From up here things seem so deceptively serene. The cloud layer is low today, hugging the grey mountaintops and obscuring the brutish violence being played out all across this area. Village by village, government soldiers are being driven out by the forces you are helping to support. They probably wouldn’t stand a chance if not for the air superiority enjoyed by the UK and its allies. This superiority, though, is being increasingly challenged by the government side’s own powerful allies. While there haven’t been any direct confrontations yet, tensions are mounting and advanced fighter aircraft have been probing the airspace controlled by the UK, testing response times and resolve. First they started seeing how close they could get to the borders of the operational area demarcated by the UK and its allies, since then there have been some minor incursions. It is such a provocation to which you have been directed to respond and deter.

As you scorch through the sky, you watch your virtual displays intently via your AR visor. You reach a hand down and your fingers feel like they come into contact with the display, even though it isn’t physically there. You swipe across and change to the view which shows your interception trajectory. Less than three minutes before they encroach on the area the UK and its allies control and patrol as part of this operation. Despite the coolness of the temperature controlled cockpit, you feel sweat starting to bead on your forehead just below the line of your EEG hood.

You look over each shoulder to both of your flanks, reassured by the presence of your two wingmen. The lack of any cockpit glass to break up the slate grey airframes gives them a menacing air. You test your control, thinking clearly through the patterns you’ve established for various commands. Your wingmen shift their formation accordingly, autonomously executing your commands. They draw in part on their powerful onboard processing capability, but their compute power is also substantially augmented by uplinks from the mesh network of edge computing capabilities that has been established on the ground.

Even with support from your wingmen and the teams on the ground, it will be your calls that correspond to life or death decisions, and determine whether there is a major diplomatic incident, maybe even an escalation in the ongoing war. Two minutes until the two aircraft will encroach on the operational airspace you are required to patrol and can be engaged. You can almost feel the responsibility for being the only human in the loop physically weighing on you, like a couple of extra Gs. Your suit begins to ripple gently around your lower legs and arms, designed to relax muscle tension and promote blood flow. Clearly your stress has triggered some kind of physiological effect to which your suit is responding.

You slow your own aircraft slightly and think one of your wingmen into a position far in advance of you, as a vanguard. You send the one with the full sensor and weapons suite and watch your displays carefully as it lurches forward and starts sending back data about the airspace ahead. While you know the adversary’s aircraft are difficult to spot due to their stealth design, your wingman is utilising its advanced set of sensors to provide bountiful readings on both identified airframes.

You start to wonder what their aim is, are they flying purely to test if you can intercept them before they penetrate the airspace or might they be acting as a diversion for something somewhere else. They must know you are approaching, they will have received numerous warnings by now by those controlling the airspace. Whatever they’re planning, they’re flying predictably and you will soon be in a position to warn them with a visual presence and engage them if required, although you are hoping it won’t come to that. If previous patterns are anything to go by, they should change course and leave the area at the last moment.

They’re sixty seconds away from the designated operational airspace now and you keep glancing down at your display of the data provided by your advanced wingman. Suddenly the two small symbols representing the adversary aircraft disappear from the display. You seem to have lost the feed from your wingman. You look to the left hand side of the display, where a smaller visualisation shows less granular readings on the adversaries’ positions based on your own onboard sensors. You lock your eyes on this picture and it enlarges in size.

You try to think the other wingman round onto your other wing. It is fitted with the EW suite and has the ability to provide a handy shield, both physically and electronically between you and the two aircraft you are approaching. It doesn’t respond. You think the command again and still it doesn’t respond. A double buzz in your suit's right arm alerts you to an issue, you look at the virtual display through your visor and notice the fault icon for your thought interface is flashing. You revert to manual control, using the virtual touchscreen to shift the EW capable wingman into a new position. You could definitely do without having to concentrate on this task as well as operating your own aircraft.

You’ve never experienced problems with the thought interface before. It seems like too much of a coincidence that it should fail now, in the middle of a potential engagement, particularly alongside the continuing loss of the other wingman’s sensors. You don’t bother to call the problems in, your system’s digital twin will be capturing its performance with much greater fidelity than you will be able to relay verbally to the team on the ground. You need to concentrate on the mission in hand.

Even though your situational awareness is more limited now, you can still keep track of the adversary aircraft. They are very close to encroaching on your airspace. Your missile launch success zone has reduced due to the loss of the data feed from wingman with the full weapons suite, meaning you will need to get closer to the aircraft to be able to meaningfully deter or engage them. You realise you’ve probably just lost your range advantage.

You wonder whether your problems are the result of the adversary aircraft deploying some previously unseen jamming capabilities. The data from your EW wingman suggests that you aren’t currently subject to any electronic countermeasures. Whatever the problem is, it’s something to do with the ground-based mesh network that provides your aircraft and your wingmen with augmented capabilities.

You are getting close to being within visual range of the aircraft and are becoming more heavily exposed to the risk of being targeted. According to your readings the two adversary aircraft are skirting the designated operational airspace, they haven’t encroached yet. Your rules of engagement are clear as to how you should act if they do.

Your advanced wingman is now in a position to sight the aircraft, and sends enhanced imagery of the aircraft which you view on one side of your visor. Your palms are slick with perspiration inside your gloves. Without the thought interface functioning or access to the full set of data feeds you should have available, you feel hamstrung. You just hope the pilots of the adversary aircraft aren’t fully aware of your diminished capabilities.

The aircraft seem to be maintaining a path that stays just outside your area of operation, but they aren’t backing away and they are well inside the air defence identification zone the UK and its allies have defined. Your next step will be to present a visual warning to the aircraft. As you prepare to manoeuvre the wingman with the full weapons suite into position using your virtual touch screen, you feel the double buzz in the right arm of your suit. Your display is indicating that the thought interface has come back online. You can see all the full set of data on the two aircraft again as well. A mixture of hope and adrenaline surges inside you.

Your own aircraft is coming into visual range of the intruding adversaries now. You think both your wingmen into positions that clearly signal your intent. They bank rapidly to achieve positions of advantage. The adversary aircraft, sensing their predicament peel off away from your operational airspace and beat a hasty retreat. You maintain your stance until you are confident they have been deterred, watching your two wingmen manoeuvre. You can’t be sure from this distance, but it looks to you as if they are both performing a synchronised victory roll, the sun glinting off their wingtips as they rock in tandem.