GOLAN: This is the Future of War (Future War)

by FX Holden

  “Well, definitive proof that, its Navy … Carmine, help me out here,” Henderson said, floundering.

  “Everyone knows about the Besat submarine incident. Remind them about that, explain we found traces of radiation on the boat, which confirmed other intelligence we have received.”

  “Right. As you know, coming to the aid of an Iranian submarine in distress, we detected evidence of radiation aboard the boat, confirming other intelligence recently received.”

  “Obtained, not received, Mr. President,” Kaspersky added. “More assertive. Also, finish strongly and clearly. ‘Iran has nuclear weapons and they were provided by North Korea.’”

  “What about the no-fly zone? There is an air war raging between Israel and Russian aircraft supporting Syria. Multiple reports of aircraft shot down. Have any US aircraft or pilots been involved, have any been lost?”

  “No. It was my express instruction that no manned aircraft were to be used enforcing the no-fly zone. No pilots have been lost.” He hesitated. “Have we lost aircraft?”

  Carmine checked the tablet PC on her knee, which contained the latest intel from Defense Intelligence. “Four unmanned US aircraft destroyed to date. Two Russian aircraft which entered the no-fly zone were destroyed. No hiding that, the Russians are expected to protest publicly about it as soon as tomorrow morning Moscow time.”

  “Christ. Thank god we had no pilots in those planes. What about the Russians?”

  “The planes they lost were piloted. We don’t know if their pilots were rescued or lost.”

  “It’s like they are daring us to take them on.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Carmine said. “More you should know. The US Marines we sent into the Golan Heights were attacked by Syrian Druze forces before they could link up to the UNDOF force there. There have been casualties on both sides. With things potentially calming down, we are pulling them out again.”

  “What a cluster. What kind of casualties? Any Marines killed?”

  Carmine checked her notes. “Two wounded, none killed, but they aren’t out of the woods yet. Their evacuation is planned for the same time you go to air.”

  “I want an update on that as soon as we’re off air,” Henderson told her. “So what can I say?”

  “The no-fly zone will remain in place as long as Syrian troops are massed on the Israeli border. The situation there is tense, and there have been clashes between US and Russian aircraft. You don’t want to go into details as the situation is still developing,” Allen proposed.

  “And finish strongly again. Iran is pulling back its naval and ground forces. Israel is ordering its navy back to port and its aircraft to their bases. We expect Syrian forces to stand down, but we remain ready to respond immediately if the ceasefire line is breached,” Kaspersky said.

  “It already has been,” Carmine told them. “Our aircraft and the Israelis attacked a small Syrian armored column inside the Golan Heights made up of Russian private contractors. A small force, probably just a probe.”

  “God save us from privateers,” Henderson said. “No major troop movements yet, though?”

  “No. Syria has been hurt badly by the Israeli air offensive, but we don’t need to talk about that.”

  “Good. Next?”

  “Russia is a part of this talk-fest in Stockholm?”

  “We’ve invited all members of the Security Council, including Russia. Iran and Israel have both agreed to join. It’s a historic opportunity.”

  “What about the blockade, has it been lifted?” Karl continued.

  “Uh, well, yes. The purpose of the blockade was to prevent Iran placing nuclear weapons at the borders of Israel, including its territorial waters. Our latest information indicates Iran is pulling its ships back, so the need for the blockade is gone but…” Henderson rolled his hand. “We will remain vigilant and ready to implement it again if we see any change and so on. The US Congress stands united in…”

  “Stop. Keep it tight, Mr. President,” Kaspersky said. “Don’t be drawn off topic into anything domestic, you just have three things to speak on, the Israel-Iran arms negotiations in October, the no-fly zone, the naval blockade.”

  “What about the situation inside Israel, the cyber attack, the Russian attack on Israel’s satellites…” Allen asked.

  “We already strongly condemned the cyber attack and we are treating it as terrorism as it also affected US interests inside Israel. We stick to that statement. The Russians ‘accidentally’ knocking out Israeli satellites … that’s a matter between Russia and Israel,” Kaspersky said.

