combat bombing mission. He had been in training when the B-2s were last used in Iraq and Afghanistan, so this was the first time he had flown over enemy territory.

Nodding, Pappi ordered, “Open bomb bays.”

“Bomb bay doors open,” Ricky replied hoping fiercely that they could get the bombs out before they were detected.

Pappi lifted the weapons lock cover up and depressed the button, arming the bombs for release. He then moved his hand back to the red and yellow button that would release the bombs and depressed it. In a second, he felt the aircraft lift slightly as the weight of the two 30,000-pound bombs fell free of his aircraft. Without waiting to be told, Ricky closed the bomb doors since their deadly cargo had finally been released.

Pappi immediately turned the aircraft for home. Just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, their warning systems came on, letting them know they had just been acquired by a Russian Surface-to-Air Missile system. Pappi chided himself, “Ugh! I shouldn’t have turned the aircraft so soon. I should have waited to make sure the bomb doors were fully closed first. There must have been a sliver of the doors open and it gave away just enough surface area for the SAM to acquire a lock. Crap!”

In the less than sixty-seconds it took for LTC Fortney’s B-2 to open its bomb bay doors and release the two MOPs, a Russian S-500 anti-ballistic-missile system detected both his aircraft and the two bombs it had just released. The S-500 acquired an immediate lock on the bombs and began to fire off missiles to intercept them. A nearby SA-21 fired off two missiles at the B-2 before it disappeared from their radar screen.

The S-500 then detected the two bombs dropped by the Spirit of Indiana, the second B-2 on this bombing mission. The SA-21 was not able to acquire the bomber before it closed its bomb bay door, slipping away.

The men manning the S-500 then had four falling objects and one enemy bomber that it was engaging. The operators immediately launched a series of missiles at the bombs and two missiles towards the B-2. The missiles raced out of their launchers, accelerating to Mach 4. Within ten seconds of launch, the two missiles heading towards the B-2 lost acquisition of their target, although they continued to fly towards what the targeting computer estimated the B-2’s position to be when it reached the same altitude.

This was the first time the Russians would be using the new Lenovo targeting system, which, if successful, might finally be the key to defeat the American stealth systems. The Lenovo looked at the acquired target’s speed, altitude, and current flight path, and then calculated the path the missile should travel to intercept it. It then had a proximity sensor built in, so when it detected an object consisting of metal, polymers or other aircraft-type materials, it would cause the warhead to explode. While this specific technology was not new, what was new was the aero displacement reader. When an object flies, it displaces air, just as water is displaced when something travels through it — the Lenovo continually looked for the displacement of air caused by highspeed objects, like an aircraft, missile, or bomb, and then guided the missile towards the source. When the object came within its roughly 2,500-meter detonation radius, it would explode.

While the two missiles targeted at the B-2 lost the radar acquisition, they continued to head towards the B-2’s projected path. As the missile sped away after the B-2, the other missiles headed straight towards the four bombs. Unlike most guided munitions, the GBU-57B also had a rocket motor, to assist the bomb in generating the necessary speed to be able to punch through earth and concrete to get at the bunkers deep below. While the Russian missile interceptors were racing at Mach 4 towards the bombs, the GBU-57Bs themselves were racing towards the earth below at speeds of nearly Mach 3.

As one of the missiles came within a few hundred feet of one of the GBU-57B, it detonated its warhead, hitting the bomb with enough shrapnel that it caused the warhead to go off. The detonation of 5,000-pounds of high explosives made for a thunderous bang in the night sky, briefly lighting it up for anyone who happened to be looking in that direction. The second missile also intercepted its mark and destroyed the bomb as well. The third bomb was thrown slightly off course but was otherwise undamaged, although it would miss its primary target and land nearby. The fourth bomb, however, was able to evade the air-defense system; it pulverized its way through floor after floor of the National Defense Control Center building’s east tower.

The bomb drove through the building’s twelve floors and three basement levels before it detonated its 5,000-pound warhead, throwing flame and destruction up through the hole it had just created. As designed, once the GBU-57B sensed that it had impacted something, the tail end began to release a heavy fuel-air mist until the bomb came to a complete stop. The volatile mixture ignited, causing even more devastation. A 100-foot radius around the initial entry hole burst into a blazing inferno, causing significant structural damage to the building. Fires began to spread throughout the east side of the building. As the flames found their way to the gas lines that ran throughout the building, numerous secondary explosions erupted.

