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

by FX Holden

  “Koshka two, stay on my wing, we have been ordered to return to Latakia. Koshka three and four, there is a US transport aircraft entering my sector. I’m patching through the contact now. Engage and destroy it, then return to Latakia immediately yourselves. Do not enter the DMZ, we have lost enough aircraft to enemy action today, even if they were just drones.”

  “Koshka three copies.”

  “Koshka four copies.”

  Bondarev set a waypoint for Latakia and banked his aircraft north, checked the airspace around him for other potentially hostile contacts and, seeing none, settled in for the flight home. He had no idea what would await him, but he knew what he was leaving behind. The US no-fly zone had caused his unit nothing but grief, with the loss of several ground vehicles, two pilots and now four Okhotniks – all for a handful of the damned American drones. That was not math he liked.

  If he lived through this war – and with nukes apparently cooking off he wasn’t certain of that outcome at all – he was going to invest heavily in preparing himself for the next one.

  Because he was more certain than ever that it would be fought just as much by machines as by humans.

  US blockade line, Mediterranean Sea, May 20

  HMS Agincourt had ridden out the ripples from the atomic bomb at nine hundred feet below the surface, and thankfully had been subjected to only a ten-degree roll that passed within a minute.

  “Low-kiloton weapon,” Allen Courtenay’s XO decided. “Thank god.”

  Puncher was not quite ready to thank god for anything. Not yet. Not until the fighting was over.

  And then the dying.

  “Pilot, bring us to sensor depth. Weapons, do you have a firing solution on any of the enemy combatants?”

  His weapons officer consulted with his men. “We’ve lost our solutions on all the Russians, sir, too much noise in the water. Might be able to generate new solutions when we get the radar mast up. We have a solution on one Iranian frigate, contact Golf two.

  “Assign two Perseus missiles, please. Fire on my order.”

  His voice sounded a lot calmer than he felt. The Perseus was the most devastating weapon in the Agincourt’s arsenal. Hypersonic, flying at five times the speed of sound, once it burst out of the sea, dumped its launch canister and pointed itself at the IRIN Sinjan, those aboard would have only seconds to live. There was no defensive weapon aboard the Iranian ship that could possibly react in time.

  His men worked quietly, efficiently.

  What happened next would depend entirely on what he found when his sensor masts broke the surface, now just six hundred feet above.

  “Captain, we have lost contact with Bandar Abbas,” his XO, Salari, told a Hossein Rostami who was on the verge of complete panic. “No response from Khorramshahr or Bushehr either.”

  The Admiral of his fleet was staring out from the bridge of the Sinjan and mumbling to himself as two watch officers helped him into an NBC suit. His sister ship was last seen tumbling to the bottom of the Aegean Sea in a boiling crater of steam. A milky white radioactive fog surrounded them still and his entire crew had probably already absorbed more than enough radiation to kill every man aboard.

  Now he had lost contact with his fleet base. Which should have been impossible. Their communication systems were multiply redundant. If Bandar Abbas could not be raised via satellite, then a network of radio transceivers across cooperative nations like Egypt, Lebanon and Syria should have connected him via VHF.

  If they could not raise Bandar Abbas, or any of the other fleet bases, it could mean only one thing.

  They were no longer there.

  The nuclear attack on the Sinjan and Amol had not been an isolated happening. The Zionists must have carried out a damned pre-emptive strike. They had lulled the Iranian regime into a state of security, thinking they had agreed to arms limitation talks, and all the while they were planning a nuclear attack on Iran.

  Hossein Rostami was already a dead man, he knew that. His ship had been drowned in a radioactive waterspout and was probably still sitting in radioactive seas. The levels of radiation he was seeing on the readouts on his command console exceeded the levels for which their NBC suits were rated, and even if they were miraculously lifted off their ship immediately, he and his men were already doomed. If they didn’t die of acute radiation syndrome, they would fall victim to accelerated heart disease and cancer. The Zionists with their small nuclear torpedo had killed him and his men as surely as if they had detonated a 20-kiloton weapon right over their heads.

