Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

“STOIC One, multiple SAM launches, Baghdad . . . heads-up MOXIE!”
Somewhere behind me in the western darkness, I heard the other flight lead
zipper his mike. Unlike during peacetime operations, we flew almost exclusively
“comm out.” That is, without the usual chatter on the radios. Some of this was
professionalism but most of it was efficiency. With three hundred airplanes using
the same few frequencies, you had to limit conversations to the bare minimum. This
meant combat. Missile launches, target locations, or, God forbid, search and rescue.
Modern fighters all had a second, and sometimes a third, radio that was used for
inter-flight chitchat. Not that there was much of it. All fighter squadrons had
“standards.” A hopefully short list of mundane items that we would all do the same
way. The Gamblers were very good about this. We’d refined all the extraneous
stuff to the point where you only really spoke as an exception. Everything else was
just done by the Big Boy Book of Rules.
Then the first SAM stopped streaking west. It hung in space between the city
and the stars, and I caught myself holding my breath for a moment. SAM launched.
But who was the target The flames were enormous. I was ten miles away but
could plainly see the long, fiery tails; white-hot and fuzzy near the end, the plume
became darker and almost red where it touched the missile. The missiles were
invisible, of course, but you knew where they were, because that’s where the fire
stopped. Nothing moved faster across the sky than a surface-to-air missile.
Even after the rocket boosters burned out, the eerie disembodied red flames
raced across the black sky looking for targets. You didn’t start worrying until you
saw the flaming doughnut—a red-orange ring of fire with a dark hole in the middle.
This was the SAM and it was pointed right at you.
“Shit . . .” I muttered and thumbed on my Electronic Countermeasures pod.
Pushing the nose over, I kept my eyes padlocked on the SA-3 as it turned and
pointed at me.
“Heads-up STOIC Two . . . SAM at ten o’clock high . . . stand by . . .”
I thumbed the data-link switch over, heard the “tickle” in my helmet, and saw
that my wingman was about two miles behind and to the right of me. Twisting in
the seat, I looked back over the tail but saw nothing. It didn’t matter. Unlike
previous rigid, communications-intensive tactics, we’d evolved into a much simpler
mind-set. Modern technology helped—instead of asking where my wingman was, I
could send a data-link position request. I also always hated the inflexible, lineabreast
formations that we’d been trained with. They didn’t work in combat,
because if you flew in straight lines you were just asking for a missile up your butt.
In combat, I used a “loose deuce” formation almost exclusively. This puts a