by James Rosone
The small group now walked over to the monitor that was piping in the video feed of the vessels. Cord explained what they had found, and the odd behavior of the cargo vessels once they received the burst transmission. “Has anyone told Admiral Richards about this? He may know something we don’t,” Fleece said.
“I was going to inform him once we had a better idea of whose vessels those are,” Admiral Cord answered. “The Triton doesn’t show any PLA Navy ships in the area, and we don’t see any air activity.”
Fleece bit her lower lip. Admiral Cord knew by now that this meant Fleece was uncomfortable with the decision to wait. However, she didn’t voice any objections.
“Let’s just hope I know what I’m doing,” Admiral Cord thought, second-guessing herself. It would take some time for the Hornets to check the situation out, and if there was truly something amiss, they might have lost too much valuable time.
Suddenly, the lieutenant handling the UAV loudly announced, “Captain, you need to see this!”
Sensing something important, Admiral Cord also walked over to see what was going on. Then, one of the communications officers vied for their attention as he waved a yellow paper in the air.
“Admiral, we’re receiving a FLASH message from Guam. You need to read this, Ma’am,” the commander said in an urgent voice.
Cord turned toward her comms officer and moved quickly in his direction. As she approached his station, he handed her the message traffic:
//////////TOP SECRET/////////
FLASH TRAFFIC – URGENT WARNING – IMMINENT BALLISTIC MISSILE ATTACK
FROM: NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE
TO: SEVENTH FLEET
1) IMINT INTELLIGENCE IDENTIFIED MULTIPLE TRANSPORTER ERECTOR LAUNCHERS BEING MADE READY TO LAUNCH ON THE ISLAND OF TAIWAN. POSSIBLE DONGFENG 21-D ANTI-SHIP BALLISTIC MISSILES.
2) HUMINT INTELLIGENCE IDENTIFIED TWENTY-FOUR TRANSPORTER ERECTOR LAUNCHERS BEING MADE READY TO LAUNCH ON THE ISLAND OF LUZON. POSSIBLE DONGFENG 21-D ANTI-SHIP BALLISTIC MISSILES.
END OF TRANSMISSION.
//////////TOP SECRET//////////
The blood in Admiral Cord’s face seemed to drain out of her head, and she almost felt weak at the knees. This was the very thing she was terrified of.
“Are we cruising into a trap?” she wondered in horror.
“Someone, get Admiral Richards in here ASAP! Set Condition One. Sound general quarters and send a FLASH message to the rest of the fleet of a possible ASBM attack,” Admiral Cord ordered.
In seconds, the general quarters alarm blared throughout the ship, alerting everyone of a possible attack. The men and women on the ship moved as quickly as possible to their battle stations and prepared for the worst.
Captain Fleece turned to the CAG. “Get on the radio to the Raptor flight and order them to get us real-time video of those cargo ships at once!” she ordered. “They may be part of the PLA Navy attack, and we just don’t know it yet.”
The CAG nodded and grabbed the handset.
*******
Lieutenant Josh McDaniel’s Super Hornet had been cruising toward the mysterious cargo vessels now for nearly an hour. “Oh my God, this is boring,” he thought. “We’re still roughly twenty minutes away from even being close enough to use our cameras.”
His radio crackled, startling him. “Raptor Two Two, this is Henhouse. Fleet has gone to Condition One. Initiate afterburners and get a visual of the cargo ships. Approach with caution, possible PLA Navy trap. How copy?”
“That’s a good copy, Henhouse,” Lieutenant McDaniel responded. “Will initiate afterburners. Please be advised that we’ll need to top our tanks off again at the halfway point.”
“Crap, what the heck are we flying into?” he thought.
The two Hornets hit their afterburners and, in seconds, were zooming toward their maximum speed as they quickly closed the distance to the cargo vessels. In a matter of minutes, they came within range of their cameras and beamed the video back to the Ford, where they would analyze the ships for potential threats.
