There Will Be War Volume X

by Jerry Pournelle

  “Decades in the future,” Token said. “Wonder why?”

  “More head games,” Stevie replied. “Just quit wonderin’ and fly, boys and girls.”

  Vango said, “Good advice. Fly now, speculate later. We’re coming up on the merge. Dropping to temp standard.”

  Now each pilot could control his or her own time sense, allowing for maximum effectiveness as they approached the engagement zone. Vango slowed the world by a factor of more than 100 as a flock of stingships closed in.

  These were semi-intelligent sharks of the void whose sole purpose was to screen the larger ships against missiles and small craft. They used short-range biolasers and tiny countermissiles to thin out their enemies.

  Normally the stingships died in droves when faced with sophisticated EarthFleet fighters, but they were cheap, they absorbed firepower, and now and then they killed something, especially missiles. And they never hesitated to collide with their targets, kamikaze fashion.

  Faced with thousands of them in a broad cloud, Vango directed four of his twenty-four to sacrifice themselves, detonating their powerful suicide fusion bombs to clear a path through the mass.

  The remaining twenty drove through, and the stingships couldn’t follow fast enough, not with these new hot birds.

  On the other side a picket wall of a dozen living frigates waited, each slim Zeppelin shape crewed by a trium of Meme. These ships launched sprays of tiny countermissiles. When the human craft dodged them easily, they opened up with their fusors, incandescent blasts of superheated plasma, like flamethrowers in space, reaching tens of kilometers before dissipating.

  These caught two, and then they were eighteen.

  “Not bad,” Vango said over the net.

  “We’re kickin’ ass!” cried Stevie.

  Lock said, “They won’t make it that easy. Something’s going to spring.”

  “She’s right. Stay frosty,” Vango said.

  Token marked ships ahead on their HUDs. “Cruisers coming up.”

  “Bypass them,” Vango ordered. “The mission objective specifies only Destroyers get us the win, and only us four.”

  “Yeah, and I want to win,” Stevie replied.

  She wants to earn another rendezvous with her vices, Vango thought. At least we’re in VR, so she can’t O.D.…and one of those vices is me. But what about when we’re done? They’ll have to put her in rehab or something. Obviously they know about her addiction. I don’t want to lose her again.

  The cognitive dissonance of that thought, the nonsense of Stevie being alive when he knew she was dead, threatened to undo him.

  “Vango, pay attention!” Lock snapped, and Vango threw his craft into a violent spiral to avoid an incoming trio of hypers. “Get your head in the game!”

  “Thanks,” Vango said. “Sorry.”

  He analyzed the cruiser pattern and decided to do something different this time, something he’d thought about but hadn’t tried. “Canyon, you and Slapshot suicide on the center cruiser. We’re punching straight through before he recovers. We’ll lose fewer that way than everyone running the gaps.”

  “Right, boss,” Canyon said, and led his wingman on a mad spiral path toward the midsized ship. He was picked off by a fusor ten klicks out, but Slapshot made it to impact.

  The result was spectacular, far greater than Vango expected. The simulated suicide charge must be set to at least a hundred megatons, and the cruiser crumpled and died in a fusion fireball.

  “Woohoo!” yelled Stevie. “Destroyers, here we come!”

  Sixteen pilots and their suicide craft dove for the hole in the line, easily outracing the ships that tried to slide over and fill the gap. Beyond, the Destroyers came on in a compact mass, at least forty of them.

  “That’s insane,” Vango muttered. “Too many in too small a space. They’ll blanket each other with defensive fire. We can’t dodge all those fusors.”

  “That’s the twist,” Lock said matter-of-factly. “Last I remember, it took everything we had to take down one Destroyer. How can anyone fight so many?”

  “We don’t have to fight so many,” said Token. “This is a game, remember? All we have to do is get us each of us four to within five thousand meters of a Destroyer.”

  Vango grunted. “Token’s right. We can do that.”

