by Gene Skellig
He knew that the actual purpose of the meeting in India was really all about supporting the reconstitution of the Indian military, and not at all much about relieving suffering for the hundreds of millions of desperately poor, wretched civilians who were dying in India and Pakistan from the effects of the war.
The rapid restoration of the Indian military, after so many of their bases were destroyed in the war with Pakistan, was the anchor in the American strategy to contain China in the region. Without an effective Indian military, China would only be emboldened to increase their presence at their bases in Myanmar, Pakistan, Sudan, Thailand and soon, Indonesia.
China’s attempt to secure their own supply of oil and other commodities from the Persian Gulf and Africa were in direct conflict with American interests in the region, so the proposed American super-base in Perth, and possibly one in India, were crucial to American long-term strategic goals.
Fortunately the outgoing administration had done a good job with the heavy lifting on these files, which ensured a smooth transition for the Parker Administration to continue these initiatives. For his part, the Secretary of State was confident that he would be able to conclude an agreement with the Indians. He had worked with some of their top military personnel before, in the ramp up to Operation Peregrine Eagle, which had paved the way for the Indian invasion of Pakistan.
Secretary Webber looked forward to meeting with Group Captain Patel, whose assessments on Chinese intentions seemed bang-on to the Parker administration. Hopefully he would have the ear of the incoming administration, especially with the risks posed by the incipient failure of Pakistan.
Having once been an Air Force pilot himself, Secretary Webber was impressed with India’s steady build-up of Russian manufactured IL76-M air refueling tankers, and the upgrades the Indian Air Force had made to their Russian SU-27 and SU-30 fighters. So little was known about the true capabilities the Indians had added to the very reliable and super-maneuverable Russian multirole fighters, but recent exercises with Indian SU-27s working with American F-16s in Alaska had proven that the Indians knew what the hell they were doing and had been, before the Indo-Pak war, on the verge of becoming the world’s second most powerful Air Force.
Webber slipped his glasses into his shirt pocket. Having put the Australian file out of his mind, and also having begun to look forward to getting back to Washington before his trip to India, Secretary of State Webber allowed himself to recline his comfortable seat back, and fall into a deep, unworried sleep.
SecState Webber had been asleep for about two hours when an aide woke him up, calling him up to the communications cabin, just aft of the cockpit.
Webber rubbed his eyes to get the cobwebs out.
“Take it slow, Colonel Redmund. I’m not even awake yet. What’s up?”
“Sir. We got new orders. There’s a copy of the message coming off the printer now, but it’s quite simple. We’re diverting to India. We’ll be landing at Hyderabad in six hours.” Webber stiffly pulled himself out of his chair and made his way to the communications cabin.
Reading the message with a frown on his face, Secretary Webber had read enough to know the gist of it. “What will our arrival time be in local time?”
“Uh, about noon, Sir.”
“Shit!” said Secretary Webber, as he read the message: INDIA HAS COMMUNICATED THEIR INTENT TO CARRY OUT A RAID ON CHINESE WARSHIPS BASED AT KYAUKPYU IN THE BAY OF BENGAL. THEIR INTENTION IS TO DESTROY ONE OF CHINA’S SIX JIN CLASS SSBN BALLISTIC MISSILE SUBMARINES. THIS WOULD BE AN ACT OF WAR, AND MOST CERTAINLY PROVOKE A NUCLEAR RETALIATION BY THE CHINESE.
