Ghost Fleet

by P. W. Singer, August Cole

The firing protocol for mankind’s first wartime shots in space was well rehearsed. The targets marked in the firing solution had been identified, prioritized, and tracked for well over a year in increasingly rigorous drills the crew eventually realized were not just to support war games down on Earth. The long hours spent in the lab would finally pay off.

  “Ready to commence firing sequence,” said Huan. “Confirm?”

  One by one, the other taikonauts checked in from their weapons stations. Chang touched the photo taped to the wall in front of him. His fingers lingered on the image of his beaming wife and their grinning eight-year-old son. The smiling Ming, missing his two front teeth, wore his father’s blue air force officer’s hat.

  What the photo did not show was how upset his wife had been when he’d given Ming that hat the night before. She thought it made her son look like a prop in a Directorate propaganda piece.

  He moved his hand away from the photo and began his part of the operation, monitoring the targeting sequence. He startled even Huan when he cried out, “Ready!”

  For years, military planners had fretted about antisatellite threats from ground-launched missiles, because that was how both the Americans and the Soviets had intended to take down each other’s satellite networks during the Cold War. More recently, the Directorate had fed this fear by developing its own antisatellite missiles and then alternating between missile tests and arms-control negotiations that went nowhere, keeping the focus on the weapons based below. The Americans should have looked up.

  Chang snuck another look at the photo and caught Huan pausing, his trigger finger lingering above the red firing button. He appeared to be savoring the moment. Then Huan gently pressed the button.

  A quiet hum pervaded the module. No crash of cannon or screams of death. Only the steady purr of a pump signified that the station was now at war.

  The first target was WGS-4, a U.S. Air Force wideband gapfiller satellite. Shaped like a box with two solar wings, the 7,600-pound satellite had entered space in 2012 on top of a Delta 4 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral.

  Costing over three hundred million dollars, the satellite offered the U.S. military and its allies 4.875 GHz of instantaneous switchable bandwidth, allowing it to move massive amounts of data. Through it ran the communications for everything from U.S. Air Force satellites to U.S. Navy submarines. It was also a primary node for the U.S. Space Command. The Pentagon had planned to put up a whole constellation of these satellites to make the network less vulnerable to attack, but contractor cost overruns had kept the number down to just six.

  The space station’s chemical-powered laser fired a burst of energy that, if it were visible light instead of infrared, would have been a hundred thousand times brighter than the sun. Five hundred and twenty kilometers away, the first burst hit the satellite with a power roughly equivalent to a welding torch’s. It melted a hole in WGS-4’s external atmospheric shielding and then burned into its electronic guts.

  Chang watched as Huan clicked open a red pen and made a line on the wall next to him, much like a World War I ace decorating his biplane to mark a kill. The scripted moment had been ordered from below, a key scene for the documentary that would be made of the operation, a triumph that would be watched by billions.

  “And there’s the one,” said Huan. “Chang, it is good for us all that you did not miss,” he said as he clicked the pen shut with a flourish.

  “Indeed,” Chang said, and then, smiling, he ad-libbed, “I would save you the trouble and walk myself out the airlock. Resetting for target number two.”

  Originally known as the X-37, USA-226 was the U.S. military’s unmanned space plane. About an eighth the size of the old space shuttle, the tiny plane was used by the American government in much the same way the shuttle had been, to carry out various chores and repair jobs in space. It could rendezvous with satellites and refuel them, replace failed solar arrays using a robotic arm, and perform many other satellite-upkeep tasks.

  But the Tiangong’s crew, and the rest of the world’s militaries, knew the U.S. military also used USA-226 as a space-going spy plane. It repeatedly flew over the same spots at the same altitude, notably the height typically used by military surveillance satellites: Pakistan for several weeks at a time, then Yemen and Kenya, and, more recently, the Siberian border.

