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

by Humphrey Hawksley

  Seoul International Airport, South Korea

  Local time: 1800 Wednesday 21 February 2001

  GMT: 0900 Wednesday 21 February 2001

  The two bombs that tore through the international transit lounge at Seoul airport killed 87 people and injured more than 200. They exploded six minutes apart with such horrific force that part of the building collapsed, crushing many of the victims. Another 150 people died when aircraft were wrenched away from their boarding bridges. The fuel tanks of one exploded, sending searing hot metal and fireballs across the runway. Everyone on board that Boeing 737 died. A Boeing 757 was engulfed in flames, although many passengers were able to escape because the aircraft doors at the side were still open. Throughout the terminal, panic led to stampedes and further death, with people being crushed on staircases and in doorways as thousands headed for the freezing open air where they believed there would be safety. But out there the North Korean commandos had set up a suicide killing squad. The crowds were raked with machine-gun fire. Hand grenades exploded, the shrapnel tearing into the bodies of innocent women and children. As South Korean troops moved in, the gunmen became more and more determined. One ran from his hiding place, spraying bullets from two submachine-guns before being cut down. Another fired grenade after grenade. A third shot dead 4 South Koreans before being killed himself. It was never known how many North Koreans were involved in the attack, nor if any escaped. 11 were eventually killed. None was captured alive. 403 people died during the attack. Another 23 died from their injuries over the next day. The airport, which had opened less than two years earlier, was shut down. North Korea had achieved its goal to terrorize the people and strike at the heart of its enemy's economy.

  The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London

  Local time: 0900 Wednesday 21 February 2001

  The blue Rolls-Royce Silver Spur II, with the number plate CHN1, pulled out into Portland Place in the West End of London from the compound of the Chinese Embassy. At this time of day, with rush-hour traffic still thick in Regent Street, the Haymarket, and Piccadilly, the journey to the Foreign Office in King Charles Street could take anything up to twenty minutes. It was unusual for the Permanent Under Secretary to summon an Ambassador at such short notice and at such an early hour. But the Ambassador to the People's Republic of China did not regard it as an insult. Dragonstrike was one of those rare watersheds which determine global history. His only problem was that he had received no instructions from Beijing since the operation began. He welcomed the meeting with the PUS, if only to determine what was going on. He had memorized the speeches by President Wang and had committed to memory the more salient phrases in Jamie Song's television interviews. And as his chauffeur snaked his way around Piccadilly Circus and down towards Whitehall, and his Private Secretary read the morning newspapers, the Ambassador became curious as to how London was able to retain its history so beautifully, while in Beijing the past was relegated to museums and usually falsified.

  The car drove under Admiralty Arch into the Mall. The royal standard was flying over Buckingham Palace, indicating that the monarch was in residence. The chauffeur turned left into Horse Guards Parade and left again across the gravel of the parade ground, down the side of the garden wall of No. 10 Downing Street to park in the little-known Ambassador's Entrance at the back of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Security was efficient, formal, and fast because the car was expected. The Ambassador was shown up the Grand Staircase, with its marble banisters and deep red carpet, and shown to a familiar, special waiting room on the first floor. He sat for four minutes on a green and cream sofa. Opposite him was a gilded mirror set against gold-painted wallpaper. The most dominant feature was a large picture of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music, playing the organ. The Ambassador had been here several time before, but found this visit brought home to him the irreconcilable differences between the Chinese and European cultures. One preserved its history, with all the flaws and follies. The other, his own, destroyed it and told fairy tales about the past so no one ever knew what happened.

  The Permanent Under Secretary, the Head of Britain's Diplomatic Service, made a point of being both cold and official. His job was to convey Her Majesty's Government's displeasure in such a way that the Ambassador would relay the full message back to Beijing. The PUS's Private Secretary took notes.

  `The British government deplores your action in the South China Sea. There can be no justification for China's actions. The sinking of the USS Peleliu is contrary to everything we have been trying to achieve in the arena of world peace and the invasion of Vietnam is without question unacceptable. We will not tolerate the continued detention of British citizens caught up in this conflict. All Chinese forces must be withdrawn from all arenas of conflict and hostilities halted immediately.'

