Wild Weasel
Supression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses, AKA Wild Weasel. It's a term used for a sortie, plane, or pilot that hunts down and destroy enemy anti-aircraft sites, such as surface-to-air missile sites or anti-aircraft artilley units. For fighter pilots, it's a high-risk mission that requires nerve...a whole lot of nerve, skill...a whole lot of skill, and insanity...a whole lot more than the other two.
In order to locate the target, the enemy radar guiding the anti-air weapons has to be on, and the odds are the first target is you. Once the radar is located and locked on, the best preferred weapon is the HARM: High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile. Once elimated, other aircraft would be free to engage the enemy without fear of retailation from the ground. However, miss the target or hesitate to fire, and it's most likely that your bird will end up a fireball.
Briefing Room, Tyler AFB, Japan
January 21, 2016
1304 hours, local time
Windows were closed, pilots sat down, and the digital projector showed the computer accessing the UN Armed Forces Tactical Database Network. The TDN, created by Thorndyke Systems in Station Square, California, integrates all the information from all the files, reports, sensors, spy satellites, and anything that can gather information to gain access for numerous purposes, such as briefings for fighter sorties.
As access was nearing completion, Colonel Une said to the pilots, "For those who will take part in this sortie, this will be your first time in enemy territory. It's just like training, except when you pull the trigger or press the pickle button, you will fire real ordnance at real targets. Expect the enemy to do the same to you. The last thing I have to say to you is I expect everyone to come back home alive. Lieutenant, please give the briefing."
Out of the darkness, a young, brown-haired woman with glasses walks closer to the screen and says in a somewhat monotone voice, "Yes, Ma'am." The name of the Intelligence officer: 2nd Lt. Amelia Johnson, formerly of the Earth Defense Alliance Force Air Force from another time and Earth, age 20.
The computer finished logging in to the Network and access the briefing file for the mission. The screen first shows the view of Earth, with red countries indicating enemy territory and light blue nations showing UN territory, then zoomed in the Western Pacific, locked on to Tyler, then showed the flight path to the target area in North Korea, then zoomed in to the target area, all while Amelia was giving this briefing:
"Outer Senshi, Gundam, and the 3rd Delta Elements will be mobilized for this sortie. The objective is a North Korean anti-aircraft site in Sector F4G, 10 miles West of Kosong. In order to assure air superiority for our ground forces, the enemy air defenses must be eradicated to secure an avenue of approach for future missions deeper into DPRK territory. Your primary targets include the Fan Long radar guiding the SA-2 Guideline long-range SAM site, the FLAP LID radar guiding the 2 deployed SA-10 Grumble SAM sites, and 4 Tunguska-M1 anti-aircraft units guarding the missiles. It is recommended to fly below 500 feet to the target area in order to avoid a lock on. We expect enemy air resistance to be low, but intelligence reports of an enemy AWACS in your AOR, so expect fighter escort. That is all."
The Outer Senshi element comprised of Amara, Michelle, Hotaru, led by Trista. The Gundam element consists of Trowa, Heero, Duo, Wufei, led by Quatre. And the 3rd Delta element consists of Air Force pilots 2nd Lt. Ken "Crow" Thomas, 2nd Ellen "Rose" McNichol, 2nd Lt. John "Wolf" Rundal, being led by 2nd Lt. Ruth "Lilly" Valentine.
The Delta elements in the 5th Wing used to form Delta Squadron of the EDAF back in their Earth. After the war against the Orbital Citizen Community, they were assigned to conduct a fly-by for a victory parade. They went into some clouds but never came out of them, and the radar showed that they disappeared without a trace and without any explanation. The EDAF listed them as Missing, Presumed Dead. Now, 3rd Element and the rest of Delta are once again smack dab in the middle of another worldwide war.
