9 Days Falling, Volume I k-5

by John A. Schettler

  “Sir,” called a mishman of the watch. “The log is entered and now recording.”

  “Very well, Mister Nikolin—signal the Admiral Kuznetsov. Send one word: Pustomazovo.”

  Nikolin raised his eyebrows again. “Sir, sending code Pustomazovo, aye.” He had no idea what he was sending, but the Captain of the Admiral Kuznetsov knew exactly what it meant. It was the birth place of the Russian aircraft designer Tupolev, informing him the strike package was deploying, and the signal to move his available fighter cover into a screening position for the Tu-22s. NATO called the old bombers Backfires, and Volsky had fifteen of the newly upgraded TU-22M3s, all adapted for carrying long range weapons. The Russians were now going to show the West just what had been going on in their missile labs for the last ten years.

  It was called the KH-32, a longer range version of the older KH-22 “Kitchen” that the Backfire once carried. This new missile had a long arm indeed, a thousand kilometer range, and a very unusual attack profile. With a performance ceiling of an incredible 44,000 meters, the missile climbed to the edge of space to enable it to look down and well beyond the horizon of the attacking aircraft to acquire its target, and it was getting help from Russian satellites that had been watching the American carrier groups for some time. The new computer brain in the missile could also analyze and classify its targets to set strike priority. Once it determined its objective, it closed at a high supersonic speed that was very difficult to intercept.

  It was Russia’s answer to the fact that Admiral Kuznetsov was their only aircraft carrier. Karpov had decided early on to use the ship and its precious naval air assets as a defensive shield, and not a long range strike weapon. He wanted all twenty-eight Mig-29Ks and the fourteen SU-33s positioned for air defense, and their first mission was to screen and protect the Backfires. As things stood, by the time the American AWACs on the line picked up the bombers, it would be too late. The improved range of the KH-32 missile would allow them to fire and then withdraw, safe behind the Russian air defense screen.

  Karpov would have the final word as to whether or not the bombers would engage, but time was running out. He had Rodenko watching the situation on his closest AEW plane, Black Bear, and then the report he had feared and expected finally came.

  “Two American fighters now inside 100 kilometer range, sir. Black Bear reports active radar lock…” Rodenko looked at the Captain, his features drawn and set. “Missiles in the air, sir. They have fired on the A-50.”

  Karpov took a long breath, hands still clasped behind his back. And so it begins, he thought. It was not the Royal Navy of 1942 this time. The Americans of 2021 had just fired the first shot, meant to blind him to what would soon follow, a fist full of sand in his eyes before the main attack. So be it.

  He no longer had the luxury of musing over the fate of the world. There did not seem to be anything he could do in the here and now to avoid what was coming next. Now the game would move to the struggle for the first salvo between the two naval flotillas set to engage. He had no doubt that the planes off those carriers would be attacking his fleet within the hour. His adversary thought he had the upper hand with the ranged firepower of his air assets. He was wrong.

  “Mister Nikolin,” he said calmly. “Send the signal Red Banner One.” He would get his KH-32s in the air, and the first salvo would be his. The Backfires had overflown the Admiral Kuznetsov where it was positioned north of Iturup Island and its restless Demon volcano. They were flying high at just over 40,000 feet, avoiding the emerging ash plume from the eruption now underway. Get the missiles off now, thought Karpov—especially the air breathers. The ramjet driven high speed cruise missiles would need clear skies.

  The planes had a big KH-32 under each wing and a reserve on the fuselage. When they received the signal, they fired their wing mounted ordnance, sending thirty of the deadly new supersonic cruise missiles streaking away and climbing for the stars above. They would more than double their launch altitude before they tipped their noses over at apogee and began to seek the distant American battlegroup. Thirty supersonic kamikaze missiles would soon be heading south to find the American carrier. By the time they descended for their final plunging attack run they would be coming at over Mach-5, their noses glowing red with the heat of the friction in the atmosphere… and they would not be alone.

