Fulcrum Read online

  As the IRST would probably be used second, in the close-combat phase of the engagement, I began with the long-range radar missile control. The armament control panel was at the forward head of the left cockpit console. I flipped the lock-on switch to “friend,” which meant the radar could track and lock onto another Soviet aircraft, hopefully in this case, either Lieutenant Colonel Shatravka’s or Major Chayka’s MiG-29. If I had left the switch in the “enemy” position, the radar would have recognized their coded SRZO aircraft identification signals and not operated during the mock dogfight. I now verified that the munitions fusing system was set in the vozdukh “air” position, before moving on to the radar modes panel on the left forward instrument board.

  In air combat today, combined aircraft closing speeds can total Mach 4 and the engagement can slash through 45,000 feet of vertical airspace in less than a minute. So human senses and reflexes can be inadequate to detect and defeat the enemy. Modern air-combat tactics, both Soviet and Western, call for a fighter pilot to destroy the enemy at extreme distances — “beyond visual range" — before that enemy’s stand-off missiles could be launched on friendly targets. A powerful and versatile radar is absolutely essential.

  And the MiG-29’s improved NO-193 pulse-Doppler radar was a versatile and sensitive sensor and tracking system. But there was a lot of controversy about this radar in the Soviet Air Force. In intelligence briefings, I had learned that the radar was code-named “Slot Back” by NATO, which believed Soviet spies had stolen the basic technology from America’s Hughes Corporation. As they did about so much else in the modern arsenal of the Soviet Union, the Americans apparently chose to believe we had just slavishly copied their innovations. This was only partly true. Soviet scientists usually let their Western counterparts invest years and billions of dollars in basic research, which the Americans then dutifully published in their open aviation magazines. What detail was not available in the press, the Soviets then obtained through spies. Only then did Soviet designers set to work to modify and improve on the basic Western technology.

  But the NO-193 radar was an interesting variation on this theme. The Soviet design bureau did, indeed, benefit from espionage. But after the equipment was perfected, the KGB discovered that a Soviet electronics expert who helped design this radar was actually working for Western intelligence. Not only had he fed our design details to the West, he had actually sabotaged the initial capabilities of this important system. The original NO-193 was very sensitive and could detect fast-moving targets at extreme range, but the set’s computer was incapable of holding the lock-on needed for missile launch. When we first tested this radar during the combat evaluation of the MiG-29 in 1985, my colleagues and I had been deeply disappointed in the capabilities of the “advanced” look-down, shoot-down pulse-Doppler radar.

  A year later, after this Soviet traitor had been caught and executed, electronics technicians descended on our base to quietly install modifications to the radar, which allowed it to retain lock-on much more efficiently. Our Intelligence Directorate hoped that their NATO counterparts still believed the MiG-29’s radar was crippled by the sabotage of the Western mole.

  I now quickly configured the radar modes panel. I planned to attack my opponents from below, so I turned the Delta-H switch to the number two position, which would set the antenna scan for anticipated targets about 6,000 feet above my flight level. Then I turned the radar modes switch to auto and the hemisphere switch to forward hemisphere. The radar’s computer would automatically take over the search and tracking of up to ten targets. This computer measured their relative speeds and ranges by Doppler effect, analyzed their closing angles, and presented the target in threat-priority order on the clear rectangular Plexiglas head-up display (HUD) above my main instrument panel. On a modern fighter the HUD was the pilot’s closest friend, the simplified window into the dense network of sensors and computers jammed into the nose of his aircraft. I left the radar in the nakal standby position, warmed up and ready, but not actively scanning the airspace ahead, so as not to be detected on an opponent’s radar-warning receiver.

  The coast was coming up fast, and I would soon have to contact Brigadier, the Ground Control Intercept center in the bunker beside the regimental headquarters back at Ruslan. A battle-control officer at the Brigadier GCI center would be working with Nikolai and me today, feeding us data on the “enemy” formation we would engage. Lieutenant Colonel Shatravka’s flight would be directed by another controller sitting at a radar console in the same room as mine, but using a different radio channel. Today I had Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Shevchenko as my battle-control officer. I could picture those fellows down in “the pit,” craning forward in their chairs, glued to their radar screens. These engagements were not simply fought in the cockpits, the battle-control officers always reminded us. They got just as excited as we did.