  He let his building fury replace the panic.

  “Weapons, report missile readiness for VL tube one.”

  “All Yakhont missile tubes armed and ready to fire. Targets set for Tel Aviv. Missile in tube one has been separately armed and arming confirmed by the Korean technician. Hatches released, we are ready to launch.”

  The Sinjan had four of the larger Yakhont two-stage supersonic cruise missiles. The rest were smaller Ghader anti-ship missiles, which he might need if the Americans decided to join the Israeli attack. Their operations order called for the launch of all Yakhont missiles, both conventional and nuclear, with the nuclear weapon launched last, to increase the chances that the nuclear warhead would make it through any anti-missile defenses. A simple strategy of ‘safety in numbers’.

  Rostami pulled the glove from his hand. He called up the nuclear missile launch screen and from the handbook given to him by the captain of the Panamanian-flagged freighter, he entered the activation code for the Yakhont missile in his weapons bay and put his thumb to a print reader to authorize it. By protocol, he had to validate the launch order with Fleet Command, or have it countersigned by another officer.

  “Admiral Daei.”

  The man turned at the sound of his name.

  “Admiral, we have been attacked with a nuclear weapon. We cannot raise Fleet Command, or Tehran. Your orders, Admiral?”

  Admiral Daei stared back at Rostami though the visor of his NBC suit, cloudy with his breath. “It is your ship, Captain. What do you recommend?”

  The man’s words came back to him. If I, or anyone else, gives you the order to use that particular weapon, I want you to look in your heart and ask yourself if there is any other option.

  Hossein Rostami looked into his heart. And there he saw only death, darkness and despair. “We must retaliate with our nuclear weapon, before it is too late. There is no other option.”

  “There is always another option, Hossein. Doing nothing is an option. Dying is an option.”

  “Are you denying launch authority, Admiral?” Rostami asked, his voice tight in the suddenly silent bridge.

  “We were ordered back to Sevastopol,” Daei said. “Our last order was to disengage, not to attack Israel…”

  Rostami felt like screaming, but tried to control his voice. “That was before we were attacked with a nuclear torpedo, before the Amol was sunk, before we lost all contact with the Fleet!”

  The Admiral stiffened inside his suit and stood straighter. “Yes, Captain, I am aware of the circumstances. And I am denying you permission to launch.”

  Rostami had been prepared for the old man’s answer. He’d been expecting it ever since their conversation days before. The man had neither the loyalty to his country, nor the stomach to do what had to be done. He turned to his XO. “Lieutenant Salari, place the Admiral under arrest. The charge is treason. Have two men escort him to his state room.”

  Inside his own NBC suit, his XO looked wild-eyed, sweat running down his face.

  Rostami repeated himself slowly. “Lieutenant Salari, was my order unclear?”

  He watched his XO struggle with his own conscience briefly, deciding where his loyalty lay, no doubt weighing his own mortality and the consequences of the choice he was about to make, before the cloud behind his eyes cleared and he turned to two of the watch crew. “You two, you heard the Captain. Take the Admiral to his state room. One of you remain inside with the Admiral, the other outside, on the d
oor.”

  Admiral Daei hung his head, letting himself be led away, but at the hatch that led from the bridge, he pulled his escort to a halt. “This is your judgment day, Hossein Rostami. I beg you to at least wait, confirm your order with Tehran.”

  Rostami turned his back and waved him away. His escorts took the Admiral’s arms and pushed him through the hatch.

  Rostami was well aware of the magnitude of his decision, and how it might be regarded by history. It was a moment he wanted all on the bridge to remember clearly, so he turned back toward the watch crew and raised his voice so all could hear. “Lieutenant Salari, a second officer must authorize the launch. If you concur with my decision, please validate the launch order.”

  With the stiff gait of an automaton, Salari approached the launch console, peeled off his glove and applied his thumb to the console’s print reader.

