Chapter 6.

04/07/1992

 The sky, as far as it was visible to the horizon, was clear. Or rather, the land was clear, open for optical reconnaissance. Colonel Volkov glanced at the screen on the left side of the instrument panel and oriented the optical station toward the city, located a hundred kilometers from the regional center. The plane, now heading south, was passing fifty kilometers from the settlement, but at an altitude of twenty-seven thousand meters, the sighting angle was about thirty degrees, which made it possible to take quite informative pictures of industrial facilities. A coal depot was burning, judging by fragmentary and not entirely reliable rumors, it was set on fire deliberately.

 However, from the point of view of completing the mission, this disaster was of no importance. Although the second pilot's seat had the main flight controls, most of its instrument panel was given over to control of both main, two side radars and other reconnaissance systems. Today's flight was formally a reconnaissance mission, but under each wing there was an ultra-long-range R-37M2, capable of hitting a slow-moving subsonic target at the end of its trajectory at the meeting point, located four hundred and twenty kilometers from the launch site. This was the maximum parameter, but it was several times greater than the similar maximum parameters of the main R-27, and the new R-77. There were also two R-33s under the fuselage, on pylons in the central part.

 There, in the central part, there was also a suspended container with an optical station. Unlike the main one, this one had better optics and a mirror system, allowing the viewing vector to be directed at any angle of the front lower quadrant. This is not counting the smaller optical system in the rear of the container.

 The presence of weapons, which inevitably added weight, was in no way connected with any tasks included in the list of tasks related to reconnaissance of the crisis-ridden region. The weapon was intended for the SSI, which invariably evoked a whole range of emotions from excitement to bitterness with its abbreviation alone. This bastard also had more modest brothers - the Sr-71 and the completely frivolous D-12.

 Over the entire period, several hundred R-40 and R-33 missiles were spent on the Sr-71 and not a single hit or even damage was caused. This was depressing. The issue was, of course, not in the dizzying costs of all these wasted ammunition, but in the reputation. Although in the costs too. Of course, that Sr-71 was not a completely invulnerable machine - here we must give credit to their flight planners and satellite reconnaissance. They invariably avoided not only airfields, but also sectors in which their satellites detected the activity of air defense aircraft. Unfortunately, they often succeeded in solving such a complex problem. The MiG-131, which was put on combat duty in 1988, could have easily turned the tide, but by that time Mishka Raikin//Gorbachev's derogatory nickname// had already managed to become friends with Reagan and the flights of the "seventy-firsts" ceased. Fortunately, the country's air defense forces, represented by the "old" MiG-31s, managed to bring down one D-12 over Mongolia and two more over the Pacific Ocean. But these were unmanned vehicles, and their staffers' approach to choosing the route for such machines could have been riskier. And their characteristics were more modest. For the MiG-131, this would have been more of a training target - two NK-32M2s with nozzles 1,400 millimeters in diameter provided thrust capable of gaining speed and altitude using a simplified cycle. At the end of this cycle of gaining speed and altitude, the machine could go on a long flight, up to an hour and a half, at an altitude of 32,000 meters and a speed of 3,700 kilometers per hour. There was also a wing that was different from the MiG-31 wing and had vertical planes that converted the shock wave energy into additional lift. Visually, it looked as if they were raking an invisible air flow with an invisible jump in air compression under the plane, preventing the flow, so valuable at such altitudes, from spreading out to the sides. Only twenty-five of these wonderful machines were built and, perhaps, only a miracle saved them from destruction when Mishka began to rush around the world with his damned friendship.

 Meanwhile, the Americans had their SSI – probably one of the few things that was truly feasible and implemented within the framework of Reagan's Star Wars and SDI. It was a strategic air defense breakthrough aircraft. That's what it was called in all of its own, that is, domestic documents. The literal translation sounded like a stratospheric strategic intruder, or you could replace the word "intruder" with the phrase "invasion aircraft". Strategic Supersonic Intruder.

 It was a real monster. If in their Sr-71 they used a capricious combination of a ramjet and turbojet engine inserted into one another, then here they assembled two turbojet and one ramjet into one block. It was precisely a block – in addition to the engine nacelle, there was also an air flow redistribution system. There were two such blocks. The resulting monster was always black and somewhat resembled a "concrod" with an extended butt, i.e. nozzles. The nose, on the contrary, had a slightly greater relative elongation than even the Sr-71.

