"The President of the Osean Federations takes great pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Second Lieutenant Hans Grimm, whereby Lieutenant Grimm on the 5th of November 2010, with apparent disregard for his own life, saved the lives of twenty six airmen of the 108th Tactical Fighter Squadron and the 20th Bomb Squadron."
Standing at attention, Wardog Squadron watched as their youngest member was presented Osea's third highest award for heroism in combat. Sergeant Major Hallaway fixed the ribbon to Grimm's chest and saluted. Grimm returned the salute in kind.
"Well done, Lieutenant. Dismissed." Hallaway released Grimm and the rest of Wardog from the informal ceremony and promptly left the room to return to her duty station.
"Six Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star." Chopper quipped. "We must be on our way to speedrunning all of the medals for valour."
"Can't wait for one of us to get a Medal of Honour posthumously." Kitagawa remarked as she plopped down on one of the lounges. Ash would have laughed if that wasn't a very possible reality. They had just barely come back alive from the last mission by the skin of their teeth. She had no idea how Grimm had even evaded an R-37 missile given how close to the launch platform he had been. Ash sighed and did what she could to purge that thought from her mind.
6 November 2010
If there was one upside to Wardog's situation, it was that they weren't ground troops like Lieutenant Jason Buckham and Petty Officer First Class Ajay Witskin. A month ago, Jason and his team of SEALs had been assigned with the task of performing landing site reconnaissance in the leadup to the landings at Bastok. Fast forward to the present day and they had been given the unfortunate task of jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft well behind enemy lines and hiking more than twenty klicks to sit on top of a hill for twenty hours to lase a target for friendly fighters.
Such was the life of a SEAL. Jason and Ajay had jumped from a C-130 in the dead of night and glided via parachute into the rough vicinity of the target area. From there they had hiked with half their bodyweight worth of equipment through the arid savannah to their observation post. At the top of that hill, the duo had set up concealment for themselves and their equipment: An M4 carbine, an M249 SAW, a night vision capable spotting scope, a SOFLAM laser designator and a radio antenna. Once Jason and Ajay were in position, they waited. The aircraft meant to carry out the strike were due to be on station by midday.
Into the fires of battle, unto the anvil of war. A saying that Blaze had heard from an old tabletop game that felt particularly relevant as Wardog Squadron was once again tasked with a mission.
"We have confirmed the existence of a Yuktobanian munitions factory in the arid region of Sonza." As per usual, Chaeny was carrying out the briefing. "Credible intelligence suggests that the factory has finished a major batch of artillery shells, rockets and theatre-level ballistic missiles that are about to be airlifted to the front by a squadron of transport aircraft. Your mission is to strike the facility's production lines and destroy those transports before they can deliver their cargo. Any questions?"
The room was silent.
"Now, the facility is defended by a heavy blanket of anti aircraft defences. Quite possibly the thickest blanket outside of the Cinigrad region. Hard kill and soft kill systems, MANPADS to S-400 batteries, GPS jamming, radar jamming, the whole nine yards. A squadron of Navy electronic warfare aircraft will be assisting you to get into the area, but be warned, once on the deck, you'll be heading right into the belly of the beast." Chaeny concluded the briefing with a threat warning. "If there's no questions, depart as soon as possible."
As it turned out, the only easy day really was yesterday.
From looking at overhead photos of the facility, the main production lines were located within two separate factories built with thick slabs of reinforced concrete. With the AA threat being what it was, attacking the structures from above via a popup attack wasn't feasible and they didn't have access to any standoff munitions with the accuracy required to hit the factories without GPS guidance. That left the brute force option of going through the thickest part of the structure, a task the five thousand pound GBU-28 was perfect for.
With Blaze and Chopper carrying a GBU-28 each, Wardog sortied from Sand Island. Carrying the bomb as well as missiles for self defence, Blaze could have sworn she felt the Mudhen's frame strain with the weight. Nevertheless, she and the rest of the squadron pushed forward.
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E
WARDOG 3 / EDGE, CORVUS / F-15E
WARDOG 4 / ARCHER / F-16C
SCOUT 501 / FREAKSHOW / E/A-18G
SCOUT 502 / GHOUL / E/A-18G
SCOUT 503 / WOODSTOCK / E/A-18G
The briefing hadn't mentioned who was supporting Wardog, so when Blaze made the radio handshake with three Growlers going by the Scout callsign, she was surprised.