Outside, ground crews load the weapons onto the aircraft flying for this Wild Weasel. The general loadout armament: AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles for the targets, CBU-87 cluster bombs for the launchers, as well as AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles for any air threats. As the pilots approach their fighters, Quatre and Heero were having a talk with Quatre asking,"So, they got us flying an Ironhand. Nervous?" Heero responded without any emotion,"No." In the Navy, they call their Wild Weasel missions as Ironhands, a term going all the way back from the American Navy during the Vietnam War. Then Quatre said,"Well...good luck" as they went to their seperate birds.
Heero said "Quatre..." who turned around and paid attention to him. Continuing in his cold personality, Heero said,"Try not to get us killed, we have girlfriends to come back to." Quatre smiled and said, "I'll do my best." The pilots checked their fighters for anything out of place, then entered the cockpit, closed the canopy and went through their final checklists. The planes taxied onto the runway ready for takeoff with permission from the control tower. First off, Ruth's pink F/A-18C Hornet, Ken's blue F-35A Lighting II, and John's black F-16C Fighting Falcon takes off. Then, Quatre's flight of Super Hornets were next to leave the runway. Last, Trista's group took off into the sky, all heading for Korea, diving into the fireworks as one person would put it.
The Sea of Japan, off the North Korean Coastline
1530 hours
The group of fighters make their way to North Korean airspace at 13000 ft above sea level. In the front, Quatre's plane is equipped with AN/ALQ-99 ECM Jammers preprogrammed to jam the enemy's radar frequency so that the others can destroy the sites with less risk. For this mission, Ruth, John, and Trista was equipped with an Air-to-Air loadout to cover the strike group from any enemy aircraft. With the war in full swing, North Korea recieved upgraded Mig-29s from their "friends from the other side of the portal," Su-27s, Su-30s and J-10s from China, as well as Tu-22 Backfire bombers from the Arab forces, thereby giving them a chance against UN airpower. Hence, air cover is crucial and required in Korea. But in order to gain total air supremacy, the air defenses must first be destroyed.
At the ingress point, Quatre said,"Nomad to all units, we've reached the ingress point. ECM is active, drop below to 500 ft to target." The planes went down and were just a few hundred feet below the terrain. Quatre, Trowa, Trista, Ruth and Michelle flew rather straight foreward over most of the hills, while Heero, Wufei, Hotaru and Ken were no higher than 250 ft. sometimes going in between the hills. As for Maxwell and Rundal, there were hotdogging the stick at 100 ft, pulling all kinds of stunts in between and over the hills, which got Ruth a little ticked off.
She yelled over the radio,"WOLF, SCYTHE, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?!! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, SLAM INTO THE COUNTRYSIDE?!" Duo replied, "Hey, he started it." John fired back saying, "WHAT?! You little piece of sh--" static interfered with the rest of the word. Then, he continued,"Do you want to eat a 'winder today?!" Duo replied,"Not after you eat my cannon." John yelled,"IS THAT A CHALLENGE?!" Quatre intervened,"Please, you two. Save it until after we get back. We've got a mission to complete." Duo complied in his happy-go-lucky persona with, "You got it, boss." John reluctantly complied, "Yeah, yeah, whatever." The fighters continued to make their way to the target area.
Anti-Aircraft Site Near Kosong, North Korea
The area was bristening with missiles ready to launch at a moment's notice. The Tunguska turrets were scanning the sky for anything that might threaten the SAMs. Soon enough, the planes reached the site at speeds close to Mach 1. Quatre gave the go-ahead by saying,"This is Nomad, targets on the nose. You're all cleared to engage all targets." All the planes pulled up and split off.
One of the Tunguskas locked on to Amara and fired one of its radar-guided missiles at her. She pulled up and banked left while releasing chaff. Fortunately, it missed and went harmlessly into the air. Trowa locked onto the Tunguska and pressed the pickle button while saying "Gundam 3, Magnum." The HARM missile flew off the rack and went directly at the vehicle, causing the Tunguska's turret to explode.