  At the upper right-hand corner of the main instrument panel, I deliberately pointed my finger to verify that the master arm switch was definitely off. But I did switch the weapons control system modes switch to radar, thus completing the linkage of the entire Alamo missile circuit.

  Another setting for that switch was shlem, “helmet,” which I would not be using today, but Shatravka would. This was the helmet-mounted sight (HMS), a Soviet innovation that used a pair of infrared sensors mounted on the pilot’s helmet to track and lock onto targets for the Archer missile. You could achieve this lock-on simply by turning your head, not the entire aircraft. Intelligence officers had briefed us that the Americans had either been unable to perfect such a system or considered it superfluous. This was nonsense. There were many occasions in a close-in dogfight where the IRST sensor mounted in the clear Plexiglas dome forward of the canopy lost lock-on while the pilot could still see his target above or below. The helmet-mounted sight gave the Soviet pilot an extra set of sensors that could save his life one day. And the HMS was easy to use because the weapons computer linked the helmet sensor data directly to the swiveling IR seekers in the Archer missile nose.

  In a close-in dogfight we had learned to fly with the missile trigger on the control stick depressed. If either the HMS or main IRST sensor in the nose dome locked on a fast-closing target, the computer would automatically fire the missile. These computer-aided sensors were much faster than human reactions. So there was no danger of missing a shot on an enemy slashing past your nose at supersonic speed because your reactions were too slow to pull the trigger. The beauty of the helmet sight was that you could kill the enemy, even if you did not have time to swing the nose of your plane to bear on him. The system was a quantum improvement over the traditional IRST sights I had trained with on the old MiG-23.

  Having prepared the radar-homing and infrared missiles, it was time to set up the gun. After adjusting the cannon rate-of-fire control and gunsight for the thirty-five-foot wingspan of the opponents’ MiG-29, I squeezed the gun trigger to verify the system on the HUD. A funnel-shaped column of broken white lines appeared, wide end highest, with the small “11” symbol above it. The afternoon sun glare was bad, bleaching out the data on the clear panel of the HUD, so I pulled up the thick, smoked-glass sunshield plate to shade it. Now the electronic compass rose, indicating 27, due west, and the altitude and airspeed data showed in crisp computer-white digits. I was exactly at 13,500 feet and my airspeed was pegged on 350 knots. The large “27” in the lower right center of the HUD indicated I had two armed Alamo radar-homing missiles.

  My final stop on the instrument panel was in the right corner, the SPO-15 radar-warning receiver. When I activated the receiver’s control panel on the right front cockpit console, the rings of green, yellow, and red threat lights surrounding the stylized aircraft symbol on the display flashed like the lights on a New Year’s tree and the beeping warning tone sounded in the cockpit. The SPO-15 was now active. Any opponent’s radar, or missile-guidance radar on the ground, sweeping my aircraft would appear on the display and a warning beep would sound in my earphones. The instrument wa
s quite sensitive and would give me the bearing, relative power, and type of radar that was scanning me. If more than one enemy radar was active, the receiver would display the most dangerous threat by priority.

  I had completed my cockpit air-combat setup just as we crossed the marshy coastline. I was now thirty miles from Ruslan and switched radio channels from 7 to 6.

  “Brigadier,” I called my GCI controller “Three five zero with 351 on channel 6.”

  My call sign for this three-month period was 350, and Nikolai’s was 351. Actually our official five-digit call sign was prefixed with 48, but few Soviet military pilots used all five numbers.

  “Ponyal,” Vitaly’s crisp professional voice replied. “Roger, 350, altitude 13,500 feet.”

  Now we popped up to 15,000 feet to intersect the oval air-combat range fifteen miles offshore. I banked left and headed south toward the far end of the circuit where Nikolai and I would hold orbit in the combat air patrol (CAP) sector just north of the Turkish frontier buffer zone. At this speed we covered the twenty miles in less than two minutes. Just as my distance measuring equipment and radio compass indicated I was in the CAP zone, Vitaly’s voice sounded again in my headset.

