(Previously)

In TFCC the Battle Watch Captain turns to the admiral and says, “Well, that seemed to go pretty well.”

“Just about textbook,” the admiral concurs.

In Combat, the third class operations specialist looks at his relief with a gimlet eye, passes down the status of the air systems, threat and weapons posture. Turns [...]

(Previously) The lieutenant thinks, “If he shoots me, I die. If he’s inside min range, once we close I can easily handle him.” Upon a moment’s reflection, he calls his wingman back into the fight, just in case. The throttles are already parked in the northwest quadrant, delivering full combat rated power, so the [...]

(Previously)

Do something, daddy. Do it, he prays. Do it now.

He is rewarded: The Phantom jock turns forty degrees left, no more: He’s checking his six o’clock, aware now of a potential threat, “spiked at six.” The lieutenant can imagine the narrowing eyes of the Iranian crew, pilot and weapons officer, heads [...]

(Previously) At a mile, with three seconds left to go until the merge, the lieutenant knows that he is unobserved – no way that the Phantom pilot would allow a threat down there at his belly without checking into him to neutralize the merge – he’ll have 90 degrees advantage by the time he [...]

(Previously)

Lieutenant: “Twelve miles, hot, naked.”

Wingman: “Two’s naked.” Neither of them targeted yet with an air-to-air radar. Good.

All throughout the strike group, eyes close and ears strain to catch each almost mechanical note of this exchange, ears attuned to the hidden weight of the words and tension in the voices. Which elevates [...]

(Previously)

In the E-2, the ACO updates his track video and speaks into his boom mike, “Hobo 404, group Baltimore 195, 20, low, track west, bogey. Hot Dog red at 20 miles”

Turning back into the threat, the lieutenant snaps his visor down against the sun well-risen in the east. He selects his Sidewinder [...]

(Previously)

The cat fires and the lieutenant rattles down the deck and into the morning air, whooping with the savage joy of an alert launch in a tactical environment, of being first airborne, of a good, hard catapult shot, of flying fighters, of being young. The Air Boss clears him to cross the bow, [...]

(Previously) … In CDC, the third class operations specialist picks up his gouge card, and reads the first warning on Military Air Distress, a frequency that all tactical aircraft are required to monitor: “Unidentified aircraft 30 miles southeast of Bushehr, speed 500 knots, heading 250: You are approaching U.S. naval warships operating in international [...]

(Previously)

…the Air Control Officer cocks his head quizzically as a bit of banana-shaped radar video appears off to the east, over the Zagros. It is in a place where air targets would not be customarily found. He re-checks his air route overlay on the radar as the antenna sweeps around again, leaving behind [...]