“Stand by for release! All hands, prepare for cargo release! Five ... four ... three ... txvo ... one ... zero. Release!" Sun heard several loud snap! sounds and a slight burble through the fuselage: then, slowly, the cargo began to roll backward through the cargo bay and out through the open clamshell doors.
The “cargo" w’-as a Chinese M-9 rocket, an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Admiral Sun Ji Guoming. as chief of development for the People s Liberation Army, was conducting yet another experiment on the possible future deployment of the M-series tactical ballistic missiles on nonconventional platforms. For years, other countries had experimented with alternative methods for deploying missiles to make them less vulnerable to counterattack. The most common w’as rail-garrison or road-mobile launchers, and China relied heavily on these. But although the missiles were transportable, they still needed presurveyed launch points to ensure an accurate position fix for their inertial guidance units, which meant that the launch points could be known and attacked.
The advent of satellite-based positioning and navigation greatly increased the accuracy of military weapons—at any moment, even while moving in an aircraft, it was possible to capture position, speed, and time from the satellites, dump the information to a missile or rocket, and be assured of previously unbelievable accuracy. If the weapon could get position updates from the satellites while in flight—and the M-9 missile Sun had just launched could do just that—the weapon’s accuracy could be improved even more. And if the missile contained a TV camera with a datalink back to the launch aircraft so an operator could lock onto a particular target and steer it right to impact, pinpoint accuracy was possible.
Sun stepped back through the cargo bay, waving away several soldiers who cautioned him not to go back there, and walked right to within a few feet of the edge of the open mouth of the cargo bay. What he saw was absolutely spectacular.
The M-9 missile was suspended vertically below three sixty-foot parachutes, fitted with strobe lights so he could see where they were in the darkness. He knew that as the 14,000-pound missile fell, it was receiving yet another position update from the American Global Positioning System satellite navigation constellation, and gyros were compensating for winds and missile movement, and were aligning the missile as vertically as possible. Suns cargo plane was about two miles away now—the missile could just barely be seen under the three chutes— when suddenly a long white tongue of fire and smoke appeared from under the parachutes. The three chutes deflated as the weight was taken off the risers, then they cut away completely as the M-9 rose up through the sky.
A perfect launch! Sun had proven—again, for this was his seventh or eighth successful air launch—that it was possible to launch a ballistic missile from a cargo plane. No special aircraft was necessary. Any cargo plane—military or civilian—could do it, with the right modifications. All of the avionics needed to transfer satellite navigation data to the missile was in a “strap-down” container that could be transported with ease and installed in less than an hour.
Sun signaled that he was clear of the opening and that it was safe to close the cargo doors, hurried forward, and entered the air lock leading to the crew cabin. Ignoring the biting cold, he stripped off his gloves and snowsuit as the air lock pressurized, then removed his oxygen mask and helmet, opened the forward air lock door, and entered the launch-control compartment. “Status!” he called out excitedly.
“M-9 is running hot and true,” the launch officer replied. “Altitude eighty thousand feet, twenty-nine miles downrange. Datalink active.” The officer handed Sun a messageform. “This came in for you while you were aft, sir. Message from headquarters.”
Sun took the messageform but did not bother to look at it—he was too excited about the launch. He watched in childlike fascination as the tracking numbers changed, moving his finger along a chart following its position as the missile zoomed northeastward. It was running perfectly.
Minutes later, the M-9 was approaching its target—Tung Ying Dao, what the rebel Nationalist government on the Chinese island province of Formosa called Tungsha Tao. Tung Ying Dao was a large archipelago of islands and reefs in the South China Sea, claimed by Taiwan, about midway between the southern tip of Formosa and Hainan Island, almost two hundred miles east-southeast of Hong Kong. The rebel Taiwanese government had erected several military sites on the largest island, Pratas Island, including U.S.-made Hawk and Taiwanese-made Tien-Kung antiaircraft and Hsiung Feng anti-ship missile sites. The defenses on the island were a great threat to Chinese ships passing between the mainland and the South China Sea, especially ships bound for the Spratly Islands, the archipelago of islands, reefs, and atolls claimed by many western Asian nations.