  A bastion of attack submarines were off to the south, now entering cruise missile range of the American task force. Three Akula Class attack submarines were spread out in the vanguard, forming a screen against intruding enemy subs. Their job was simply to find and attack any enemy submarine attempting to penetrate the screen and threaten the next group of SSGNs. Two older Oscar Class subs were following them, the Omsk and Viluchinsk. They carried some vintage cruise missiles, each with twenty-four of the old P-700 Granit “Shipwreck” missiles. With a range just over 600 kilometers and a heavy 750 kg warhead they posed a grave threat.

  Behind them came the pride of the Russian undersea fleet, the new Yasen class boat, SSGN Kazan. Here were no less than forty P-900 “Sizzler” cruise missiles, fast sea skimmers with a high speed terminal run programmed for dizzying evasive maneuvers.

  Karpov counted down the seconds, knowing his Backfires had their missiles in the air by now, and holding his breath as the time ticked off. He wanted to give his missile fire order to the sub bastion to coordinate the time on target as closely as possible for each weapon system involved. He had worked out his initial attack the previous evening, laboring late into the night to check and double check each detail of the plan. He had even coded everything into discrete message transmissions to be sent at crucial intervals as the action unfolded. The time was now.

  “Nikolin! Send low frequency transmission undersea Order One as programmed.”

  “Sir, aye, sending undersea transmission one.”

  If all went according to plan there would soon be a salvo of twenty of the slower P-900s from Yasen, half of the boat’s missile arsenal. Undersea Order Two would send twenty-four of the faster P-700 cruise missiles from the two Oscar class boats leaping from the sea like a school of angry flying fish and skimming right over the wave tops toward the American carriers. These forty-four low altitude missiles would be added to the thirty KH-32s off the Backfires, soon to be falling like meteors from the edge of space.

  Karpov looked at his watch, then glanced up at the ship’s chronometer, mentally calculating something in his battle mind. The American strike planes were almost at the AEW line and closing, about 400 kilometers out. Rodenko reported multiple contacts inbound, with data fed by Black Bear, but that plane had but seconds to live. He had to act at once.

  “Rodenko! Feed AEW data to Samsonov at once to fix the position of the American strike groups. When we lose Black Bear switch to predictive plot. We know where they are headed and our systems can calculate their course and speed easily enough. Sound air defense alert and signal all fleet units! Samsonov, I want the S-400s ready, four salvos of eight. Concentrate your fire on the Alpha strike group coming in from the Hokkaido coast. Kuznetsov’s fighters will handle the Beta strike group.”

  Rodenko was quick to comply and Samsonov soon had good live targeting data on the planes coming in off the coast of Japan. They would lose the contact soon enough until the ship re-acquired them with her own radars, but the computers would continue to project a predictive plot based on the last live course heading and speed they had obtained. The S-400s would be keyed to intercept based on that plot until their active radar could redefine the precise location and home in. The Captain was going to deliver yet another surprise, for the Americans would not expect SAM defense for some minutes, until they were inside the 300 kilometer range of his older S-300s. But the new S-400s had an extended range to 400 kilometers, and they could fire at once.

  Captain Tanner wanted to try his patience that morning, and he would now pay the price. Rodenko turned to Samsonov and nodded. Karpov gave the order to fire and the missile warning sounded as the first of the S-400
s were up and away. Like an old veteran returning to the front, wounded, bandaged and yet resolute, Kirov was at war.

  ~ ~ ~

  Far to the South Captain Tanner got the bad news soon enough. He was sitting in the Captain’s chair on the bridge of CVN Washington, and about to have a very bad day. His AWACS coverage soon reported the Backfire strike group, but they had fired from well beyond 600 kilometers.

  “Deaken!” He wanted his weapons specialist. “What’s coming at us off those damn Backfires? They’re over 800 klicks out!”

  “Can’t be throwing the kitchen sink at us at that range,” said Deaken. He was referring to the KH-22 “Kitchen” missile with a maximum range of 600 kilometers. “Has to be something new—probably the KH-32.”

  “Well, what about it?””

  “World of pain, sir. High angle attack. Sucker climbs to the upper edge of the atmosphere, acquires, and then dives on the target.”

  “Just what I didn’t need to hear.”

  “Sir!” Deaken had just picked up another missile launch warning from the AWACS. “We’ve got multiple missiles inbound, 300 klicks out. Those have to be off subs!”

  “Well where the hell is our screen?”

