Dragon Strike -- A Novel of the Coming War with China (Future History Book 1)

by Humphrey Hawksley

  `Foreign Minister. The BBC. Why is Brunei not included?'

  `We wanted to follow the aspirations of the 1970 Declaration on the Zone of Peace Freedom and Neutrality, as laid down in the 1972 ZOPFAN guidelines. Numbers five and ten refer to foreign military presence in the region. Brunei retains a British military base on its soil. There are British warships there at present. This is not a major issue and as soon as the British leave, we will welcome Brunei with open arms. The French presence in Vietnam, of course, constrains the membership of Hanoi. We hope that, too, is temporary. We are in discussions with Singapore and Malaysia to bring to an end the facilities they offer to Western military powers. Those of you familiar with the ZOPFAN document may want to quote back at me guideline eleven which prohibits the use, storage, passage, and testing of nuclear weapons. I can reveal that President Wang assured the Ambassadors that China's long-term plan was to abandon its nuclear programme. But as you know these things take time.'

  `CNN, Foreign Minister. What about Laos and Cambodia?'

  `When Vietnam returns, so will they. Two more questions.'

  `Straits Times, Singapore. Why has Indonesia not signed?'

  `Indonesia is the largest country by far in South-East Asia. It is generally in agreement, but we need more time to work out the details.' `New York Times. Will commercial shipping now be able to travel unimpeded and if that is the case will you now be returning the Shell New World to its rightful owners and releasing the crew from captivity?'

  Jamie Song looked at his watch, then answered: `The Shell New World incident is being investigated. The People's Liberation Army was not involved. Now, there are press kits on the table on the side. The enlarged map behind me sets out the new Friendship and Cooperation Zone of East Asia.' As the Foreign Minister left the stage, red lights illuminated the countries which had signed the MOU, so that they were indistinguishable from China itself. Chris Bronowski, commenting live into the CNN coverage of the news conference, said: `We are seeing the first map of China's twenty-first-century empire.'

  `Can you be more specific?' prompted the anchor.

  `Yes. There is a swath of areas which historically came under the control of the Chinese emperors d which China still claims. Burma or Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos were dominated by the Manchus. China claimed suzerainty over Korea. It claims and controls Tibet. It also has claims on the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where it doesn't recognize Bhutanese sovereignty, and on the Indian state of Sikkim, whose annexation by the Indian government it also refuses to recognize. It may want to revive a claim on Mongolia which came under Moscow's control when the Manchus collapsed in 1911. My guess is that President Wang wants to reassemble China in its former glory under the more acceptable Friendship and Cooperation Zone of East Asia.'

  The Presidential Palace, Hanoi

  Local time: 2020 Tuesday 20 February 2001

  GMT: 1320 Tuesday 20 February 2001

  Colonel Etienne Gerbet was shown into the President Nguyen's office. The President was on the telephone and Colonel Gerbet surveyed the room cautiously. The presidential office was dignified, but not overly stuffy. Pictures of the President's family were displayed on a sideboard along with a multitude of other photographs of world leaders and regional politicians Nguyen had met during his rise to power.

  `Welcome to Hanoi, Colonel. I trust your flight was uneventful,' Nguyen said.

  `Quite uneventful, thank you, sir,' the Colonel replied.

  `Well, shall we get down to business? I understand from the conversation I had with President Dargaud on Sunday that he would be sending me something special. Are you it?'

  `In a manner of speaking, sir. If I may be permitted . . .' The President nodded his assent; Gerbet opened an attache case and removed some papers and computer floppy disks. `What I have here, sir, is a suggestion for how we might be able to help you . . . level the battlefield, as it were. How familiar are you with the term "information warfare"?'

  `Not at all. Go on.'

  `Your forces have since Sunday been engaged in operations in southern China. Groups of up to ten men have penetrated deep into Chinese territory and sowed confusion among the local townspeople. The attack on Monday at Xiatong when the local Party Secretary and Head of Public Security were killed in their beds was particularly effective. We have reason to believe that the Chinese have had about as much as they are going to take of this sort of harassment of their border towns. They are, in fact, preparing a force, lightly armoured, and of about 50,000 troops, to stage a retaliatory strike across the border. We have reason to believe that they plan to raze Lang Son in revenge.'

