Chapter 18.
Major Blankenberg's Mission.
25.feb.2120.
Russia. Arctic Circle.
The technician sergeant standing by the stairs saluted silently. Blankenberg grabbed the railing and began to climb energetically into the cockpit. The F-158's cockpit was a kind of miniature shuttle, that is, it was a detachable capsule.
Such a "shuttle" could only take off a few dozen meters, moving away from the plane in distress, but this capsule could reliably take care of a person in a crash over the ocean, and it could separate from the plane at the entire range of speeds up to maximum values approaching three machs.
Initially, the F-158 was an ocean raider - a hunter of enemy ships. The raider was also capable of fighting off carrier-based aircraft sent to intercept it. He was even better and more graceful at escaping from it, having first sent ammunition to their floating "boss".
With the aircraft carriers, as with many other things, everything went wrong already in the first month of the War - the former global gendarmes of both blocs, those who survived, hid in the rear bases.
Partly for this reason, the Raiders of the 210th Air Wing, who patrolled the sectors of the Philippine Sea until the summer of 2114, were transferred to Western Siberia. The second reason for such functional changes was the so-called "Russian catastrophe of 2114", when the national armed forces of the RFR suffered heavy losses in the then Central African Front. In 2114, it was still the North African Front, NAF. By the time of that first air wing transfer to Siberia, "@enemy" had begun their advance in the south of Kazakhstan, one of the fragments of the former Soviet Union. Perhaps this was not entirely correct, but both Blankenberg and the other officers perceived this and similar independent states precisely in the context of their former affiliation. Whatever one may say, the ghost of a gloomy empire that had sunk into oblivion was tenacious.
As for Kazakhstan, the national forces of this friendly country, which had joined the Bloc shortly before the beginning of the Pre-War, were inferior even to the bloodless army of Russia. This was not a particular problem for containing the enemy's advance - the Bloc had managed to build up the coalition forces grouping in the region in advance and deploy a primary anti-missile defense network, to the north of which there was already a ready-made system with LAURA terminals and radars of the same name. By the summer of 2114, the orbital component of the military potential was in a state close to the pre-war one, which made it possible to track not only armored vehicle columns, but even single vehicles, and, most importantly, to direct any munition, even orbital, to such a target, if only the price was not a concern. Then the F-158 began to barge flights at a distance of two hundred miles from the front line. The main armament was cluster pods with a launch range of up to 250 miles. The pods, or simply put, missiles carried from 16 to 32 submunitions with individual guidance. Missiles flying in the stratosphere scattered their submunitions at a considerable distance from the target and, accordingly, the enemy's air defense, defending battle formations in the short and medium range, received up to three dozen targets instead of one. The submunitions were full-fledged small-sized missiles that reached the target area using weak and correspondingly small engines that simply did not allow the speed to drop too quickly. At the final stage, they were homing projectiles diving almost from the stratosphere, driven only by gravity. "@enemy", in their stupidity moving their convoys and armored groups in organized columns in the near rear, then finally realized that they were doing something wrong, and protection from slow-moving drones alone was not enough, but before that moment the raiders, each of the raiders, managed to knock together a huge mountain of scrap metal. This was before the enemy broke through in the so-called Aral direction.
Meanwhile, Russia was raging its own political passions. The mutiny in the famous Kuznetsk region broke out in the summer of 114, but it had no effect on the combat work of the air wing - after all, it wasn't the biggest shit that happened in the Western Bloc countries, in the rear, during the years of the War.
In the fall of 114, "@enemy" used a new tactic, starting to send hypersonic air combat drones into flight, which either launched missiles or hit the target like a missile themselves. More than half of the air wing was knocked out.
In December of 2114, the remnants of the unit were included in the air defense aviation group of the recently formed positional area, in the central part of which the Kepler-West missile launch site was being built. They couldn't think of anything better than to locate it, this missile launch site, on the territory of the rebellious region. In justification of these planners, it had to be admitted that by the end of 1914 the Siberian thugs had somehow been pacified, at least they were no longer fighting each other.
Six months later, Blankenberg was transferred to Europe to patrol the Atlantic Highway. In the middle of 2117, in the summer, he was transferred to the Pacific.
And less than a week ago, after the "@enemy" had struck a number of enterprises throughout South America, the air wing was urgently transferred, oddly enough, back to Siberia and began to hastily prepare for the use of missiles with gliding hypersonic munitions.
If everything had gone as it should, then normal carriers with missiles of suitable characteristics would have been brought into the sector. However, UCE, another, along with the orbital reconnaissance and communications component, which was a key component of the military machine, this information AI network, allowing various combat units to act with a coherence that would plunge any military leader of the past into mystical horror, did not extend its beneficial powers to rear logistics.
Perhaps there was some completely reasonable explanation for the absence of normal carriers and missiles in the sector. Of course, no one would initiate Blankenberg into such subtleties.
One way or another, it was necessary, as in the last century, to accelerate, enter the stratosphere, and, having started to make a hill, launch a rocket at a certain altitude, or more precisely, at a certain combination of altitude and speed, when both the altitude is not maximum and the speed is not lost - this was calculated by AI. Compared to what the F-158s were doing here in Siberia in 2114, destroying entire columns of "@enemy" with one launch, this mission was not as inspiring, but it was still much more dynamic than a routine patrol of the ocean strategic highway.
