by Jeff Edwards
Its name could be translated loosely into English as ‘flying lizard,’ but the UAV’s builders preferred the more auspicious translation of ‘soaring dragon.’
Western analysts were correct in believing that the Xianglong’s primary purpose was long-range, high-altitude strategic reconnaissance. But the mission modules currently attached to the UAV’s wings had a quite different purpose.
The module under the port wing was an electronic blip enhancer, designed to amplify and retransmit incoming radar signals, to make the 7.5 ton UAV seem much larger to enemy sensors. For this mission the drone’s apparent radar cross-section had been effectively doubled, giving the slender Xianglong a radar profile that closely mimicked the 16 ton airframe of a Chinese J-10 fighter.
The module under the starboard wing was a microwave transmitter, and it was busily broadcasting X-band signals that were virtually indistinguishable from the pulse-doppler emissions of the Chengdu KLJ-10 fire control radar carried by J-10 aircraft.
The decoy modules and electronic emulators of the deceptive mission package did an extraordinary job of simulating a J-10 fighter jet. The primary flaw in the deception was the drone’s lack of speed.
The jet-powered Xianglong was one of the fastest UAVs on the planet, more than 100 knots faster than the American MQ-9 Reaper. But—as impressive as the Xianglong’s top speed was for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle—it was not fast enough to accurately simulate the airspeed of a real J-10.
The Soaring Dragon was not perfect bait, but it was very good bait, and its lack of absolute perfection was offset by numbers. The UAV was not operating alone. It was surrounded by nineteen other drones of the exact same design and capability. Their collective spoofery was intended to make them such attractive targets that minor details like airspeed would be overlooked.
And the deceptive mission packages had not yet exhausted all the tactical cheats at their disposal. They still had a few tricks left to play.
* * *
USS Towers:
“TAO—Air, Bogies are launching chaff and going evasive!”
“TAO, aye!”
The maneuvers were quickly visible on the Aegis display screens, as the enemy aircraft dodged and weaved to avoid the missiles bearing down on them.
Bowie’s eyes stayed locked on the dancing blue and red symbols. It still didn’t feel right. He couldn’t quite put his finger on the problem, but he couldn’t shake the idea that there was something wrong with the way the Bogies were maneuvering.
Then, it hit him. He tapped the TAO on the shoulder. “Check their airspeed now. How fast are the Bogies moving?”
The Tactical Action Officer punched a quick series of keys on his console. “Looks like… about four hundred knots. Give or take.”
The TAO looked up at his commanding officer. “That’s not right…”
“No,” Bowie said. “It isn’t. Those Bogies are jinking and jiving like crazy, but not a single one of them has kicked in the afterburners to get away from our missiles.”
“They’re some kind of decoys,” the TAO said.
Bowie nodded. “They’ve got to be.”
He reached into the overhead, jerked the red handset of the Navy Red terminal out of its cradle, and shoved it against his right ear. He keyed the mike, and waited a half-second for the crypto burst—a rapid string of warbling tones that the UHF transmitter used to synchronize its encryption signal with the secure communications satellite. “Alpha Whiskey, this is Towers. Hostile strike raid from my bearing two-one-four, is evaluated as a ruse. I say again, Bogies bearing two-one-four are probable decoys! My unit will continue to engage and monitor, but expect additional attacks from other vectors, over!”
The Air Warfare Coordinator on the aircraft carrier responded within ten seconds. “Towers, this is Alpha Whiskey. Roger all, and concur. We have rapid pop-ups on multiple inbound Vipers, threat axis zero-seven-five. Keep your head down. Alpha Whiskey, out!”
* * *
Vipers (mid-flight):
They came in very low, and very fast—forty 3M-54E2 anti-ship missiles, flying three and a half meters above the waves at Mach 0.8.
By official NATO designation, they belonged to the family of SSN-27 cruise missiles lumped together under the code name Sizzler. The Chinese variants of this missile class had been alternately over-hyped and under-hyped by the U.S. Department of Defense for more than a decade.
The western press had taken to referring to the 3M-54E2 as China’s Carrier Killer. That assertion had never been demonstrated under battle conditions. Until now.
Each missile had its radar seeker turned off during this phase of its trajectory, following a pre-programmed flight path, adjusted by periodic updates from the Beidou navigation positioning satellites that comprised China’s indigenous version of the Global Positioning System.