  `I will report your comments to my government,' replied the Ambassador.

  `We will be making public today our intention to support the United States in whatever way is necessary to free the foreign hostages and to secure the shipping routes through the South China Sea.'

  `Does that mean you will make a military contribution?'

  `It means what it says, Ambassador. You must draw your own conclusions.'

  `There are as you a know a number of trade contracts under consideration, and the President of the Board of Trade is due to visit Beijing in May.'

  The PUS's response was swift: `We have been down this road several times before, I'm afraid. The trade delegation has been postponed. British companies will be withdrawing their tenders until such a time as things get back to normal. The airport radar, the metro construction, the aerospace joint ventures are all on hold, Ambassador.'

  `You are imposing sanctions?'

  `Not at all, Ambassador. Our company executives simply believe it is too risky to embark upon business ventures in a country with which we might soon be at war. Your fellow Ambassadors in Europe, America, Canada, Australia, and Japan are being given a similar message. We will no longer assist in the building of a modern China.'

  `There are others who will help us,' replied the Ambassador.

  `I'm sure the Russians and Indians will oblige,' said the PUS, ending the exchange. `But you could hardly describe their infrastructure and technology as modern.'

  The Chinese Ambassador was shown out as he arrived, with cold civility.

  The White House, Washington, DC

  Local time: 0700 Wednesday 21 February 2001

  GMT: 1200 Wednesday 21 February 2001

  With the autocue rolling, the President of the United States looked straight into the camera. He waited for the recording light above the lens to go red. Then he began his address to the nation. Every network broke into its programming schedule. Most had been running rolling news about the sinking of the USS Peleliu the day before. Although it was nearly twenty-four hours since the tragedy there were no pictures, and that was how the President wanted it. The first section of the address recounted the developments of the past four days, beginning with what the President described as an `unprovoked attack' on Vietnam and `unauthorized closure of vital trading routes in the South China Sea'. The President spoke about the tragic loss of life. He then paused before moving on to the sinking of the USS Peleliu. He noted that the last American ship to be sunk in conflict was in 1952 during the Korean War. `China was also our enemy then,' he said. He reminded the American people that the USS Peleliu was not sailing to war, but to rescue American citizens, civilians, who had become stranded on one of the disputed reefs in the conflict area. It had been the President's intention to ensure civilian safety before embarking upon complex and dangerous negotiations with China. He described the attack as an act of terrorism.

  `Yet our response has been far more measured than that of our allies, the Japanese. Yesterday they declared themselves to be a nuclear power in the Pacific by exploding an underground nuclear device. I have expressed my regrets personally to Prime Minister Hyashi, but we agreed that neither of our great nations should
lose focus about what we needed to achieve. That is to secure the trading routes of our oil and other supplies from the Middle East and South and East Asia; and to safeguard the lives of American citizens in the area of conflict. This is also the view of our European allies who have their own security arrangement with governments of the region.

  `Therefore, Prime Minister Hyashi, the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, and the President of France have joined me in committing their air and naval forces to free the South China Sea from Chinese control. Our military action has just begun.'

  The South China Sea

  Local time: 2000 Wednesday 21 February 2001

  GMT: 1200 Wednesday 21 February 2001

  The first Japanese military aircraft to fly across the 25g latitude line which cuts across the northern tip of Taiwan was a new Boeing 767 AWACS early warning spy plane, which had begun operations in 1999. It was vulnerable to attack and was kept well back from possible offensive aircraft. 8 kilometres below, Japan's navy was putting its stamp on the new balance of power in the Pacific. The Kongou class destroyers Myoko and Kirishima and the Asagiri class destroyers Umigiri and Sawagiri sailed through the Luzon Straits into the South China Sea to go to war with China. The amphibious troop and tank carrier Yokohama, with 550 Marines on board, was deployed to take over from the USS Peleliu, but this time both to rescue civilian hostages and recover Discovery Reef and the control of the BP Nippon Oil drilling rig there. Three Harushio class SSK submarines, the Fuyushio, Wakashio, and Arashio, were on patrol ahead. The Yuushio class SSKs Yukishio and Akishio followed. The crews of Sea King and Sea Stallion helicopters dropped patterns of sonobuoys to detect enemy submarines.