  “Three five zero, you are in the holding zone.”

  “Ponyal.”

  I was never much of a talker on the tactical radio net. Some fellows, especially zampolits, were real chatterboxes. They were so nervous in the cockpit and so uncertain about controlling these powerful airplanes that they called out every bank and turn, every new heading and altitude change, as if they were air-control cadets in a classroom simulator, not Soviet combat pilots. The radio range of the electromagnetic spectrum might be invisible to human eyes, but certainly wasn’t to modern electronic scanners. Overly talkative pilots tended to forget that NATO ferret satellites and even the American AWACS radar planes could track you by your voice transmission. This might have been my last fight, but I still intended to maintain my own high professional standards.

  I turned again onto a westward heading and checked my mirrors to make sure Nikolai was tucked up nice and close. There he was, in perfect position, less than 150 feet from my right wingtip. We both had on our navigation strobe lights at 100 percent power. This was a little trick we used to distinguish our flight from the “enemy” on a training sortie. One of the weakest points in Soviet training was that we did not often fly against different types of aircraft representing Western fighters, as did our American counterparts.

  For a moment I stared at his plane, absorbing the rakish beauty of the powerful fighter. They say that function dictates form in both natural and human design. And just as Nature had evolved the predatory shark with smooth, hydrodynamic curves, the designers at the Mikoyan-Guryevich OKB had produced an aerial predator with a long, sharp nose, knife-edge wings, and the powerfully tapered fins of its vertical and horizontal tail surfaces. I loved this airplane and it would be hard to leave it behind and find another life.

  But my decision to leave the Air Force was final. As much as I loved flying, I could no longer serve the Soviet government and the system where everything was based on lies, deceit, and personal and institutional corruption.

  “Three five zero,” Vitaly called.

  He wanted an indication of the tactics I planned for the air-combat engagement so the ground controllers could be certain there was no gross violation of safety standards. His request meant that Shatravka and his wingman had already crossed the coast and turned north for their own holding zone, about forty miles from ours. The safety regulations called for our flight to maneuver at odd-number altitudes — 3,000, 9,000, or 15,000 feet — while Shatravka’s flight used the even numbers.

  “Plan Number Four.”

  “Roger.”

  I was about to begin my last dogfight as a Soviet fighter pilot.

  On this leg of the holding orbit, I was flying parallel to the Turkish coast. The narrow band of green, backed by winter-brown foothills below snowy summit ridges, was the frontier of imperialist NATO, the sworn enemy of the Socialist Motherland. But to me, those mountains represented freedom. This CAP zone was only twenty-five miles from the frontier. It would have been so easy to tell Nikolai to take the lead because I had “problems with my radar.” Then, as he pulled ahead, I could have chopped my throttles, slid off on my left wing, and dove for the sea. Once below the GCI radar horizon, I could have applied full military power and dashed into Turkish airspace undetected. Certainly Vitaly in the GCI bunker would not have been unduly alarmed. He knew my dogfight Plan Four called for me and my wingman to separate, with Nikolai staying high while I dropped below Vitaly’s rival battle-control officer’s radar sweep.

  I actually felt my left fist close on the throttle knobs and my right index finger slide onto the radio call button on the control stick. It would be so easy. For a moment I hung there in the clear winter sunlight, balanced as if on a pivot. Then I recalled the NATO code name for the MiG-29, “Fulcrum,” tochka opori. How appropriate. At this instant my life and this top-secret Soviet aircraft were indeed balanced on a fulcrum.

  Then, from nowhere, I heard the words of the Military Oath of Loyalty I had taken as a brand-new cadet on Armavir’s sunny Lenin Square eleven years before. After swearing to defend the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with courage and discipline, “until my last breath,” I had chanted the final phrase of the oath, my unwavering voice joining those of the three hundred young men around me.

  “And if I should break this solemn oath, then let me suffer the severe penalties of Soviet law and the universal hatred and contempt of the Soviet people.”

  As a kursant of seventeen, those words had stirred a deep emotion. My loyalty to the Soviet State had been unshakable. I had firmly believed that the Soviet Union, led by its Communist Party, was the most progressive and humane nation in history. And if young men like me defended that State and its Party, the Soviet Union would lead the suffering peoples of the world to a new dawn of harmonious prosperity. I had loved my country and my people. And I had been absolutely certain that nothing could ever make me betray them.