 And so, starting in 1986, these supposed supporters of the peace process began sending new reconnaissance aircraft to the vicinity of Baikonur. Later, in Iraq, they demonstrated that they could also drop supersonic gliding bombs.

 The speed of the SSI, according to estimates available at the time of 1989, exceeded the cruising speed of the Sr-71 by a thousand kilometers per hour, and the maximum recorded by ground radars was 4,250 kilometers per hour. Needless to say, these, like the "seventy-first", also bypassed areas threatening them, possibly collecting and summing up data on radar irradiation. If the dome of destruction of the new modification of S-300-PMU-120 had a radius of two hundred and seventy kilometers for a subsonic target, then for an object flying at an altitude of twenty kilometers at a speed of 4000 kilometers per hour this radius was only fifty kilometers, provided that the target vector at the point of impact was located tangentially ... In general, it had to go around a circle with a radius of not two hundred and seventy, but only fifty kilometers. And that was if it flew at an altitude of twenty thousand, and it, as a rule, chose altitudes from thirty-two to thirty-five kilometers. There was no need to even talk about what was left of those fifty kilometers of radius. The radius of fifty kilometers, therefore, was further reduced and it turned out that the SSI could completely pass over the launch position, barely touching the top of the calculated dome of destruction. It was necessary to "drive" the missile there so that at this very moment and in this place of the "zenith" of the dome, and so that the aircraft at this time was there, and did not pass by, even slightly. The task was solvable only in theory or with the consent and coordination of the SSI crew, who decided to commit such an extravagant suicide.

 However, the R-37M2, which reached six Machs at its maximum speed, could well have caught it in a much more honest and realistic confrontation. The chances increased several times if the launch was carried out from altitudes of more than twenty thousand and at optimal angles - either on a head-on course or on a lateral catch-up, when the meeting point would be located at an angle of forty to sixty degrees from the carrier's course vector at the moment of launch. This is what computer modeling showed.

 All three machines, which bypassed the regional capital along a three-hundred-kilometer radius, were now based at a military airfield in the Omsk region. The squadron was relocated there just a couple of months ago. Kazakhstan became an independent state and, despite the fact that the formed command of the Strategic Forces still had, as they said now, a supranational status, the withdrawal of units and their concentration on the territory of the RSFSR was in full swing. Nevertheless, the system built by generations of Soviet people did not give up so easily. These new borders between the suddenly formed states were for those - for civilians. Well, and also for the federal forces. The command of the SSN was that skeleton of the iceberg that did not give up and could melt for a very long time. And then who knows...

 Meanwhile, the plane began to roll to the starboard side. The course indicator on the upper transparent indicator began to move from right to left.

 - Now we will make a turn and pass over the city - the commander announced. The plane, flying at an altitude of twenty-seven thousand, dropped one and a half. The turn at a speed of two thousand five hundred had a radius of seventy kilometers. Volkov turned on the radar and directed the beam deep into the airspace of Kazakhstan.

 During each flight, the crews hoped and waited for one thing - that one day a mark would appear on the screen, moving at a speed of three machs and its course would be such that these R-37M2s, constantly ready to rush to the border with space, would get it. If not the SSI, then at least the Sr-71, which one day decided to stick its nose into the territory of the seemingly defeated Union. And then to hell with all these borders of the near abroad - they would shoot it down over Kazakhstan, or over Central Asia.

 And there is also the option of an airspace violator appearing from the opposite side, from the north, from the Arctic. And he will get his R-37. This is not a MiG-31. The "131s" fly faster, higher and further. And their radars detect targets like the Sr-71 at a distance of up to five hundred kilometers. As long as the altitude is sufficient and the horizon does not interfere. Sooner or later, one of them, maybe even the insolent SSI, will get his missile and then let Yeltsin, turning purple or pale, court this Bush. Let him apologize. Maybe for the sake of such an occasion, for once, he will sober up.

 The protocols for the defense of the country's airspace, even if it is now only the RSFSR, have not yet been changed - these damn reformers have not had time to get their filthy hands in here. And if they do get in, then ... Let them climb into the electrical panel and see what happens. This is for clarity. Volkov glanced to the left side, to the west, and then turned on the onboard radio reconnaissance station, designed to reveal the positions of air defense radar stations if the rebels still had the audacity to take them over.