  Skip Patterson was at the Captain’s side and the XO had a serious look on his face. “That bastard stole a march on us, sir.”

  Tanner leaned back, shaking his head. “All’s fair in love and war, Skip. This guy Karpov thought things out real good. He knew we were reneging on that deal an hour ago and he had a sub missile group right on the AEW line ready to bushwhack us. Where are our boats, damnit?”

  “They probably had them on sonar sir, but the kill orders just went out. The Russkies just beat us to the punch, but they’ll be after those subs now. Bet on it.”

  “A lot of good it does us now, Mister Patterson. They got their shot off, and that’s all that matters. The Backfires were another surprise. Every drill we’ve ever run had them launching inside 600 klicks. Alright people,” Tanner raised his voice. “It’s about to get ugly. Better hope Shiloh and the boys on those DDGs are on their game today. We’ve drilled this for years, but this is the real McCoy. Signal all units—weapons free. Prosecute, prosecute, prosecute.”

  “Aye sir, all units track and prosecute vampires. AWACs has the sub surface launches still in booster phase. We should get them on the SPY system at tip-over when they hit our radar horizon.” The US AEGIS defense system was about to get its first real war test, and the SPY-1D/3D radar would be the first shipborne system to pick the missiles up as they tipped over after the initial boost and then descended to their low level sea skimming altitudes for the target approach.

  “How fast are these new ALCMs, Deke?” Tanner was trying to calculate his kill chain probabilities here.

  “The KH-32s? Very fast, sir. They’ll be humming at Mach 5 when they hit our radar horizon and at least Mach 3.5 if they make a low level run after that. We’ll have one good shot, maybe two at that speed. Double that for the Sizzlers because they run subsonic until the final approach. And we can beat on the older Shipwrecks all day. They’re fast, but with a radar cross section that big we’ll lock and track them easily enough. We’ll only get a couple shots at them, but one should do.”

  The air launched missiles were going to be the real problem, thought Tanner. Anything coming in at that speed reduced the defensive SAMs reaction time to the bare minimum. They had to acquire, track, engage and prosecute that contact, and they may only get a few good shots at a missile that fast, perhaps only one. A few seconds later they got word their AEGIS Cruiser Shiloh was already firing.

  “Hell they took a pot shot at those KH-32s with the RIM-161s, sir!” That was the Standard Missile 3, designed for intercepting ballistic missiles. It had the range to even leave the atmosphere and get up after satellites if necessary, and Shiloh was sending a barrage up to see if they could thin the soup on those Backfire launched cruise missiles. To make the shot the AEGIS system was relying on data from the AWACS, as the incoming missiles had not reached the ship’s radar horizon yet. It was a proverbial ‘long shot’ but a good play. Tanner just hoped to God it would help him, but he knew that, with over seventy missiles inbound, something was bound to get through.

  His battlegroup was not tightly concentrated. He had destroyers Lassen and McCampbell out on ASW Screen, Wilbur, McCain and Fitzgerald in the inner screen, and CGN Shiloh was in tight.

  I should have waited for Nimitz, he thought. That damn Flash-Z traffic forced me to take immediate action against my better judgment, but no one will know or care much about that when this is over and done. If this old girl gets hit, the only thing that will make the news cycle is the smoke and fire. I’ve got 80% of my aircraft aloft, with most of those heading north to send our Harpoons Karpov’s way within the hour. Let’s hope we’ve got a deck here for them to come home. Otherwise they’ll have to land in Japan.

  The “war” as it would now be called in all seriousness, was only a matter of minutes away, coming at him in seventy-four screaming anti-ship missiles.

  Chapter 23

  And it was coming fast.

  The KH-32s were going to be a little ahead of the game. Climbing to the dizzying height of 44 kilometers, they quickly acquired the American carrier battlegroup and began their descent. The attack profile was one a ballistic missile might take, though it was deemed ‘semi-ballistic’ in naval circles. It still spelled deadly any way you worded it, and the thirty missiles were diving at Mach-5. Rising to the challenge, CG Shiloh was sending one SM-3 after another up for the chase.