“M-9 reaching apogee,” the technicians reported. “Altitude one hundred fifteen thousand feet, seventy-one miles downrange.”
Admiral Sun touched the sensor control, and in a few seconds several white dots appeared on a dark black and green background. This was an infrared image of the scene below from the nose cone of the M-9 missile, beamed to the launch aircraft via radio datalink. Sun magnified the image to maximum and could just barely make out the outline of Pratas Island. Several other large, hot targets, far more intense on the heat-sensitive sensor than the island, showed as well—these were target barges with large diesel heaters set up on them, arrayed around Pratas Island to act as targets for the M-9 missile.
But Sun ignored the target barges. Instead, he locked the targeting bug of the M-9 missile on the northwest section of Pratas Island, where he knew the missile installations were located. The senior technician noted this at once: “Excuse me, Comrade Admiral, but you have locked the missile on the landmass. ...”
“Yes, I know,” Sun replied with a sly smile. “Continue the test.”
“Our telemetry systems won’t record the impact if it strays more than twenty miles off course,” the tech reminded him.
“How long will we have datalink contact before impact?”
“It should hold lock all the way to impact,” the tech replied, “although terrain or cultural obstructions may block the signal within approximately eight seconds to impact.”
“How far will the missile drift off course in eight seconds?”
“If it stays locked on, it will not drift off course,” the tech replied. “If it breaks lock when we lose the datalink ... it will miss perhaps by not more than a few dozen meters.”
“Then I think we will get all the telemetry we need,” Sun said. “Continue the test.”
The closer the M-9 got to its target, the more detail they could see. Through occasional spats of static and one short nine-second datalink break as the warhead separated from the booster section, Sun could start to make out large buildings, then piers and wharves, then finally individual buildings. Through long hours of study, Sun knew exactly what he was looking at, and as soon as the system allowed him to do so, he locked the warhead on the main barracks building, a two-story wooden frame structure just a few hundred meters from the northwestern shoreline of Pratas Island. Sun knew that approximately a thousand rebel Nationalist soldiers were stationed on Pratas Island, manning and servicing the antiair and -ship sites—and he knew that about one hundred Taiwanese soldiers would be asleep right now in those barracks.
“Twenty seconds to impact,” the tech reported. “Uh . . . sir, should we lock on one of the target barges now? ”
“Captain, if you dare question my actions ever again, you will be commanding a garbage detail in Inner Mongolia province by tomorrow night,” Sun Ji Guoming said in a low voice. “As far as you are aware, I locked the missile warhead’s targeting sensor on the primary target barge, and you saw it lock on perfectly as expected. Is that clear, Captain?”
“Yes, sir," the technician responded. He watched in horror as the war-head careened down out of the sky, faster and faster, never wavering— it had held lock all the way until it passed below datalink coverage. The last thing they saw on the TV monitor was the broad, flat roofline of the
barracks building. Even if the warhead started to drift, which it didn’t, the warhead would not have missed that building full of sleeping soldiers. The warhead had no explosive charge on board, only concrete ballast to simulate a 300-pound high-explosive warhead, but such a large object smashing home at over 900 miles an hour was going to do major damage even without a major explosion. The devastation would be catastrophic—and the rebel Nationalists would never know what hit them.
“Excellent test, comrades, excellent,” Admiral Sun announced. “Secure all stations.” He remembered the urgent message from Beijing just then, and fished the messageform out of his flight suit pocket and read as he continued, “Section leaders, I expect full reports on any difficulties to me before we land. Pilot, let us head back to base and—”
He stopped, dumbfounded, as he read. No, no, this was impossible!
“Cancel that last order, pilot,” Sun shouted. “All available speed to Juidongshan naval base. What is our time en route?”
