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Feature: What Grrlz Are Made Of
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“Go high to take the leader.
Chainsaw! One, shooter.”
I can hear the Hornets as Sugar and
I set up on the incoming MiGs. They are starting their target
runs!
 “Enfield
11, rifle!”
The Hornets are launching AGM-65 Mavericks
at the three Grad launchers!
“Colt 1, watch our backs.
We’re inbound to target.”
“Roger. Colt 11 engaging bandits.”
I designate both targets. I will release
both my AIM-120s on this pass and thereby force them defensive.
Our ECM is preventing a target lock but knowing the MiGs have
lock-on-jam capability, we must fire and deny them the shot
with an R-27!
“Fox three. Two in the air.”
 “Roger.
Fox one.” Sugar has fired a Sparrow.
The lead Hornet’s Maverick is
on target, as are the two fired by his wingman.
The Canadians are in the process of
a bomb-damage assessment over the mujahid compound, a dangerous
task, as it is shrouded in woods and an air battle is happening
only a couple of miles south of them! I am well inside RTR
now and my AIM-120 missiles are active as they come off the
pylons. I switch to single-target track mode on the wingman
and see him immediately change course.
 “Both
missed on the leader! Fox two, dammit, guns, guns from two!”
The lead MiG-29 is savagely maneuvering!
He forced both the inbound AMRAAM
and the inbound Sparrow to overshoot him. Sugar fires a Sidewinder,
but the MiG pops flares and rolls inverted, pulling across
the missile and forcing it too to miss by mere feet.
In so doing, though, the MiG lead
pilot has placed himself in Sugar’s gunsight. The Vulcan
cannon in her right wing root buzzes angrily and a swarm of
phosphorous tracers reach for the MiG, a Syrian from the same
squadron as the MiG I stole last year, ripping through one
of the horizontal stabilizers!
The second MiG is Iranian,
as I found out later. It has defeated my Slammer with a violent
maneuver, pitching down and then up at the last second and
forcing the missile to miss low as it tried to match his angle.
He pulls through and commits a fatal error, I can see the
light of his afterburners.
I have a Sidewinder selected, screaming
in my headphones for me to release it. Instead, I maintain
STT lock and fire a Sparrow. So close and with the Iranian’s
energy depleted, he has no hope of evasion.
“Two, fox two!” Sugar
is still engaged with the Syrian, a dogged fighter.
As he explodes, I pull into the vertical,
with full reheat selected. Coming over the top, I am in vertical
scan dogfight mode and still inverted as the APG-63 locks
the Syrian fighter in STT, two miles away and crossing me
at an oblique angle.
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