Winter Kill 2 - China Invades Australia

by Gene Skellig

  But the Americans had yielded to Australian diplomatic pressure to support the Australians’ decision to go with the Spanish hull design and the overly complex arrangements with the three Australian shipbuilders involved. Yet the Aussies still wanted to use the American’s Aegis combat system and the associated Lockheed Martin SPY-1D passive radar, fire control system and SM-2 Standard Missile family of weapons. This would give the new Australian fleet of three Hobart class destroyers an effective area missile defense capability for Task Group Defense, the protection of forces deployed ashore and an area and high value unit umbrella capability that could extend as far as 150 nautical miles from the ship.

  In exchange for the technology transfer, the Americans had taken their pound of flesh out of the Australians, demanding increased basing rights in Australian territory. While the Australians were staunch allies of the United States, fighting side-by-side with the Americans in each and every war, their domestic political problems required that Americans not appear to operate anything like independent American military bases in Australia. For appearances sake, American military personnel had to be ‘guests’ on Australian bases, and to ‘rotate troops’ through short periods of time on so-called ‘Combined Joint Exercises’.

  Ever since the leaked contents of the secret version of Australia’s White Paper on National Defense had disclosed to the world what the Australian military was expected to contribute to the American-led alliance, assisting with Air and Naval forces blockading Chinese shipping in the region, the cat had been out of the bag.

  Everybody understood that the blow-back would mean that in the event of hostilities, the Chinese would retaliate against targets inside Australian territory. Not only had that leak enraged a sizeable proportion of the neutral-leaning Australian population, but it had also revealed the American’s ambitions for increased basing rights in Australia, to go along with their increased presence in South Korea, the Philippines, and more recently, Vietnam, as a direct counter to expanded Chinese bases in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar and now Thailand.

  The irony was that the world’s two largest economies and closest trading partners, with a deeply co-dependent fiscal and commercial relationship, were fast becoming a dangerous military rivalry. It was a dangerous game they were playing, and one side had the advantage of thousands of years of intrigue.

  On a smaller scale, the Australians were also gaming the Chinese, supplying commodities to China while at the same time agreeing to increase their military commitments to the American-led containment of China. It was a ludicrous but very real and tense diplomatic dance which all parties avoided publicly acknowledging, pretending that by keeping the intense love-hate relationship with China unspoken, the ridiculous was somehow sublime. If not knowingly, then they were deeply self-deluded.

  With strong public opposition to American bases in Australia, South Korea, Japan and in other Asia-Pacific countries, the American vision of establishing a network of bases and facilities, which could be ramped up and used at any time the Americans saw fit, was becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. The Australian request for the radar and missile technology transfer, and their choice not to purchase the two billion dollars’ worth of ships from American shipyards, had presented Secretary Webber with a golden opportunity to strong-arm the Australians into quietly signing off on a secret agreement which effectively gave the Americans the right to move in and ‘borrow’ whatever space they required from any Australian defense installation anywhere within the Australian territory, but to do so in the guise of Combined Joint Task force exercises.

  The first such expansion of the American footprint had been done years before, in the form of creating a Marine Air Ground Task Force Australia, “MAGTFA”, basing 2,500 Marines on a so-called ‘rotational’ basis at the Royal Australian Army’s Robertson Barracks facility in Darwin, Northern Territory, along with increased Aerial Port of Disembarkation, APOD, operations at RAAF Tindal, NT, and other RAAF airfields.

  The deal also included dredging of the harbor and other improvements which amounted to a quiet expansion of the tiny Royal Australian Navy docks in Darwin. This would also allow for easier Sea Port of Disembarkation, SPOD, operations for the Marines from the Third Marine Division, as they rotated personnel and equipment in and out of Darwin from their bases in Okinawa and Hawaii. It was all about paving the way for Strategic Lines of Communication, SLOC – the air and sea pathways that could be used to deploy millions of tons of supplies and potentially tens of thousands of personnel into Australian territory, without being held up in negotiations and politics.

  That had been the deal struck back in 2013, but the actual ramping up of the MAGTFA was only now taking place, along with a quiet expansion of CIA and other intelligence units footprints at ‘space antenna’ and other communications facilities scattered throughout Australia.

  The expansion of the American complex at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, was accomplished without any official paperwork whatsoever. The Australian government was that eager to have a larger commitment from the Americans, as Chinese dominance in the region was a profound worry for them.

  Overall, the American diplomats had been happy with the arrangements and supported the Australian’s naval program as it limped along. But with only one ship produced so far and an unending series of misfit hull blocks, integration problems and now legal conflict between the participants in the ‘Sea 4000 Program’, the Aussies were sorely lacking in missile defense capabilities and it now looked like the HMAS Brisbane and the HMAS Sydney would not be completed for another three to six years. That left HMAS Hobart as Australia’s only operational air warfare destroyer.