  The radar picked up the incoming missiles easily enough, and the enhanced infrared seeker was quick to refine the target data. Even if the missile did boast of a stealthy approach there was no way to hide the heat generated by the incredible speed of the KH-32s. The SM-3 attack was like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, as it relied on a strike to kill by kinetic impact. When it did hit, however, it did so with the force of a ten ton Mack truck moving at 600 miles per hour. As the missiles climbed, their attitude and course were corrected by precise, short propulsion bursts, an improvement in the latest block of the Raytheon designed missile.

  All the corporate sales talk about ‘a more flexible, capable, and cost-effective architecture, improved sensor technologies, and a variety of options to detect and track enemy missiles was now about to be put to the test. It would be a test unlike any other ever run for the missile, which had a good track record in one-on-one engagements under well controlled conditions, but this was the real thing. It wasn’t a test with a missile platform quietly waiting for a target, knowing its timing and approach vector from the start. This time it was thirty missiles all at once, and there was only one catch—Shiloh had only 24 of the SM-3s in inventory, and three of the destroyers had only 12 each. Normal protocol was to fire two missiles at each incoming target. They would barely have enough.

  The KH-32s were also getting an assist from another Russian AWACS plane. The A-50s on the AEW line were presumed to be expendable assets if war actually broke out. When Black Bear went down in flames, the Russians were quick to activate their newest addition of the airborne surveillance fleet, the A-100. The plane was built on the capable workhorse of the IL-476 airframe, and upgraded with new advanced AESA radars. It had better loiter time, extended detection range, and resistance to jamming. Positioned behind Kuznetsov’s fighter screen, its life span was more secure, and it was now giving an able assist to the missiles in order to vector them in on their targets. Ignoring the outer destroyer screens, they were after the heart of the American task force, AEGIS Cruiser Shiloh and CVN Washington.

  Eighteen SM-3s were in the air already, and Shiloh was pouring it on, her deck and superstructure awash with white and amber smoke as the angry fire of the missiles’ exhaust rocketed them skyward. Anxious crews aboard the ship were watching the radar screens and tracking the engagement. The SM-3s were performing as advertised. They got one, then three of the incoming KH-32s, and the hot race to g
et the others was intense. After seven kills operators on Shiloh were encouraged until they saw that three missiles were now well below the expected kill altitude from this initial barrage. Three, then five, then seven were through the SM-3 salvo, their incredible speed making a direct hit a very tough prospect. Nine of their brothers had died to penetrate this outer envelope, and a second wave of SM-3s were still engaging the remaining fourteen missiles there, but these lucky seven were now on their way in to the target. Shiloh would have but one last slim chance to get them.

  The RIM-162 ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile) was that last chance. It had improved range and agility and came four missiles to a cell in a VLS ‘Quad Pack’ on the forward deck. The missiles had seen numerous test firings over the years, swiping target drones from the sky, and defeating slower subsonic anti-ship missiles like the Beech AS-34 Kormoran. The ESSM was designed specifically to deal with supersonic missiles with evasive maneuver capability. Yet design is one thing, testing another and the heat and intensity of real warfare quite another indeed. These were not Kormorans or target drones, nor were they supersonic—they were true hypersonic missiles coming in at nearly 4000 miles or 6500 kilometers per hour. They could cover their entire active range of 1000 kilometers in about ten to twelve minutes accounting for extra time needed in the initial boost phase. Now they were deadly meteors, five times faster than anything the Sparrows had been sent to track and kill before. Twelve missiles were fired from Shiloh’s broiling foredeck, but only three found targets in the precious few seconds before the incoming missiles got into the hot zone. Four KH-32s were going to get through. One would miss, spoofed by countermeasures, three would hit and the battle would shift dramatically on that score alone.

  Shiloh took one missile amidships, between the two prominent box-like superstructures that house the valuable radars. The warhead packed a considerable wallop on its own, but the additional kinetic impact imparted by speed was tremendous. It sheared through the mast there destroying the ship’s electro-optical sighting system, the AN/SPS 49 system, and then penetrated the superstructure until it had nearly blown completely through the bottom hull. Black hell was at the center of the ship, which shuddered under the impact, the central mast toppling over the side and into the sea. It was a bulls eye hit, near fatal, and it was going to quickly take Shiloh out of the game for the next crucial minutes when the ship lost power while emergency crews and engineers were scrambling from undamaged sections to fight the intense fire.