The missiles try to target the fighters, but the jamming prevents the radar from gaining a lock on. As the rest of the self-propelled AA fired its guns at the fast movers, Hotaru lines two of them up and fires her 30mm gattling cannon. Although it looked like only smoke came out of the gun, an almost invisible stream of anti-armor bullets ripped several vehicles and some of the launchers into a column of fire.
Hotaru spoke over the radio, "Firefly to Timer, AA guns destroyed." But she missed one that was behind her and fired a missile. Ruth found the missile coming right behind Hotaru and called, "Firefly, Lilly, incoming missile! Missile!" Hotaru punched some chaff and pulled a hard right turn, but the missile detonated below the airframe, casuing warhead fragments to hit the body.
Warning lights and alarms went off in her cockpit, a violent shake knocked Hotaru around, afterwhich she said,"Uugh, I'm hit! I'm hit! I'm hit!" Fortunately for the A-10, it was heavily armored, so she was still flying. Heero fired a missile at the remaining Tunguska, elimating the short-range defenses. A worried Trista called,"Firefly, Timer, are you alright?"
Hotaru responded,"Yeah, I'm ok. Rudders are damaged, but the rest is functional. I can still fly." Quatre didn't want to take the chance of having her down in enemy territory so he called in,"Firefly, Nomad, let's not take any chances. Head on back to base. Shenlong, Anaconda, cover Firefly out of the combat area." Heero and Wufei complied with the order and met up with Hotaru.
Trista called in saying, "I'm going to link up with Firefly just in case. Typhoon, Tsunami, I'll leave you with Nomad." Michelle responded,"Roger, Timer" and Amara replied, "Take care." The Eagle met up with the A-10 and headed back home.
Meanwhile, the remaining SAMs were about to be eradicated by the Super Hornets. Heero fired one HARM at the Guideline radar, while Duo hit the Grumble SAM radar, neutralizing the high-altitude threat. The planes climbed up to 7000 ft. and Quatre reported,"All radars eradicated, looks like the SAM sites are down. Let's get out of here." On the ground, the Guideline missiles were aiming at the strike group heading home. One of the missiles rocketed off the rail and streaked towards Quatre. In the cockpit, he senses sharpened once he heard the beeping, then looked at his radar and sees the missile coming at him from behind.
"BREAK OFF! BREAK OFF! SAM!! SAM!!" Quatre yelled. The planes split off and Quatre banked right while punching chaff. The Guideline fortunately missed and streaked past towards him. A surprised Duo said, "What the hell was that?!" Michelle said, "Looked like the SAM came from back there!" Amara yelled, "But we destroyed the radar! They shouldn't be firing at all!" Two more SAMs, a Grumble and another Guideline, were fired. Amara said something with,"Oh, F..." but static again interferred with the word. They were deploying more chaff and Quatre yelled, "Get down to the deck! Avoid their lock, now!" The planes dropped and turned back to the SAM area, but all the radars were destroyed.
"Anaconda to Nomad, no radars are active. Repeat, all ground radars have been silenced." Coming out of the forest, two SA-9 mobile SAM platforms and two ZSU-23-4 self-propelled guns moved into range and fired their weapons onto the low-flying aircraft. "Confirmed, 2 SA-9s and 2 ZSU-23s coming from the East" Amara reported on the radio. Duo responded,"Gaskins and Shilkas? Man, they'll pulling all the stops today." Planes constantly climbed and dived to avoid getting hit by the air defenses, while trying to cluster bomb the launchers. Chaff and flares were ejected, but were already running out.
Just then, Ruth was looking at the radar and found something mentioned in the briefing. "Lilly to all units, contact, Mainstay with escort, heading 320, 40 miles, angels 10. Could that be controlling the SAMs?" It was a A-50 Mainstay radar plane with 2 Mig-21 Fishbeds leading it and 2 Mig-23 Floggers trailing it. As soon as the SAM radars went down, the plane took control of the missiles, and fired at the planes, a rather clever tactic. Quatre couldn't jam the plane because its frequency is different that the one used at the radar sites. That left him with only one option: shoot the AWACS down.