  Webber took off his glasses and gazed outside the window into the distance. They will need the Brisbane and Sydney sooner than that. He thought back with horror on very recent history, the conflict that had scarred and changed the world forever. The Middle East Nuclear Exchange, MENE, that had taken place when Iran and Israel had traded nuclear blows so suddenly, that had devastated the region. Then short months later came the far greater devastation of the nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Like shoppers at a year-end sales frenzy, every nation then rushed to get as much missile defense capability as they could get their hands on.

  The jury was still out whether the American support to India, with stealth bombers and hundreds of cruise missiles, had provided enough of a first-strike advantage to limit the counter-strike ability of the new regime in Pakistan. ‘Operation Peregrine Eagle’, OPE, had been considered a success as it had achieved the goal of decapitating the Islamo-Fascists, loyal to Mualana Abdul Aziz and those of the Pakistani Army who had participated in the massive coup. But the fallout, particularly in India, had been devastating. Scores of Pakistan’s one hundred and eighty warheads, mostly in the thirty kiloton range, had rained down on cities and bases throughout India. With the increased range of the Shaheen-II, and the increased accuracy and countermeasures of the Ghazvani missiles, the death throes of the short-lived ‘True Islamic State of Pakistan’ had delivered a terrible retribution on their Indian attackers.

  And the world did not care. There was not even an uproar over the American support for the pre-emptive strike and the subsequent invasion of Pakistan by India. So while there were the predictable histrionics at the United Nations, there was not much of an international humanitarian response. It was as if, with the nuclear war genie now out of the bottle in two wars in less than 12 months, the world had largely accepted the notion that large scale conflict in far-away lands was unavoidable. With over two hundred million dead, the scale of the disaster in South Asia was beyond the ability of average people to come to grips with. They had largely put it out of their minds and focused inwardly on problems closer to home, such as the extremely high unemployment and social unrest that was threatening to tear apart the fabric of both Europe and the United States.

  Despite the American complicity and active participation in the war between India and Pakistan, the world had largely tur
ned their backs on that troubled Islamist nation. It was not so much that people did not care about the suffering of the untold millions of casualties from the radiation and from the conventional arms which India used to subdue Pakistan in the aftermath, it was just that they had heard enough grievous news stories originating from Pakistan over the years - and the many American and other NATO soldiers who had perished in Afghanistan. So the world had little sympathy, and was basically not concerned about the Indian annexation of the defeated Pakistan.

  But the Chinese were concerned. With the Pakistani threat on India’s left flank now neutralized, and with a massive re-construction and military mobilization now underway in India, China saw their South Asian rival as a major new threat. This was particularly underlined with India’s now uncontested dominance over the Indian Ocean – the shipping lanes that were so crucial to the flow of the oil and mineral commodities that were the lifeblood of China’s hungry economy.

  So while the increased ability of India to project power in the region may have been the primary source of China’s own need to increase their military presence in the area, and the corresponding decades-long build-up of Chinese military hardware, the Americans had no choice but to come up with a strategy to offset the imbalance and to preserve at least the notion of American dominance in the region. It was a very complex region, with a large proportion of global trade passing through the narrow choke point at the Strait of Malacca.

  The Chinese strategy had been to build up military bases all the way from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. This ‘String of Pearls’ strategy represented a direct threat to American military hegemony in the region, and ultimately upped the risk of China emerging as the dominant military power in the strategically critical shipping route. Having evolved strong ties with Indonesia, militarily and economically, China was on the verge of locking up the sea-lanes. All they had to do was complete the build-up of a ‘blue water navy’ and base a sizeable enough fleet out of Indonesia, a development well within the range of possibilities, and China would be able to put the US 7th fleet out of the Strait of Malacca. And by aggressively expanding their Air Defense Identification Zone, ADIZ, as they had in late 2013, the Chinese were expanding the reach of their increasingly capable force of PLAAF fighter-interceptors, with SU27s and SU30s having cut off American, Japanese, Korean and Tawanese access to a vast stretch of the air-space over the South China Sea.

  The Australians shared the American assessment, and had accepted an increasingly active role in the strategic region. So Secretary Webber knew that he would be pressed for more American support on his visit to Canberra to meet with Australian defense officials. The Australian need for additional missile warfare defenses had been anticipated by Secretary of Defense, Joseph Alderman, and the Joint Chiefs. So the Pacific Fleet had been tasked with deploying three Arleigh Bourke guided missile destroyers to the region, which Admiral Beatty, Commander US Pacific Fleet, decided to send from 3rd Fleet, based in San Diego, rather than from the 7th Fleet, in Japan, so as not to diminish the firepower based in Japan to offset China’s rapidly expanding naval presence. This was on top of the fact that there were now five Aircraft Carrier Strike Groups operating in the Asian Pacific theatre, with two Strike Groups dominating both ends of the Straits of Malacca. And by aggressively expanding their Air Defense Identification Zone, ADIZ, as they had in late 2013, the Chinese were expanding the reach of their increasingly capable force of PLAAF fighter-interceptors, with SU27s and SU30s. The result was to cut off American, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese access to a vast stretch of the air-space over the South China Sea.