  “Still gonna be hard,” said Wild Bill from up ahead. “We should perform a rolling detonation to white out their sensors. These uprated suicide charges should pump out a hell of a lot of interference, assuming the sim takes that into account.”

  “Good idea. Give me a minute and I’ll set it up.” Vango further slowed the world outside himself, yielding enough time to run 3D calculations and issue instructions to his twelve sacrificial lambs. “See you all back at the barracks,” he said as he sent the data packets. “Drinks are on me.”

  Clouds of countermissiles issued forth from the Destroyer mass and closed in on the EarthFleet squadron. One by one, Vango’s people detonated their ships to clear the way through and provide enormous electromagnetic pulses, blizzards of jamming that blinded the enemy. They tended to blind his people as well, but all they had to do was fly their courses toward the huge targets.

  Belatedly, those targets began to maneuver. If this were real, Vango would have laughed at the idea that ships two kilometers in diameter, with armor five hundred meters thick, would run from a few fighters, even armed with hundred-megaton fusion warheads. An explosion of that size would still need to be nearly in contact to do significant damage, because the vacuum of space provided no medium to carry a blast wave.

  Good thing it wasn’t real.

  When the last of twelve detonations dissipated, Vango found himself and his remaining four-ship in superb position, spread fifteen klicks apart, each pointed at a frantically accelerating Destroyer. The big ships weren’t nearly fast enough, though, even spreading out in all directions.

  Fusors vomited into space, reaching for him, but with his accelerated time senses they seemed to move in slow motion, and he easily anticipated their paths. Maneuvering to avoid the white-hot zones, he closed toward his target like a gazelle in a dispersed herd of buffalo.

  Stevie blasted at maximum and was the first to cross the five-thousand-meter line. Vango expected the usual notation to appear in the mission tracking module, but it didn’t, this time. Closer and closer she flew, until a fusor blast seemed to reach for her. Vango wondered why the sim was waiting to record her score.

  Then his sensors fuzzed and he lost all HUD cohesion for a long moment. When his viewing capability returned, he saw an expanding zone of annihilation ten kilometers wide. Stevie and the Destroyer were simply…gone. Another Destroyer on the edge of the sphere of death spun slowly, severely injured.

  “Mother of God,” he breathed. “What in hell was that?”

  “Mother for sure,” Lock replied. “The mother of all suicide bombs, a thousand times as big as anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “More like ten thousand times as large,” Token said, ever the human calculator. “Remember the square-cube law. Double the blast radius needs eight-ish times the power.”

  Vango laughed, but grim. “Then let’s go out in a blaze of glory. See you on the dance floor.”

  Token crossed his line, and then Lock. Vango felt no trepidation as he crossed the line and awaited detonation, only satisfaction at completing the mission combined with anticipation of another night with Stevie.

  ***

  “These new semi-organic control modules are a pain in the ass,” said Missile Tech First Class Pedro Weinauer as he fitted the half-meter black box into the last of the flight of twenty-four XM-58 capital missiles.

  The cylindrical bodies, huge for weapons but small compared to even a one-man fighter, sat lined up on the flight deck of the assault carrier Peterborough. A line of cones kept the hustle and bustle of operations away from the delicate devices.

  Warrant Officer Hudson stared flatly at Weinauer. “Shut up and finish. I’m initiating the integ
ration program.” She input a code into the Vango module—the master—and closed the access panel. “Network looks good. Everyone take an hour. Get some chow or some rack time. We start on the next set as soon as these are movable.”

  Weinauer nodded. “Thanks, boss,” he said, leading the half-dozen missile techs waiting nearby toward the enlisted mess.

  Hudson checked her secure control pad and stared at the hard cables snaking across the deck, connecting the brains into a network. After launch, they would go wireless, using microwave and laser comms.

  But until then, would take that hour until the modules achieved full integration, more or less. Something about the variability in the Meme-derived bioprocessors made the exact time uncertain. Then, the grabships would load the weapons into the cruisers’ missile boxes and they’d be sent into battle together.

