by James Rosone
As the naval captain finished briefing the naval situation, he signaled for the Air Force briefer to make his way to the front. A Lieutenant Colonel changed the briefing slides to show the Air Force activity. Like the briefer before her, she also stuck to the facts. “Following the massive cruise missile attack by the Navy, the Air Force sent in two squadrons of B-1 Lancers, which hit a series of additional air defense systems, critical railways, roads, bridges and tunnels throughout the Shandong province. Our goal is to degrade the Chinese military’s ability to carry out any additional strikes against our naval forces, South Korea, or the Japanese home islands.” Her brief continued for another ten minutes before the President asked a question.
“Colonel, my understanding is that the B-2s are still in Japan for another week. Are there specific targets they are going to go after before we have to split the bomber wing up and send half of them back to Europe?” asked Gates.
The colonel clicked through a couple of slides to the one highlighting the B-2s. “The Pacific Commander wants to use the bombers to go after the Chinese transportation and logistics capability. The bombers themselves can carry six 5,000 lbs. Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) and fifteen of the 2,000 lbs. versions, so each bomber can hit a lot of different targets on a single mission. The Admiral wants to focus on going after their rail networks, hitting critical bridges, tunnels, and major switchyards, which will hinder the Chinese military’s ability to move troops, equipment, fuel and munitions across the country,” she concluded.
She gave the President a moment in case he had any additional questions. When he didn’t have anything further, she passed the briefing on to the Secretary of Defense.
The SecDef eagerly jumped into his part of the brief. “While you were in the process of landing, Mr. President, the South Korean and US ground forces officially crossed the DMZ, and are now engaging the remaining North Korean forces. They initially met stiff resistance at the DMZ; however, once they started to break through the frontline soldiers, they started to encounter massive numbers of enemy soldiers surrendering. In many cases, they had dozens of North Korean units approaching our forces with white flags, pleading to surrender.”
“The ground war is roughly four hours old, and so far, we have collected over 39,000 prisoners. This could be a fluke and perhaps we will start to hit more die-hard units, but this is promising, Mr. President,” Secretary Castle said with a look of optimism.
“Finally, some good news,” thought Gates with a smile.
Castle continued, his expression more serious now. “Sir, we have two other major problems that have developed over the last hour. The first being the Chinese ground forces near the North Korean border. Prior to hostilities, the Chinese had deployed roughly 80,000 troops near the border, and those troops have now crossed over and are moving down the peninsula towards our forces. Right now, we are not 100% sure who is technically in control of the North Korean’s military or government, and the Chinese may be moving their forces into the country to assume control of what remains of their army and country.”
“The second problem we have is that the Chinese just launched a massive missile and artillery attack against Taiwan.”
Audible gasps could be heard from those who had not been brought up to speed on this latest development just yet. Everyone’s worse fears were starting to play out; despite pleas for calm and peace, the war continued to widen.
Secretary of State Johnson jumped into the conversation to add, “Sir, the Taiwanese president has asked us for military assistance, if we are able to provide it.”
Gates couldn’t help but snort before responding. “Does the President of Taiwan understand that China has also declared war on the US, Japan, and South Korea, not to mention that NATO is currently at war with Russia? I am not sure there is any real military support we can give them right now.”
The President was numb as the reality of war with four countries at one time began to settle in. “What in God’s green earth are we supposed to do now?” he thought, unsure of what to do next.
Gates sighed audibly, then took a drink from his bottle of water. “Jim--what is our next move here?” he asked, almost pleading for his Secretary of Defense to give him an answer.
SecDef Castle knew the President would most likely ask him this question. That was one of the traits he admired about Gates; he wasn’t afraid to admit he didn’t know something and ask for advice from those who did.
“Mr. President, the Chinese attack on the 7th Fleet hurt us, but it was expected and anticipated,” Castle began. “We survived the initial shock and awe they tried to lay on our fleet, and now we are hitting them back hard. Per our previous discussions, when the Chinese declared war and attacked our battlegroups, I ordered the new commander at PACOM to initiate Operation Trident. As our briefers began to describe, our Navy has hammered the Chinese navy and air force facilities that posed the greatest immediate threat to our forces. This was quickly followed by action from our Air Force.”
He paused only long enough to take a breath before continuing, “Our B-2s are just now taking off from Japan, and will begin to carry out a series of deep strikes within China, going after their critical rail, bridge, and tunnel networks. We are going to make the logistical challenge of moving men and material around their expansive country a bit more difficult for them. The carriers Nimitz, Theodore Roosevelt, and John C. Stennis will arrive in the Sea of Japan tomorrow. We’ve also relocated the cruise missile SSGNs Florida and Georgia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Those additional cruise missile submarines will arrive at Yokosuka Naval Base around the same time the Ohio and Michigan return back to rearm. While the loss of the Reagan and the crippling damage to the Vinson hurt us, it could have been worse. In my opinion, the Chinese wasted the element of surprise when they attacked the 7th Fleet. Had they waited until the entire Pacific Fleet had sailed into the Yellow Sea or near the Straits of Taiwan, they could have sunk all of our carriers. As it is, they revealed to us the capabilities of their anti-ship weapons; now that we know what they can do, we are developing strategies and plans to deal with this threat.”