  As the Secretary of State recalled from the last briefing on the disposition of naval forces in the region, Carrier Strike Group 5 was on exercise with the Indian-modified Kiev class carrier, INS Vikramaditya and her Battle Group in the Indian-dominated Bay of Bengal. That will really piss of the Chinese, he thought, as he visualized the CVN-73 USS George Washington Strike Group and the Indian Carrier Battle Group bearing down on the Chinese naval units stationed at the Chinese-funded and constructed dockyards in the Burmese port of Kyaukpyu.

  But the strategic influence and ability to project power that a Carrier Strike Group offered came at an enormous financial cost, he thought to himself, recalling the CVN-78 USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which was on its inaugural deployment somewhere in the Strait of Malacca. The first of the new X-Class of super-carriers, the cost of the Gerald Ford had come in at a staggering twenty billion old-style dollars.

  With the collapse of the old US dollar, and President Parker’s efforts to launch the new US Gold-Dollar, it would be a long time before the United States would be able to invest such colossal sums of money into new ships, let alone another X-Class carrier. This affected the Navy a great deal, as it drastically reduced the number of warships coming out of the shipyards.

  Any contribution from the Australians to help control the Strategic Lines of Communication in the region was urgently needed by the US. If deploying some Air Warfare Destroyers to help protect the Australian Navy was the price to pay, the Americans would get far more in return. The key is how it is all negotiated, he thought.

  Secretary Webber did not tell the Australians that DDG 114 Ralph Johnson and DDG 111 Spruance, were already being provisioned for deployment to Australia and DDG 116 Thomas Hudner was already passing the equator bound for an unscheduled port visit to Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

  The Parker administration had decided to give the Australians the added missile defense capabilities but wanted the Australians to give them formal basing rights for a tri-service USAF, USN, US Army base in the Perth region, on the extreme west coast of the Australian continent. This would enable the US to have land-sea-and-air expeditionary power projection over the south Asia from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. It would be the American’s second ever tri-service base, and would be modeled after the 87th Air Base Wing in New Jersey. The Department of Defense officials had recommended that they let the Air Force lead the planning for the proposed base in Western Australia, as the Navy and Army presence there would only be ramped up when required. The Air Force would have the largest footprint there on a day-to-day basis and would therefore be the most suitable branch of service to operate the proposed super-base in pre-war and post-activation modes. Hopefully there would be less inter-service rivalry than with the other super-bases, where resentment had seethed after the forced and poorly executed cobbling together of sister-services together after the last round of BRAC base closures.

  On a personal level, Secretary Webber wondered if he was going to get into any trouble for holding a considerable block of shares in the engineering and construction consortium that would be given the three-year contract to build the super-base at Perth. In past years, up until the reforms that his President had ushered in, Washington was a great place to trade on such inside information, but President Parker – and Washington in general – had heard the American population loud and clear on such corruption. I’d better liquidate my holdings in CHL before the stock goes up on the news. I’ll still be up a lot. Better safe than sorry, He thought, besides, now I’ve got the Chinese tips to play – I’ll make out like a bandit, and be well-positioned for my White-House run, he thought with satisfaction.

  With the super-base near Perth agreed to, Webber had decided not to press the Australians for a full-on USMC base near Darwin. The current ‘rotational’ deal for MAGTFA is satisfactory for now. Maybe when the Australians become more worked up about the Chinese they’ll beg us to formally base more Marines in the Northern Territory, so those negotiations can safely be put off for a few years, he thought. Once they put pen to paper on the Perth base, we’ll reward them with the swift arrival of the three DDGs. In the meantime, I’ve got to keep the pressure on them to make the right decision and sign the revision to our Status of Forces Agreement. Once we have the new SOFA, we’re in business. Their media can’t even pry into the details of the Perth Agreement, because i
t all falls under their new ‘Official Secrets Act’.’

  The US had given the Australians a ten-day window to communicate their decision, which should be in plenty of time for the Thomas Hudner’s arrival in Darwin. The tight timelines were necessary, as the Secretary of State would have to know the Australian answer before his upcoming trip to India.

  Thinking of the thick India file he had not had time to review in depth, the Secretary of State felt a wave of exhaustion. He had not had more than five hours sleep any night in the past three weeks, and would only have a little over a week in Washington to catch up with the rest of cabinet. Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead, he thought.

  By reading the classified, annotated version of the ‘Early Bird’ every morning before breakfast, however, he had maintained a fairly up-to-date grasp of world events, and had paid some attention to what little the international media had to say about the status of disaster response in the aftermath of the Indo-Pak war.

  Of course, in the United States, the loss of over two hundred million souls in India was only given lip-service, as many people actually believed that India had been overpopulated to begin with. He personally found that sort of attitude to be repugnant, and his heart went out to the poor victims of the nuclear war. His sympathy was equally given to the Pakistanis and the Indians, as he did not hold the civilians responsible for a war that was started by the Islamo-Fascists who had seized control of Pakistan and her arsenal of over 200 nuclear warheads. Well, that war was actually started by India - but they had no choice, he corrected himself.