by Jeff Edwards
The American ships were on nearly reciprocal courses, the Towers moving west and the Gerrard moving east, both converging slowly on the formation of Chinese warships that lay between them. At some point, the two U.S. Navy destroyers would pass some indefinable boundary, where microwave-deflecting hull geometries and radar-absorbent tiles could no longer hide them from the sensors of their enemies. The goal was to begin the attack before crossing that invisible threshold.
If all went according to plan, the Chinese wouldn’t suspect the presence of the American ships until they detected incoming missiles. And then it would be too late.
Silva’s eyes stayed locked on the display screen. Adjacent to the symbol for the Towers was a highlighted data-field containing the current calculated probability of detection, expressed as two sets of numerals separated by a slash: 62.0 / 7.8. The first set of digits—provided for purposes of comparison—was calibrated to the radar cross-section of a standard Arliegh Burke class destroyer. The second set of digits was adjusted for the minimized radar signature of a modified Flight III Arliegh Burke class ship.
Based on received signal strength at the ship’s current position, the Aegis command and decision computer predicted a 62% chance that an unmodified Arliegh Burke destroyer would be detected by the Chinese radar, and a 7.8% chance that the same Chinese radar sensors would detect the Towers.
While Silva watched, the readout changed to 68.2 / 9.1, as USS Towers edged closer to the defensive screen of the Chinese aircraft carrier.
From an intellectual perspective, Silva acknowledged that nine percent didn’t seem like bad odds, especially compared to the nearly seventy percent that a less stealthy ship would be facing right now. But for all the cutting-edge technology, there was nearly a one-in-ten chance that a Chinese radar operator would peer into the clutter of random sea returns on his scope, and spot a tiny smudge of pixels that represented USS Towers.
Silva tore her gaze away from the probability of detection readout, and took in the overall tactical situation. The enemy aircraft carrier was screened by four surface combatants: a pair of Type 054A (Jiangkai II class) multi-role frigates to the northwest and southwest, and a pair of Type 51C (Luzhou class) air-defense destroyers to the northeast and southeast. This put both of the Chinese destroyers on the eastern side of the formation—closest to the Towers—presumably to provide air coverage against the retreating Midway strike group.
The symbols for the Chinese ships were enclosed by ellipsoids of dotted lines, representing calculated areas of uncertainty. The enemy ships were estimated to be somewhere within those areas of uncertainty, but their exact positions were unknown.
With their own radar transmitters shut down, Towers and Gerrard were relying on tracking information from their AN/SLQ-32(V)3 electronic warfare systems. The SLQ-32 (or Slick-32, as the system’s operators preferred to call it) was capable of detecting, identifying, and tracking virtually every search, targeting, or navigation radar devised by man. But for all its adaptability and processing power, the Slick-32 was a passive sensor. It could determine the direction of an enemy radar source; but it had no ability to measure how far away the hostile emitter might be. This bearing-only data was sufficient for targeting Harpoon missiles, but lacked the range information critical to most other weapon systems.
If the Towers and Gerrard had not been operating under strict emission control, they could have exchanged lines-of-bearing through the tactical net, establishing and maintaining cross-fixes for the enemy radars, neatly pinpointing each of the Chinese warships on a continual basis. Instead, they were making due with periodic data feeds from a NightEagle III unmanned aerial vehicle flying slow surveillance passes over the enemy formation at 20,000 feet.
Constructed from radar-transparent composites, the UAV was small, lightweight, and relatively stealthy. Every fifteen minutes or so, it pointed an ultraviolet diode laser to the heavens, and squirted a packet of digital information toward one of eleven Fleet SATCOM communications satellites in orbit. The satellite promptly encoded the UAV’s targeting data, and transmitted it back toward the earth as an encrypted UHF radio signal, where it was received and decrypted by the two American destroyers.