He read on: “IT IS UNCLEAR WHY THE INDIANS ARE CONSIDERING SUCH A DANGEROUS ACTION. IT MAY BE IN RESPONSE TO INCREASED PLA PRESENCE IN THE INDIAN LADAKH AND ASKAI CHIN PORTIONS OF THE TIBETEN PLATEAU. THE PLACEMENT OF CHINESE TROOPS IN THESE INACCESSIBLE MOUNTAINOUS AREAS HAS REKINDLED TENSIONS BETWEEN THE TWO MOST POWERFUL NATIONS IN THE REGION. OUR ASSESSMENT IS THAT THE INDIANS DO NOT INTEND TO CARRY OUT THE STRIKE AT KYAUKPYU. THEIR LIKELY INTENT IS TO PRESSURE THE CHINESE TO WITHDRAW THE JIN CLASS SUBMARINES OUT OF THE BAY OF BENGAL, IN MUCH THE SAME MANNER AS PRESIDENT KENNEDY STARED DOWN THE SOVIETS OVER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. THEIR STRATEGIC GOAL SEEMS TO BE TO DENY THE CHINESE ACCESS TO THE BAY OF BENGAL WITH THEIR MEDIUM RANGE MISSILES. WHILE WE SUPPORT THIS GOAL, YOU ARE DIRECTED TO ENGAGE THE INDIANS TO ASCERTAIN WHETHER THEY WOULD ACTUALLY DESTROY A JIN CLAS SSBN, OR WHETHER IT IS THEIR INTENT TO BLUFF. IF YOU DETERMINE THAT THEY ARE INTENT ON ACTUALLY DESTROYING A TYPE 094 SUBMARINE, YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO WARN THE INDIANS THAT THE UNITED STATES WOULD TAKE MEASURES AIMED AT MAKING SUCH AN ATTACK IMPOSSIBLE. WE DO NOT WANT TO SEE WAR BETWEEN INDIA AND CHINA, AND WILL TAKE EXTREME MEASURES TO PREVENT SUCH. S.P. PRESIDENT.”
“What is it, Sir?” asked one of Webber’s diplomatic team.
“Go ahead and read it for yourself.” Webber said, handing the cable to his senior staffer.
The member of Secretary Webber’s diplomatic team read the message quickly. “Holy Cow! Am I reading this right? If the Indians really mean to destroy a Chinese sub, are we are going to attack India to stop them?”
“I’m not certain that is what we will do, but we have to make them believe we are prepared to do exactly that.”
“But Mr. Secretary, they are our allies. We need them to do just this, to push back against the Chinese. As far as I see it, if they can pressure the Chinese to pull their Type 94s out of the Bay of Bengal, isn’t that the type of pressure we want India to achieve?”
“Sure, but you have to look at it from the Indian perspective. It worked when they actually did something like this to Pakistan in 1971. And more importantly, they just won a nuclear war with Pakistan. Despite the terrible loss of life and damage to their country, India has come out of this in a stronger strategic position. They may actually believe that war with China will somehow work out well for India. So I agree with this assessment. India may actually intend to sink the sub, and we do have to stop them. If that means we bend their arm, great. But if it means we have to destroy one of their SSKs, diesel subs, then we will do that if we have to.”
“But Sir, if we take out one of India’s SSKs then we will be at war with our ally. Besides, the Indians can just use one of those Brahmos hypersonic cruise missiles – their Air Launched Cruise Missile – to take out the Chinese SSBN in Burma. They could launch one from one of their warships at their navy base in the Andaman Islands. So taking out their attack sub would be ineffective”.
“True, but if we convince them that we will degrade their military capabilities to avert a war, then they may agree to make the whole thing just a bluff,” the Secretary of State said, not sure how he would achieve that.
“You know as well as I do that the Chinese are great poker players. They won’t be pushed around by a bluff.”
“I know, Pete,” said Webber, looking beaten.
“This could get nasty in a hurry.”
2
BANISHMENT
When he logged on to check his email on the computer in his cramped office at the Ranger School, Major Peter Weir had a momentary burst of excitement at the subject line of an as yet unread email.
It was his AI, Assignment Instructions. For a moment, he decided to print it off without reading any of it, so that he could share the joy of first reading the good news side by side with his wife, Cheryl. After eighteen years at his side his wife had earned it. She had thrown herself into the full range of activities that the spouse of an up-and-coming officer is expected to do, both inside and outside of the US Army officer’s wives community. So now that he was about to be reassigned, Peter Weir knew that he owed a great debt to his wife, and the best way to begin to repay that debt would be for her to be the first to read the AI message.
They both hoped that he would be reassigned to 3rd Battalion, 75th Rangers just in time for 3rd Bn’s rotation into the breach as the Ranger Ready Force, as one of three identical, rapidly-deployable special operations battalions. With the 3rd Bn
about to rotate into the high-readiness role, ready to deploy anywhere across the globe within 18 hours, it was the best place to be for an officer as eager to face the ultimate command challenge – sudden, unexpected, and unrehearsed engagement with some ruthless enemy.