  Henderson was already tuning out, thinking ahead to the press conference, Carmine could see that. He stood, buttoning his jacket, and gave them a broad smile.

  “You know what? I think we’re finally getting ahead of this shitshow.”

  US blockade line, Mediterranean Sea, May 20

  Target Bravo is adjusting course to zero one seven degrees, speed 19 knots and rising. It will remain within range for an estimated 48 minutes.

  “Shut up!” Binyamin yelled, curled on his bunk, arms around his head to block out the incessant babble of Gal’s AI. Reporting it had reached the intercept waypoint, that it had identified the target vessel, that it was adjusting course to optimize the interception solution and avoid the Russian escort vessels … all things Ehud would have taken care of, but with Ehud gone the AI automatically stepped into his shoes, assuming a higher level of command authority unless countermanded.

  It wanted the job? Binyamin let Gal have it.

  Then it announced their target, the IRIN Sinjan, was changing course, together with its sister ship, breaking away from the main Russian fleet. Trailing behind the Amol, she was swinging around and headed back up the Aegean, presumably destined for the Bosphorus and the Black Sea, where she had come from.

  They weren’t interested in the Amol. By contrast, they were very interested in the Sinjan, because Mossad agents in Sevastopol had confirmed the planned transfer of a North Korean nuclear warhead at sea, from a Russian freighter, to the IRIN Sinjan.

  It had been Binyamin and Ehud’s mission to ensure that the IRIN Sinjan did not reach port in Syria bearing that warhead.

  Now the Iranians were retreating. Binyamin did not know why. All he knew was that it made Ehud’s death pointless. The Iranians had killed Ehud, they had attacked his homeland, and the price to them was a single Fateh submarine?

  It was not enough. It was not nearly enough.

  Binyamin rolled upright, putting his stockinged feet on the deck and wiping his nose. He returned to his chair in the CIC and scanned the displays on his console.

  “Gal: bring up the situational holo.”

  The globe of light sprang to life. It showed a 360-degree view of the tactical environment around the Gal, both below and above the surface. Behind them was the bulk of the Russian fleet, which Gal had successfully threaded them between without alerting any pickets. The Russian cruiser, the Moskva, was only five miles astern of them. Six miles ahead were the two Iranian trimaran frigates. Their hulls were made for a low radar profile and speed over the water of up to 44 knots, but they also gave off more noise than a single-hulled vessel, making them easier for the Gal to track.

  “Gal: do you have a firing solution on target Bravo?”

  Yes, Captain. Tubes one to five are armed, an updated firing solution is loaded to all weapons.

  “Are we at minimum safe distance for the use of special weapons?”

  Minimum safe distance for the use of special weapons is five miles. We are currently six miles from target Bravo and increasing. At expected rate of separation we will lose contact within 46 minutes.

  “Gal: prepare to validate launch code for special weapon D.”

  Standing by, Captain.

  The Gal had four 650mm tubes from which it could launch ‘specials’. Three contained Popeye submarine-launched cruise missiles with 20-kiloton warheads designed to destroy entire fleets, like the Russian Black Sea fleet, harbors like
the Syrian port of Tartus, or even cities, like Damascus or Tehran.

  For this voyage, the Gal had also sailed with a 650mm torpedo, reverse engineered by Israel from a Russian-designed DT type 65 submarine, and armed with a 5-kiloton warhead. It would not destroy entire fleets – its blast effect was severely dampened by the seawater surrounding it – but it was a very effective weapon for guaranteeing the destruction of a single target like a missile cruiser or aircraft carrier, or, if fired into an enemy harbor, contaminating the harbor with a radioactive saltwater plume that would put the harbor out of commission for months, if not years, while it was being decontaminated. And Israel could deny all responsibility.

  Binyamin had not been authorized to use a Popeye missile on this mission, but Gal’s 650mm nuclear torpedo was more than sufficient to account for the IRIN Sinjan and send it, and its precious nuclear weapon, to the bottom of the Aegean Sea.