The bomb that went off course plowed into a dense area of residential buildings, not far from the Kremlin and Red Square, causing significant civilian casualties. The bunker busting bomb not only plowed through the fifteen-story apartment building, it buried itself near several metro lines before detonating. The GBU-57 collapsed three different metro line tubes, killing and trapping hundreds of people. It also ignited numerous underground gas lines, which subsequently destroyed several other buildings. In all, this bomb resulted in the deaths of roughly 1,763 civilians, and close to double that number were injured. In addition, thousands of people were left without a home.

“What do we do now, Pappi? That missile seems to have lost our lock but it’s still tracking towards us,” Ricky said nervously as he strained himself trying to look below and behind them for the missile.

As thoughts raced through his head, Pappi kept going back to his training. If the missile lost lock on your aircraft, then it would estimate the most likely position your aircraft travel to and then detonate, hoping you were in range of its blast. With that thought in mind, Pappi increased airspeed, turned the B-2 eight degrees to their right, and began to climb. He wanted to add a few thousand more feet of altitude and veer off course. Hopefully, that would be enough to evade the path of the missile.

“Hang on Ricky, I’m getting us some more altitude and changing course. This should throw the missile off our trail,” Pappi said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

The missile continued to track towards where they would have been. However, as the missile got within eight kilometers, it suddenly changed course and began to head right for them.

“Oh my God, the missile just turned… it’s following us!” Ricky shouted over the intercom, suddenly realizing it might actually hit them.

“How in the hell did that missile know where we were?” Pappi thought. “How could it have redirected like that?”

Pappi had no good answers for any of his own questions, but he didn’t have time to get bogged down with trying to figure it all out. He simply increased the throttle to the max, climbed and angled his aircraft harder to the right, hoping his stealth ability would again aid him in evading the enemy missile.

Then, to both of their horror, the missile continued to close in on them like it knew where they were. Then, it exploded, spraying shrapnel everywhere. The aircraft shook hard; alarm bells began to blare in their ears, letting them know the aircraft had been damaged. The bomber started to shake violently and pulled to the left. Pappi saw that they were losing hydraulic pressure. Shrapnel must have hit some of the lines. He hit a few buttons, switching over to their auxiliary system and hoping it would work.

Ricky began to call out the problems on the dashboard. “We are hit! I’m showing a fire in engine two, loss of oil pressure in engine two, and hydraulic pressure loss on the left side of the aircraft.”

“Turn engine two off, and hit the fire suppression system. We need to get that under control. I’m switching over to auxiliary hydraulics now,” Pappi directed. Then, realizing there was a real possibility they might have to abandon the aircraft, he ordered, “Do a quick check of our location, Ricky. What are we near? How far away from Latvia are we?”

As the two of them struggled with getting the aircraft under control and addressing the problems as best as one can at 34,000 feet, the SAM alarm came on again. Two more missiles had been launched at them from another SA-21 system, and began streaking in the sky towards them.

“We are roughly 109 miles west of Moscow, and several hundred miles away from Latvia. Those SA-21s missiles are still at least four minutes away. What are your thoughts Pappi?” Ricky asked, voice trembling. He knew the plane wasn’t going to make it. He just wasn’t sure when and how they needed to bail out.

“We are going to have to eject. The bomber is too badly damaged, and we’ve lost our stealth ability. I’m angling us towards Toropets. There are a number of forest preserves in that area. Try to steer your parachute towards this section here,” he said, pointing to a green area on the map. “Let’s try to meet up at this spot, near Lake Yassy.”

Pappi paused for a second, then seeing that the enemy missiles were now less than sixty-seconds away from impact, he offered one final word of encouragement. “You can do this Ricky. Just remember your training, and you’ll get through this.”

Then, without another thought, he hit both of their ejection buttons, sending them flying into the air, away from their crippled bomber. As he bolted through the air, wind whipping past his face as he waited for his parachute to open, he managed to see that Ricky’s chute had just opened up. He was grateful that he looked to be OK. Seconds later, his own chute opened as well, making a snapping sound as it jerked him like a ragdoll.

“Dear God, did that hurt,” he thought.

Once he got his bearings again, Pappi looked up and saw his B-2 still heading towards Latvia, trailing smoke as it flew. The two Russian missiles were still streaking towards it. They both abruptly impacted against the bomber, ripping it apart into a million little pieces.

As chunks of his bomber rained down to the ground below, he thought, “Well, this is a rather inglorious way to end my Air Force career. I’ve flown dozens of combat missions, and I’ve never lost an aircraft… here I am in my last few months in the Force and I managed to lose a $2 Billion bomber. I’m probably going to be captured, too. Maybe I can hold out long enough for a search and rescue team to recover me… maybe.”