Direct Action

44

As they flew over the treetops, the Blackhawk crew and the SEALs heard a range of different chirping sounds in their headsets.

“We’ve got radars,” the Blackhawk copilot announced somewhat redundantly. He consulted his display. “I’m reading Flat Face, Dog Ear, Gun Dish, and Spoon Rest. They’re all over the place.”

He’d given the NATO code name for a range of Russian radar systems. Flat Face was a surface-to-air missile or antiaircraft-gun acquisition system. Dog Ear was an early-warning radar associated with the SA-13 short-range missile system. Gun Dish was the radar atop the ZSU-23-4 self-propelled antiaircraft gun system. Spoon Rest was a surveillance radar, and the most dangerous because it could pick up low-altitude targets.

“Anything coming from the higher elevations?” the pilot asked.

“Two Gun Dish,” the copilot replied.

“Shit,” was all the pilot said.

Since they were skimming over the treetops, the radar would have to be higher and radiating down in order to pick them up. But the crew was somewhat comforted by the fact that most Russian radars weren’t good at picking targets out of ground clutter.

But as the second Blackhawk, flying in trail of the first, swept over some trees, a string of green tracer bullets came floating up right in front of it.

The pilot turned away from the fire. It wasn’t easy at such low altitude. Too hard a turn and they would be crashing into the trees. When they steadied out, the pilot realized how it had happened. Someone on the ground had fired at the lead helicopter, or at least the sound of the lead helicopter. But it was going so low and fast that it was already gone by the time he brought his weapon to bear. Unfortunately, the second Blackhawk was just in time to receive the fire. The pilot solved the problem by moving up in echelon with the lead Blackhawk.

The ZSU-23-4 was a small tracked vehicle with a rotating turret mounting four water-cooled 23mm rapid-firing cannons. Atop the turret the Gun Dish radar spun around, searching for targets. When it locked onto one, the Identification-Friend-or-Foe system electronically interrogated it. If the target was a foe, the gunner slaved the turret onto the radar track, the computer provided a solution, and the guns fired.

The Gun Dish radars on the early ZSU-23-4’s had had trouble picking targets out of ground clutter at altitudes below six hundred feet. But in later models, notably the ZSU-23-4M, the Russians had introduced radar modifications to reduce that problem.

When the Syrians had put their forces in Lebanon on alert, several ZSU-23-4’s had taken up station in the western foothills of the central mountain range. As it happened, one of those vehicles was high enough to be right on line with the Blackhawks’ flight path as they came across the coastline and over the western plain. The dish antenna atop its turret stopped spinning and pointed west, wobbling slightly.

A continuous tone sounded in the crew headsets of the lead Blackhawk.

“Gun Dish lock,” the copilot called out.

The pilot instantly swung into a gentle S-turn and thumbed a button on his stick. Chaff cartridges were ejected from tubes in the fuselage. The cartridges burst open and filled the air around the helicopter with distinct clouds of thin metallic strips.

The S-turn caused the Blackhawk to disappear within the chaff clouds that showed up on the Gun Dish radar as separate and distinct targets. The radar lock was broken. The Gun Dish tried to decide between the slowly dissipating chaff clouds, but couldn’t. By then the terrain elevation had changed and the Blackhawks were safely back in ground clutter.

When the steady tone in their headsets stopped, Miguel Fernandez and Red Nicholson caught each other’s eyes across the cabin and smiled weakly.