“Stand by, sir,” the pilot responded. Sun was in a daze as the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer pulled out charts and started computing the new flight planning information. The three officers looked at each other nervously; then the pilot turned to the navy admiral lower class and said, “Sir, the naval base at Juidongshan does not have a runway long enough to accommodate this aircraft. The closest base that can safely accommodate us is Shantou, ETE, five-zero minutes. We can have a helicopter standing by to take you to Juidongshan, ETE—”
“Pilot, I did not ask you to fly to Shantou,” Sun said angrily. “Are the runways and taxiways at Juidongshan stressed to take this aircraft?”
The copilot looked up the information in the airman’s flight supplement manual and replied, “Yes, sir, the runways can handle us at minimum gross weight. The taxiways and ramp areas are limited to thirty thousand pounds, so—”
“That is all I need,” Sun said. “I do not need you to park this plane— I only require that you drop me off. You can dump fuel as you begin your approach to get down to emergency-landing fuel weight.”
“But, sir, the runway is made for only liaison aircraft and helicopters,” the flight engineer said. “It is only five thousand feet long! Even with only minimum fuel to reach Shantou, our safe takeoff roll will exceed the runway available by—”
“Lieutenant, I do not care if this plane becomes a permanent fixture at Juidongshan—I want to be on the ground at Juidongshan in less than a hour. If I am not in a car and on my way to headquarters in that time, the next destination you will be landing at will be a security ice cave in Tibet. Now, go!”
PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY NAVY EASTERN FLEET (TAIWAN OPERATIONS) HEADQUARTERS, JUIDONGSHAN NAVAL BASE,
FUJIAN PROVINCE, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
SUNDAY, 18 MAY 19 97, 2316 HOURS LOCAL (17 MAY, 1416 HOURS ET)
“Greetings to you, Comrade Admiral Sun Ji Guoming,” General Major Qian Shugeng, the elderly deputy commander for plans of the Military Command Headquarters Targeting Taiwan, said in a low, gravelly voice. “It is a pleasure to present our operational plans to you on behalf of the general staff. I will now turn the briefing over to my young deputy, Colonel Lieutenant Ai Peijian. Colonel Peijian has been most helpful in preparing this briefing for you. He is one of our hardest workers and a true and loyal son of the Party.”
The nearly eighty-year-old general officer waved a withered hand to tonight’s briefer, Colonel Lieutenant Ai Peijian—“young” in his case meant about age fifty-five—who moved to his feet and bowed respectfully. “Welcome, comrade, to our status briefing regarding our standing war plans for the glorious pacification and reunification with the rebel Nationalist Chinese on the island of Taiwan. Before I begin in detail, I am happy to report that our plans are in perfect order and await only the command from our Paramount Leader to execute the war plan. In less than one week, we can destroy the Nationalists’ defenses, capture the Nationalist president and his key advisors and Kuomintang leadership, and start the process of reunification under the Communist Party of China.”
“That will be for me and Comrade General Chin to decide, Colonel,” Sun said, impatiently waving a hand for the briefing to begin.
Just two minutes into the briefing, Sun knew that not much had been changed—this was the same briefing he had been given every two weeks for the past year now. This military committee—the Operations and Plans Committee, part of the Military Command Headquarters Targeting Taiwan, or MCHTT, based here in Juidongshan—was in charge of continually revising the war plans drawn up by the Central Military Commission, Chinas main military command body, for the initial attack, invasion, occupation, and subjugation of the rebel Chinese Nationalist government on the island of Formosa. Every two weeks, the MCHTT was required to brief the Central Military Commission or its designated representative—that had been Admiral Sun Ji Guoming for quite some time now—on any changes to the war plan made because of force or command changes on either side.
But it was a farce, typical of the huge, bloated People’s Liberation Army bureaucracy, Sun thought. No member of the lowly MCHTT would dare make any substantive changes in the war plans drawn up by the Central Military Commission—that would be an act tantamount to treason. Colonel Ai was the commanding officer of the planning division of the MCHTT, but he was such a junior officer that if he worked in Sun’s office of the chief of staff, his day would be spent mostly making tea and emptying wastebaskets for all the middle- and upper-class flag officers there. If the Central Military Committee wanted any changes made as to how Taiwan was to be “reunited” with the mainland, the CMC would tell the chief of staff, who would tell Sun, who would tell the MCHTT to make the changes. That process might take six months—six months spent by each bureaucrat in order to make sure that his superior wasn’t trying to screw him, each bureaucrat making sure that the orders made him look good if it worked and made someone else look bad if it didn’t work.
