At 0900 local time, a pair of Navy Super Hornets, call signs Mustang 11 and 12 are streaming north across the Gulf of Oman toward an ammunition depot in Bandara Bass that satellite imagery says is emptying by the truckload. The clock is running, but unknown to either pilot, an Iranian air defense battery in the mountains ahead is sitting silent.
watch as two contacts cross the 120 km line and reaches for the power switch. Mustang 111’s radar warning receiver lights up like a disco ball. Bearing 340 phased array acquisition, this is not a legacy radar sweeping lazy circles. Someone in those mountains has a modern beam locked on the formation and is building a track.
If that beam holds long enough to generate a firing solution, the SEAD 3 missile will be in the air before the pilots finish their next breath. And nobody told Mustang Flight this system was still in the fight, but the depot is worth the risk. Mustang 111 calls the threat. Behind the two Super Hornets, an E18 Growler, call sign Wizard 31, tears into the fight to earn its paycheck.
The Growler is the Navy’s electronic attack aircraft. Same airframe as the Super Hornet, but instead of bombs, it carries jamming pods and anti-radiation missiles designed to first blind and then take out an enemy radar. Wizard 31 activates. The Cordad’s track quality crumbles, firing solution falling apart in real time as the operator watches his display dissolve into noise.
If you look here at the Growler’s wing stations, you’ll see three ALQ249 next generation jammer pods, the most powerful airborne jamming system the Navy has ever fielded. One pod per station, each one broadcasting across more frequency bands than the Cordad’s entire system was designed to handle. Think of it like trying to have a phone conversation while someone holds an air horn against your ear.
The signal is still there, but you can’t make out a word of it. The American taxpayer bought the loudest air horn on the planet, and Wizard 31 just pointed it directly at the Cordad’s ears. But the Cordad operator is not an idiot. He’s been trained for exactly this, the predictable sequence where noise precedes a missile.
Instead of shutting down, he narrows the beam, tightens the scan volume to a cone barely wide enough to hold both Super Hornets. It’s a technique Iranian air defenders practiced against American Growlers last week. Sacrifice your search to punch through the noise on a single bearing, and it’s working. Mustang 111’s warning receiver, which dropped from solid track to intermittent when the jamming hit, ticks back up.
The firing solution is rebuilding. Degraded, sloppy, but closing toward launch parameters. At this range, the Syad 3 needs 8 seconds of clean track to commit. The Cordad operator has three. Mustang 11 one and one two break into a weave. Shallow S turns that drag their radar returns through the jamming side lobes, forcing the Cordad’s processor to keep recalculating.
Every correction buys another second, but the weave also drags the formation off the ingress heading toward the depot. Every second spent dodging is another 30 meters of course deviation the navigation system will have to claw back. The Growler pilot rolls in and pickles the first Argam ER. The weapon drops off the rail.
And this is where it gets interesting. The Arkham ER has three completely different ways to find the target, which makes the older anti-radiation missiles look like they were navigating with a gas station road map from 1997. It rides the radar beam in, remembers where the antenna is sitting, and if the operator shuts off the radar, it switches to its own millimeter wave to find the target in the last few seconds.
Shutting off the radar at this point is like slamming the door after the delivery driver already has your address, your garage code, and a photo of your dog. The Cordet operator sees the inbound on his scope and cuts the radar. 3 seconds too late. The Arkham has already logged the position and switched to GPS crews.
40 seconds after launch, the warhead detonates on the array. One threat down, one Arkham remaining on Wizard 31’s rails. And that jamming broadcast just lit up every passive receiver in Hormosan Province with the strike packages approximate bearing. 40 km northwest of the depot. Something that has been sitting dark for 3 days.
Here’s the announcement and powers up on a completely different frequency. New spike on Mustang 111’s warning receiver. Completely different character. The display calls it a hawk. 40 km out. Already tracking. Mustang 111 does the only thing physics allows. He pushes the nose over and dives. Trading 25,000 ft of altitude for speed and a changing geometry that makes the fire control solution harder to solve.