  With its primary control communications link via the WGS-4 satellite now lost, the tiny American space plane shifted into autonomous mode, its computers searching in vain for other guidance signals. In this interim period, USA-226’s protocol was to cease acceleration and execute a standard orbit to avoid collisions. In effect, the robotic space plane stopped for its own safety, making it an easy target.

  The taikonauts moved on down the list: the U.S. Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness system was next. These were satellites that watched other satellites. The Americans’ communications were now down, but once these satellites were taken out, the United States would be blind in space even if it proved able to bring its networks back online. After that was the mere five satellites that made up the U.S. military’s Mobile User Objective System, akin to a global cellular phone provider for the military. Five pulses took out the narrowband communications network that linked all the American military’s aerial and maritime platforms, ground vehicles, and dismounted soldiers. Then came the U.S. Navy’s Ultra High Frequency Follow-On (UFO) system, which linked all of its ships. It was almost anticlimactic, the onboard targeting system moving the taikonauts through the attack’s algorithm step by step, slowing down only when a cluster of satellites sharing a common altitude needed to be dispatched one by one.

  The last to be “serviced,” as Huan dryly put it, was a charged-particle detector satellite. The joint NASA and Energy Department system had been launched a few years after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster as a way to detect radiation emissions. A volley of laser fire from Tiangong-3 exploded its fuel source.

  When Huan finally put the pen back in his suit pocket, there were forty-seven marks on the wall.

  They had been told that the ISS would be taken care of “by other means.” On the other side of the Earth, discarded booster rockets were coming to life after months of dormancy. The boosters-turned-kamikazes advanced on collision courses with nearby American government and commercial communications and imaging satellites. The American ground controllers helplessly watched the chaos overhead, unable to maneuver their precious assets out of the way.

  “I will run diagnostics and flush the laser power systems,” said Chang. He kept moving in order to avoid thinking about what was happening on the Earth’s surface below.

  “Good,” said Huan. “Then see if you can pull up the imagery from the attack; I want to watch it again later.” Of course you do, thought Chang.

  USS Coronado, Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, Hawaii

  The coffee was just like that first cup his father had allowed him to sip from, back when he was seven. No sugar. No cream. It had tasted acrid, awful, not like the vanilla-flavored coffee his mom had loved. “When you’re in the Navy, you don’t have time onboard to add in all that junk,” his father had explained, typical of the kind of advice he gave his kids.

  The boatswain’s mate in charge of brewing up the coffee on the USS Coronado was no barista either, and so the bridge crew all sipped his awful coffee, watching the harbor wake up around them. Stim tabs and the other pharm provided by the corpsmen worked better, but the Navy clung to its traditions. The bitter coffee was as much a part of the morning watch as the sunrise.

  Simmons set down his mug and eyed the sunlight illuminating the Coronado’s deck. The LCS had just celebrated its tenth birthday, but Jamie still thought the sharp, triple-hulled trimaran design gave it the look of a futuristic starship, like out of a Star Wars movie. His dad loved that old stuff, so much so that he had taken Jamie and his sister, Mackenzie, to one of the reboot movies whe
n they were way too young to understand it. Their mother had gotten so mad when she’d found out. It was still a good memory, though, Mackenzie coming home with the empty paper popcorn bucket, cherishing it in the way that little kids make souvenirs of the most mundane objects. That was one of the few happy memories from before his father left, before Mackenzie died.

  Simmons walked over to a spot near one of the port windows to inspect a blemish no bigger than a quarter. He ran his finger over the epoxy patch. On the last anti-piracy patrol, a burst of machine-gun fire had gone right through the window and two spots below in the ship’s aluminum superstructure, now also repaired. No one had been hurt, fortunately, but it reminded the crew that the LCS had been designed for speed, not for heavy combat. Some of the crew had later wrapped Captain Riley’s chair in aluminum foil as “ballistic protection,” a joke that went over poorly with the captain.

  As Simmons watched the morning sun paint the other warships in the crowded harbor orange, he savored the moment, knowing this was one of the last times he would command the bridge. He’d let Riley know what he’d decided when they arrived in San Diego.