  100 kilometres ahead of the Japanese task force was the USS Harry S. Truman carrier group. Already her F-14 Tomcat fighters with air-to-air missiles and F/A-18 Hornets with laser-guided bombs and anti-radar missiles had penetrated deep into China's self-declared airspace. Their target was the Woody Island military base on the Paracel Islands. With the Tomcats giving air cover, the Hornets flew in to attack it.

  Seven Su-27s scrambled from their base on Hainan Island, and within minutes had engaged the Tomcats in the first ever combat test of strength between the two aircraft. The Su-27 had been designed by Soviet aerospace engineers to beat the American F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18. They drew from the American design with the advantage that the competing aircraft had already been built and were operational. The Russian aircraft was one of the first to be fitted with air-to-air missiles with their own active seeking device, which allowed the pilot to `fire and forget', or turn away from his target as soon as he had released the weapons. Each aircraft carried ten missiles, six on the wings, two beneath the engine intakes, and two under the fuselage. For ground attack, it had five-round packs of 130mm rockets and could also carry the much-feared Moskit anti-ship missile. A few days earlier, in their missions against Vietnam, this technological edge in performance was incidental. But now, as the Tomcats were in a forward role of air defence to protect an American carrier group, the stark truth had finally travelled all the way from the Pentagon to the White House: Soviet Cold War technology had been transferred to another, more durable Communist power and Americans were facing the consequences.

  The fight began when the aircraft were far apart. A Tomcat observer spotted on his warning receiver a signal which he identified as radar guidance for a missile fired from more than 110 kilometres away. The American rules of engagement then allowed the Tomcats to fire. Two had eight long-range Phoenix air-to-air missiles guided to different targets by the track-while-scan AWG-9 radar. Although this was old equipment dating from the 1970s, it had been upgraded and was still a lethal combination. The air was soon full of fourteen Phoenix missiles speeding to their targets, one having misfired on its pylon, and one having failed to guide after launch, falling into the sea. The aircraft with the misfire jettisoned the now-useless missile. But what the Americans did not know before the war began was that the enemy had developed jammers which would confuse the homing heads of the Phoenix that were needed for terminal accuracy. Only two of the seven Su-27s succumbed to the Phoenix attack, and the remaining five closed for the dogfight with their guns and infra-red missiles, which homed on to their targets by fixing on heat generated by their engines. Manoeuvrability and training is the key to the dogfight, and although the Su-27s were more manoeuvrable than the Tomcats the pilots were not as well trained as the Americans with their Red Flag and Top Gun training systems.

  The American pilots eluded and attacked the enemy with manoeuvres they called in their jargon yo-yos, max-G turns, offensive barrel rolls, rolling scissors, and diving for the deck. One pilot, who died, was hit not by air-to-air missiles, but by enemy cannon fire when he inadvertently turned his aircraft across the nose of one of the Su-27s, which he had not spotted. One Tomcat observer saw a missile-launch warning from a tail direction. He guessed that from that quarter it would be an infra-red missile. His pilot waited a fraction of a second, broke sharply towards the sun, and the observer fired off flares which exploded into sources of intense heat designed to seduce away the missile. It worked. While up-sun of his attacker, the pilot reversed his turn and in the short time it took his opponent to realize what he had done he was in a firing position with an AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided missile, albeit at the edge of its capability. The Su-27 pilot heard in his radar warning receiver the Tomcat radar lock on and he released chaff clouds. This decoyed the first Sparrow but not a second which followed in salvo. The Su-27 was hit and spiralled into the sea. Another Su-27 had used its afterburner too much and became stuck in reheat; it ran low on fuel, and one engine failed. It lost combat energy and was soon picked off by a Tomcat, the pilot ejecting as soon as he realized that he was being attacked.

