SALIM MUST DIE by Mukul Deva Page A

children. Most of them were fast asleep, though a few were surfing the in-flight movies. In any case, none of them was aware of the Israeli F-16Is that had linked up with it a few minutes short of entering Iranian airspace and were now flying in the shadow of the huge jet. All four fighters were flying in a dense pack immediately below the jetliner. This ensured that their radar profiles merged with that of the Lufthansa craft.
    Seventeen minutes into Iranian airspace.
    ‘Sierra Tango, time to hit the deck.’ The unseen controller rapped out the command.
    There was a second's pause. Then, as one, the jet pack broke cover. Falling away from the jetliner, the four fighters fell into a steep dive angling away to the right.
    The last leg of their journey had begun.
    ON THE GROUND, THERE WAS A MOMENT OF TOTAL consternation as the four fighters suddenly erupted on a dozen radar screens of the Iranian air defence system.
    However, the confusion did not last very long. Memories of the Israeli air strike of 7 June 1981 on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq 2 were still sharp in the minds of the Iranians.
    A few seconds later, the Iranian radars had identified the intruders and got a fix on their likely destination. Alarms began to scream as the air defence system kicked into play. Almost immediately the instrument panels of all four Israeli fighters lit up as they began tracking the inbound radar hits and missiles. Disregarding the cacophony of alarms flooding the cockpits, the four fighters dived straight towards the target lying in wait for them below. Their lives were not important. The mission was .
    The Iranian air defence system was nowhere as sophisticated as the fighters it was up against. A legacy of the CENTO (Central Treaty Organization 3 ), the Iranian early warning system was established in 1950 and had last been upgraded in 1970. It comprised a number of Chinese SA-2 missiles, Russian SA-5 and SA-6 SAMs, the highly capable SA-10 Grumble missile system and twenty-nine newly inducted TOR M1 systems. The areas most heavily defended were obviously Tehran, and the various R&D and production centres like Bushehr and Natanz, which were critical components of the Iranian Nuclear Biological and Chemical (NBC) weapons program. However, there was no nationwide integrated air defence network. Consequently, the Iranians relied almost entirely on point defence of key locations using SAM batteries while the SA-10 and TOR M1s posed a highly potent threat when deployed in an integrated array.
    The Achilles heel of the Iranian system was its inability to generate effective real-time early warning and act as a fully integrated system. This allowed the attacker a window of opportunity. The window was only a few seconds long, but in such high speed aerial warfare scenarios, it is usually these few vital seconds that count. They are what tilt the balance between success and failure, life and death.
    The scream of a dozen alarms filled the cockpits and the minds of the four fighter pilots as they raced towards their objective at supersonic speeds. Each of them tried to shut out the urgently clamouring beeps as they activated electronic countermeasures. For those few fragile seconds technologies clashed as the Israeli jet fighters sought to elude the Iranian weapons seeking them out. Jammers and active array radars glowed into action either to blind the electronic eyes seeking them out or decoy them. Chaff and flares spewed out of the aircrafts, drawing the incoming missiles away from them.
    The Israelis exploited the only two factors in their favour: the slim window of opportunity that the Iranian system gave them and the shock of the tactical surprise they had managed to achieve when they had fallen out from below the Lufthansa jetliner.
    Suddenly the target was right there in front of them.
    ‘Commence home run.’ Ilan's voice snapped into the headsets of Sierra Tango.
    Twisting through the flak-riddled air, the four F-16Is snarled