“Argonauts never deploy without full gear, sir. Captain MacRae insists on it. So I can’t figure that anyone could have gotten the drop on them. It’s a real mystery.”
“Well stay on it. Something will turn up soon,” said Wells, always the optimist. “I’m sure of it. Oh, and happy new year.”
“The same to us all, sir.”
Morgan saluted, and was on his way.
Midnight, 2 JAN 2026
The new year was barely a day old when the helicopters lifted of the deck of Canberra. She was Australia’s big beautiful Babe, the largest ship in the fleet at a little over 27,000 tons, and was carrying 32 helicopters, including the C-47 Chinook and the Taipan. That allowed her to lift over 600 troops in one throw, two full battalions. She would be protected by DDG Hobart, Australia’s premier fleet air defense destroyer with 42 VLS cells carrying some of the best missiles on earth for that job, including the American Standard Missile-6, with another two dozen ESSM’s, and SM-2. Frigates Perth, Stuart and Arunta also carried 32 ESSM’s each.
The occupation of Ras Karma went off without a hitch, as the Chinese had seen the base as untenable, and pulled out days earlier. As the morning began, Admiral Wells had up two small CAP groups. One was a two plane scout group out looking for signs of the Chinese Fleet. The other was a four plane defensive CAP patrol designated Seabat.
At 12:30, the CAP patrol picked up a pair of Chinese planes and moved to engage, but they were slippery when it came to getting a good target lock. The Chinese were up to their old tricks again, using their long range J-20’s in the scouting role as well. As the Seabat patrol closed, they eventually got locks and fired, and that started a brief 9 minute duel that saw the Chinese lose one J-20, though the last plane evaded and made good its escape to the west. It had done what it came to do, its long range radar painting the British fleet, as well as the Australian Maritime Task Group, which was just south of Socotra Island.
Captain Jiang Li was in command of the Aden Group aboard Nanchang, and his name meant “Beautiful Craftsman.” Over the years the navy had seen that in his performance at sea trials and maneuvers, which is why he had been given the very first Type 055 Destroyer when it sailed in 2020. Though he had been offered a promotion to a term as a shore based Admiral, he had turned it down, preferring to stay with his ship and remain at sea.
His eight ship flotilla might be outnumbered where hulls were counted, but he had 72 YJ-18’s with a 290 mile range, and another 16 of the long range YJ-100’s, The enemy fleet had been spotted about 315 miles off, so he was very close to salvo range with his premier ship killers, the Sea Eagle-18. At that moment, the two sides were closing on one another at a combined 45 knots per hour, so he sounded battle stations and hoped he would get into range in the next few minutes.
When Admiral Wells got the report on the two J-20’s, he assumed his fleet had been discovered, and seeing the enemy with his own scout group, he realized he was sailing into danger. He had seen how the American Captain operated, never allowing the range to slip inside 300 miles, and using his air wing to do the heavy lifting. This time, the British Admiral was determined to do the same.
“The fleet will come right to sixty degrees northeast. Signal the Australian MTG to steer 90 degrees east. Commence air strike operations as planned.”
That was going to send up the Whalesign Squadron, with each plane carrying eight of the new SPEAR strike missiles, with the small eight kilogram tandem warheads. No single hit could threaten a ship, but an accumulation of hits from that ordnance could quickly mission kill even the best destroyers, and force them to withdraw. There would be twelve planes in that strike, with five more on escort. As for Fleet defense, the 14 fighters on HMS Victorious would be assigned that role, and the six on Ark Royal were the fleet scout group.
The Whalesign strike group formed up and flew southwest before turning on the target heading, seeing the American Hawkeye AEW plane that the Roosevelt had sent south to assist the British operation. They moved to loiter speed for a few minutes to allow the escort fighters to cruise on ahead. With the long dark shape of Socotra Island off their left wingtips, they then accelerated to 480 knots and started towards the enemy fleet.
At Riyan airfield on the coast of Yemen, the base commander got the report from his midnight scouting mission. He had lost a J-20, but found the British fleet. Now he rushed to get a KJ-200 AEW plane up, with five J-10’s. That mission package was to move within radar range of the enemy, and track them. At the same time, Captain Jiang Li gave the order to accelerate to 30 knots and close on his targets. He desperately needed that AEW coverage, because the scouting fix was already aging, and the YJ-18 was finicky, wanting a fairly certain target location prior to launch.