  `I am impressed with your knowledge not only of our operations but also of the intentions of the Chinese. But what has this to do with . . . information warfare?' Nguyen asked.

  `I was coming to that. President Dargaud has authorized me and my men to assist your army in defeating the Chinese attack. We expect it will come quite soon.'

  `We have had experience in beating the Chinese before, Colonel. Why do we need your help?'

  `I have the utmost respect for the Vietnamese soldiers, sir, and I have no doubt that they could, as in 1979, deliver a bloody nose to the Chinese. However, what we are offering you is a way of preserving your army and delivering a knock-out blow to the Chinese at the same time.'

  `Go on.'

  `We have the capability to see the battlefield in its entirety and assist your army with target selection. In real time we can pinpoint the position of Chinese tanks and troop deployments. With this information your heavy artillery, rockets, and mortars ought to be able to do the rest. How can we do this? I am not authorized to go into details but we, like the Americans, and the Chinese for that matter, have satellites in the sky. We've positioned one of our best over the Chinese-Vietnamese border since the war began on Sunday. It is able to communicate with our embassy here in Hanoi and from there by microwave link to Lang Son. We can do the rest. But I am also authorized to make one more offer of assistance. The Chinese army has bought many, though not all, of its battlefield information systems from us. Indeed, they widely use a Thomson-CSF Star Burst battlefield information manager. Although I cannot go into details we are able to ensure that the system fails at a time that would be helpful to your forces.'

  Zhongnanhai, Beijing

  Local time: 2200 Tuesday 20 February 2001

  GMT: 1400 Tuesday 20 February 2001

  President Wang remained an elusive figure. In keeping with Chinese political tradition he cultivated an image of omnipotence through his skilful behind-the-scenes manipulation of events. His people saw pictures of him on their television sets and in the newspapers meeting foreign dignitaries and chairing important meetings. But unlike his predecessors he rarely left the high red walls surrounding Zhongnanhai to venture outside the capital and only marginally more often travelled within it. Throughout the day Chinese Central Television and local radio stations had been broadcasting that he would address the nation at 10.15 p.m. in a special TV news bulletin. A studio in Zhongnanhai had been fitted out especially for the broadcast. The President was to sit at a table. Behind him would be a deep red screen supporting a crane in full flight. The crane is north Asia's most prized bird — revered in China, as well as Korea and Japan. At 10 p.m. he entered the studio, chatted with the young female make-up artist and the crew. He sat down and waited for the signal to begin recording his message to the nation.

  `People of China,' he began, `I speak to you tonight about a crisis facing our country. I have no doubt that with the help of the great Chinese people we will succeed. Since the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century Western capitalism has never stopped its aggression against China and its plundering of China. Today our heroic forces are fighting to regain our sovereignty over the Nanshas [Spratly Islands] and the great waters that surround them preserve for the motherland riches that rightly belong to the people of China.

  `Let me explain why. There is a vast sea to the south of the motherland
e South China Sea which covers an area of 3,200,000 square kilometres of our territorial waters. The beautiful and bountiful Nanshas are located in the southern part of this vast sea. The Nanshas have belonged to China since ancient times.

  `Yet the capitalist powers have never stopped casting their greedy eyes on the big treasure house of these islands. In the short period of sixty years since the first illegal survey of the Nanshas by a British ship in 1867, other countries occupied and plundered the archipelago on more than ten occasions. Even today, there are over fifty petroleum consortia from more than ten countries and regions that have long prospected for oil in the Nansha waters. Moreover, some forces have even attempted to turn the Nanshas into so-called international high seas and occupy the precious wealth.

  `This brings me to the interference in the internal affairs of China by third parties. Any discussion of this can proceed only from the accepted principle that China brooks no interference in its internal affairs. We will absolutely not permit any foreigners to interfere.