Mustang one two follows. The altimeter unwinds like a broken clock. 20,000 18 15 Both jets punching through the descent with throttles at mil power trying to put enough vertical separation between where the missile expects them to be and where they actually are. They level at 12,000. The math on this mission just got uglier, but the math on surviving the next 30 seconds got better.
Behind them, the Growler’s jamming is tuned to the Cordad’s band. Returning the ALQ249 to the Mercad’s frequency takes several seconds of reconfiguration. The retune takes too long. In electronic warfare, several seconds is an eternity. In missile defense, it’s a eulogy. The Mercedes Illuminator paints Mustang flight with an unbroken beam and sends two missiles screaming off the rails at Mach 3.5.
If you look here at the warning display, the threat symbology has changed. The MRSAD is Iran’s modernized version of the American MIM23 Hawk. A system the US sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution. Upgraded for 40 years with digital seekers and capabilities the original designers never imagined. MRSA tracks on a completely different frequency band than the Cordad. Think AM radio versus FM.
The Growler was tuned to the wrong station, and both missiles ride reflected energy bouncing off the Super Hornet’s back on their semi-active seekers. Like a flashlight beam bouncing off someone’s jacket in the dark, the Murad’s illuminator is the flashlight, and Mustang Flight 66,000 lb of American fighter jet is the jacket.
Mustang 111 and 12 break hard into the threat. Both jets hauling toward the Murad in a coordinated defensive turn that collapses their formation into a single tight radar return. Against an active seeker missile, you split. Against a semi-active system riding one illuminator beam, you stay close because splitting means one jet flies out of the beam and the other catches both missiles alone.
The turn compresses their signature and drags both aircraft through the chaff they’re about to dump. Both pilots punch their AL47 countermeasure dispensers. the oh no button that dumps defensive decoys out the back of the jet. The chaff bundles bloom behind both aircraft. Thousands of thin metallic strips creating false radar returns that look like fightersized targets to a semi-active seeker. Mustang 12’s chaff blooms clean.
A textbook radar decoy spreading across the sky behind the aircraft. Mustang 111’s dispenser stutters. Two of the six chaff cartridges in the first sequence fail to eject. a mechanical jam in the AL47’s rotary magazine that the pilot can feel as a dull thunk instead of the rapid fire pops he’s trained to expect.
Four bundles instead of six. The radar decoy behind Mustang 111 is thinner, smaller, and fading faster than his wingman’s. The first missile tracking the stronger return commits to Mustang 12’s chaff cloud. The one with the weaker decoy to choose from stays on Mustang 111. He can see the contrail on the canopy.
Correcting toward his dive line, the pilot shoves the throttles into the stops and rolls 30°, pulling the aircraft’s exhaust plumes out of the dive plane while losing the last of his altitude cushion. 12,000 ft becomes 10 in 2 seconds. The geometry change drags the illumination beam through the chaff cloud and more importantly buys Wizard 31 the seconds he needs.
At 10,000 ft and accelerating through 500 knots, Mustang 111 can hear his own breathing inside the mask. The first MRS missile streaks through the chaff to his left. A white contrail punching past the canopy close enough that his head snap back to track it involuntarily. The missile detonates on a chaff return 200 m behind Mustang 12. Shrapnel pattern no hit.
The second missile is already correcting toward Mustang 111’s dive when Wizard 31 catches the new frequency and the jamming takes hold. The illumination degrades. The seeker loses the return and the missile goes ballistic into the gulf below. Wizard 31 pickles the last Arkham ER at the Murad.
40 seconds later, the battery joins the Cordad as scrap metal. Two American missiles that cost less than a house in the suburbs just erased two air defense systems Iran spent decades building. Your tax dollars finally did something your accountant would approve of. Mustang flight is alive, but the last 60 seconds cost them everything they can’t get back.
Wizard 31’s Argam pylons are empty. The weapon that answers radar guided threats is gone from the strike package entirely. If another system goes active between here and the depot, the only options are jamming and a prayer. The evasive dive burned altitude. Mustang flights started at 25,000 and is sitting at 10,000 and altitude cost fuel.
