Do not expect realistic technology or realistic people.

Interesting with planes that can outmaneuver missiles, but even if a plane can react faster than a missile, such reactions would make soft mush of the inside of the humans involved.
( )

Day of the Cheetah is a 1989 technothriller novel written by former US Air Force officer Dale Brown. It is part of Brown's Patrick McLanahan series of novels
America’s most advanced fighter plane, DreamStar, has been hijacked. To retrieve it, Lt. Col. Patrick McLanahan takes on his most perilous assignment since The Flight of the Old Dog.

The odds are against him. His aircraft, the Cheetah, hasn’t the speed, the power, or the technology of the DreamStar—his skills behind the stick are the only advantage he’s got.

Storyline
Russian agent takes the place of Ken James. Ken James get into Dreamland
and starts work on ANTARES (Advanced Neural Transfer and Response). Plane
XF-34 Dreamstar

Characters
Ken James - Russian Agent
General Brad Elliott - Commander of Dreamland
Lieutenant Colonel Pat McLanahan - Project director - Dreamstar
Hal Briggs - Dreamland Chief of Security
Deborah O'Day - Defense advisor
Marcia Preston - Pilot - O'Day's assistant
JC Powell - Cheetah pilot - killed
Alan Carmichael - ANTARES expert - killed
John Ormack - Navigator - killed
Wendy Tork - EWO

Killed in final battle ?
Captain Alicia Kellerman - Nav
Major Kelvin Carter - Pilot
Captain Nancy Cheshire
JC Powell - Cheetah pilot - killed
Alan Carmichael - ANTARES expert - killed
John Ormack - Navigator - killed

Captain Paul Scott - Bombardier
Dr. Angelina Pereira - Gunner

XFB-5 Tracer

Leads to: FUTURE FLIGHT

HAWC disbanded after the incident

A Soviet deep-cover agent steals the world's most sophisticated jet fighter--and nearly destroys McLanahan and the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. ( )

Notwithstanding the idea of Soviets in Nicaragua (Monroe doctrine), implausible behavior of world leaders, and unreal defector flip-flop, this was a pretty good sci-fi book. It was a short listen purports development of a thought controlled fighter airplane. What an idea. ( )