  Hudson shrugged. Finicky or not, these things were taking down Meme warships. It didn’t matter much what weird shit they put inside to make them work. In fact, she didn’t really want to know.

  She shivered. Sometimes she felt like the boxes were alive and looking at her.

  ***

  Use of human engrams to guide missiles must be viewed as a mixed success. Their performance exceeded that of our best digital control systems, but the expense in time, resources, and particularly the moral cost to those who knew, the knowledge that our finest minds were being replicated, trained and deliberately sent to inevitable death, caused me to wonder whether it was worth it.

  I must reluctantly conclude it was. During the Meme’s most recent assault, use of our most skilled and dedicated officers’ engrams brought us within a hair’s breadth of victory. To quote Wellington, it was a damn near-run thing, and the fact that the Meme finally achieved their goal of smashing Earth with two kamikaze Destroyers in no way detracts from the efforts and heroic sacrifices of the virtual replicants.

  Without them, we would have lost the entire Solar System. At least now we have a chance to rebuild. The Mars colony is robust, and Jupiter’s moons contain the bulk of our spaceborne industry. While we hold those, hope remains.

  —Excerpt from A Personal Memoir: Survival Against the Meme, by Xiaobo HUEN, Admiral, EarthFleet, Commanding; 2109 A.D.

  Editor’s Introduction to:

  FLUSH-AND-FFE

  by Lt Col Guy R. Hooper, USAF, ret. and Michael L. McDaniel

  The nature of war changes. Sometimes it is a straightforward matter of winning large battles, of bringing everything you have to bear on the enemy’s forces to win both the campaign and the war in a single engagement. Alexander effectively ended the Persian Empire at Arbela. Otto the Great ended nearly a century of Magyar raids into Europe at the Lechfeld. Sometimes wars seem to go on forever, with no decisive battles ever fought. The stronger side always looks for ways to bring the opponent to battle and defeat him once and for all. But sometimes that leads to disaster, as with the French at Dien Bien Phu.

  Sun Tzu advises us to take what the enemy holds dear. The implication is that if you hold it strongly, the enemy will then break his teeth on your defenses, for defense always has the advantage; or if your defenses are too strong, he must negotiate and be amenable to your will. This principle has been long known, but like most principles of war, it is not always easy to put into practice. Clausewitz warns us that in war everything is very simple, but the simplest things are very difficult. And as von Moltke the Elder said, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

  Guy Hooper and Michael McDaniel address the problem for modern powers in an age of asymmetric warfare, and illustrate the complexity of modern military operations planning, as we seek to bring irregular forces to decisive battle.

  FLUSH-AND-FFE

  by Lt Col Guy R. Hooper, USAF, ret. and Michael L. McDaniel

  Modern precision firepower does not determine combat against either an entrenched enemy willing to accept losses or one skilled in camouflage, concealment, and deception. In Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and Kosovo, liberal use of expensive precision weapons produced important results but still left the national leadership the unpalatable choice of accepting the terms of bombing alone or running up a butcher’s bill by sending in troops to root out an enemy.

  The time is right for a new operational concept that blends proven strategic principles of the past with the tactical revolution advanced by precision weapons and mobility. This idea involves forcing enemies from foxholes by seizing politically and materially vital areas, thus confronting them with a choice of their own—do nothing and lose, or engage superior precision firepower.

  The time has come to fight with new combination tactics. This concept combines maneuver and fire warfare. Maneuver warfare puts boots on the ground to seize or threaten centers of gravity in the rear, then precision fires destroy enemy forces during the inevitable counterattack. The destabilizing effect of invasion acts as a forcing function. An enemy is compelled to react against an immediate threat to political control, yet it is exactly this reaction that exposes it to destruction from precisely targeted fire. Critical to strategists, the Flush-and-Fire-For-Effect (Flush-and-FFE) tactic answers the basic question of whose side time is on.