Both Super Hornets dumped thousands of pounds of JP5 in the dive and the combat power maneuvering that followed. The Wizo, the weapons systems officer in Mustang one two, the second set of eyes in the back seat whose entire job is managing the math the pilot doesn’t have time to run, does exactly that. He runs the numbers. Climbing back to 25,000 puts them inside the engagement envelope of any radar guided system they haven’t found yet.
And they have zero Argam rounds left to answer it. Staying low keeps the mountains between them and whatever else is hiding in the eastern ridge lines. It also pins them at an altitude where a man with a shoulder fired missile can reach them. He calls it 4,000 ft direct north into the depot to rain mask the radar threats. Except the IR exposure.
It’s the last bad option or a menu where every dish comes with a side of something trying to ruin your day. Mustang 11 pushes the throttles forward and descends toward the industrial corridor south of the depot. 4,000 ft. Both F414 engines at military power. The jet is burning JP5 at a rate that would make you cry at the gas pump, pumping infrared energy into the sky behind the aircraft like a bonfire on a dark beach.
Every heat seeeking sensor within 5 miles just got a dinner invitation. The most dangerous weapon between Mustang Flight and the depot doesn’t use radar, doesn’t need a crew of six, and costs less than the pilot’s flight suit. Mustang Flight’s ingress route runs north from the coast across the airport perimeter through two miles of industrial warehouses and shipping yards, then into the hills where the ammunition depot sits behind a ring of hardened bunkers. 4,000 ft.
Both engines and combat spread, threading between the mountains to the east and the city to the west. On a rooftop in the industrial district south of the airport, an IRGC militia man shoulders a MSG 2, an Iranian copy of the Chinese QW18, infrared guided, worth roughly the same as a used Honda Civic. It is now pointed at a $70 million fighter jet.
The Iranian soldier hears the twin turbo fans before he sees the jet. 66,000 lb screaming north at 4,000 ft with enough heat trailing behind it to light up every infrared sensor in the district. He shoulders the launcher and the seeker growls as it crawls onto the thermal signature of Mustang 111’s exhaust plumes.
He squeezes the trigger and the missile tears from the tube, accelerating on a column of white smoke the pilot will never see. No radar emission, no cockpit warning. The ALR67 Victor 3 radar warning receiver, the system that just saved this pilot’s career twice in 10 minutes, picks up enemy radar energy. A shoulder fired infrared missile emits none.
The radar warning receiver is silent because there’s nothing to warn about. Mustang 11 is flying with a missile behind him and a green board in front of him. Here’s what makes that gap worse. The FA18E doesn’t carry a MOS, a missile approach warning system that detects the infrared flash of a motor igniting and screams a warning before the weapon closes.
The F-35 has one built into its skin. Even the $30 million MQ9 Reaper drone has one, but the $70 million Super Hornet doesn’t. Mustang 111 cranks 5° toward the coast. The turn swings the jet’s exhaust plumes out of the MSG 2’s narrow seeker cone. The tracker loses lock at the edge of its field of view. The missile’s guidance built for tailchase geometry against a target holding steady can’t reacquire.
It passes behind and below the aircraft before the proximity fuse detonates harmlessly. Mustang 12 half a mile in trail flinches at the flash against the haze. Mustang 11 possible launch bearing 180 flash south of the airport. Mustang 11 checks his jet. No caution lights, no damage indications.
His warning receiver never made a sound. He asked Mustang 12 to repeat. Mustang 12 confirms the flash. And the depot is still 11 mi north, still emptying by the truckload. They can’t climb. The fuel state that put them down here hasn’t improved. And the empty Arkham pylons haven’t grown new missiles. The decisions that kept them alive in the seed fight are the reason they’re trapped now.
The MRSA forced the dive. The dive burned the fuel and the fuel state locked them at the one altitude where a man with a tube can reach them. Mustang 111 scan pattern shifts. Forget the instruments. He’s looking through the canopy now. Eyes sweeping rooftops and tree lines and overpasses, hunting for the one visual cue that matters.