It was the same problem that had plagued Admiral Sun Wei—getting that first link in the Kill Chain forged was always the hardest to accomplish. But the British had better overall situational awareness, and noted what the Chinese were doing.
“Merlin, Balrog. Be advised—we’ve spotted five J-10’s up and heading your way. Whalesign reports low missile count. Over.”
“Roger Balrog, go hot and then RTB. Merlin over.”
As this engagement began, the Merlin controller saw that there were no other Chinese air threats on his screen, and therefore vectored the Saber escort group north to help clean up those J-10’s. The Whalesign strike group had closed to target range and was cleared hot, firing off all its SPEAR’s in a cloud of steel.
As they did so, the five F-35’s of Saber Group made short work of the entire Chinese mission package, downing all five J-10’s and then killing that KJ-200. Then three more J-20’s scrambled from Riyan AFB to give challenge. No one saw them on radar….
Saber-5 was loitering, keeping the Chinese Fleet painted on radar and transferring that data to the fleet. The SPEAR’s were all in the air, and now just 30 miles from the Chinese ships. At 01:30 the J-20’s were finally detected, streaking in at 1000 knots. Then Saber Group released its Meteor storm, even as the Chinese put their PL-15’s in the air.
“Whalesign, Whalesign! Vector North and then come left to 295 Degrees and engage bandits. Over.”
The strike planes still carried two Meteors each, which meant they had 24 plane killers available to help defeat this enemy interception. One J-20 was hit, a wing blown off that sent the plane into a dizzy cartwheeling death. The other two J-20’s broke off to the east. They were not merely trying to evade the British fighters, but were bravely charging towards the British fleet in an attempt to refine their position.
The Chinese ships had finally seen the incoming SPEAR’s, eighteen miles out, and the HQ-9’s started flying off the decks in a fiery wash of white smoke that soon obscured the entire task force. It was a torrent of missile fire from those fully loaded VLS Bays, and it was tearing into the SPEAR formation like sharks attacking a school of prey fish.
Yet that was always the point of an initial strike like this. The sea Captains had learned that the defense was usually too potent to break through on the initial strike, but the Whalesign group had put 96 missiles in the air, and that was going to pull a lot of HQ-9’s, which would severely weaken the defensive capability of the Chinese fleet and expose it to real damage on any subsequent strike.
The skies were blossoming with yellow fireworks in the night, glowing low over the sea, as the SPEAR’s were coming in at 300 feet elevation. In the next terrible five minutes, they HQ-9’s would find and kill them all, and not one would get as close as five miles. Yet when it was over, and Captain Jiang Li took stock of his inventory, he was down to 44 HQ-9B’s and another 23 HQ-9A’s, not enough to defeat another strike of that magnitude. Behind those, he would still have 96 short range HQ-10’s, so he reasoned he could take one more blow and remain alive.
“Seabat, Merlin. We have a leaker. Cleared hot!”
The British controller had seen a solitary J-20 rising from 300 feet and climbing madly into the sky. It was already within radar range of the fleet, and had to
be taken out, for the longer it stayed there the better a fix it might deliver to the Chinese ships.
The J-20 banked and dove to evade the first two Meteors sent out after it, dancing at 38,000 feet. Then it fired its last remaining PL-15’s one finding Seabat-7 for a kill. Two more Meteors went after it, getting revenge for their lost comrade, and ending its mad rush at the fleet.
But it had delivered the goods….
As Captain Jiang Li leaned over the radar screens, he saw that the northernmost of two British groups still had some uncertainty in the position readings, its heart about 310 miles out. The southern group was a little closer at 300 miles, and the position fix was solid. He could attack that now with the YJ-100, but he had only 16 of those missiles, right there on the Nanchang.
They would certainly be defeated, he thought. Better to wait and try to get inside 290 miles for my YJ-18’s. We are very close. They are turning east and trying to open the range again, just as they did earlier against Admiral Sun Wei. Now we must run like the wind, for they will be hours getting more planes ready to strike us.
