by Td Barnes
Like a monster from the deep, the sub captain stealthily arrived at his destination shortly after midnight after successfully transiting waters where the Pentagon spent billions on antisubmarine warfare sensors and defense systems. He and the submarine crew welcomed the momentary relief from the mental strain of this accomplishment while they settled the sub on the ocean floor and silently waited for the execution of this mission. Each knew the real test would be the successful evasion of the defenses of Taiwan and the challenge of escaping undetected after the execution phase of his mission.
At the prescribed time, he silently ascended unnoticed to missile launch depth and initiated the missile launch sequence. The submarine rocked with the mighty belch of compressed air that propelled the missile to the surface where its engines ignited in a mighty roar to launch the missile skyward. Though caught entirely off guard, the bi-national command at NORAD detected the launch immediately and notified the President followed by the issuance of a maritime warning to the Federal Aviation Administration and the other agencies on its flash message dissemination list.
The swiftly ascending missile traveled straight instead of the typical “corkscrewing” trajectory of a beam-riding missile trying to acquire the targeting beam. This and the blatantly dirty color of the contrail identified the missile being an SLBM missile launched by a subsurface aquatic platform, a Big Boy, a “fire and forget” weapon that used its internal guidance system with no need for external guidance after launch.
Crews, operators, and commanders alike on the island and ships at sea looked at their clocks and watches in puzzled confusion when the intercontinental ballistic missile executed a racing ascent on a sub-orbital trajectory. The rays of the sun and atmospheric winds created a brilliant multicolored and erratic contrail behind the plume of the streaking missile, sparking a tsunami of frantic calls from observing airline pilots and ship captains witnessing booster separation at approximate 75,000 feet altitude followed by the ominous ignition of the missile’s second stage.
The military on the island, including that of the United States, the mightiest country on the globe, reacted in numbed disbelief at the sight of an unknown enemy launching an SLBM within view of navy and air force defenders of Taiwan.
The mission planners obviously timed the launch to occur 35 miles off the coast of Taiwan one hour before sunset with intent for the sight of a JL-2 SLBM in the booster stage snarling the rush hour traffic to a standstill. They figured correctly in that regard and with their assumptions that NORAD would contact the US president and notify the massive American military machine.
However, instead of creating the anticipated panic, the launch provided entertainment along the coast, causing traffic to stack up and slow to a stop with motorists exiting their vehicles to watch. Smartphone cameras clicked while the booster separated and fell into the ocean.
Another photo op occurred when the second stage ignition hurled the missile upward through sheer cumulus cloud coverage until it visually disappeared near an altitude of 200,000 feet. In a matter of minutes, the smartphones and iPads of motorists and the public witnessing the contrail uploaded forty-three thousand photos and videos to YouTube and Facebook accounts.
Travel on the freeways resumed when the missile disappeared into the atmosphere where it leveled out on a course for re-entry onto its target. Only then did military commanders on the island of Taiwan begin to wonder, “Are the United States forces in Taiwan under another Pearl Harbor or nine eleven attacks?”
The Chinese Jin-class SSBN submarine still carried eleven additional missiles. With its mission successfully completed, it dove deep and headed in the direction of the missile headed home towards its impact zone. China had not only successfully penetrated all US detection and intelligence measures; it also defiantly launched a missile hosting enough nuclear warheads to obliterate the island of Taiwan. Once the National Security Agency interpreted the missile telemetry and the American Navy identified who conducted the launch, any US allies would think twice about militarily confronting the Republic of China or its interests in the Middle East.
Although intended to merely a show of force and technology with impact inside the Chinese atomic proving grounds, the ability to make such a launch would force the world to recognize China the new superpower, the top spot in today’s pecking order of military might.
****
Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
At the same time of the missile launch in Taiwan, civilian services five miles outside the city of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia mimicked the actions of citizens in Israel also frantically preparing for reprisals should Israel make a pre-emptive decapitation strike upon Iran. Israeli leaders used the nation’s activities in Saudi Arabia to maintain the deceit along with their continuing with public demands for the declaration of a red line for Iran to cease its uranium enrichment program. The Jewish nation frantically prepared for the inevitable attacks on its homeland while hiding their knowledge of China providing nuclear-tipped missiles behind the scenes to the enemies of Israel.
Aiding in their deception, a massive sandstorm in the Sahara Desert was now sweeping across the Middle East with a wall of sand shutting down the city of Tehran, Iran. Northwesterly wind blowing from Western Syria into Iraq disrupted life throughout the region while concealing the Israeli preparations for taking a passive defensive posture.
Israel furthered its new stance on the Iranian threat by continuing to prepare for war alongside those who would support an Israeli preemptive strike. The Saudi air force and their Israeli air force guests did not know of the occurrences along the Pacific Rim and remained oblivious to Israel’s two new submarines and their crews now patrolling the Israeli coastline. Israeli soldiers hustled and bustled in a most unlikely place, the ungodly hot desert near Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
Unbelievable in times past, Israeli forces massed with an Egyptian tank battalion and Saudi Arabian special operations forces, marine, armored, missile, air, and naval forces, all joining to repulse a potential Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia. The participation of Egypt came as a surprise considering its internal problems of liberal and secular groups rising to power in the months following the revolution. Egypt could easily have been another of the enemy. Universal fear of Iran naturally created strange bedfellows, all preparing to take the battle to Islamic Republic territory.