Jim paused for a second as he turned to look at someone off camera, then returned his gaze to the camera and leaned in closer. “I have ordered our cyber-warfare groups to immediately begin to go after the Chinese logistics capability. We are scrambling their barcode and computer systems, so when a unit sends a message requesting more ammunition, they will instead receive toilet paper or some other useless supply that won’t help them. These may sound like little nuisances, but I assure you, as our cyber guys infiltrate their electronic logistics system, it’s going to wreak havoc on their ability to keep their army groups running at full speed. We are also going after their satellites, just as the Russians went after ours. In addition to that, as we identify where their cyber groups are operating out of, we are having the Navy and Force launch cruise missiles at those facilities. This is going to have a huge impact on their cyber groups if they know we are actively targeting each site individually,” Castle said with a devilish grin. He really liked being able to go directly after the enemy hackers.
“As to the ground war, we had to withdraw the US and ROK Marines from landing near Pyongyang once it appeared that war was inevitable with China. We needed to protect the amphibious assault ships and the support ships needed to sustain a ground invasion. Now that China is moving ground forces into the DPRK, I recommend that we have the Marines redeploy along this area here,” he said, pointing on the map to the city of Hamhung on the Sea of Japan. “This was the second largest city in the country, and the only top four city in the DPRK that we did not nuke. It is, in all likelihood, the alternative headquarters for the government, if anyone survived the first day of the war.”
“This will give us a beachhead from which to land additional forces behind the North Korean frontlines, and hopefully allow us to cut them off. It will also give us exceptional defensive positions along these ridges here, when the Chinese forc
es do eventually reach ours.”
The President thought over what his SecDef had explained, feeling a bit more hopeful. “OK Jim, you’ve convinced me of the merits of the landing. Do it,” he responded. “Let’s also make sure the Air Force hammers the living daylights out of the Chinese forces entering Korea. Hopefully we can butter them up really well before they even reach our soldiers.”
The Secretary of State broke into the conversation again. “Mr. President, while I understand we do not have conventional forces we can deploy to Taiwan to help them, perhaps we can send them some Special Forces, or maybe one of our Ohio class submarines can deliver a barrage of cruise missiles at the Chinese ports near Taiwan, like they just did in the Yellow Sea.”
Gates sat back in his chair for a second, thinking about that, when Admiral Meyer interjected, “Mr. President, while I would like to send Special Forces to Taiwan, the limited number of units we have in the Pacific need to stay focused on Korea and any potential incursions we may make into China directly. Once our two cruise missile SSGNs have rearmed in Japan, we could redirect them to head down to Taiwan and hit the Chinese navy, but we also have to remember, the Chinese have their three carriers down there as well. There will also be an increased presence of enemy submarines in the area. I don’t want to risk losing any of the cruise missile submarines. We are going to be relying on them a lot more going forward with the loss of two of our carriers,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs replied, hoping to kill the idea before it could take root.
“Perhaps we can have the B-2s try and provide some sort of direct support?” the President inquired. “Maybe they can hit a troop transport or part of the rail or port facilities in the area,” he offered.
Castle jumped back in, “That we can do. I’ll place a call to PACOM and have him send a B-2 strike that way. It’s about as much support as we can offer Taiwan for the moment, until we have additional soldiers and ships.”
“How are we doing in that department, Jim?” asked the President, hoping the rebuilding of the army was at least moving along.
“The first batch of 150,000 recruits has just arrived in training. We have a new batch of 150,000 trainees starting each week. Roughly three quarters of these recruits are going directly into the infantry, so their training is roughly three months. Normally, the training would have taken four months, but we need those replacement soldiers at the various frontlines ASAP. The remaining 37,500 trainees from each cycle will be receiving a myriad of additional training in communications, medical, aviation and other critical jobs, so their training time is going to be closer to four to six additional months. We are working with the technical training schools to shorten it down as much as possible while not diminishing the required training.”
Castle sighed. “It’s going to take some time, Mr. President, but the first batch of 112,000 infantry soldiers will start to arrive at the frontlines in December. Approximately 112,000 additional soldiers will continue to arrive each subsequent week, until all five million draftees have been trained,” he concluded.
The President’s senior advisor, who had just flown in to Ft. Hood that morning, asked, “How long is each draftee’s service agreement again?” This was a detail that had not been finalized, despite previous debate.
Castle bristled a bit at the question, but answered it anyways. “The term of the draft is for the duration of the war. We will look to do a large-scale demobilization once the war has concluded, just as the US did following the end of World War II. We learned a lot from the Vietnam draft, and the Pentagon has determined that giving a set date to the draftees is not an effective way of building the sustained army that will be needed to win this war. Plus, we would have to continually draft people each week to replace the ones that finished their term.”