  Harnessing the Revolution

  Operational fires, attacking targets deep inside enemy territory with airpower, missiles, and long-range artillery to support theater-wide campaign objectives, have revolutionized modern war. A century ago, battlefields were a few acres in size, and forces not engaged eye-to-eye exerted little direct influence. Today the area can be thousands of square miles, and it is routine to attempt to win not just battles, but campaigns, by striking targets deep within an enemy’s rear.

  The revolution in operational fire has not led to a revolution in operational art. Operational fires have proven deadly against troops and vehicles in the open but have been nearly worthless against entrenched forces. Artillery barrages on the Somme, B-17 pickle-barrel bombing in World War II, B-52 strikes in Vietnam, and cruise missile attacks in Kosovo did not win the war against dug-in or concealed troops. Operational fires have only been slightly more effective against mobile or time-sensitive targets.

  Somewhat paradoxically—and in the face of contrary evidence—operational art has raised the bar for precision firepower, expecting it to compel a political result by the efficient reduction of a carefully tuned not-too-hot, not-too-cold target list. Air strikes may cut off reinforcements, and rocket barrages may keep enemy heads down, but ultimately the United States counts on firepower to break the morale of enemy populations, who theoretically, and somewhat vaguely, are expected to spontaneously rise up and depose their own leadership to settle the conflict.

  This has not occurred since World War I. Instead, populations tend to dig in and endure. Thus the Army believes, with justification, that ground forces ultimately settle conflicts by territorial battles. In its view, humble infantrymen are far from obsolete.

  The proponents of landpower are generally correct, but unfortunately are afflicted by specific challenges. Ground forces have poor strategic mobility. Light infantry can be moved readily, but any sort of mechanized forces involve shipping large numbers of heavy armored vehicles, a sluggish process at best. More critically, ground assaults entail a high price because soldiers can’t execute bloodless warfare. Policymakers fearful of losses and the possible collapse of public support are unwilling to rely on ground attacks as their first option.

  Future challengers to the United States will know how to counter its strength and exploit weaknesses inherent in large-scale deployment of heavy forces or precision weapons. Mobility, the humble spade, and the well-constructed decoy may have proven enough of a match for high-tech weapons to convince an enemy that it can hope to survive combat against the U.S. military.

  Asymmetric Responses

  The fleet-in-being principle has been adopted by small nations in confrontations with great powers. The idea of such a fleet is simple: keep a viable fighting force together and occupy enemy assets with the threat of a sortie.
Since this force can choose the time and place of attack, its enemy must keep an equal or superior force in battle position continually as a counterweight. Considering the need to rest and refit this masking force, an enemy can tie up a force twice its size. This has made the fleet-in-being a favorite strategy of weak naval forces for centuries.

  Recently this classic naval stratagem has been adapted to conflict on land. Enemies have learned that Americans are strong on bombing and weak in mobile logistics and the willingness to absorb casualties. They have come to realize that by avoiding bombs and preserving their assets, the United States will take months to transport strong ground forces to the theater and may never work up the will to commit that force to battle.

  Countering this strategy is not easy, but it can be achieved. The weakness of the fleet-in-being is that minor fleets cannot control the seas. A nation that needs to use the seas must fight whenever it is challenged. And it is this fact, suitably transposed to the land environment, that is key. Flush-and-FFE is based on the simple proposition of taking control of a location the enemy can’t afford to lose, then annihilating its forces with operational fires when it tries to reclaim it.

  Naval strategists have long acknowledged that winning control of the seas and exercising day-to-day control demand different types of ships. Winning control involves either defeating or threatening to defeat an enemy in a pitched battle. This demands large, powerful vessels—ships of the line, battleships, and carriers. On the other hand, exercising control demands smaller, more numerous forces, such as frigates and cruisers—ships able to both stop enemy shipping and defeat opposing commerce raiders, but not intended to take part in a fleet action.

  The same principles apply to warfare on land. Historically, heavy units such as infantry, cavalry, and artillery fight and win battles. But it is light, small units that exercise control over conquered territory: a troop of light cavalry on horseback, a regiment of light fighters, or even an infantry squad in a fighting vehicle. The petit guerre for exercising control remains the same.