  Petty Officer Third Class Randall Jefferson, a young sailor on the bridge, approached, looking almost sheepish when he saw the XO lost in thought.

  “Sir, I am sorry to disturb you, but you asked me to notify you if anything came up,” said Jefferson. “The sonar grid picked up movement. It just flashes in and out, right up near the ship. It’s probably some fish or a dolphin . . .”

  “Don’t apologize for not letting your guard down in port. Deploy REMUS and let’s take a look.”

  He gave the orders to lower what looked like a neon-yellow torpedo into the water. REMUS, the remote environmental monitoring unit, had actually started out in the commercial sector, much like its mother ship’s original design as a high-speed ferry. The unmanned underwater system, essentially a robotic miniature submarine, had been developed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, mainly for civilian applications like port facility inspection, pollution monitoring, and underwater surveying. It was a mainstay of Discovery and Travel Channel sims. But what worked to capture Shark Week footage also worked for underwater guard duty.

  Simmons entered the bridge and stood behind Jefferson, who was now operating the mini-sub with a first-generation Sony PlayStation–type controller. The handheld video-game-style controller was supposed to be intuitive for the sailors, but it felt more like a relic to a generation who now gamed in 3-D immersion. The vid from REMUS played out alongside a live overhead satellite feed of the ship’s position, a pattern analysis of surface and air traffic around their position, and a multicolor spherical chart that showed status reports of the crew and ship systems.

  “Not picking anything up on thermal, sir,” said Jefferson. “Let’s see what visual has.”

  “Give me the full screen,” said Simmons.

  The camera pivoted and showed a gray mass of shadows on the screen. Simmons squinted, as if willing the murky water to reveal its secrets.

  “Hello there,” said Jefferson. He zoomed the camera in on a dark form slowly circling under the ship’s stern. The camera began to focus.

  There. No mistaking it. Against the dark blue background was the faint silhouette of a diver.

  “Some damn fool local out messing around where he shouldn’t,” said Jefferson.

  But then the diver stopped and raised his arms above his head as if praying beneath the LCS’s hull.

  “He’s got something in his hands,” said Jefferson. The diver held what looked like a trash-can lid. He lazily kicked his feet and inched closer to the Coronado’s hull.

  Simmons fought down the coffee climbing back up into his throat.

  “Sound Force Protection alert! Possible terror attack, FP Condition Delta!” shouted Simmons. “And wake the captain. Tell him we have a diver placing what looks like a limpet mine on the hull.”

  He picked up a headset and steadied his voice, knowing any fear in it would resonate throughout the ship.

  “This is the XO. Force Protection security team to the port side. Cycle rudders and energize sonars. Set Material Condition Zebra,” Simmons said. “FP team, we have a diver attempting to place an explosive device on the hull. I want him off. Batteries release. Fire at will.”

  Chaos broke out as sailors ran to the port side and tried to see where the diver was. Through the bridge’s open hatch, Simmons heard the shouts getting increasingly desperate.

  “There he is.”

  “No, he’s over there!”

  “Get the hell out of my way!” yelled Petty Officer Anton Horowitz. He had been standing guard duty by the gangway on the starboard side, and he pushed his way through the scrum to the port side.

  Horowitz leaned as far over the railing as he could and fired his M4 carbine methodically into the water, making a looping pattern of splashes from bow to stern. It was a strange thought to have in the middle of a terror attack, Horowitz knew, but this was actually fun. He had reenlisted only two months ago for just this kind of work, with a promise from the skipper that he’d be allowed to try out for the SEALs. He’d already submitted the required DNA and blood samples for SEAL selection and had been maxing his hypertrophy workouts.

  Back on the bridge, Jefferson saw the ripples that Horowitz’s bullets made as tiny white lines on his screen that stopped after a few feet. When he switched to thermal view, they looked like a series of yellow needles jabbing into the water that quickly disappeared as their heat dissipated. Many were perilously close to the REMUS, but few were near the diver.