Lieutenant Commander Mary Teller, his back seater, was looking at the video display when she suddenly blurted out, “Those aren’t cargo holds, Josh. Those are vertical launch systems…hundreds of them!”
“Are you sure, Mary?” McDaniel asked in shock. “I’ve never heard of a VLS system on anything outside of a warship.”
“I’m telling you, those are VLSs. The entire ship is covered in them,” she replied. “I’m going to radio back to the carrier to see if they see it as well.”
“Hang on, Mary,” he said. “I’m going to make a low pass over the ships, so we can get a better look at them.”
He slowed them down and began a descent. Just as McDaniel flew over the first cargo ship, his missile warning alarm sounded in his headset, letting him know an enemy missile had just locked on to him. Before he even had a chance to react, his aircraft was hit by a Chinese FN-6 man-portable air-defense system, or MANPAD, erupting in flames before either he or his back seater was able to eject. His wingman, who had been flying at a slightly higher altitude, suddenly found himself being chased down by three FN-6 missiles as well. The missiles were so quick, they left very little time to react or get away. In mere seconds, both Hornets were downed.
*******
Vice Admiral Jeff Richards sat in the wardroom, compiling some notes for a report he planned on writing following the end of the battle with the PLA Navy. He wanted to make sure he captured some ideas and feelings he had prior to the battle starting.
Lifting his cup of coffee to his lips, he took a long drink from the now-lukewarm java.
Suddenly, the general quarters alarm sounded. Instinctively, he got up and quickly made his way to the CIC to find out what was going on.
It took him nearly five minutes to move through the maze of corridors and ladder wells, wading through all the sailors running to and from one location to another. When he entered the CIC, he saw controlled chaos as the men and women running the CIC expertly managed the situation unfolding around them.
“Talk to me, people,” he said. “What the heck is going on?”
One of the battle managers, who had been watching the video images being relayed by the two Hornets, yelled out, “Raptor Flight is down! Raptor Flight is down!”
The CAG quickly jumped on that. “What do you mean, they’re down? Did they just disappear?”
“Sir, they were transmitting video and then all of a sudden it stopped. One second, they were there, and then everything went black. I think they may have been shot down,” he replied.
“Bring up the video they were broadcasting just before it went blank,” said Captain Fleece. She began biting her fingernails nervously.
The video began. To their collective horror, they saw what the pilots must have seen just before they died. The forward sections of the cargo vessels were covered in vertical launch systems. These merchant raiders had been converted into cruise missile platforms. They were less than 460 kilometers from the fleet, well within their operational range. Couple that with the flash message they’d just received, and it was suddenly clear—the fleet was moving right into a cleverly laid Chinese trap.
As Admiral Richards realized what was happening, anger billowed up inside him and he lashed out at his strike group commander and captain. “Why were these vessels not checked sooner? How could we have let them get so close to the fleet?” he yelled.
Admiral Cord and Captain Fleece were silent and stonefaced.
“Never mind,” said Richards, softening his tone. “We have to deal with them. I want those ships sunk now before they can launch their missiles, if we’re not already too late.”
Captain Fleece turned to the CAG. “Scramble your airwing,” she ordered. “Have them focus on disabling the enemy missiles that will be headed our way soon.”
Admiral Cord went to work getting the rest of the strike group ready and organized to deal with the newly identified threat. She ordered two more destroyers to
move in the direction of the cargo vessels, since this would be the direction the largest quantity of enemy missiles would be traveling from. She also handed Admiral Richards the flash message from NORAD about the imminent attack. He only shook his head, as if he had known this was going to happen.
“This is Korea all over again…” thought Richards.
He turned and walked over to a small cluster of workstations he had taken over, separate from where Admiral Cord would be coordinating her strike group. He needed to make sure the fleet was adjusting their ship formation and placing their defenses in the area most likely to receive the largest volume of enemy missiles. He also wanted to get on the radio to Guam and see if the Air Force would be able to get some tankers headed out in his direction so he could keep his aircraft in the air longer over the fleet while they dealt with this new threat.