  It required two officers to authorize its use. But in the event of the death of one officer, the weapon could be launched by the surviving officer on confirmation of a time-limited launch code validated by Gal, the assumption being that if the officer had the correct authorization code, it was because it had been issued to them by the relevant commanders in Government and the IDF. If both human officers were incapacitated, the weapon could not be fired and the Gal would pilot itself in stealth-optimized mode back to harbor in Haifa or Eilat, whichever was nearer.

  The launch code ‘safe’ on the Gal was a device mounted beside the captain’s console which was updated any time the submarine connected with the Israeli Navy satellite and servers. It had last updated during their check-in window before the cyber attack, and it was showing that the launch codes Binyamin had been given when they got underway were still valid. In the absence of other data, and given what they had heard on the radio when they floated their comms buoy last, it told Binyamin his orders were unchanged, and for at least the next few hours, he still had a valid launch code.

  ‘Sink the Sinjan, use of special weapon authorized.’

  Aboard the Sinjan, Rostami and his crew swung into action. His Officer of the Deck stepped back from his command post. “I stand relieved. The Captain has the deck.”

  “Comms, sound general quarters, advise the Amol and the Moskva of the contact,” he ordered. “Helm, all ahead flank. Weapons, jam and deploy decoys, order Kamand close-in weapons crew to alert, prepare for anti-ship missile defense. Air control, I want a Saegheh drone over that contact dropping buoys immediately.” Rostami paused his string of commands, suddenly remembering he was not alone on the bridge. “Admiral, do you concur?”

  The older man simply nodded. “It is your deck, Captain.”

  Glancing out a portside window, Rostami saw the Amol turning hard to port even as he began to power ahead at flank speed, the Sinjan rising out of the water as it climbed to its maximum speed of 44 knots. They had rehearsed such a scenario many times, in many different seas, both with and without their Russian partners, and each Captain knew what to do. The priority was to protect the Sinjan and its precious nuclear missile. The Sinjan powered directly away from the contact, making the most of its high-speed design, just under the speed of a conventional torpedo, firing electronic and noisemaking decoys into its wake. They would not help against a submarine-launched supersonic anti-ship missile, of course, which was why he had ordered the missile defense team to their stations.

  As Sinjan pulled away, the Amol turned toward the contact, placing itself between the contact and the Sinjan to protect against torpedoes and missiles and allowing it to optimize the trajectory of its anti-submarine rocket torpedo defenses as drones from both the Sinjan and Amol hunted for the sub.

  “Contact identified by sonar as probable Israeli Dolphin-class submarine,” his junior OOD announced.

  The Admiral coughed gently. “Israel has announced its intention to enter arms control negotiations. We have been ordered back to port. We should not fire at the contact unless we are fired upon first, do you agree, Captain?”

  “Yes, of course, Admiral. But in the current environment, prudence dictates…”

  “Indeed it does.” He held out his hand. “Give me the radio, please, and contact the Amol. I want to be sure no one does anything … precipitous.”

  “Echo Fox Echo Alpha Echo niner niner Alpha six. Validate.”

  Launch code is confirmed. Please provide a retinal scan.

  Binyamin bent his eye to the scanner on the safe.

  Launch authority validated. Special weapon D in tube four is available for launch.

  “Gal: do you have an updated solution on the contact?”

  I have a bearing. As the target is drawing away at close to the speed of our torpedo, it will be necessary to detonate some distance from the target, but I estimate a 98 percent chance of a kill due to the wide kill diameter of the special weapon.

  Binyamin kept the image of Ehud in his mind, trapped behind the sealed hatch, hammering on it as the water around him buffeted his legs, rising from his waist, to his chest, to his neck … He closed his eyes tightly.

  “Gal: match generated bearing and shoot.”

  Aye, Captain. Target locked, targeting data downloaded, shot away.

  All Domain Attack: Chaos

  No-Fly Zone, Golan Heights, May 20

  Bunny had her recon drone following the Russian Armata and its UGV wingman, at a low altitude and oblique angle, out of range of its 30mm secondary weapon. Her main focus was on the four Okhotniks which had just entered Golani airspace.

  “Falcon, Falcon, Merit.”

  “Merit, go for Falcon.”