A white smoke trail climbing from the ground. The helmet isn’t designed for this. The visor cuts the contrast. He lifts it. 3 mi north of the first launch. A second militia man on a warehouse roof has been tracking the sound of the engines for 30 seconds. He shoulders the tube. Seeker tone. He squeezes.
This time, Mustang 111 sees it through the canopy. A white streak rising from the 2:00 low position, climbing and curving toward his exhaust. The thing his million-dollar warning receiver can’t detect. His own eyeballs just found because a wingman’s call put him on visual scan 3 miles ago. He breaks hard right into the launch and punches the AL47.
Flares MJU53 magnesium decoys burning at 2,000° tumble behind the jet in a string of ball suns. Each one hotter than the F414 exhaust the Misog is chasing. The missile seeker hesitates between the real target pulling away and the brighter, closer flare source. It takes the flare.
The proximity fuse detonates 40 m behind and below the aircraft. Close enough that the concussion thumps through the airframe. Hit. Silence on the frequency for one second. Two. Negative. Clean. Moving. Two manpad shots in 4 miles. The depot is 3 minutes north and still worth the risk because every minute spent surviving is another truckload of anti-hship cruise missiles vanishing into the mountains.
The Wizo runs the fuel math one more time. What he finds draws a line under the rest of the mission. They have enough JP5 for one pass each over the depot and a direct run south to the carrier. One pass miss and the depot keeps emptying because there’s no more gas for a second run. North of the industrial district, Mustang flight climbs.
The manpad threat thins out above the rooftop line and the release geometry the Jams need requires altitude the formation gave up 20 minutes ago. Every foot of climb is a trade. More exposure to radar guided threats. They no longer have missiles to answer. Bought against a firing solution that only works if they can reach it.
Mustang 11 rolls in at 12,000 ft, 7,000 below the brief release altitude, but as high as the fuel state allows. The JDAM does not care. GPS works at any altitude. What just left the jet? A GBU31 joint direct attack munition, a 925 kg bomb with a 429 kg trional warhead made it to a GPS tail kit that delivers within 5 m of a target from 15 km away.
The guidance package cost $27,000. The result costs considerably more to replace. No laser, no weather dependency, no smoke problem, just a satellite and a math equation that ends in a building ceasing to exist. The pilot pickles two GBU31s and 4,000 lbs of guided steel drops away from the jet. Tail kits deploy. GPS fins begin adjusting 10 times per second toward pre-programmed coordinates.
The bomb is essentially driving itself to a pin on Google Maps, correcting course faster than you can blink. Once the bombs are off the rails, the pilot’s only job is to get the jet out of the way. The first Jam punches through the depot roof and detonates inside. The 945 pounds of trional goes first, then the depot answers.
Anti-hship cruise missiles and ballistic missile propellant cook off in a chain of secondaries that sends a column of black smoke to 2,000 ft. The shock wave rattles Mustang 12’s canopy from 3 mi out. Mustang 12 is 30 seconds behind on the second bunker, and Mustang 111 just created his problem. A smoke column is sitting between jet and aim point.
If you look here at the smoke, a laserg guided bomb would be useless because the designator needs a clear line of sight to the target. The same way a sniper needs crosshairs on the chest. The JDM steers by GPS from a satellite that has no idea there’s smoke at ground level. 30 seconds behind his lead, one pass, one chance, and a wall of burning propellant between him and the aim point.
Mustang one two releases and pushes through the debris cloud. The jet bucks hard as the thermal updraft from burning propellant catches the left wing at 400 knots. The second Jam is already descending through the smoke on GPS fins that adjust through the turbulence without caring that the pilot just grabbed the canopy rail.
The weapon impacts the second bunker. Walls blow outward and secondaries follow. Bright white and sustained solid rocket propellant burning at temperatures that will cook off for hours. If you enjoyed this video, watch this other video on the war with Iran. Bye for now.