  Rostami turned forward, looking down at the missile tubes. “Thank you. Weapons, launch missiles four through one.”

  Marine One Helicopter, Washington, DC, May 20

  “Get the Iranian supreme leader on the line,” President Henderson said to Karl Allen. He was in the Marine One helicopter on his way to Andrews Air Force Base and Air Force One. “And then the Israeli PM.”

  “Yes, Mr. President. You have a call with ExComm and the Joint Chiefs in five,” Allen said, turning away to keep working the phone.

  Henderson had been rushed from the West Wing out to the helicopter on the lawn as soon as the report of the nuclear detonation had been received. So far, no missiles were flying, but the Russian and US fleets were going to merge at any moment and it would only take the smallest miscalculation to change that situation.

  He’d been on the line with the Joint Chiefs on his way out to the helicopter and the situation was chaotic. They weren’t able to tell him if the explosion was a nuclear accident or a nuclear attack. It had apparently happened under the water, so the probability of it being a nuclear torpedo was high, but the epicenter of the explosion was so close to the Iranian frigate, the IRIN Amol, that the accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon aboard that destroyer couldn’t be ruled out. The US ships on the blockade line had gone on high alert, the whole of US Central and European Commands were at DEFCON 1, from Nuuk in Greenland to Turkey in the south-east, and NATO forces in Asia had also been moved to high alert.

  Karl Allen was speaking on the phone and then put his hand over the receiver. “The Ayatollah isn’t available. I have the Iranian President.” He handed the phone to Henderson. “And he’s pissed. Don’t expect diplomatic language.”

  “President Zarif,” Henderson began. “I wanted to share…”

  “Mr. President, an Israeli submarine has used a tactical nuclear weapon against our ships in an unprovoked attack in international waters,” the Iranian interrupted. “Israeli aircraft have been attacking targets across Iran all night. These are acts of war, and Iran will reply in kind, with all the weapons at our disposal.”

  “President Zarif, please, we…”

  “Goodbye, President Henderson.”

  Henderson stared at the phone. “Bastard hung up on me.”

  Allen raised his eyebrows but did not look surprised. “Israeli PM on two.”

  Henderson reached across and switched lines. “Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for taking my call…”

  “This is why we need Iranian disarmament, President Henderson.”

  Henderson looked at Karl Allen in surprise. “I’m sorry?”

  “I assume you are calling about the nuclear accident in the Mediterranean. They cannot even control their nuclear arsenal. They do not have the technology or the means to adequately safeguard their weapons.”

  “You … you’re denying Israel was involved in this incident?”

  “Completely. Our intelligence suggests an accident aboard an Iranian nuclear-armed warship. We will be protesting to the United Nations, demanding Iran surrender its nuclear weapons immediately into safekeeping to prevent further incidents.”

  Karl Allen was shaking his head and mouthing a profanity. Henderson ignored him. “Mr. Prime Minister, I am sure any further provocation of Iran…”

  “Provocation of Iran?!” the man exploded. “Half of Israel is still without power, satellite or cellular connections. Our hospitals have been turned into mortuaries. Our air force has taken heavy losses in clashes with Russian aircraft over Syria. Syrian and Iranian troops are still massed at our borders. Please do not speak to me of Israeli provocations.”

  Allen had been pulling up something on a tablet screen and handed it to Henderson. “Mr. Prime Minister, Iran believes Israel was behind this incident – I have that from the Iranian President personally. We believe an Iranian retaliatory strike is imminent, probably with ballistic missiles.”

  “Israel is ready.”

  “Yes, I am sure. But so are we. Mr. Prime Minister, I am just about to authorize a US attack on Iran equivalent to the cyber and space attack on Israel. We believe it will neutralize the Iranian ability to command its ballistic missile forces and thereby eliminate any risk it can use nuclear weapons against Israel.”

  “It will only take a single Iranian missile commander to make a lie of such a boast, President Henderson.”