Quatre agreed and said,"It has to be. Scythe, Phalanx, Typhoon, take care of the launchers, Viper units, engage the fighters, Tsunami, form on my wing, we're engaging the Mainstay." A grinning Rundal said, "Huh, never thought you'd asked." then went into full afterburner to engage the fighters first before anyone else did. The four Migs veered away from the A-50 split off, and headed for Ruth, Ken, and John from their left. One Flogger and Fishbed split off to intercept Michelle and Quatre while the other two stuck with 3rd Delta Element.
Meanwhile, Trowa dropped a CBU-87 cluster bomb onto the SA-2 launchers, which popped off its shell casing and spread numerous submunitions that rained down on the missiles. Duo heads for one of the Shilkas in a rather high-speed, suicidal run as the guns keep firing at him. He pulls the trigger, fires his 20mm cannon, and destroys the Shilka without recieving any damage to his aircraft. Amara fires her remaining HARM at the other AA, and strafes some of the Grumble launchers with her gun. Up in the air, Ruth dogfights with one of the Mig-21s.
She selects the AIM-9 Sidewinder and tries to lock onto the bandit's engine, but this Mig is squriming all over the place. She tries for a kill shot, so she pushes the button and yells,"Viper 1, Fox Two" and the Sidewinder flies out. The bandit deploys his own flares and pull into the sun, thereby prevents the missile from hitting. The Fishbed rolls upside down and dives down towards Ken, now pointing towards the Mig. They come at each other head on until the Fishbed was shot down by Rundal's gun aimed right at the cockpit. The shot down enemy fighter dives down in flames, then explodes several thousand feet in mid-air. Rundal happily reported in,"Wolf here, bandit down. Scratch one Fishbed."
Ruth looks behind her and sees the Flogger coming around behind her, so she tries to out-turn it to the right. Ken targets the Flogger, pushes the button, the internal bays open, then an AMRAAM fires. The Mig manages to bank away from the radar-guided missile, but couldn't avoid Ken's 25mm bullets that came after the Flogger moved into range. The Flogger's engine was on fire and the pilot ejected, causing the plane to fall and spin out of control. Meanwhile, Michelle and Quatre were in a dogfight of their own with the remaining two Migs.
Quatre had the Flogger right in front of him, but is too close to even use his gun, so he pulls a high-speed yoyo maneuver to widen the distance. He pulls the stick, pushes the throttle, and the plane goes into a steep climb at 70 degrees at full afterburner. After a few seconds, he levels his plane and lines up the turning Flogger that's trying to get a better position on him. Now he's too far for guns, so he selects the Sidewinder, locks on the Mig, and uncages the missile, which gave off a growling noise indicating a good lock and track.
Quatre called, "Nomad, Fox Two!" and the Sidewinder streaked off the left wingtip. The -23 deployed flares while climbing and banking right, but the missile got close enough to clip the engine. The smoking plane climbed a few hundred feet, then stalled all the way down to earth back first. Quatre looked to see if the enemy pilot ejected to safety, but there was no parachute in sight, which brought a kind of disappointed look on Quatre's face. He knew things like this would happen because he experienced it back in his Mobile Suit days, but he just can't help feel sorry for killing another human being, no matter how much he or she does or doesn't deserve it. He's used to it, it's never easy for him, but he gets used to it.
Michelle had the Fishbed hot on her tail, and is in a good position to fire its missiles. Moments later, the pilot fired an old Aphid missile at Michelle. She reacted by diving to the right and popping flares, confusing the missile and having it hit one of the flares. Michelle uses both the stick and the rudder pedals in an attempt to outturn the bandit to the right. Both planes were in a high-g turn spiraling downward. The North Korean pilot tries to follow suit, but blacked out in the process. As for Michelle, she is pinned to the back discomfort, but she manages to handle the g-forces pretty easily. She manages to get behind the bandit and selects her gun: The M-61 Vulcan 20mm gattling gun.