"Freakshow? Is that you?" Blaze asked the squad leader of the three Growlers. She heard a familiar laugh.
"The Four Wings of Sand Island gracing us with their presence once again." Freakshow joked. "We're the Headhunters, not the Headhunted, of course we're alive."
"No, like, we heard the Kestrel was off station, what are you still doing here?" Blaze was both surprised and confused.
"EW assets are in short supply, we got yoinked off the carrier as soon as she went home." Freakshow replied.
"Wardog, Scout, cut the chatter." As always, Thunderhead graced Wardog with his presence. "We have a job to do."
"Well aren't you a ball of fun." Freakshow quipped. "Copy, Scouts forming up above and behind Wardog."
The group of seven pushed on towards the target area. The Sonza region, a long stretch of dry, arid savannah, went on as far as the eye could see. Brown grass and the occasional tree dotted the area. As the group got closer to the target, their radar warning receivers started going crazy, picking up at least a dozen different radar emitters out to the north-west.
"Jeez, now they've got us turning right into another suicide mission!" Chopper complained upon seeing the scale of the enemy's air defence network. "And this scenery definitely clashes with my rock n'roll…"
Blaze shook her head. "Golf 2-1, Wardog 1, radio check, over."
"Wardog 1, Golf 2-1, reading you five by five." Buckham, Golf 2-1, replied from his observation post near the target. "'Bout time you showed up. Say weapons package, over."
Blaze looked at her kneeboard. "Golf 2-1, Wardog's package as follows. Two by GBU-28, eighteen by CBU-107, laser code 2-2-0-0."
"Two GBU-28, eighteen CBU-107, laser code 2-2-0-0, acknowledged." Buckham replied, presumably writing this down on a notepad of his own. "Wardog, be advised, we've seen ZSUs and Tunguskas moving around in the area, uncertain if they're active or not."
"Copy that 2-1, we'll manage fine." Blaze reassured, dropping her altitude drastically to conceal her radar signature amongst the terrain leading towards the target. Chopper, Grimm and Nagase followed her lead while Freakshow, Ghoul and Woodstock popped up and gained altitude.
"Wardog, we're playing the music… now." Freakshow advised Blaze. "Given the target, today's track is 21 Guns by Green Day. Try to avoid the Iglas, for the love of god."
Blaze snickered in reply to Freakshow as she pushed the throttle all the way forward. "Golf 2-1, Wardog, we'll be on target in three minutes."
"Copy Wardog, three mikes." Buckham replied.
"Wardog, listen up!" Blaze called out. "We'll be doing this in three passes. I'll be targeting one of the production lines at high speed and low level. Chopper, once I've hit my target, make your pass, hit the other factory and get the hell out of the danger zone. Edge, Archer, once Chopper is clear, make a simultaneous pass on the runway and flight line, get as many as the transports as you can. Understood?"
"Crystal." Nagase.
"Got it." Grimm.
"Understood, kid," Chopper.
"Alright." Blaze lowered her visor, leant back in the seat and braced herself. "Wardog 1, in."
Ripping towards the target at blazing speeds, as Blaze rounded a corner she noticed a radar array scanning outwards from the factory. Almost certainly having appeared on the display of the radar operator in the nearby control room, Blaze pushed onwards.
"Heads up, they know we're here." Blaze informed her squadmates, passing over a hill. As she reached the apex of her flight path, Blaze just barely saw the roofs of some of the factory buildings in the distance.
"Eyes on you, Wardog." Buckham said from his observation post. "Laser is hot on the left building, I say again, left building."
"Wardog 1." Blaze replied as quick as was humanly possible. "Sam, keep an eye out for triple A."
"Yut." Samurai muttered. They were fast approaching the target, just one more hill to go before they were on the last leg. As Blaze pulled over that final hill, four anti air search radars illuminated her all at once. She pushed the Mudhen as low as she dared to the ground and lined up the factory on the left side. The F-15E handled like a pig with the crushing five thousand pounds of weight under its belly. All that weight was about to get sent down range with all the fury of a thousand angry wasps.