  “Sir, they’re not getting him,” said Jefferson.

  “Swing REMUS around and maneuver fifty meters away. Then I want you to bring it back full speed at us,” said Simmons.

  “Sir?” asked Jefferson.

  250 Meters Above Tokyo, Japan

  They had said Tokyo was big, but up close it seemed to go on forever.

  Major Alexei Denisov’s MiG-35 fighter-bomber was doing 875 kilometers per hour, just beneath the sound barrier, to avoid leaving a telltale sonic boom. And yet the dense buildings below seemed like they would never end. The plan seemed to be working, though. The threat-detection icon on the luminous screen at his right did not register anything urgent. He kept his finger on the toggle switch for the plane’s multifunction self-protection jammer, but so far the fighter had been unchallenged.

  The reason was simple. The U.S.-Japanese combined air-defense network was designed for a threat from China, to the west. And east was where Denisov and his twenty-two other fighter-bombers had launched from the Admiral Kuznetsov. The Russian navy aircraft carrier was believed to be on exercises in the North Pacific, out of range of Chinese airstrikes. In fact, it had waited for a gap in satellite coverage and darted south at thirty knots for eight hours, moving just within the strike package’s range. The MiGs flew in fast and low, and, once they were over Japan, they popped up to mimic the flight paths that commuter jets took from Narita Airport.

  Denisov’s MiG’s radar-warning receiver rumbled as signals from an early-warning radar near Narita washed over it, this time close enough to overcome the plane’s stealth features. Denisov’s radio picked up the frantic calls of the air traffic controller. He hit the button and a digital recording began to play. It sounded like gibberish to him, but the FSB officer back on the Kuznetsov had been clear about the need to play it at just this moment.

  To the air traffic controller on the ground, it sounded like the pilot of one of Sony’s executive jets was having a heart attack.

  As the MiGs passed Miyazaki and turned again toward the Ryukyu Islands, it was clear that the defenses were finally onto them. Denisov’s radar scope showed four Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-15s were vectoring as fast as they could, but they wouldn’t get there in time. The ruse had bought Denisov only a few minutes, but it
should be enough.

  After scanning the sky above him for any incoming fighters, Denisov said a quick prayer for his men and his country. For himself, there was no need. A commander could operate only with certainty, not fear. He expected losses today, but also success. His latest imagery of one of his targets showed just eleven U.S. aircraft parked inside their hardened hangars. Dozens remained out in the open, as usual.

  The MiGs dove to low altitude and pushed forward to their full sea-level velocity of nearly fifteen hundred kilometers per hour, well over the speed of sound. The new MiG-35s were called fourth-generation-plus fighters by the Americans. They weren’t fully stealthy, but they had a significantly reduced radar signature. Each second counted now. When the jets neared Okinawa, Denisov’s radar-warning receiver lit with a pulsing red icon. The Patriot IV missile batteries that the Japanese had acquired from the Americans were tracking his low-flying fighter. They had him in their sights and could knock him down at will.

  This was a crucial component of the plan. He took a deep breath and waited, telling himself that the missiles were threats only if someone pushed the launch button. Japan’s Air Self-Defense Forces, however, were not authorized to fire on targets without permission from that country’s civilian leadership. The gamble was that permission wouldn’t come in time. Two decades of near-daily airspace incursions by Chinese aircraft would have desensitized the Japanese, plus their communications networks were supposed to have been knocked offline by cyber-attacks. At least, that was the plan.

  All the more reason not to miss on this first free run, Major Denisov had told his men during their preflight briefing. “You are about to fire the most important shots of your lives, and they may be your last. Make them count.”

  There was no rallying call to glory over the flight’s communications. The only sounds on the radio this time were digital recordings of the voices of American F-22 Raptor pilots copied by a surveillance ship that had monitored the RIMPAC war games held each year off Hawaii. Anything to create uncertainty and delay the Japanese and American response by just a few more seconds.