*******
Twenty-six thousand feet above the Allied fleet below, the myriad of surveillance cameras on the MQ-4C Triton UAV captured ballistic missile launches from the islands of Taiwan and Luzon. Within seconds, a short burst message was detected between the Chinese fleet and the cargo vessels. Shortly after, one of the now-classified merchant raiders fired off its missiles at the American fleet. While the first vessel disgorged its missiles, the Chinese destroyers with the main fleet also fired off their first volley of anti-ship missiles.
When the first merchant raider finished firing off its first set of two hundred missiles, the next two raiders fired off their own barrage. A couple of minutes went by, and then all five raiders fired off another barrage of missiles, holding their final barrage in reserve. As the missiles leveled out and headed toward the American fleet, it became clear the Chinese had timed the launches and elevation of the missiles so they would converge on the American fleet from multiple height levels and directions. This would make it significantly harder for the fleet’s close-in defense systems to move from one target to the next.
While the data was being transmitted to Guam and the fleet below, the outer skin of the drone suddenly became superheated. The paint started to peel, and in a fraction of a second, the inside guts of the drone overheated. Then the UAV suddenly crumpled under its own weight and airspeed as it disintegrated from the heat of a high-energy beam.
*******
“Admiral Cord, we just lost the Triton feed,” announced a very nervous lieutenant. “One minute it was fine, sending us targeting data of the incoming missiles—then it just cut out. It’s no longer transmitting any data. Its transponder is also out.”
Cord grumbled. “Send a message out to the other strike groups about what just happened. Launch more drones and tell everyone to switch to the alternate plan. Unless the Chinese shoot our satellites down again, we’ll switch back to them,” she said, hoping the satellites would be able to pick up the slack.
The military satellite system was still recovering from the first Russian attack, when they’d carried out a complex “internet of things” attack that overheated many of the internal systems on the satellites, burning them out. SpaceX had been incredibly busy launching replacement satellites into orbit as fast as the factories could produce them. However, despite the valiant efforts by SpaceX and the satellite producers, not all of them had been replaced yet, so the ones they did have operating could only handle so much data.
It was controlled chaos in the nerve center of the carrier as they worked feverishly to integrate and analyze all the data streaming into the command center, and Admiral Cord nervously watched every detail as it unfolded. The sophisticated computer system that ran the fleet’s defensive system was now tracking 1,900 inbound threats. The twenty-six EA-18 Growlers went to work with their jamming pods as they tried to confuse the anti-ship missiles defensive systems, while the Super Hornets dove in to attack them with their own weapons.
The fighters were going to have one chance to hit as many of the incoming threats as possible; once the missiles flew past them, they would have no hope of catching up to them again. All 420 fighter planes from the carriers descended on the incoming threats, firing their weapons into the swarm that was heading toward their floating homes.
In an almost miraculous effort, the fighters managed to destroy 509 of the incoming enemy missiles. If it weren’t so deadly, it would have made for a beautiful fireworks show. Having dispensed their missiles, the fighters loitered at a high orbit above the fleet to allow the destroyers and cruisers to initiate the next layer of defense.
In seconds, the destroyers Michael Monsoor and Zumwalt made history as their railguns engaged the missile threats at a rate of ten rounds a minute, scoring a consistent one hundred percent hit ratio. While the missile count was steadily dropping from the railguns, the rest of the destroyers joined the fray with their own SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6 missiles at the carrier killer ballistic missiles and the remaining cruise missiles still bearing down on them. The sky and water around and in between the ships was filling with smoke trails and exhaust plumes of friendly missiles streaking in all directions. It was almost reminiscent of a 17th- or 18th-century naval battle between wooden sail ships, firing gunpowder cannon—except these weapon systems were far more lethal and devastating in their use.
While the battle was well underway above the water, deep beneath the waves, a dozen Virginia-class attack submarines moved into position to attack the Chinese fleet while a handful of the older Los Angeles attack subs kept the fleet safe from any underwater threats.