  “I am showing Russian aircraft, four Okhotnik fighters, inside the no-fly zone, do you concur?”

  “Roger for Merit. You are cleared to engage.”

  “Merit committing, out.”

  She hesitated. Her two anti-air Fantoms were circling inside Israel, nearly twenty miles back from the Golan Heights at the moment. She had four Okhotniks spread in a line from north to south throughout the DMZ, but one enemy aircraft in particular she didn’t like – the one over her Marines in Buq’ata. If she came in low … between the hills near the Kfar Blum kibbutz…

  “Merit, be advised, Israeli combat air patrol approaching the no-fly zone, two F-35s. Stand down and await developments.”

  “Merit copies. Are they seeing what we see?”

  “We still have no data link to Israeli air control. We advised them of the Russian incursion, and this is their response. They asked us to tell you to back off.”

  “Happy to let someone else share the pain, Falcon. Merit out.”

  Bunny pointed to their 2D tactical situation display, speaking to Kovacs. “If they can see those Okhotniks, they’ll engage from back here, I’d bet. Their Python missiles only have a twenty-mile range, and they won’t want to get closer. What I’m worried about…”

  “Is … where are the Felon motherships?”

  “Exactly. Their ground pounders are controlled by two guys on the ground in a trailer like ours but that is definitely a combat air patrol, which means each of those Okhotniks is being commanded by a pilot in a Felon in the air somewhere back inside Syria. If they get a sniff of those F-35s there are going to be a lot of missiles flying any minute…”

  The tension in the trailer rose as the blue arrows on their tactical screen that marked the Israeli Panthers and the red arrows marking the Russian Okhotniks drew within twenty miles of each other.

  “Any second now…” Bunny said, the fingers of her left hand drumming on her keyboard.

  “Do you mind?” Kovacs asked her, reaching out a hand to stop her.

  “Sorry. Just getting ready for…” Her left hand darted forward, tapping key combinations as her right hand gripped her flight stick. “Show time! Missile launches. They’re going for the two Okhotniks in the south.”

  In response to her commands, the two Fantoms under her control banked to an easterly heading and lit their tails.

  “What are you doing? Y
ou were supposed to stand down…”

  “And await developments,” Bunny told her, pointing at the missiles on the tac screen, rapidly converging on their targets. “Those are developments. While Ivan is dodging those missiles to the south, we can sneak in and take out that frotting Okhotnik over Buq’ata…”

  Yevgeny Bondarev had expected a response to the incursion of his Okhotniks. Either it would come from the Americans, or from the Israelis. The Byelka radar onboard the Okhotnik was identical to that on his Felon, and it had detected and classified the incoming missiles as Python-5s, optical-infrared guided missiles. Probably fired by F-35s since they could not see the aircraft that had fired them on their radar warning screens.

  He nodded with satisfaction as his pilots engaged their drone’s infrared countermeasure systems. The Directed Infrared Countermeasure turrets on the Okhotnik’s spine and belly could fire modulated laser bursts at incoming infrared missiles to blind them.

  And they had proven very effective over Turkey against older infrared missile designs like the Python-5.

  Bondarev allowed himself a wry reflection as he watched his pilot’s drones maneuver and return fire down the bearing of the enemy missiles with their much superior K-77M multimode missiles. It really didn’t matter the Israelis were flying the most advanced stealth aircraft in the sky if they filled its weapons bay with missiles designed in the 1990s.

  A radar warning alert appeared on his helmet-mounted display at the same time as a chime sounded in his ears. Tracking radar! His Okhotnik reacted automatically to the threat, rolling onto a wing and pointing its nose in the direction of the radar source, low in its stern quarter. Moments later the radar warning turned to a new warning. Missile launched! Peregrine … a US missile this time. A damned American drone was down there, somewhere in the Golani weeds.

  Bondarev wasn’t panicking. The Okhotnik had a high survival rate against the Peregrine, and his drone showed why as it corkscrewed through the sky, firing chaff and infrared decoys in its wake at the same time as it blasted jamming energy at the incoming missiles. It required no intervention from him – in fact, any attempt by him to intervene would just have slowed down its response time.