He looked at his watch, seeing that the satellite Yaogan-7 was about to make its overhead pass, and within 100 miles of the British task groups. It would strengthen his hold on the enemy targets, and hopefully resolve the downrange ambiguity that was inevitable when firing at a target nearly 300 miles away.
Now is our time, he thought, as he turned to the CIC station. We must strike them now….
Chapter 3
03:00 Local, 2 JAN 2026
Admiral Wells was now considering his options. Particularly since the amphibious group was slower. While the strike planes were returning, he launched his last four ready F-35’s in the air defense role, realizing the ball was now in the Chinese side of the court.
He was a little worried about the amphibious operation group, but two much needed ships were coming on the scene from the south, the new Type 45B class destroyers Legion and Lightning. These ships had been stationed at Gibraltar, undergoing a systems upgrade there but were ordered to the Indian Ocean weeks ago, arriving at the Seychelles by the 3rd of December. They lingered there for some time, refueling and embarking elements of the Royal Marines that were no longer needed to defend the place, and then moved north.
The British had been desperately trying to give their fleet some surface warfare capability, while also finding a defensive counter to the Chinese YJ-18 that had killed so many frigates. They thought their new Sea Ceptor system was the answer, but where aghast when it was unable to target or kill the speedy YJ-18 traveling in its near hypersonic terminal run.
Something had to be done.
“We’ve taken a few very hard knocks,” said Sir Frederick Simon Gill, Captain of Prince of Wales. “Let’s hope they don’t get their teeth into our heels this time out.”
“We’ll hold our own, Freddie,” said Wells. “Two more destroyers are coming up to join the Aussies—L Class this time out, and with upgrades.”
“What sort of upgrades?”
“Well as you know, our Sylver GWS-45 VLS bay on the Daring Class is a fine system, but it’s much smaller than the Mark-41 used by US destroyers, with just 48 cells as opposed to 64 on the US ships. But few people know that our system actually has space for the addition of 12 more A50 vertical launch cells for SAM’s or A70 cells for the Storm Shadow cruise missile.”
“Indeed?” said Sir Frederick. “Damn waste of space if we haven’t installed the cells.”
“Yes,” said Wells. “Tricky business getting Parliament to cough up the pounds required. Oh, they want a capable navy, but they just don’t want to pay for it. Before the war, the Daring Class had been primarily an air defense destroyer, with little or no surface or ASW capability. But as tensions rose in the early 2020’s, and potential rival navies produced more powerful surface warriors like the Chinese Type 055, we knew we had to improve that class, and give it some teeth. The only thing we could come up with was the addition of American Mark 41 VLS bays. Yet we could have done much more. My lord, look at the Argos Fire. It’s a perfect example of what could be done.”
“Private money from the Fairchild Group went into that project,” said Sir Frederick.
The Fairchild redesign of her Daring Class acquisition had removed useless armaments like the two twin 324mm torpedo tubes and made other alterations to gain interior space. It kept the GWS-41 Sea Viper System, but actually trimmed off that extra space for 12 more cells, because it was deemed inadequate. That created a smaller Sea Viper VLS Bay, and so the designers doubled down and put in two, which bumped the Argos Fire from 48 Cells to 96, the equivalent of a US Burke Class destroyer. They then moved aft and found room for a smaller 24 cell Mark 41 VLS Bay on either side of the ship, and this was where the new “Gealbaum” SSMs were mounted. Those bays could also receive the latest US LRASM, and so the Argos Fire was now a true multi-purpose destroyer, with enhanced air defense and a respectable punch for surface warfare.
When the Royal Navy looked at its own Daring Class ships, they realized they would not have the time to make major alterations to gain the necessary space for such an upgrade, but there was room for two smaller16-cell Mark 41 VLS bays, and adding those would open the door to the purchase of any US missile system that used that VLS system. They choose the Multi-Mission Tomahawk, the same system planned for the new US FFG-X program, to give the ship some long range surface warfare capability, and Daring and Dragon spent most of December getting that upgrade at Diego Garcia.
