"Brown, Dale - Warrior Class" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

TWO
NeMs Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas, Nevada Several days later
"Jee-sus, look at those suckers haul ass!
It.seemed as if the entire crowd of about two thousand onlookers said the very same thing as two sleek aircraft came into view on final approach to Nellis Air Force Base's main runway. Even from ten miles out, they were clearly visible. Yet unlike most large aircraft, such as airliners or military jet transports, this aircraft didn't seem to be flying slower than normal-in fact, like the fighter jets that escorted it, it seemed to be going very fast indeed.
It used the NATO nickname "Backfire." But in the Republic of Ukraine it was known as "Speka," meaning "heat," and that described the Tupolev-22M perfectly. It looked like a very large jet fighter or a small, compact bomber, with a long pointed nose, sleek lines, variable-geometry "swing" wings, and two very big, very noisy afterburning engines. It carried a wide range of weapons, including all of the Commonwealth of Independent States' air-launched weapons. It had half the payload of the B- I bomber, but much greater speed and range; and it was air-refuelable, which meant it could attack targets anywhere on the planet on short notice with minimal support. It was sleek, fast, powerful, and even sexy-looking. All of these factors made the Backfire bomber arguably one of the world's most devastating attack planes.
There were many reasons for Ukraine not to have anything to do with the Backfires, or any expensive offensive weapon
system, for that matter. Ukraine, the largest and most populous ex-Soviet republic besides Russia, had one of the smallest gross national products in industrialized Europe--every bit of its industrial output was needed to maintain its fragile existing infrastructure and maintain a modicum of a decent life for its citizens, with hardly anything left over for exports, long-term capital improvement, or warfighting. Despite its geographical and strategic importance, Ukraine spent a fraction of what other countries its size spent on defense, and it would be difficult to maintain the fleet of relatively high-tech planes.
Upon splitting off from the Commonwealth, Ukraine's entire strategic attitude had changed as well. Ukraine declared itself a "nuclear-free" country, isolated itself from the ethnic and economic turmoil engulfing most of eastern Europe
and the Russian enclaves, and resisted joining any outside military alliance. Ukraine had few outside enemies except for its tenuous relationship with its former parent, Russia, so the longrange supersonic Backfires had been considered nothing more than a useless, dangerous money pit. In fact, plenty of countries, including several Middle East countries, had offered as much as one billion dollars each in hard currency for the planes. So they had been too expensive to fly, not apparently vital to the security of Ukraine, and worth billions in badly needed cash.
But times quickly changed, and Ukraine had found it could no longer afford to live in splendid isolation. Russia became more and more reactionary and more aggressive against its former Soviet republics, increasing the pressure on its neighbors to join the new Commonwealth-what many saw as the rebirth of the Soviet empire-or suffer its wrath. When Ukraine had refused to renew its membership in the Commonwealth and at the same time applied for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia had exploded.
In 1995, Russia had staged a series of deadly attacks against military bases in several of its former republics, including Moldova, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Russia had called these bases "suspected terrorist training facilities" and threats against Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and had accused their former republics of persecuting ethnic Russians.