The 75th Ranger Regiment was well known and highly respected for their specialized skills ranging from air assault, direct action ops, infiltrations and exfiltrations, personnel recovery and so on - the full spectrum of special operations - but what was little known outside the Ranger community were their ‘new talents’ which amounted to a revolution in special operations thinking.
The Rangers were re-inventing themselves into post-asymmetric warfare specialists, ready to wage war – and interdict the enemy – in more nebulous circumstances that defied traditional definitions. And it was more than simply adapting the latest technology into their range of special equipment. It was more than using battle-space sensors and communications technologies to accelerate their OODA loop to the n’th degree – they could already ‘Observe, Orient, Decide, Act’ in a much tighter spiral than just about any potential adversary. No, the real revolution was in better understanding the battle-space context.
Simply put, the global war on terror had taught the Rangers that developing linguistic and cultural understanding required more than mere lip service, as the ability to assess the battle-space now required special ops forces to understand their opponents from their own perspective, quite alien to how North Americans typically see the world.
To be truly effective the world over, the 75th Ranger Regiment had begun to cultivate cohorts of regional specialists who could understand a variety of foreign languages, such as Russian, Hindi, Farsi, Arabic, Indonesian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog and Malay.
And Major Peter Weir was one of this new breed of Special Ops experts. He had spent the last four years studying and making himself an expert on one of the more prominent potential adversaries – China. While his grasp of Chinese was still quite rudimentary, his understanding of their cultural and historical influences was impressive, even to the native Chinese instructors who were guiding him. Teaching would be the wrong word, as Major Weir was given a great deal of freedom in how he approached his assignment, and he was autodidactic enough that his ‘teachers’ quickly found themselves in more of an advisory, supportive role.
On the strictly military side, he had become something of an expert on the order of battle, history, and the TTPs – Tactics, Techniques and Procedures - of the three million strong People’s Liberation Army.
Getting his arms around the great diversity of the five main branches of the PLA – their ground forces, the PLA Navy, PLA Air Force, their strategic missile force and their reserve force had proven to be overwhelming, so Peter had focused on the command structure of the PLA, on the macro level, and also studied the highest readiness units, special operations forces and other rapid-reaction formations on the micro level.
His research amounted to a detailed, highly classified study of the highest readiness units that had been going through considerable changes over recent years, with particular emphasis paid to the People’s Liberation Army’s best equipped and most well trained 38TH Group Army, Beijing Military Region, the new “all brigade” 20th Group Army, Jinan Military Region, and, of course, the highest readiness units of the 42nd Group Army, Guangdong Military Region – of North Korea/Chosin Reservoir fame so deeply entrenched in American military lore.
He had submitted his analysis, aptly entitled “The New Red”, over six months ago. Other than his CO’s initially positive comments, he had received no further comment back from the chain of command. Surely that won’t hurt my chances, Peter thought. If anything, they should put me in as an A5 Planner with 3rd Battalion, where I can get involved in updating plans for and awareness of the Chinese threat – put some action into the ‘pivot to Asia’.
An assignment to such an operational unit, given his exceptional track record as a Major with the 75Th Ranger Regiment, could be accompanied by his promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel. And promotion had been on his mind for the last two years, not so much for the prestige and pay increase, but more for the range of topics he would be able to engage in as a light-colonel. As much as he enjoyed being a senior instructor on loan to the 4th Ranger Training Battalion, at the Ranger School in Fort Benning, Major Weir yearned for the more strategic cutting-edge side of the Special Operations world the he belonged to with the 75th Ranger Regiment, a special ops force of the US Special Operations Command, SOCOMD.
As he laid out in “The New Red”, his own assessment was that the next war would be in Asia. He fully supported the US military’s Pivot to Asia and had been carefully putting together special skills, including language training, that could help move his career along in the right direction.