“This also allows us to keep unit cohesion throughout the war. We won’t have units constantly losing good, experienced soldiers just when they are needed most. The Pentagon and I are in agreement that this will greatly cut down on the number of casualties as well.”
The President nodded his head in approval as did his NSA and the CJC. The rest of the Joint Chiefs also seemed reasonably pleased with the decision. That had been a major disadvantage during the Vietnam war; nearly all the experienced soldiers would rotate home and get out of the military, leaving just inexperienced junior soldiers who suffered a very high casualty rate.
Cyber-Warfare
Shanghai Shi, China
Agricultural Bank of China
Colonel Xian sipped on his tea as he observed his small cadre of hackers from his office, hard at work. The group, which mostly consisted of young men and women, sat there glued to their oversized computer screens with headphones on and energy drinks strewn about their work stations.
“Kids these days…sloppy and messy,” he thought as he looked at them. “If they were not such exceptional hackers, I would never tolerate such filth.”
Now that war had been declared against the Americans, his unit was free to carry out unlimited and direct cyber-attacks against a plethora of US targets. His specific unit had been tasked with going after the civilian sector of the US economy and making the daily life of Americans difficult. He had 36 highly-skilled hackers in his unit to accomplish this task, which he thought was more than enough. His first order of business was to break his team down into smaller groups and assign them specific regions in America to target. Their main targets were the American entertainment sector and the transportation industry, areas that continually lagged in cyber defense.
One group of hackers was specifically causing problems for Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube streaming services, hitting them continually with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and other malicious activity. A different group was hacking into various small towns across the US, shutting down traffic cameras or changing commuter rail times so that people would show up after the trains had already left. Their mission was to cause general chaos and anxiety for the American civilian population and let the people of the United States know that China, though many thousands of miles away, could reach out and touch them wherever they lived. Judging by the comments they were seeing on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media platforms they monitored, their attacks were having the desired effect. People were becoming increasingly angry about their mundane, boring online lives being interrupted.
As satisfying as it was to know his team was impacting the daily lives of the enemy, he wished his team was able to carry out more malevolent types of attacks, like shutting down the US electrical grid, but he had been warned to not even try that. His leadership feared that if they succeeded in taking the country’s grid down, the Americans would retaliate and do the same to China. As much as he hated to admit it, China had grown just as dependent on electronics and the power grid as the US had. It was almost as if an unspoken mutually assured destruction (MAD) doctrine had been implemented between the warring factions. There were still areas that were off limits, even during a time of war. After President Gates nuked Shenyang, the Chinese leadership was hesitant to test him further by straying from the unofficial electronic détente.
Just as he was about to walk out of his office to check on one of his hacker teams, the building suddenly shook violently, throwing him to the ground. In a fraction of a second, he saw the ceiling above him collapse down on top of him and his fiefdom, just as a large fireball consumed them all. Unbeknownst to Colonel Xian and his hacker group, the National Security Agency had acquired their physical location and sent that data over to the Air Force and Navy. A B-2 bomber, who had been carrying out a strike against a rail bridge nearby, was redirected to drop a JDAM on the Agricultural Bank of China. Within seconds of the blast, a myriad of persistent cyber-attacks taking place across the US suddenly ceased.
A Desperate Fight
Smalyavichy, Belarus
The sounds of heavy machine gun fire and various explosions beat out a deadly rhythm in the distance as US and Russian forces continued to clash ne
ar the outskirts of the capital. As Major General Austin walked up the steps to the City Hall building, he could see the exterior of the building had been scarred by a few nearby explosions and riddled with bullets. Most of the glass windows had also been blown out. When his forces entered the city, a small contingent of Belarusian soldiers had tried to prevent the Americans from capturing it, but that fight had ended quickly and with deadly results for the soldiers who thought they could prevent the 4th Infantry Division from securing the city.
As the broken glass crunched against the boots of General Austin, he saw his staff hard at work, getting the new headquarters building set up. The last two days had been a mad dash to capture the city and cut off the Russian supply lines. The United States’ surprise attack into Belarus had caught the Russians off guard, and they were playing defense now. The rest of Three Corps and the Polish divisions had the Russian 6th Tank Army fully engaged further south, and now it was time to force them to surrender or slaughter them on the battlefield.
“What’s that status of that Russian airborne division at the edge of the city?” General Austin asked his G3.
“Colonel Pippen’s brigade is engaging them now,” the operations officer began. “They have that Spetsnaz brigade pinned down near Minsk International Airport. There is a lot of heavy fighting in that area. Colonel Pippen wants to know if we can give him more artillery support while his brigade continues to box them in.”
General Austin just nodded; they needed to keep those Spetsnaz guys cornered in the airport region. If they broke out into his rear area, they could cause him a lot of problems. It was foolish of the Russian commander to drop nearly his entire brigade on the airport without trying to also secure the nearby villages. They were paying for that miscalculation now.
“Where is the 3rd Armor Brigade at now?” asked Austin, hoping they had finally made contact with the Russian paratroopers that had been dropped behind his forces near Maryina Horka. If they were able to get themselves organized, they could pose a serious problem to his hold on Minsk.