The missiles were flying blind, but their nose-on radar cross-sections were relatively low. Coupled with their lack of active emissions and wave-hugging flight profiles, this made them difficult to detect and track.
That would change in a few hundred milliseconds, when the missiles would all energize their target acquisition radars at the same instant. All forty missiles would instantly become visible to the sensors of the American ships and aircraft, but the missiles would compensate for the lack of stealth by accelerating to Mach 2.2 for the terminal phase of the attack.
This supersonic ‘sprint’ would give potential interceptors only seconds to identify the threat and react. Theoretically, the window of opportunity for defensive engagement would be too narrow for the target ship to exploit.
That theory was about to be tested.
* * *
USS Towers:
The drama played itself out on the tactical display screens in two acts, separated by both time and distance. To the southwest, the First Act had nearly resolved itself. Evasive maneuvering aside, the ship’s SM-3 missiles were shredding the inbound Bogies, which—Bowie was now certain—must be decoys.
The Second Act was playing out to the east. Forty hostile missile symbols had appeared, and were closing on the Midway at incredible speed.
Two elements of Combat Air Patrol were vectoring in to intercept the Vipers, but—like everyone else in the strike group—they’d been caught looking the wrong way. Even on afterburner, by the time the F/A-18s arrived on station, the engagement would be over.
The Midway had air defenses of her own: a pair of Rolling Airframe Missile launchers, a trio of Sea Sparrow missile launchers, and four Close-In Weapon Systems—the 20mm defensive Gatling guns known to the fleet as Phalanx. The carrier could protect herself against a reasonable number of subsonic cruise missiles. But the number of inbound Vipers was not at all reasonable, and they were moving at supersonic speeds.
The only thing between the carrier and destruction was the USS Frank W. Fenno, the Arliegh-Burke class guided missile destroyer assigned to the eastern perimeter of the strike group’s screen.
As Bowie and his CIC crew watched the tactical displays, the Fenno began launching clouds of SM-3 missiles. The friendly missile symbols overlapped and obscured each other for several seconds, and then they began to diverge as the interceptor missiles homed in on individual targets.
They were too many to count visually in the limited time before intercept, but the Aegis tracking software provided the total. Eighty missiles. The Frank W. Fenno was following a shoot-shoot-look-shoot doctrine. Fire two missiles at each incoming Viper, scan with radar to see how many have been destroyed, and then fire again at any Vipers that survived the first salvo.
Bowie’s first instinct was to call that a mistake, but maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t know the other destroyer’s exact weapons load out, but it probably wasn’t much different from what the Towers was carrying. The Fenno had something like ninety SM-3s aboard, give or take a few for minor variations in mission loads. Which meant that the Fenno’s skipper had just launched about ninety percent of his SAMs in his initial salvo. Ordinarily not the kind of choice that a smart
destroyer captain would make. But the Vipers were coming in too fast. The Fenno wasn’t going to get off a second salvo. Whatever they missed the first time around, was going to hit the carrier.
Bowie slammed the Navy Red handset back into its cradle. “Goddamn it! Is there any way we can help the Fenno intercept those Vipers?”
The Tactical Action Officer shook his head. “Not a chance, Captain. Even if we had a clear field of fire, they’re too far away. By the time our birds get over there, it’ll be too late.”
“There’s nothing you can do right now,” Silva said softly.
Bowie turned, and she was standing at his elbow. He exhaled heavily. “I know. But I don’t have to like it.”
He turned his eyes back to the Aegis display screens. “Damn it!” he said. “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”
* * *
The engagement unfolded on the big displays. Two friendly missile symbols converged on a hostile missile symbol as the first of Fenno’s interceptors destroyed their assigned Viper. Then the interplay of tactical symbols seemed to shift into overdrive, red and blue icons stuttering, intersecting, vanishing, and rearranging themselves in indecipherable patterns.
When it was over, nine hostile missiles remained on the screen, streaking toward the bright blue circle that represented the American aircraft carrier.
* * *
USS Midway:
Admiral Zimmerman gripped the arms of his chair and watched the onrushing missile symbols on the large-screen tactical displays. He had already double-checked his seat belt. He had no intention of getting tossed around Flag Plot like a rag doll when those damned missiles hit.
