Translation
"Captured 8, 101 for 55, angles 71". It was times like these Andrews was reminded of the limitations of his aircraft, despite the B-7 being the most expensive combat aircraft ever built, and being exceptionally capable in its mission, it was a bomber, not a fighter, and in the next few minutes, his role would be that of glorified bait. A thought that was confirmed by sudden ding of his aircrafts Radar Warning receiver, informing him that he was being painted by an air search radar to his due east between 90 and 110 degrees, almost certainly the air search radar installed on board the Mig-31's roughly 55 nautical miles off his nose, and closing within a few nautical miles of the maximum range on their heavy duty "bomber killers" carried under their wings. In a few seconds that beeping turns into a constant high pitch buzzing alarm, telling Andrews that a fire control radar was now pointing it's radar and emitting at his Bomber. Andrews clenched as he prepared to engage in an evasive turn and burn manuver, waiting only for a que form his escorts intercept officer, listening to the static on the radio and the buzzing RWR system as if his life depended on it.
"Heater, Heater, Heater, Tally 8 Heaters inbound." Comes over the radio from the RIO onboard Good Vibrations . Andrews immediately turns his six engined supersonic bomber upside down and opens the afterburner to its second stage, with the other B-7 following tightly on his right wing, both aircraft deploy 72 flares and 48 charges of Chaff, as the aircraft turns at a rate of 11 DG/sec it exerts 6.5 g's of force on the aircraft, leading the edge of Andrews vision to tunnel as he listens over the radio to maintain situational awareness, the radio now is a flury of information. Andrews listens as each of the Eight pilots flying the 8 escorting Crow's call "Fox-3, single" before those aircraft deploy their own countermeasures, the radar intercept officer on the lead fighter once again calls out incoming "Spike, Spike, Tally 16" informing the group that in addition to the 4 incoming R-40 super heavy air to air missiles, are an additional 8 long range R-33's.
The R-33's are more lethal and dangerous, being more able to hit a maneuvering target, however, those semi active guided missiles are fired at the EF-14's, and thus the immediate concern for Andrews and his fellow B-7 wingman is to survive the long range heat seaking R-40's. By turning around and reducing altitude the 3 remaining missiles in pursuit (as 1 had gone after flares), now must pass through denser air to chase the target, Given the speed of the B-7's and the speed of the missiles in chase, an intercept course will now be hundreds of miles, far in excess of the capabilities for the missile to achieve, as a result, none do, with the last missile splashing into the ocean before the B-7's start to climb back to altitude and turn north. The EF/14's have a very different challange the semi active missiles approaching them reach terminal speeds quickly and are not easily confused by flares or chaff, while electronic counter measures confuse a few, the Migs guiding those missiles launch a second pair that home on jam, in this fight, the EF/A-14's will need to outlive the Migs pursuing them, while the Mig-31's have to point their nose at a target to shoot a semi active missile and guide it, the AAM-1 Active Radar missiles fired by the Crows have no such limitation, meaning that as the mig-31's continue to guide their R-33's towards the Crows they are chasing, they are also flying towards incoming missiles, while the Crows themselves are flying away from the missiles pursuing them, furthermore, the R-33 only can chase a target as long as its receiving guidance guidance from the launch aircraft, which means if the Migs are nocked out, their missiles fall harmlessly into the ocean.
With the AAM-1 and R-33 possessing nearly the same average speed of Mach 4, and the EF/A-14's running away at Mach 3.2, and the Mig-31's pursuing at Mach 2.5, the closing speed of the AAM-1 is Mach 5.7 towards the Migs, and only Mach 1 towards the EF/A-14's. Approximately 38 seconds after the first missile was fired by the first Mig-31, the first 2 kiloton thermonuclear warhead, carried by a AAM-1 Longbow, detonates. 7 more follow over the next 3 seconds. All eight mig-31's are destroyed in the shock waves. Lt Andrews turns around to see the white balls of plasma nearly 40 miles behind his aircraft where the Mig-31's had previously been. The 8 R-33's which had been in the air, now without guidance from their launching aircraft, fly straight paths untill their engines run out of fuel and they fall into the ocean. In the engagement the escorting flight of EF/A-14's suffered a single loss from an aircraft that had been hit by an R-40, this missile had passed through a cloud of flares deployed by the bomber flight, when it started looking for new IR signatures, it detected at low altitude an EF/A-14 that was already slow from turning around to run from incoming Migs, and had acquired and hit the vulnerable aircraft. The pilot and RIO where killed upon impact.
The group of 9 aircraft, now 2 B-7's and and 7 EF-14's turn towards Miami and return to altitude and speed. Four F/A-18 Raiders also head towards Miami, but at an altitude of 30 meters and airspeed of Mach 1.5, these aircraft will approach from the South as a seperate flight, at these low altitudes, radar cannot see them beyond the horizon due to the curvature of the earth, they are only visible in visual range or by airborne radar looking down over the horizon.