The Russian attacks had been swift and devastating. Only when Russia had attacked NATO warships on the Black Sea had anyone tried to oppose the Russian war machine. Rebecca Furness, at the time the first female combat pilot in the United States Air Force, and her tiny Air Force Reserve unit from Plattsburgh, New York, had flown a series of precision strike raids deep into Russia that had helped stop the conflict before it flared into a general east European thermonuclear war. Patrick McLanahan, flying the original EB-52 Megafortress, had done the same in defending Lithuania against attacks by neighboring Belarus and Russia.
Already devastated by a slow economy, no foreign investment, and a general lack of confidence in its reformist government, Russia had finally refrained from any more military forays for several years. It was completely unable to influence events concerning former close friends Iraq, Serbia, and North Korea. Russia, whose landmass spanned almost half the globe's time zones and whose natural resources were unmatched by any country in the world, was quickly becoming a third-rate power.
The rise of nationalist, neo-Communist leaders like Valentin Sen'kov had changed all that. Russia had reasserted its influence in deciding the fate of Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo, and it had used considerable military force to subdue the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Ukraine, because of its domineering location on the Black Sea, its large Russian population, and because it hadn't been properly brought into line during the 1995 conflict, clearly saw itself as next in line if it refused to toe the Russian line.
Ukraine's answer: stop acting like a target, and start being a true European power and member of the world community. It started a conscription program---every high school student received ten weeks of military basic training as a condition of graduation, and every able-bodied person had to belong to a reserve unit until age forty-and increased defense spending tenfold. Ukraine had beefed up its Black Sea fleet, started training its ground forces using Gen-nan, Turkish, and American doctrine instead of Russian, and rebuilt its air forces-including reactivating the Tupolev-22M fleet. Since the 1995 conflict with
Russia, twelve of the surviving twenty-one Backfire bombers had been returned to service.
The most important change: increased integration with NATO military command structure and doctrine. Full integration would take many years, but the beginning
of this important step in NATO's push toward Asia was taking place now. Two of the supersonic swing-wing bombers were at Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada, participating in U.S. Air Force-sponsored joint NATO air combat exercises. They were the most powerful, most anticipated, ex-Soviet warplanes ever to come to America.
"How about we have a little fun, guys?" Captain Annie Dewey asked. The thirty-five-year-old brunette B-IB aircraft commander from the One-Eleventh Bomb Squadron, Nevada Air National Guard, was sitting in the right seat of the Tupolev-
22M supersonic bomber. Per United States regulations, a U.S. military pilot had to be on board every multi -crew-member combat aircraft landing on an active military airbase. The nonstop flight from Ukraine to Las Vegas had taken only nine hours, including two aerial refuelings.
"What do you have in mind?" Colonel-General Roman Smoliy, the crew commander, asked. With his square jaw, gray flattop, piercing blue eyes, square nose, and broad shoulders tapering to thin ankles, Roman Smoliy looked like he had been cast for a Hollywood movie. Smoliy was the chief of staff of the Ukrainian Air Force. Before the conflict with Russia, Ukraine had had a force of two hundred intercontinental bombers, equal to that of the United States, a mix of Tu-95 Bear turboprop bombers, Tu-22 Blinders, and Tu-160 Blackjack supersonic bombers, along with the Tu-22M Backfires. After the war, only fifty had remained. It was General Smoliy's job to decide if Ukraine should have any long-range bombers at all, and that meant learning how to employ them in battle. "Nothing boring, I take it?"
"How well you know me already, General," Annie said. She spoke briefly on the radio, got the clearance she was looking for, then said, "Escorts, you're clear to depart. See ya on the ground." The two F- 16C Falcon air defense fighters, who had been escorting the big Russian bombers on their flight across







the United States, wagged their wings and split off. "Okay, General, one-time good deal-all the airspace within thirty miles of Nellis, including over Las Vegas, is yours. Show us what these babies can do."
General Smoliy broke into a wide grin, then reached across the center console, took Annie's hand, and kissed it. "Thank you, Captain." He secured his oxygen mask with an excited SNAP! and took a firm grip on the control stick. "Doozhe priyemno, Las Vegas," he said. "Pleased to meet you." He then jammed the throttles all the way to full military power and swept the wings back as far as they could go. He started a tight left turn back toward Las Vegas, his wingman in tight fingertip formation. It did not take long for the fori-nation to overfly the Strip. They had descended to just a thousand feet above ground level. They did two three-sixties over the downtown, using the Stratosphere tower as their orbit point.
After the second orbit, just to make sure as many folks as possible were watching, Smoliy called out, "Dvee, drova, tup! " and he plugged in full afterburners. The two Tu-22Ms easily slid through the sound barrier, booming all of downtown Las Vegas. He then aimed directly for Nellis Air Force Base. Still traveling well past the speed of sound, both heavy bombers flew down the runway only two hundred feet above ground, creating a double rooster-tail from the supersonic shock wave that could be seen twenty miles away.
At the north end of the runway, Smoliy pulled his throttles back to military power, yanked his bomber into a hard ninetydegree right-bank turn, and swept the wings forward, quickly slowing the big bomber down below the sound barrier. By the time they rolled out on the downwind side, they were at the perfect altitude and airspeed for the approach, and Smoliy and Dewey began configuring the bomber for their overhead approach. The second Tu-22M was precisely thirty seconds behind him.
"That was awesome, General!" Annie shouted, after she double-checked that the landing gear was down and locked. "Totally awesome!"
"Thank you, young lady," Smoliy said. "I do enjoy watching young excited women." He nodded to her, then said, "The