During these periodic updates, the area of uncertainty for each Chinese ship shrank to a discrete point, and the Towers and Gerrard knew the exact position of every enemy vessel. But as the minutes ticked away and the Chinese ships maneuvered within their formation, the American Slick-32 systems could only track bearings. The estimations of target range became progressively less reliable, and the ellipsoid areas of uncertainty began to grow again.
The NightEagle III was capable of maintaining continuous uplink with the satellites, providing constant position updates for the enemy warships, but the UAV had been programmed to avoid detection. There were at least three flights of J-15 fighter jets circling over the area, providing air cover for the Chinese carrier. The UAV’s laser communication link was covert, but it was not completely invisible.
Again, it came down to the difference between undetectable, and less detectable. The success or failure of this mission—life or death—depended on keeping the UAV and both American warships below the threshold of detection.
Any one of those Chinese planes might bounce a lucky radar echo off the Towers or the Gerrard at any time. One of the pilots might glance up (or down) at just the right angle, and catch a glimpse of a strange black shape against the waves, or a small winged silhouette against the night sky.
Silva knew she shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts, but this was the part she hated. The waiting. The proverbial calm before the proverbial goddamned storm. That frozen eternity of inaction, where every second seemed to draw itself out to an edge as keen as a razor, and there was nothing to do but dwell on the endless list of things that could go wrong.
On the tactical display, the symbols for Towers and Gerrard were well into the deepening reds of the Chinese radar coverage now. The probability of detection readout said 88.1 / 17.6. There was nearly a one-in-five chance they’d be spotted, and the numbers were still climbing.
Splitting the difference between best-case and worst-case for the areas of uncertainty, the Chinese destroyers were a little over 40 nautical miles away. They were well within Harpoon range, but Silva knew from the pre-mission briefing that Captain Bowie intended to close another three miles before launching the strike.
Like most American surface combatants, the Towers carried only eight Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The USS Donald Gerrard carried eight as well. That only allowed four Harpoons per target, and the Chinese warships were supposed to have good anti-missile defenses.
Bowie wanted to be close enough to press the attack with naval gunfire, in case the limited inventory of Harpoons was not enough to guarantee a kill.
Even a year earlier, a gun attack from 37 miles would have been impossible. Against surface targets, the effective range of a standard 5-inch naval artillery shell was less than 20 nautical miles—a little better than half what was needed for Bowie’s plan. But that had been before Vulcano.
Over the past several decades, there had been several attempts to develop rocket-assisted projectiles with enhanced ranges, but none of the U.S. efforts had ever panned out. The two most promising projects—the Ballistic Trajectory Extended Range Munition (BTERM), and the Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM)—had been cancelled, due to budget overruns and lingering technical challenges.
The U.S. Navy had finally sidestepped the issue by procuring Vulcano rounds from the Italian arms firm, OTO-Melara. The Italian defense industry had succeeded where the American military-industrial complex had failed. OTO-Melara’s 127mm Vulcano projectiles were fully compatible with the 5-inch guns aboard U.S. warships, and their maximum range was 40 nautical miles.
The gun crews aboard the Towers and Gerrard had been trained on the Vulcano rounds, and they’d racked up an impressive number of attack simulations using the new ammunition. But even the most accurate training simulators have prac
tical limitations, and actual hands-on experience with the new projectiles had been limited to a handful of live firing exercises.
In view of this, and in light of the knowledge that the U.S. Navy had never employed Vulcano munitions under real-world combat conditions, Bowie had decided to edge a little nearer to the targets before launching the attack.
Silva agreed completely with the captain’s reasoning. It made sense not to push their luck by relying on textbook assessments of a new weapon’s capabilities. Better to build in a little safety margin, in case the textbooks turned out to be wrong.
But the probability of detection readout was still climbing. As Silva watched, it changed to 91.6 / 22.9. In another few minutes, the chance of getting caught would reach 30%. Definitely too high for comfort.
Silva looked around and met Bowie’s gaze.
He raised one eyebrow slightly. “This must be what it feels like to be a submarine commander,” he said.