  As the dogfight raged overhead, the Hornets kept to their ground-attack mission on the Paracels. Their air-to-air defence capability was limited because their AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder anti-aircraft missiles had been removed so the aircraft could carry laser-guided conventional and cluster bombs together with some AGM-65F Maverick and HARM anti-radar missiles. The formation leader flew a two-seater with a weapon system operator in the back who was able to concentrate on electronic warfare. The Hornets' jammers first sent out a wave of high-intensity microwaves which filled the skies with radar energy across a wide frequency band. This was called noise-jamming. Then the jammers confused the enemy radar further with more sophisticated methods involving cunningly synchronized pulses and Doppler shifts which pretended to be non-existent targets. Sometimes enemy radar screens were almost obscured by massive jamming which produce a series of spikes emanating from the centre of the radar displays completely confusing the radar operators.

  The Chinese fired at least four surface-to-air missiles, but these were easily seduced away by the countermeasures, and seconds later the radar and anti-aircraft defences were being destroyed. Fire-and-forget radar-homing HARM missiles took out two radar-guided anti-aircraft positions. The other radars took the hint and switched off. A third SAM site was spotted when it fired a SAM without preliminary radar lock. The aircraft of the pilot who had seen it was equipped with large laser-guided bombs. He released one but unlike the HARM, he had to keep the laser beam on the target until the bomb hit. Although the laser target designator was stabilized and did not need manual aiming, it limited his manoeuvre. He failed to detect a missile fired from high above by an Su-27. By the time his missile warner alarm sounded, it was too late to escape. However, the missile warhead failed to detonate and the missile streaked close by without doing any damage. The Hornet pilot thought he had escaped but the Su-27 had fired a salvo of two e second one worked and it destroyed the aircraft. The bomb, unguided without being able to home to the laser marker on the ground, did not even detonate, having lost laser-lock, a device introduced to avoid civilian damage in earlier wars. The ground attack continued. Once the defences were taken out, cluster fragmentation bomblets with a wide area of effect we
re used on the runway and aircraft storage areas. Any aircraft on the ground was a soft target and was either destroyed or damaged by the bomblets and ricochet debris. The runway was pitted with small craters and small mines were also dispensed from the clusters.

  Within twenty minutes, all Su-27s had either been shot down or had retreated. Two Su-27s ditched before they could reach friendly land. The Chinese had provided no tanker in-flight refuelling support. The Americans lost two Tomcats and the Hornet which attacked the SAM site. Several Tomcats had to be air-refuelled on the way home. Another Tomcat was damaged so that it could not land on the aircraft carrier; the crew ejected and the aircraft ditched alongside. They were picked up unharmed by the duty rescue helicopter. The Tomcat squadron leader, who himself had shot down an enemy plane and shared another kill, said caustically: `I guess it shows it don't matter how good your aircraft is if you are not trained to fly it properly and don't have the back-up.'

  1,200 kilometres to the south, the Nimitz carrier group entered the conflict area through the Balabac Straits. With the same combination of Tomcats and Hornets, the American aircraft first sank the Luhu class destroyer Haribing, already hit at the beginning of the conflict by Vietnamese torpedoes. After returning to the carrier, another squadron took off to destroy the Chinese positions on Mischief Reef. There was no resistance.

  French Dassault Rafale multi-role fighters headed for the Spratly Islands, flying from Ho Chi Minh City where they had arrived from Europe only hours earlier. They shot down three lumbering Chinese air-refuelling aircraft and picked off four Su-27s which were still heavy as they were on their way to give air support to the Chinese navy. For the second time in the Dragonstrike war, Vietnamese aircraft took off from Cambodia and Laos. From Vientiane, refuelling at Vinh on the north-east Vietnamese coast, they struck the Chinese naval base on Hainan Island 800 kilometres away. From the Laotian royal capital of Luang Prabang, they attacked PLA land troops positioned in the northern border area.