Kingsley watched as the distance and time to target counted down on his HUD. Stretched to either side of him were the squadron’s Nemesis Banshees.

“Keep it tight people. We’ve got ten kilometres until we need to climb. Keep your eyes peeled for enemy fighters,” he ordered, keen to make sure they didn’t slip into a code green state of mind.

All ECAF pilots were trained to use the traffic light system. Code Green was only ever entered into if they were on base, relaxing in quarters, eating meals. That sort of thing.

As soon as they entered the briefing room they were in Code Amber. Their minds were alert for threats, for input of information, for anything out of the ordinary.

Code Red was when they were out on the pan, checking their planes, flying on mission. This was when the situation was truly dangerous as anything could - and would - go wrong at any time.

The final state was Code Black, which was when they were in combat. He would expect them to be in Code Black as soon as they hit the climb marker. From then on, until they were back at base, they would consider themselves to be in mortal danger.

‘Roger that,’ Fitzsquires answered before the rest. Out of all of them, Kingsley would have been surprised if Fitzsquire hadn’t answered first. The man was a proper pilot, as much as he hated flying the Banshees.

CLIMB

“All Black Sheep, climb,” ordered Pilgrim as the mission notification popped up. It wasn’t necessary for him to repeat the order, but doing so didn’t hurt.

Checking his left and right as he did so, Kingsley pulled back on his stick, taking the attitude of his nose to 45 degrees. Satisfied that the rest of his flight were matching him, he checked the layout of their target.

It was fairly large, and full to the brim of damaged vehicles. They were laid out in order of Body Points remaining. Those most damaged were further away from their line of approach. That couldn’t be helped as there was no way the Black Sheep could circle far enough around and avoid all of the anti-air they would fly over in order to do so.

This meant that they would be hitting vehicles with up to 70% remaining. Vehicles which had been classed as mobility kills, but which their crews hadn’t been able to repair.

Naturally a tank with 70% of its Body Points remaining would be a tougher target than an unarmoured truck with 70% of its Body Points remaining, but it still meant they would need more hits on target to kill the vehicles nearest to their line of attack.

Of course, if I can cause an explosion near one of the worst damaged vehicles, I’m still going to get a kill, he thought as he watched the altimeter climb. Just hope the ECM lads and lasses are jamming their anti-air.

‘Missile launch!’ cried out Flight-Sergeant Leto, commander of 4 flight.

Glancing to his left, Kingsley saw the flight breaking formation as they popped flares, trying to avoid the incoming missile.

“Stay in line Wrath Flight! Let them deal with the missiles. We’re one mike out from target.”

One minute. His stomach flipped as the adrenalin truly started flowing. More shouts of alarm rose as missiles raced towards them. Tracer and pulse fire joined them, quickly followed by explosive shells.

One minute. Less now. Each second a second close to when they would nose down. Each second another chance for the ChinKor air defences to blast them into flinders. A scream filled the comms channel, quickly cut off with terminal finality.

“Wrath flight, select your targets,” he quickly selected a cluster of trucks and APCs. There didn’t seem to be any order in which they were parked, just clustered together. “How you doing Canham?” he asked his gunner.

“Good thanks, flight-sergeant,” skies are clear. “I can see three chutes behind us.”

Kingsley grunted. He’d pushed the losses of the other flights to the back of his mind. His flight was still intact and mission ready. It didn’t matter if the other flights were, or weren’t. His mission hadn’t changed, and wouldn’t until his flight either ran out of ammunition, or was shot from the sky.

Checking the target designator markers once more, he saw that a couple of targets had been double-marked. Clearing them, he marked two others.

“Wrath, check your targets, I’ve redesignated some doubles. Ten seconds.”

He blanked the acknowledgements, focusing on slowing down his heart rate, keeping it at a steady 70 beats per minute. On his retinal monitor were all of the other’s vital statistics.

Fitzsquire, for example, had an even lower heart rate than he did. He might as well have been asleep. His brain activity however, was through the roof. Just as Kingsley knew his own would be.

Right now, the entire squadron would be running through something called the OODA loop. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It was a way of describing a human’s thought process. In fact it could be applied to virtually every living thing on the planet.

The simplest analogy to use, as he always told his pilots when teaching them, was to think of a plate of food in front of them.

You Observe using all of your senses. Smell, sight, touch, hearing, even taste. So sizzling Chinese beef was perfect. You would hear it coming before it was on the table. You would smell it, and feel the heat of the steam rising from it.

Orient. You hear the waiter bringing the dish to your table. You look up in the direction of the sound, and then follow the path of the waiter as they draw near.

Decide. You know you really don’t want the waiter to spill the food on you. It’s going to burn. So you should lean out of the way.

Act. You move back, and allow the waiter to place it on the table.

And that’s the first OODA loop to do with that dish, for you.

Now, the waiter is doing the same thing. He has to find the table number for the dish, work out where it is in his head, then decide to pick it up and take it to the table. Not forgetting the OODA loops that he then goes through whilst picking it up, as well as moving past every obstacle on the way. Each one an OODA loop of its own.

The trick with OODA loops as a pilot, is that you need to break the OODA loop of the enemy pilot.You need to short-circuit their decision making and create a window of uncertainty on their behalf, that you can break.

With a waiter you could do that as simply as saying ‘I asked for no peppers’. There will be an obvious pause as their loop of ‘deliver to table, don’t burn myself, don’t burn my customer’ changes to ‘Huh?’.

They then have to OODA loop back into the new set of processes that they have to follow in order to get the correct order.

With regard to a bar fight. As soon as someone has decided that they’re going to hit you, hit them first. Take them from being the attacker - and therefore dominant - to being the defender and literally on the back foot.

OBJECTIVE REACHED.

‘All pilots. Dive! Dive! Dive!’