He felt certain that the powers that be had noticed him, and would find a place for him as an operational planner with 3rd Btn, 75th Rangers. Perhaps they’d make him Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations. DCOS Ops would be perfect, but Major Weir knew that there was a risk that he had over-done his specialization on China and risked being reassigned to the Regimental Special Troops Battalion. That could still result in promotion, as there were lots of O-5s, lieutenant-colonels, in the RSTB, but it would probably result in a desk job and not a front line combat command role – therefore the end of his career progression.
Either way, he thought positively, the promotion’s got to be in the bag this time. The only question is what and where.
But as he retrieved the message from the printer, and folded it so that he would not accidentally read any of it, Peter had a moment of doubt.
What if I have been passed by? What if I’m reassigned to yet another school, or some other garrison post? What if, God forbid, I have already hit my terminal rank? he thought. Cheryl will be devastated. She has her heart set on being a general’s wife, like her mother was. And her father would be so disappointed.
Peter banished the negative thoughts from his mind by taking stock of all the reasons his promotion was assured, and his reassignment to a career-enhancing position was certain.
He knew that the US Army had borne the brunt of the savage cuts to defense spending in recent years, but the Army has been cut to the bone as it is – they can’t cut us anymore. And with guys retiring or taking those early retirement offers there’s got to be some great billets opening up all over the place. And I’m due for mine.
As he looked back on the highlights of his career, and the consistent way he had been moving along with his professional development, putting a tick in every required box – on time or ahead of his peers – he knew that he had done his part in the “up or out” career stream. Certainly he should do just as well as his buddy Steve had done.
Major Weir hung around at the Benning Brew Pub pretending to enjoy a beer. Some of his buddies teased him for refusing to tell them what his Assignment Instructions were, but he insisted on discussing them with “C-in-C-House” first. But while he sat and sucked back his brew, he began to worry again.
He had almost decided to give in to the temptation and read his AI message, when his pal Steve arrived to share a pint with him, and then give him a ride home. They had carpooled for years, for the chance for the best friends to have some time together each day and to save a few bucks in the process.
Saved from the pressure from the other officers, Major Peter Weir was somber and clearly in no mood for chit-chat. It was not just that there were NCO’s around, making discussion of an officer’s career path inappropriate. Had there still been an Officer’s Club on base, where he could more openly talk career, he still would not have felt much like talking about it. But he was more than willing to listen to Steve’s own good news, even if he was not willing to reciprocate.
Years of experience told his friend to leave it alone and just drive Peter home. Steve guessed correctly that Peter was upset about his reassignment, but he knew better than to pry. Sooner or later Peter would let him know.
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For his own part, Steve had already shared his own Reassignment Orders with Steve, at the Brew Pub, and really appreciated the sincerity in Peter’s congratulatory comments.
When Steve slowed his car to a stop in front of Peter’s Married Quarters in the sleepy neighborhood on the far side of the sprawling base in Fort Benning, Georgia, the change in pace seemed to wake Peter from his reverie.
“Sorry, Steve. I should have told you on the way here. I got my Orders.”
“I thought as much. You get just the AI, or the full PCS?”
“Come on, you know how long it takes for that stuff.” They both knew it usually took months for a Permanent Change of Station message to come out of the Personnel Reassignment Work Centre.”
“That’s how it used to be. But let me tell you, ever since that last RAR back in 2012, the Orders have been flying out of the PRWC like you wouldn’t believe.”
“RAR?” asked Peter.
“Rapid Action Revision – you know, to our beloved Department of the Army Regulation 600-8-11? Reassignment – Personnel - General?” Steve said, as he stopped the car. He had an encyclopedic skill at rolling off Regulation titles and numbers that sometimes stopped Peter in his tracks – he had trouble keeping up with the guy. “How long since your last reassignment – three years, right? Well, a lot has changed in how they administer our reassignments now. Don’t you read the revisions to Admin Orders?”
“Yeah, right. As if I have the time for that,” Peter said, shifting uncomfortably. He didn’t want to appear behind the loop, not even to Steve. “It’s really not been on my radar, what with my focus on the Chinese. What’re the important changes?”
“Not much, really,” Steve’s voice changed to a monotone as he quoted Army regulations, “The Reassignment processing begins upon receipt of Assignment Instructions and ends with the issuance of Permanent Change of Station orders in accordance with Army Regulation 600–8–105…”