He turned back to the master tactical display. “Trying to sneak into your enemy’s sensor envelope without being detected. Knowing that the only things keeping you alive are silence, and luck.”
Commander Silva nodded, but didn’t say anything. Her eyes drifted back and forth between the estimated range to target, and the probability of detection. Two sets of numbers—one decreasing, and the other increasing. Silence and luck. Silence… and luck. Silence…
A burst of encrypted UHF came in on the downlink from Fleet SATCOM, carrying the latest targeting fixes from the NightEagle III. On the Aegis display screen, the areas of uncertainty for the Chinese ships shrank instantly to distinct points.
Captain Bowie looked over the target geometry, judging angles and distances against whatever image of the battle plan he carried in his head. He nodded, cleared his throat, and spoke loudly. “Let’s do it.”
And suddenly, it was time.
CHAPTER 51
USS TOWERS (DDG-103)
BAY OF BENGAL
WEDNESDAY; 03 DECEMBER
0013 hours (12:13 AM)
TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’
The Tactical Action Officer keyed the net. “Weapons Control—TAO. You have batteries released. Kill Surface Contact Zero One and Surface Contact Zero Two with Harpoons.”
The acknowledgement came immediately. “Weapons Control, aye.”
A handful of seconds later, the steel deck vibrated with the syncopated rumble of anti-ship cruise missiles blasting free of their launch tubes.
“TAO—Weapons Control. Four birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted two-each on the hostile surface contacts.”
Commander Silva watched four friendly weapons symbols blink into existence on the tactical display, and race toward a set of programmed navigational waypoints on the far side of the targets. “How long until the second salvo?”
“About three minutes,” Captain Bowie said.
The plan was to launch the attack in two stages. The first salvo of missiles would fly past the enemy warships, remaining below the radar horizon for the Chinese sensors. When the Harpoons had covered half the distance to their respective waypoints, the second salvo of missiles would be launched toward their own waypoints, on the near side of the targets.
The timing of the launches was calculated to bring all of the Harpoons to their final navigational waypoints at the exact same instant. Then, the missiles would simultaneously turn toward the targets and shift into terminal attack phase, their radar seekers going active as they homed in for the kill.
On the western side of the battle group, the USS Donald Gerrard would be carrying out a mirror image of the attack against the two frigates on her edge of the enemy formation.
The tactic was called simultaneous time-on-target. If it was executed properly, each Chinese escort ship would suddenly find itself with four incoming Harpoon missiles, all converging from different points of the compass.
The Jiangkai II multi-role frigates and the Luzhou air-defense destroyers were known to carry strong anti-ship cruise missile defenses. Faced with one (or even several) Harpoons coming in from the same general direction, there was an excellent chance that the Chinese ships could intercept most or all of them. But the odds that they could simultaneously engage four hostile missiles from widely-separated bearings were much lower.
If the latest tactical assessments were accurate, a simultaneous time-on-target attack should yield one or two successful hits on each of the enemy destroyers and frigates.
For Silva, time had somehow shifted into overdrive. The three minutes between missile salvos seemed to flash by in a few seconds, and then the deck was vibrating with the launch of the second set of Harpoons. Four new friendly weapons symbols popped up on the Aegis display screen, and instantly began vectoring toward their assigned waypoints.
The missiles had been in flight less than a minute when a report from the Electronic Warfare module broke over the net. “TAO—EW. I have two X-band emitters, bearing two-eight-zero. Signal characteristics and pulse repetition frequencies are consistent with fire control radars for Chengdu J-15 fighter aircraft.”
Before anyone had time to react to this message, it was followed by a report from the Air Warfare Supervisor. “TAO—Air. The data stream from NightEagle III just chopped off in mid-transmission.”
The TAO keyed his mike. “Air—TAO. Clarify your report. Have you lost the satellite downlink?”