The initial thrust of the attack on the island of Formosa was to destroy the island’s thick air and coastal security units from long range. Seven fixed bases and ten mobile presurveyed launch points in east- central China were programmed to launch up to twenty Dong Feng-15 intermediate- and short-range missiles each on Taiwanese targets per day, that was one hundred and fifty to three hundred missiles per day, an incredible bombardment. The attacks were programmed to last as long as a month, but of course would be halted right before the amphibious invasion began, or upon the rebel’s unconditional surrender. The high- explosive missile attacks would be followed by tactical air strikes to mop up any surviving targets, escorted by waves of fighters to ensure air superiority and to fight off an expected counterattack by Taiwanese air forces. An amphibious invasion was deemed unnecessary—the thought being that loyal Communists on Taiwan would rise up, throw off their Nationalist oppressors, and welcome the People’s Liberation Army ashore peacefully—but the aircraft carrier Mao Zedong, formerly the Russian carrier Varyag and for a short time the Iranian carrier Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and its battle group would be used to ferry troops and supplies ashore if necessary, while providing air cover against any resistance.
“Hold please, Colonel,” Sun finally said. “You show the employment of seventy-five DF-15 missiles on Longtian to launch against Taoyuan and Hsinchu Air Bases on Taiwan.”
“Yes, sir . . . ?”
“Yet I was briefed two days ago that there has been extensive flooding on Longtian peninsula and that the base and city are not fully repaired,” Sun went on angrily. “The undamaged missiles were removed and sent to Fuzhou. What forces are covering Longtian’s targets while their missiles are evacuated?”
Colonel Ai seemed stunned at Sun’s question. “The evacuation was merely precautionary, sir,” he responded. “We expect the missiles to be back at their presurveyed launch points in just a few days. ...”
“But then you are in fact telling me that Taoyuan and Hsinchu are not really at risk right now” Sun insisted. “You are saying�
��”
“Comrade Admiral, Longtian covers the initial bombardment of Taoyuan and Hsinchu,” General Lieutenant Qian said in a loud, irritated voice. “Colonel Ai, continue the briefing—”
“But, sir, I just said there are no missiles at Longtian,” Sun interrupted. Although Qian was senior to Sun, they were both of equal rank and authority, and it was certainly within Suns purview to question anything in this briefing. He turned to Colonel Ai and asked, “Did you bother to move any bombers from the interior or from the north to cover those targets? Zeguo Air Base can perhaps handle twenty or thirty B-6 bombers; Hangzhou and Fuzhou might be able to handle thirty each as well. One hundred bombers might be able to cover those two Nationalist cities until the DF-15s can be replaced at Longtian. You might be able to get a number of Q-5s to cover the targets, but it might take a hundred and fifty or more, depending on the status of Taiwan’s Tien Kung-2 antiaircraft missile deployment that was scheduled for this month at Hsinchu. But the weather is getting a bit better, so the Q-5s might have a good chance.” Sun paused, regarding Ai. He still looked absolutely petrified with confusion, his eyes shifting back and forth from Sun to Qian. “Are you getting any of this, Comrade Colonel?”
“Yes, sir,” Ai said, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as if he were choking on his own tongue. But a warning glare from General Qian got his attention, and he pressed on: “Ah ... yes, as I was saying, Longtian’s DF-15 missiles will destroy the air defense bases at Taoyuan and Hsinchu, with secondary targets at Taipei and Lung Tan available when intelligence reports the destruction of these two air facilities—”
“Comrade Colonel, are you listening to what I am saying?” Sun interjected angrily. “You cannot destroy any air bases with weapons you do not have. Now, I have told you that there are no missiles at Longtian, and I have suggested using bombers or attack planes to cover Taoyuan and Hsinchu until the missiles are operational again. Why do you continue to brief outdated information?”
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