  `Even though the United States has the greatest national strength, it cannot have its own way to the point where it has the final say on world affairs. To maintain its status as the only superpower, the United States has to make a desperate attempt to contain other countries' development. US relations with foreign countries, such as with the European Union and Japan, are relations of cooperation rather than containment, while its relations with Russia and China are relations of containment rather than cooperation.

  `The Chinese people desire peace. Why else would we have signed today in Beijing a Memorandum of Understanding with our South-East Asian neighbours? We do not want war. We want peace. Today's agreement was freely entered into by all parties. China's place in Asia is at the heart of Asia. Our friends in the region understand that. Like us they view with anger and dismay the resurgence of militarism in Japan. Japan is the biggest threat to regional stability we have. There are none more so than the Chinese who understand the true nature of the Japanese. Their despicable grab for territory in the 1930s, their slaughter of women and children in Nanjing and Shanghai, their use of opium to control our people in old Manchuria showed the Japanese to be the vilest of all the imperialists who gorged themselves while the Chinese people starved.

  `Following the end of the Cold War, Japan changed its defence strategy from one concentrated on repelling potential Soviet attacks to one based on confrontation with China. But we warn Japan, as we warn the United States, whoever plays with fire will perish by fire. And I remind both countries of the words of Long March veteran Wang Zhen: "We have the experience of dealing with the Americans on the battlefield. They are nothing terrible. The war theatre may be selected by the Americans, in Korea or Taiwan. They have nuclear weapons; so have we."'

  The South China Sea

  Local time: 2300 Tuesday 20 February 2001

  GMT: 1500 Tuesday 20 February 2001

  The water along the two main shipping lanes through the Mindoro Straits was only 60 metres deep in places. The Apo West Pass ran along the northern coastline of the Calamian Group of islands, rugged, poor, Philippine fishing outposts whose boats were ignoring the Chinese warnings and were out working. To the north-east was the Apo East Pass, which ran along the coast of Mindoro Island, and it was through here that the commander of the USS Peleliu steered his amphibious group towards the South China Sea.

  The shallow water and the noise thrown out by dozens of small fishing vessels made it an ideal arena of battle for the Chinese diesel-electric submarines, waiting at 50 metres below the surface. Some were even resting on the seabed, their main motors cut and so completely silent that they were undetectable by even the most modern submarine equipment.

  Yet the commander of Ming 353 knew exactly what he was looking for. Six hours earlier, when the Dong Fang Hong 6 Chinese military satellite was passing, the submarine had raised a satellite communications (SATCOM) mast to receive a message which was constantly beamed down from space. In less than thirty seconds the submarine went deep again. The order was to attack the USS Peleliu as soon as she entered the South China Sea. In the following hours, every other Chinese submarine in the South China Sea received the same instructions.

  The fifty-seven officers and men had been cramped on board Ming 353 for more than three weeks now. They slept in narrow three-tiered bunks which were squeezed against the bulkhead, sharing sleeping bags and pillows. Only a filthy cloth curtain divided each bunk from the corridor. Even the patience of the Chinese ratings, recruited from the harsh mountain provinces, was being tested. They couldn't wash. They had no change of clothes. Everyone had sprouted thin beards. The whole vessel stank of cooking fat, diesel, and sweat. Equipment was suffering from the constant changes of humidity. Condensation flowed down everything.

  The task of identifying the American warship would have been the envy of any submarine commander. He knew when she was coming through and the course she was sailing. He also had on file the complete acoustic signature of the USS Peleliu, meticulously copied on the several occasions she had called in at Hong Kong before the British left in 1997. Chinese military intelligence operating in the Pearl River Delta was able to record every sound the ship made. In an ideal military world, the propeller design, size, and speed of naval ships would remain a closely guarded secret. But the USS Peleliu had been operating in the Pacific for twenty years and China had her exact propeller characteristics. It had also pieced together details as intricate and unique as a human fingerprint. It had recorded the auxiliary power plants; the sewage plant; the hydraulic lifts which carried aircraft from deck to deck; the compressors which filled hospital bottles with oxygen and gas. All of these sounds made up the ship's acoustic signature, which had been copied onto CD-ROM with the signatures of dozens of other warships. The Chinese had equipped their antiquated submarines with Pentium-chip laptop computers. They were no more than off-the-shelf office equipment. But this was a world where civilian technology was outstripping the military. The sonar operators on the Ming 353 simply recognized the USS Peleliu's signature from their laptop screen.