  “Nonetheless. We do not intend to follow Israel down the rabbit hole of nuclear war, Mr. Prime Minister. Let me make this clear, any use by Israel – any further use by Israel – of nuclear weapons in this conflict will result in the immediate cessation by the United States of all future support, political or military, for the State of Israel. In perpetuity. Israel has so very few friends in this world, Mr. Prime Minister – I would make it my personal duty in life to see you were left with none. Is that understood?”

  There was a heartbeat of silence at the other end of the line. “We will take that under consideration. Goodbye, Mr. President.”

  Henderson slammed the phone back into its cradle. “He can take my ass under consideration.”

  Karl Allen picked up the phone again. “I’m glad you let him know you aren’t buying that BS about this being an accident.”

  “Not for a second. Get me Admiral Clarke, and get word to Tonya Dupré. Initiate Operation Illumination, immediately.”

  Russia and Iran were not the only State actors capable of an All Domain Attack. The US had been preparing to fight an All Domain War against a hostile nation-state for decades, and its plans, as well as its capabilities, were very, very advanced.

  Operation Illumination was the US plan for phase one of an All Domain Attack on Iran, which Tonya Dupré had refined in collaboration with staff at the Pentagon over the last two weeks, to account specifically for an escalation in the conflict involving Israel, Iran and Syria.

  As the US President set his stamp on the executive order initiating the operation, he set in train a series of actions which had been queued and ready to execute at a moment’s notice. The first was within Tonya Dupré’ jurisdiction – a massive ‘distributed denial of service’ attack on the entirety of Iranian government communications infrastructure, from telephone – cellular and landline exchanges – to old-fashioned telegraph, which still existed in Iran. International telephone and internet links into and out of Iran were targeted, with the aim to cut Iran’s leaders off from their subordinates, and Iran off from the world.

  Iran’s SMS2 military satellites were the next targets. Though their base stations would be compromised, Iran’s military would still have the ability to relay messages between Iranian military units around the region via satellite. But the satellite’s positions were constantly monitored, and from Arleigh Burke-class destroyers around the world, within minutes of the President’s order, SM-3 anti-ballistic missiles lanced into the upper atmosphere to destroy them.

  A blanket of silence was to be laid over Iran, but it was only the first phase of Operation Illumination. Even as the debris of the Iranian satellites began burning up as they fell out of orbit, two B-21 Raider aircraft circling high over the Isa Air Base in Ba
hrain sent 32 JASSM CHAMP extended-range cruise missiles at suspected Iranian ballistic missile sites inside Iran while another patrolling over Jordan sent 16 missiles toward the border between Syria and the Golan.

  Their mission was not to strike specific targets. Iran’s ballistic and ground-launched cruise missiles were either buried deep in silos, or mounted on mobile launchers which were hard to hit and destroy remotely, even with the best of satellite and surveillance intelligence. The CHAMPs (Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missiles) launched by the B-21 Raiders were not even carrying explosives – they were carrying electromagnetic pulse emitters. They were designed to launch and loiter, flying to a target area and then circling around it, blasting the ground underneath with high power microwave energy that would fry the electronics of anything inside their footprint, from the smallest field radio to the launch systems of a ballistic missile.

  Between them, before they ran out of fuel, the 48 stealth cruise missiles launched by the Raiders would cover 60 percent of the land mass of Iran, including all of its known military bases, missile launch sites and most of its larger population centers, and all of the Golan border area of Syria. What the cyber and satellite attack on Iranian and Syrian forces had not crippled, the CHAMP missiles would fry. If by a miracle the Iranians managed to get a missile away, its guidance system would be scrambled before it got a hundred feet off the ground.

  They were terrible, indiscriminate weapons, whose microwave pulses did not care whether they were attacking the guidance system on a ballistic weapon, the delicate medical equipment inside a hospital intensive care unit, or even the pacemaker inside the heart of an octogenarian shopping in the Grand Bazaar in Tehran.