It was now up to the CIWS and the remaining RIM-7 Sea Sparrow and RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile or RAM system to take over. However, those missiles were going to be extremely difficult to hit as they reached their terminal velocity. The stone-cold truth was that some of the missiles were going to get through.
Admiral Cord stood, not knowing what more to do at this point. She watched as the training the Navy had put its officers and enlisted men and women through took over. What might have appeared to a civilian as dozens upon dozens of individuals shouting and motioning from one item to the next was actually being played out in a well-organized and exceptionally choreographed dance of decisions and reactions to those decisions.
The ship’s highly complex targeting system was managing the entire fleet’s point defense systems, identifying what CIWS or RAM system was closest to each threat and vectoring them in to deal with it. The system was handling these hundreds of decisions a second far faster and efficiently then the men and women who managed the system could ever hope to achieve.
*******
Moments later, the wind blew more of the exhaust and smoke from the missiles away from the ships, and Admiral Richards watched in horror as many of the enemy missiles struck his beloved fleet. Two of the DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missiles slammed into the forward and rear flight deck of the USS Eisenhower, scoring direct hits. The flight deck burst into flames.
Richards winced as he saw the billowing clouds of flame and smoke rise, knowing that hundreds of sailors had just perished. It brought back horrible memories of when his own carrier had been hit by one of those missiles at the start of the war. Just as he thought that might have been the only ship to get hit by the ASBMs, another one streaked down from the sky and rammed into the center of the USS Nimitz. Seconds later, the Nimitz was hit by three more missiles, which nearly ripped the ship apart. The entire flight deck and superstructure of the carrier was now engulfed in flames and was being rocked by secondary explosions. The ship was clearly in trouble as it listed quickly to one side.
“Switch to a view of the Roosevelt, and then the Lincoln and Stennis. I need to see if any of the other carriers were hit,” Richards directed the chief petty officer manning one of the video feeds at the terminal near him.
The video zoomed into focus on the Roosevelt, which had a bit of smoke from a couple of hits it took to its hull, but no raging fires across her flight decks. The other two carriers appeared to be in good shape as well. Turning his attention to the Japanese ships, he saw that one of them had settled pretty deep into
the water and was clearly going to sink; another one had taken several hits and was on fire. The other two appeared to have minimal to light damage, with their flight decks also in good shape.
“Sir, the bulk of Chinese cruise missiles are about to arrive,” one of the battle manager officers said.
Richards just nodded. There was really nothing more he could do at this point but wait to see how many of them made it through their defenses. He motioned for the chief manning the video feed to zoom out, so they could see more of the fleet as the missiles closed in. Many of the missiles were being destroyed at the last minute by the Zumwalt’s railguns, but many more were leaking through to slam into the hulls and superstructures of the Allied warships.
The USS Port Royal, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, took three direct hits by CJ-100 anti-ship missiles, each packing a 300-kilogram warhead. The ship burned wildly at first as the fires from the explosion quickly spread before the crew reacted and doused them with water and regained control of the flames.
As the rest of the missiles found their marks, Admiral Richards saw a large portion of his fleet had somehow survived the largest anti-ship missile swarm in history.
“Now it’s time for payback,” he thought.
The Chinese and American fleets had closed the distance gap to get within strike range of their fighters, but that also meant they had just moved within range of his new Harpoon Block II+ extended-range missiles.
He turned to Rear Admiral Cord. “Order the fleet to begin engaging the PLA Navy with our Harpoons. It’s time to get some revenge. Also, get our fighters back on the decks of the carriers that are still operational. We need them rearmed and ready to repel the next attack,” he directed.
In minutes, the American and Japanese ships fired off their own anti-ship missiles while the remaining aircraft landed on the carriers that still had operational flight decks. As quickly as the fighters landed, they were being brought below decks and placed into an assembly line system of being rearmed, refueled, and then placed back on the forward elevator to return to the flight deck and get airborne.