  The commander ordered the Ming up to periscope depth to try to confirm the target with Electronic Surveillance Measures. Within thirty seconds, the ESM mast had absorbed the electromagnetic spectrum around it, taking in the USS Peleliu's navigation radar, encrypted tactical communications, and satellite communications. The data made up the ESM fingerprint, which was analysed with the acoustic fingerprint in the Ming's own Tactical Weapons System computer. The submarine commander now had a near certain classification of his target and could take the decision to close within firing range.

  When he was 1,700 metres away he had a strong urge to carry out a more dangerous, but also more accurate, `eyes only' attack using the periscope. He knew the American anti-submarine warfare detection equipment might find him before the torpedoes hit. But that was the risk of the job. He would use straight running torpedoes, of the old 1960s design, weapons which in naval jargon cannot be seduced by electronic countermeasures. Their rudimentary mechanical system would ignore the decoys thrown out by the USS Peleliu to change their course. The American commander would attempt to project a bogus acoustic signature of the USS Peleliu several thousand metres away from the real ship. Another countermeasure would simply be white noise, like the hissing of a fire extinguisher, which would appear louder than the ship itself.

  The commander kept the periscope up for five seconds to obtain a firing solution. He was 30g on the bow of the target. He put the periscope down. With his acoustic, electronic, and optical information matched, he opened the torpedo doors. He took the periscope up. What he saw, however, made him take it down immediately, wait ten seconds, and raise it again. The Seahawk helicopter crew had identified the periscope of a second submarine. The vessel went deep, but the helicopter crew dropped two Mk46 torpedoes. The explosion of a Romeo submarine being destroyed ripped through the water. This was the moment the commander of Ming 353 asked for his firing solution. He was 850
metres from the target.

  He released the first weapon at a bearing of 90g to the target course. This was the middle torpedo of his salvo of three. The swell swept around the periscope, cutting off his view of the target. But he had already worked out the firing pattern. The next was fired 5g ahead of the bearing, the third 5g behind. He completed what is known as the zero gyro-angle shot, creating a spread of weapons to counteract either the target speeding up or turning away.

  The Americans had twenty-six seconds to react. In a scrambling panic, they threw out electronic countermeasures. But the low-tech torpedoes, made up of only an engine and warhead, kept their course. The American captain began to turn the USS Peleliu to port to evade the torpedoes, but it was a useless gesture with such a lumbering vessel.

  The Ming commander had set the first weapon with a proximity fuse which went off 2 metres below the hull. The explosion blew a hole in the bottom and ruptured systems in a large area of the ship. The second torpedo, with an impact fuse, had a direct hit, stopping the ship's engines. The third weapon passed in front of her bow and detonated.

  The crew of a second Seahawk scrambled and took off from the USS Bunker Hill. They dropped a pattern of sonobuoys in the area of the attack and over the next three hours they found and destroyed one other Ming and two more Romeo submarines with torpedoes and depth charges. But Ming 353 and one other escaped. When the crews returned to their base on Hainan Island, they were hailed as heroes. There had been six submarines waiting to strike the USS Peleliu. Military experts debated as to how much the Chinese commanders had been inspired by the German Second World War wolf-pack tactic of stretching up to fifty U-boats in a net across the paths of Allied convoys in the Atlantic. They would often be on the surface and only dive when attacking. Some German commanders actually attacked on the surface, driving their vessels between the lines of the convoy using guns and torpedoes. The key was surprise and daring, similar to the risks taken by the commander of Ming 353. As the Dragonstrike war continued, Allied naval officers referred to the clusters of Chinese submarines as wolf-packs.