“TAO—Air. That’s a negative, sir. We’ve still got a good latch on SATCOM 7, but the satellite has lost comms with the drone.”
Silva made eye contact with Bowie. “Captain, unless I miss my guess, a Chinese air patrol just blasted our UAV out of the sky.”
Her assessment was confirmed by the Officer of the Deck about two seconds later. “TAO—Bridge. Lookouts are reporting a fireball bearing two-seven-five. Position angle fifty-one.”
Bowie turned toward the TAO. “Stand by to go active on SPY. Our Chinese friends have just figured out that we’re in the neighborhood. I want to be ready to shift to full Aegis combat mode on a second’s notice.”
He raised his voice so that the entire CIC crew could hear him. “Listen up, people. It’s about to get hot around here. Let’s stay sharp, and be ready for anything.”
On the Aegis display, the Harpoon missile symbols were reaching their final waypoints and turning toward the enemy warships. The missiles were sea skimmers, hugging the wave tops to remain below the radar coverage of the target vessels until the last possible instant. In another ninety seconds or so, they would become visible to the Chinese radar operators.
Bowie had no intention of giving the enemy ships time to react properly to the incoming missiles. He nodded to the TAO. “Nail ‘em with the gun.”
The Tactical Action Officer relayed the order to Weapons Control, and the ship jerked as the 5-inch deck gun loosed its first round. The muzzle report reverberated through CIC like a clap of thunder, only partially muffled by the steel bulkheads and insulated lagging that separated the compartment from the gun deck.
The gun cycled into its auto-load sequence, pumping out another projectile every three seconds, with bone-jarring booms. When the first five rounds were in the air, the gun swung its aim toward the second Chinese destroyer, and pumped out another five shells. Then the gun shifted its attention back to the first destroyer, and fired another five-round salvo.
Vulcano Round:
Moving at a half mile per second, the first round took just under 74 seconds to close the distance to the target. As the projectile neared the end of its trajectory, the canard control module near the nose took a fix from GPS and compared the result to the position estimate from its own inertial measurement unit. The control module adjusted the angle of the stubby canard fins, and the Vulcano round pitched over into its terminal descent phase.
The infrared sensor locked onto the largest heat source within its field of view. The canard control module made a final angular correction, and the self-guided artillery shell streaked down toward the target like a met
eor.
The Luzhou class destroyer was powered by two steam turbines of indigenous Chinese design. When the first round of the artillery barrage began falling from the sky, the strongest thermal signature was a plume of superheated gas rising from the forward exhaust stack.
The first Vulcano round punched through the hottest part of the exhaust trail about six feet above the stack, missing the destroyer cleanly, striking the water about fifteen yards off the ship’s port quarter. It exploded on impact, sending out a shower of shrapnel that either fell into the sea or pinged harmlessly off the metal flanks of the warship.
Three seconds later, the next Vulcano round missed the Chinese vessel by an even wider margin. Then, the third shell arrived.
PLA Navy Ship Shijiazhuang (Luzhou class destroyer #116):
Junior Lieutenant Dong Jie swung his binoculars to the right, and frantically scanned the sky to the starboard side of the ship. The Watch Officer and Tactical Lookout were gathered at the port side bridge windows, trying to get a look at the points of impact for the two explosions that had occurred so suddenly off the port side of the ship.
But they were looking the wrong way. The rockets, or artillery shells, or whatever they were, had come from the east. Dong had heard them distinctly, a strange whistling noise so high-pitched that his ears could barely detect it. What was that sound? What was causing the explosions?
And then he was hearing the whistling noise again, coming from the east, just like the last two times. He turned toward the Watch Officer, and said, “ting!” (Listen!) But the Watch Officer wasn’t listening.
Dong moved swiftly to the watertight door at the starboard side of the bridge. He yanked up the dogging handle, pulled the door open, and stepped out onto the starboard catwalk under the stars. The cold night air hit him like a blow from a hammer, but he had to know where that sound was coming from.