The entire scenario made the Middle East military history with Israel joining the two most significant Arab nations deploying their military strength in position for combating the Iranian army and its Revolutionary Guards Corps. This all occurred because of a shared fear of Iran becoming a nuclear power and threats made against any nation supporting Israel in a preemptive strike against Iran.
The battle plan provided for Israel attacking the nuclear facilities while Egyptian forces joined up with the Saudis to throw the invaders back. A joint Saudi-Egyptian commando force at the same time headed for the western coast of Iran to launch a counterattack on the Revolutionary Guard bases. Large-scale Saudi marine, air force, tank, and artillery forces arrived in Egypt while the combined forces prepared in Saudi territory, establishing another historic event with their first landing on Egyptian soil while a scattering of North Yemen Huthi rebels infiltrated the Iranian oil fields should this extensive preparation evolve to an invasion.
The USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Harry S. Truman, American aircraft carriers quietly positioned in the Persian Gulf and the northern Arabian Sea to support the invasion under the command of the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain.
The USS Harry S. Truman added four squadrons of Hornet and Super Hornet fighter-bombers plus an early warning, surveillance and command craft, electronic warfare craft, two squadrons of helicopters and one squadron of transports. The arrival of the Abraham Lincoln raised the number of US fighter-bombers in Iran’s neighborhood of 120 that included six USAF Lockheed-built F-35A Lighting II Joint Strike Force fighters.
The USS Cape St. George guided missile cruiser raced two hundred forty
miles at sea to take its position in the Persian Gulf, while the USS Wasp hurried two hours behind the St. George to catch up. The Wasp carried the Lockheed-Martin F-35C, a carrier STOL model still undergoing sea trials.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas announced their decision to sit out any war between Israel and Iran, but Lebanon did not. With the tiny country of Israel having 100,000 rockets and missiles pointed at it, many of these being in Syria, the survival of the Israel nation depended on the United States technology destroying the effectiveness of the Chinese missiles now in the Middle East.
The nuclear war began in the Middle East with the small country of Israel placing full confidence in the US technology provided by Bradley’s people. Subsequently, Israel launched its missiles only after its defenses detected the multiple launches from Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, but otherwise hunkered down to save its military assets for later.
The information provided by the DIA proved to be right. All the Chinese missiles used the compromised guidance systems acquired from the United States. Having an Israeli UAV on station continuously transmitting the encrypted ECM signal near the launch site enabled the pod on the UAV to insert a transmitted Trojan Horse ECM into the IRD of the missiles without the enemy ever knowing about it. An alert sent to the Israeli Command Center at the same time provided the country with a notice of an impending attack, enabling those at work or otherwise away from home to rush into the many air defense shelters scattered throughout the cities and those in their homes to enter their safe room. Beyond alerting its citizens, the country passively waited for whatever happened. Any surprise awaited only those launching the missiles.
Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, obviously coordinated to launch their missiles simultaneously to take out the key cities in Israel with the Chinese advisors in Iran exercising care to minimize collateral damage in Beirut and Palestine.
The missile guidance commands inserted by Israel proved to be considerably more creative than the carefully planned commands by the aggressor. While the missiles supposedly targeted Israel, this is not what occurred. One of the Syrian-launched missiles instead headed towards Beirut and met halfway a rocket headed from Lebanon to the 4,000-year-old city of Damascus. The rest of the Syrian and Lebanese weapons targeted the same military assets and nuclear facilities that Israel and the United States initially intended for targets, responding to the same coordinates programmed into cruise missiles remaining passive on the US warships. The missiles launched from Iran lifted off and went through their booster stages only to change course and return to Iran to join those arriving from Syria and Lebanon. Hell shook while the massive nuclear detonations annihilated the country of Iran and the launch sites in Lebanon and Syria.
****
Pacific Ocean – 85 miles west of Taiwan – Same time:
After launching the CSS-NX-5 missile, the Chinese submarine anxiously headed for deep ocean waters to lay low until the Americans gave up looking for it. Using this, the first of three warships now in the service of the PRC Navy possessing SSBM mobility to launch a first strike SLBM, the People’s Republic of China intended the missile launch to be nothing more than a show of power and thus programmed the missile to return to Chinese territory for impact. The Chinese leaders mainly wanted to demonstrate to the Americans the superior range capability of their new submarine should the Americans decide to support Israel against the attacks underway in that region.
The Chinese knew that with the United States downsized to pre-1940 naval strength because of sequestration cuts, China could do whatever it wanted with no military repercussions. The Americans would think twice about intervening in the Middle East after the embarrassment of having the Chinese submarine pierce its submarine defenses to launch a missile in its backyard.
