“If he stays high, he’ll try a radar shot any second,” Tanaka guessed. “If he follows us down, he’ll try a heater next.”

“Then let’s see if we can make him stay up high,” Wickland said. To the attack computer, he said, “Deploy towed array.”

From a fairing in the tail of the bomber, a small aerodynamic cylindrical object extended out in the bomber’s slipstream on an armored fiber-optic cable, quickly going out three hundred feet from the tail. The object was a transmitter that could broadcast a variety of signals—radar jamming, spoofing, noise, heat, or laser signals. When the array was extended, Wickland called up a program on the defensive system and activated it.

On board the Libyan MiG-23, the pilot’s radar warning receivers started to go crazy—it was as if an entire squadron of American F-15 fighters was closing in on him. As he was wondering why he didn’t see them coming, suddenly the radar warning receiver told him every one of the F-15s was launching missiles at him!

He knew it couldn’t be true—there were no F-15s in the middle of Libya. But he could not ignore the warnings. The pilot immediately dropped radar and missile-decoying chaff and flares and executed a tight left break to escape what he believed were a dozen AIM-7 Sparrow missiles heading toward him.

The second MiG-23 did the same, breaking in the opposite direction—but not before he fired an R-60 heatseeking missile from less than six miles away.

“Warning, missile launch, MiG-23, five o’clock, six miles ” the computer’s female voice calmly reported. But as it reported the attack, it was already responding. The towed array instantly began transmitting infrared energy signals, making the heat-seeking missiles think they were pursuing a huge heat source the size of a house. Seconds later, the computer ejected decoy devices that emitted hot points of infrared energy that drifted down and away from the Megafortress, then shut off the infrared energy signal from the towed array. When the R-60 missile was able to pick up a target again, after being dazzled by the huge heat source, all it saw was the tiny, hot, slow-moving dot of the high-tech decoy—too inviting a target to ignore. The first R-60 missiles plowed into the decoy two miles behind the Megafortress, safely out of range.

With the decoy destroyed, the second R-60 missile fired by the MiG-23 veered back toward the Megafortress. It was too close to be decoyed by the towed array again, so another defensive system activated: the active laser defensive system. Directed by the EB-52’s laser radar, a large helium-argon laser mounted in a fairing atop the Megafortress fired beams of laser light at the oncoming R- 60 missile. After a few seconds, the missile’s seeker head was blinded by the laser’s intense heat and light, and the missile could no longer track.

“We got it!” Wickland shouted. “We—!”