“The newer Type 26 Frigates will have that same Mark-41 system, three 8-Cell bays,” Wells explained. “The L series ships, like Lightning and Legion, used the two extra VLS bays for enhanced air defense, and they got modified at Gibraltar last month. Instead of putting in the Sea Ceptor, those 16-cell bays could hold many more American ESSM’s, vastly expanding the destroyer’s defensive capability.”
“If only we had them down here sooner,” said Sir Frederick. “We’ve lost too many good men and women out here as things stand. Frankly, the Daring Class as it was originally conceived was a fine ship in its time, but the world has changed. We’ve seen it is now just barely adequate in the air defense role, which is why the L-Series likely got those upgrades. But yes, we could do more.”
“I’m afraid that was all the Navy could manage given time and budget,” said Wells, “and war found the fleet less prepared than we might have wished. The high ship loss tally and casualty rate is the harvest we reap for that lack of preparedness. Live and learn. Legion and Lightning are just over the horizon, about 25 miles south of the Australian MTG and coming at 28 knots to bolster their defense. We’ll manage.”
04:00 Local 3 JAN 2026
Time waits for no man, or so the old saying goes. Even the brief minutes it would take for the Chinese ships to receive their orders and begin processing firing solutions had created tiny circles of uncertainty around most of the targets. All but two ships in Wells’ group were soon ten minutes old, and those where the reading remained solid were too far away to strike.
All but three ships in the amphibious group were aging rapidly, so those that were still reading good were targeted with a much smaller salvo than Captain Jiang Li would have wanted. Frustrated, he knew that all he could do now was continue his pursuit, slowly gaining on the slower southern task force, where he now could read the identities of most every ship. So only 24 missiles went out after the most lucrative targets, making their slow approach at 500 to 530 knots—slow by the standards of modern missiles.
The United States had set the mold for SSM design with the Tomahawk and Harpoon, and their shadow still fell heavily over the seascape of this war. The Harpoon was all but gone, but the main long range SSM in the US inventory was still the venerable Tomahawk, upgraded, but decades old at the dawn of the hypersonic missile era. Few ships had been hit or sunk by Tomahawks, and those that died were ships with depleted SAM inventories. It was found that the Tomahawks might only get hits when fired in great numbers, and after an air st
rike had already weakened the enemy defense.
By contrast, Kirov sunk two carriers and a Type 055 with relatively few Zircons, and Kursk sunk three other ships with its speedy Onyx. Speed had become the predominant killing factor where the missiles were concerned, though stealth still contributed to any offensive threat. The low, slow approach of the Tomahawks might see them creep in close, but they would eventually be seen by modern radars, and the HQ-9 had been more than capable of shooting them down.
On the other side, Admiral Sun Wei had savaged the British fleet with his YJ-18’s, too fast in their terminal runs to be easily stopped. So Wells had urged his Captains to find ways to get those missiles before they got close enough for that high speed sprint.
It was the Australian Destroyer Hobart that first answered the call, with Standard Missile-6. The ship could target and track the vampires over 100 miles away, and hit them that far out, something that even Kirov’s vaunted Gargoyles could never achieve. Balrog flight off the Ark Royal had also come down to stand a watch, and it got all but two of the Vampires in one group of eight. The two survivors were YJ-100’s heading for the frigate Richmond, but they had no high speed terminal run, and were fair game for Sea Ceptor. They would not be needed. The incoming destroyer Lightning put Aster 15’s out after them and cleared the threat board.
About 05:00, as most of the strike planes and escorts were returning to the British carriers, the Chinese tried one more time to get good target locks for the YJ-18’s. They had three J-20’s left at Riyan AFB in Yemen, and sent up two with orders to get radar on the British fleet. Their stealth was good enough to even allow them to catch Seabat flight unawares as it was winging its way home, their weapons bays empty, and two F-35’s were lost. Then the J-20’s poured on the power, accelerating to 1000 knots, and raced away towards the British fleet.
One British plane had a single Meteor left, and it sent it after them in hot pursuit, getting some payback with a kill. The last plane, however, then switched on its long range radar, and painted the British Fleet. When the data was shared with the Chinese ships, Captain Jiang Li began firing missile salvos at 05:10. His task force had been running at 30 knots, slowly making up the miles on the British as they moved east. Now the range had closed to 270 miles, inside the reach of the YJ-18. It was now or never…
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