The Chinese controllers failed to realize when its boost phase completed, the missile inertial guidance system now operating off the American stellar update including a sequence of guidance commands. However, this new programming still used the Chinese Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system provided by their Bei Dou navigation satellite system. Thus, the missile appeared healthy, looking to have accepted the proper command while it transitioned to a trajectory taking it home to mother China with no hint of the coordinate changes transmitted from the American satellite. At this early stage, nothing indicated the missile being out of Chinese control while it followed the embedded instructions of the Americans.
The boost phase of the missile burned for 5 minutes, carrying it to 75,000 feet altitude off the coasts of Taiwan and the China mainland. Once the booster separated and fell away, the warhead continued a powered ballistic trajectory with the second stage lasting 18 minutes, carrying it to 203,480 feet to place it in a sub-orbital elliptical orbit with an apogee altitude of approximately 308,722 feet— slightly displaced due to earth rotation during the time of flight.
Radar operators on the Aegis ships patrolling off the coast of China could hardly believe their eyes when their scopes painted the Chinese SLBM passing on a trajectory originating off the coast of China near Taiwan. Many of them along the way locked onto the SLBM believing it part of an exercise, watching in disbelief when the missile crossed into the interior of mainland China.
NORAD, after quickly eliminating the missile’s targeting the United States or any of its allies, now sought to determine the impact zone and China’s intent. The launch of the Chinese rocket occurred moments before those happening in the Middle East, causing NORAD to believe the missile initially to be a statement of power or a rather drastic means of protesting the Red Flag Exercise in Nevada by violating its Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement. No one saw a connection between the two events.
A translator monitoring the reports of the various Chinese tracking sites kept those assembled in the need-to-know loop up to date on the status of the missile, easily tracked because of its rocket exhaust and other emissions, making the encased warhead and its cone-shaped re-entry vehicle easy to detect in this phase of flight.
The Chinese radar operators acquired track of their returning missile precisely on a trajectory for detonation over a small, uninhabited island 150 miles off the coast of mainland China, encouraging the missile officers to congratulate one another and predict to Beijing an excellent and fruitful mission against the Imperialists.
Joy and celebration dampened at 12 minutes to impact when the missile jettisoned its second stage and moments later when the warhead should have started its reentry but failed to do so. Its integrated circuits designed to calculate navigational differential equations thousands to millions of times per second neglected to deviate from the fixed script inserted by the American satellite, delivering a missile traveling at near four km/s with little time for the startled operators to order the missile to self-destruct.
Confusion turned to panic when the missile corrected its trajectory to head it toward Beijing with reentry of the warhead occurring eight minutes later, giving the operators slightly less than 2 minutes to figure out that the Imperial Palace in their nation’s capital lay centered in the impact zone, ground zero of their own missile.
The NORAD operators calculating the impact zone switched to the big screen live video downloading from a satellite high definition camera directly overhead, enabling the muted staff to witness the warhead releasing its bomblets 2,000 feet above Beijing. The high speeds of the cluster of warheads made them impossible to intercept and allowed for no warning to their individual target before the bomblets vaporized the city and everything within miles in a matter of seconds. Six million tons of soot, smoke, and debris rose above the ruins to an altitude of 52 miles before entering the wind currents of the jet stream traversing the planet.
Those in the NORAD war room witnessing what satellites and seismic stations around the world now detected stood frozen, their eyes glued to their sensors and monitors while the powerful nuclear explosions spread deadly radiation and hot wind across the countryside to vaporize everything in their path.
Even th
ose located miles away from the detonation witnessed a 100-mph fireball shooting five miles into the sky with surface heat equaling that of the Sun, hyper-explosive pressures, and 900-mph winds that leveled buildings, vaporizing 4,000,000 people into smoke and flame.
Flash-blind drivers 10 miles away crashed their vehicles, planes, and watercraft, blocking evacuation routes beneath the rise of the boiling fireball reaching temperatures many times those of the sun and appearing to last forever before finally becoming a cloud of radioactive dust and debris entering the jet stream.
Stunned silence turned to disbelief when word spread that China had conducted a colossal atmospheric nuclear test. It shocked the world, seeing the missile and not knowing what this signified. No one could accept the government of China vaporizing itself with one of its own nuclear warheads.
While this fast-moving drama played out in China, the eyes of the world focused on the war starting in the Middle East. Again, something half a world away posed no immediate threat to the United States.
The uncertainty of what happened in China prevented NORAD or the military alerting the world media of something amiss until the missile launches in the Middle East that triggered NORAD and all the nation’s military forces into action. Though the Chinese missile launched first, it was still in flight with the Middle East erupted into nuclear war. Consequently, this caught everyone off guard when the klaxon alarms started their warning warble at US bases and aboard US ships to signal the United States is raising its defense condition threat level to DEFCON 2. Entrances to US bases closed to the public while the military bases elevated to their long-practiced war preparedness.
This war-activation scenario repeated itself around the world at embassies and at Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard installations. Telephone switchboards and Internet servers overloaded with calls to the various bases from citizens concerned about the United States being at war. US embassies around the world tightened their security and planned the evacuation of non-essential personnel back to the United States in many instances with no one being aware of the missile warhead exploding in China. They only knew that the United States had elevated its military alert level to DEFCON 2 and naturally assumed it was related to something going on regarding Iran.