Blankenberg sat down in the chair, fastened his belts and connected the interface, the connector of which was attached to his belt. The helmet visor came to life and a green picture of the system startup menu appeared. Then the familiar inscription appeared with an instruction to turn his head left and right, and then nod up and down.
Blankenberg followed the instruction. The helmet orientation system was calibrated. Blankenberg ran his palm with spread fingers in front of his face, and a menu with the power plant status appeared on the visor. Swiping his palm to the left, he removed the unnecessary picture for now and focused his attention on the real cockpit panel. AI, meanwhile, was busy preparing the engines for launch.
The technicians, meanwhile, were doing their job - at the moment when Blankenberg was busy with the real instrument panel, they were hooking the tug to the front landing gear.
After some time, Blankenberg glanced at the man standing to the side of the plane, raised his hand above himself and stuck out his index finger, as if pointing it back, and then pulled the lever with the orange head.
The glass part of the cabin, folded upward, began to descend smoothly but vigorously.
AI reported that the hydraulics had been checked and were in order.
At this point, the plane barely twitched and began to move towards the gate. The day was clear, bright and sunny, and considering that everything around, with the exception of the airfield, was covered in pure white snow, up there, far from the airfield, the day should have been doubly bright.
In the distant sector, where the targets were located with clear weather, there were no problems at all throughout the year, and this was especially important in the case of using missiles with a visual target recognition system. However, the type of missiles with an optical system was not the only one - five vehicles of the link carried a total of ten missiles, half of which were with optical guidance, half with GPS. The raids carried out today were partly, if not tests, then combat testing of cheaper ammunition and simplified tactics.
Optical recognition was left for when things got really bad and GPS was in limited functionality mode - this had already happened more than once. Sometimes "@enemy" managed to position its ECM systems with phased arrays quite successfully. These were guided by third-party radars and hit with sharp beams of their interference for tens of miles, knocking the munitions off course.
The tug was dragging the plane to the runway, where "Crusader - 12-02" was already standing. "Crusader 12-03", that is, Blankenberg, was to take off a minute after him, and with three more "Crusaders" take a course of "230", after which, picking up speed to almost three machs, head for the southern border of Russia.
"Crusader 12-02", standing on the runway a hundred yards ahead, began to move the tail unit and flat nozzles of its four engines. The tractor that had pulled Blankenberg was already taxiing away from the runway.
The engines, started on the field, immediately after leaving the hangar, were running at minimum thrust, unfortunately, still giving off enough thermal power for the orbital group "@enemy" to have a chance to detect activity at the distant northern airfield.
Blankenberg began checking the rudders and vector mechanization of the engines. "Crusader-12-02", standing in front, closed its nozzles as much as possible and there, between these flaps, a white-blue glow appeared. This aircraft shuddered and slightly lowered its nose in pre-launch tension. The hum of its engines, despite all the soundproofing and headphones, became audible to Blankenberg.
Without making himself wait long, "Crusader-12-02" added gas, the engine flaps suddenly swung open, causing the rectangular apertures of the nozzles to expand by half. A translucent bluish light shot out of the engines. The plane jerked from its place and rushed away.
Less than half a minute later, the gray silhouette, like a fighter, rushed upward over the far edge of the strip. The mass of the two missiles was significantly less than the maximum load - this is what made the takeoff so energetic and spectacular.
Finally, Blankenberg heard a voice from the control tower - takeoff was cleared. Blankenberg put his hand on a pair of control handles of the two central engines and pressed his finger on the steel lever on one of them. The levers of the others took the same position, and the handles themselves aligned themselves, becoming level with the leading one.
A green indicator lit up on the side of the control handle block that had assembled itself. Now they could move them forward, giving each engine first full throttle, and then bringing it to afterburner.
Blankenberg pushed forward. The assembled block gave way and with a few clicks moved forward. The plane began to lower its nose, but Blankenberg immediately released the brakes, and the machine rushed along the runway. In the meantime, he pressed the engine control stick all the way down, and after the jolt that ran through the machine, a small tremor was felt - the afterburner was now rumbling at full speed.
Finally, when the speed reached 190 knots, he pulled the main control stick back, and the plane soared upward, pressing the pilot's butt against the seat. The takeoff stage was over. Now it was necessary to retract the landing gear, and then the flaps. Soon, having reached an altitude of six thousand feet, Blankenberg also turned off the afterburner - it was necessary to go around the airfield in a circle with a radius of ten miles to wait for three more machines to take off.
Blankenberg turned on the radar and selected the air target scanning mode - the radar was fine. Of all the friendly objects displayed on the map with a scale of 256 miles, the closest objects were two transports flying to the east. Most likely, it was a supply convoy for a coalition group lost in the uninhabited spaces of the Russian Far East.
A group of three Su-37 attack aircraft was flying about a hundred and fifty miles to the south - these were most likely based somewhere near the Super Federation and its missile launch site. That was all - the northern airspaces, as usual, were now sparsely populated by aircraft. There were two air routes, but one passed further south, the other, a backup one, was opposite in high latitudes.
Blankenberg turned off the radar and looked to the left, where another "Crusader" was racing along the runway below.
Having described three-quarters of a full circle above the base, Blankenberg headed for the next waypoint, located near a village or town with a hard-to-pronounce name - "Turukhansk" - there the "Crusaders" were to assemble in their formation.