On the HUD, a reticle appears for the gun and Michelle aims it towards the plane. She had a good shot at the engine, but she wanted to aim a little further up than that. She slightly adjusted the plane so that the recticle was over the Mig's cockpit. She pulled the trigger and the bullets started to fly from the nose with a buzzing noise. The rounds went straight through the canopy glass and the cockpit caught fire. The pilot in the Mig-21 went spiraling down and slamming into the Korean countryside. In the cockpit, Michelle Kaiou is no different than her superheroine alter ego Sailor Neptune. She is completely devoted to the mission, and shows no remose or pity, nor does she expect it from anyone else.
With the fighters down, the Mainstay is a sitting duck waiting to fry. Quatre targeted the plane and called in "Fox Three! Fox Three!" Two AMRAAMs jumped off the edges of the air intakes and bulleted towards the target with another two AMRAAMs fired from Michelle and Ruth. It was 29 miles away when all four hit the wings, fuselage, and radar dish. The dish broke into pieces, the tail section broke away, and the left wing flew off from the missile hits, causing the burning Mainstay to tumble down to the ground. A few survivors jumped out of the plane, but Mainstays are supposed to have a full crew of 15. A few hundred feet above the ground, the plane exploded and the remaining debris scattered around the area as little firery comets.
Quatre looked down at the wreckage and called in,"Confirmed, AWACS is down. Any more launches?" Heero looked at the radar and reported,"Negative. All SAM sites are confirmed down." Amara responded with, "Whew. Alright." Quatre said with a subdued voice, "Nomad to all units, mission complete, all aircraft RTB." All the planes left in the area headed for the coast and returned home.
Tyler AFB, Japan
1720 hours
The planes coming from that Wild Weasel sortie began landing at the runway one bird at a time. It was a reliving sight for Lady Une to see all of her pilots come back alive and well. The planes taxied and parked at the flightline where ground crews would inspect the aircraft, make any necessary repairs, and wait for the call to rearm the fighters for the next sortie. At the far end of the flightline, there is a hangar dedicated for damaged aircraft requiring repair. Inside that hangar, Airman Kari Kamiya and some of her Digimon ad hoc mechanics are at work fixing Hotaru's wounded A-10 that was hurt from that sortie earlier in the afternoon.
At the briefing room, all the personnel involved were being debriefed by Amelia and her superior, Major Lilia Mihajlovna, UNAF, age 14. Lilia was also EDAF after being part of a genetic enhancement project. She is currently the senior intelligence officer in the 5th Wing. With the flight tapes examined and downloaded and the pilots reviewed, the screen shows the TDN creating a digital reenactment of the last sortie. Meanwhile, Amelia had some final words before ending the debriefing:
"Thanks to you, this Wild Weasel mission was a success. With this anti-aircraft site eliminated, we can strike further into enemy territory. But for now, get some rest, you deserve it."
They're going to need it, 'cause it's only going uphill from here.
Author's Notes
Series Added: Air Force Delta Strike(PS2 game)
More Terms:
UNAF- United Nations Air Force
G-Forces- Gravity forces pushing on a body.
Angels- 1000 feet(Ex. Angels 5: 5000 ft)
TDN- Tactical Database Network
DPRK- Democratic People's Republic of Korea(North Korea. South Korea is officially named the Republic Of Korea, or ROK)
SAM- Surface-to-Air Missile
AWACS- Airborne Warning And Control System
AOR- Area Of Responsibility
ECM- Electronic CounterMeasures
Magnum- Radio call of launch of anti-radar missile, such as a HARM or ALARM.
AA- Anti-Aircraft
Fox Two- Radio call of launch of IR-guided missile, such as a Sidewinder or ASRAAM
Fox Three- Radio call of launch of active-radar guided missile, such as an AMRAAM or Meteor.
HUD- Heads Up Display
RTB- Return(ing) To Base