  Now, as a First Class pilot captain in the Soviet Air Force, I was a different person. I now understood that the Soviet State, manipulated by a tiny clique of corrupt Party criminals and their accomplices in the military and “Organs of State Security,” maintained the cruelest and most repressive system in human history. But my loyalty to my people had not changed. The final phrase of the oath still bound me.

  Suddenly my radar-warning receiver beeped and the forward right quadrant flashed with green and yellow. Shatravka’s search radar had just swept us. From the band of intensity lights, I knew he was still at extreme search range, too far for a lock-on. But our two flights were closing fast. With Nikolai tucked up so close, we were presenting only a single target echo on both airborne and GCI radar. And I hated to relinquish this advantage too soon. But in a closing engagement with radar-homing missiles as the initial weapon, a pilot who stubbornly tried to retain a minor perceived advantage would not survive very long. The Alamo accelerated to Mach 5 and was damned hard to shake.

  Suddenly Nikolai’s voice sounded in my earphones. “Na mnye. He’s got me.” Shatravka’s radar now had a solid lock on Nikolai’s aircraft. It was time to split our flight.

  “Nachalie,” I ordered Nikolai. “Let’s go.”

  I chopped the throttles back to idle, pulled the stick hard left, and hit the air brakes. The fighter rolled onto its left wing and dropped toward the sea. As I fell, I looked quickly back over my right shoulder to see Nikolai banking hard right in a fast, high-G break at our original altitude of 15,000 feet.

  By turning perpendicular to the threatening Doppler radar, Nikolai and I hoped to break Shatravka’s lock-on before his computer authorized missile launch. Doppler radar depended on differential speed to generate a target. We had abolished that speed by turning hard right and left, perpendicular to the enemy radar. If Nikolai could keep this angle for twelve seconds, the logi
c memory of Shatravka’s radar computer would be overpowered and the lock-on broken.

  My own gambit was a variation of this tactic. As I dove west, I would be invisible to Shatravka’s Doppler radar. And I knew that the GCI radar used by his battle-control officer had a seven-second scan sweep, and that two complete scans were required to register a solid target blip at this range. So, if I could be down below the GCI radar horizon within fourteen seconds and maintain my own perpendicular aspect to the enemy flight, they would have lost me. And when they picked up Nikolai again, they would naturally assume that blip represented both of us, still flying tucked-up tight. Air combat was not a gentleman’s sport. You had to be deceptive to survive.

  Ten seconds later I slid my throttles forward to eighty percent and pitched up to slow my rate of descent at the official minimum maneuver altitude of 1,800 feet. I sagged in my seat. The rubber bladders of my G-suit inflated, squeezing my belly and thighs to keep the blood from rushing away to my legs and causing gray-out. But today I planned to go much lower to avoid radar detection.

  I pushed the throttles to ninety percent and eased the nose over. In a moment I was down on the deck, only 600 feet above the softly rolling blue swell of the sea. Now I was invisible to both Vitaly and his rival controller’s radars. And Shatravka was too preoccupied searching for Nikolai up at 15,000 feet to sweep for me down here. That was my game plan, which also included using the sun to mask my position. Because on these clear winter afternoons, anyone flying low to the west was difficult to see against the glinting surface of the water.

  My airspeed had now hit five hundred knots and I swung onto a northeast heading of 050 degrees. After forty seconds I pushed the throttles to full military power and pitched back to a steep gorka climb. I turned my oxygen control to full pressure, 100 percent, pure oxygen. In the high-G dogfight I expected, I would need all the oxygen the system could deliver to prevent diminished vision. Again, my G-suit hissed as the bladders inflated hard against my midsection. Now I turned my radar modes switch from “standby” to “illuminate.” My HUD lit up with a swarm of parallel white lines, electronic glowworms marching to the commands of my radar computer. These were target blips, most of them false returns. The radar quickly sorted through the clutter to reveal an authentic target block on a bearing of 010 degrees, ten miles ahead, at least 6,000 feet above me.