"Wardog 1, pickle!" Blaze declared, releasing the bomb. All of a sudden the Mudhen gained back a bunch of its manoeuvrability and acceleration, right in the nick of time as Blaze spotted tracers flying in her direction.
"Break high!" Samurai called out the incoming fire right as Blaze pulled the stick to get above the incoming rounds. Frantically jerking the aircraft around as more bursts of autocannon fire lit up the skies around them, Blaze caught a glance of a massive blowout from the building she had hit. Ventilation shafts billowed with ugly black smoke as a large chunk of the roof exploded outwards.
"Wardog 1, good effect on target." Buckham reported from his uninterrupted line of sight to the target.
"Heard!" Blaze yelled back, her voice straining from the variation in gee forces as she dodged and weaved in between streams of AA fire. "Chopper, you're up! Watch out for AAA!"
"Roger that! Wardog 2, in!"
Chopper's mad run towards the second factory looked much the same as Blaze's approach, the key difference being that when he came screaming in over that final hill a couple of minutes after Blaze, there was already a welcoming committee of anti aircraft guns waiting for him.
"Weren't kidding about the triple A!" Chopper said between grit teeth as he wrestled with his aircraft to evade the incoming fire while also remaining on target. The added weight he was lugging around certainly wasn't helping.
"Hot laser!" Zoomer could see the laser being cast by the spotter team.
"Seen!" Chopper saw it on the same kind of screen that Zoomer was using. "Wardog 2, pickle!"
The GBU-28 separated from the Mudhen, acquired the laser and tracked away towards what the laser was pointed at. Chopper pulled away and decided to turn around a hundred and eighty degrees to come back the way he came instead of following Blaze north away from the facility. Chopper got creative with his evasive turns to avoid the autocannon rounds flying towards him.
As he approached the safety that the surrounding hills provided, Chopper heard a faint bang and felt a slight shake. He looked back.
"The hell was that?" Chopper asked. None of the master alert sirens were going off and all the various pressure gauges seemed to be at normal levels. Zoomer looked back.
"Dunno. We all good?" Zoomer asked, not seeing any indications that they had taken damage.
"Pressure's good, no warning lights." Chopper replied.
"Get us the fuck out of here and don't worry about it." Zoomer suggested, a suggestion that Chopper took to heart as they flew away from the facility at full speed.
When Chopper called out his bomb drop, Nagase and Grimm initiated their attack runs, flanking around a couple of kilometres to the west to line themselves up with the runway and hangars before turning and burning for the target, Nagase in the lead, Grimm a short distance behind her, CBU-107 cluster bombs beneath both of their wings. The CBU-107 was a cluster bomb, but unlike a traditional cluster bomb that used explosives as its payload, the 107 used thousands of steel and tungsten rods for a kinetic effect rather than an explosive one. The result was a cluster bomb that didn't leave behind unexploded ordnance.
Wardog 3 and 4 came rocketing in from the southern end of the runway. A couple of Yuktobanian An-124s had begun taxiing in the timeframe where Blaze and Chopper had conducted their attacks. Nagase, carrying more than double Grimm's total bomb count, took the responsibility of attacking the flight line where more than a dozen similar An-124s and Il-76s were parked up. Nagase lined up the transports and dropped her cluster bombs in pairs, tossing more than enough of them to completely blanket the area with tungsten and steel rods. Thousands upon thousands of small dust and fragments were kicked up as all the aircraft on the flight line were torn up and shredded apart.
"Good effects." Pops commented from the back seat. "Watch out for AA."
"I see it." Nagase replied, climbing up to escape the reach of the Shilkas and Tunguskas firing at her. She elected to fly north to meet up with Blaze. Grimm on the other hand turned around and went to go back up Chopper. A handful of rounds got too close for comfort, but both Grimm and Nagase made it safely out of the danger zone.
"Wardog, Golf 2-1, good effect on all primary targets. The factories and planes are toast. This callsign is going offline for exfil." Buckham reported a positive bomb damage assessment to the strike aircraft above.
"Copy that 2-1, have a safe trip. We are RTB." Blaze said to Buckham.
"Likewise, Wardog. Golf 2-1, out."