He heard the muted growls of outbound RAMs and Sea Sparrows, punctuated several times by the harsh metallic zipper sound of the CIWS guns firing. Friendly missile symbols flickered briefly on the tactical displays, and hostile symbols winked out of existence. They were getting some of the Vipers. How many, he didn’t know, but there were two or three left on the screen when the first of the enemy missiles slammed into the starboard side of the superstructure.
The admiral was thrown against his seatbelt so hard that he felt like someone had pounded him in the stomach with a Louisville slugger. The lighting flickered, but the power seemed to be holding, at least in Flag Plot.
His ears rang and his eyes didn’t want to focus properly. He could smell smoke, and he could hear someone shouting what sounded like orders, but the words didn’t make any sense to him.
He lifted his head and his eyes found the big tactical screens. Four of them were dark, but the screen on the far right still showed the weaving ballet of colorful icons. An odd red emblem bore straight for the heart of a bright blue circle.
The symbols touched, and the admiral felt himself thrown violently against his seatbelt again.
The lights went out.
CHAPTER 44
WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM
WASHINGTON, DC
MONDAY; 01 DECEMBER
9:48 AM EST
President Wainright flipped open the blue-jacketed folder and began to scan the top page of the briefing package it contained. After skimming the material for nearly two minutes, he looked up. “Okay, I’ve seen the charts and figures. Now, I want somebody to translate it into English for me.”
He closed the folder and dropped it on the table. “How bad is it?”
Admiral Casey, the Chief of Naval Operations, stood up. “It’s not good, Mr. President.”
He pointed a remote toward the wall-sized Situation Room display screen. The presidential seal was replaced by a series of still pictures of the aircraft carrier, USS Midway. The ship was listing fifteen or twenty degrees to starboard, and several of the images showed smoke billowing from a hole in the superstructure and another (larger) hole in the lower hull. Close-up photos of the two damaged areas had apparently been taken at a later time, after the fires had been extinguished.
“We’re looking at the impact points of two anti-ship cruise missiles,” the CNO said. “Based on flight profiles, electronic emissions, and battle damage assessment, we believe that both missiles were Chinese air-launched variants of the SSN-27 Sizzler.”
The display screen sequenced through a dozen more close-up images, taken from a variety of angles. From this range, the impact points looked like craters. The edges of the blast holes were blackened and irregular, the steel and aluminum structures of the enormous ship broken, charred, and twisted into ragged shapes of chaos.
Admiral Casey halted the march of images with another flick of the remote. The screen showed a medium distance shot of the wounded ship, apparently taken from a helicopter. The angle of the carrier’s list seemed to be even more evident than in the earlier shots.
“As you can see,” the admiral said, “one of the missiles impacted right at the waterline, causing damage above and below the water, and opening the hull to major flooding. This has resulted in a pronounced list to starboard, which was further increased by firefighting water pumped in to extinguish the fires.”
The CNO laid the remote on the conference table. “Given the severity of the damage, personnel casualties have been relatively light. Six dead, and nineteen injured. Three of the wounded are in critical condition, and some or all of them may not make it.”
The president sighed heavily. “How much do we know about the attack?”
The Secretary of Defense closed her own briefing folder and stood up. “Well, Mr. President—not to put too fine a point on it—we got suckered.”
She reached for the remote, and Admiral Casey handed it to her.
SECDEF thumbed several buttons, and the image of the damaged aircraft carrier was replaced by a map of the Bay of Bengal. The blue iconic silhouettes of three Navy destroyers formed a loose triangle, with the silhouette of an aircraft carrier at the center.
“The raid took place in two waves,” the Secretary of Defense said. “The first wave was detected at approximately 1728 hours, that is 5:28 PM local time.”
She keyed the remote, and a cluster of red aircraft shapes appeared to the left and slightly below the strike group. “Twenty jet aircraft, inbound from the southwest. We don’t know exactly which kind of hardware was used, but it seems likely that the entire wave consisted of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, equipped with advanced electronic deception systems. We suspect they were launched from the Chinese carrier, but that’s only an assumption at this point. They were able to closely simulate a group of Chinese J-10 aircraft. And, due to their angle of approach and radar characteristics, they were misidentified as an actual raid against the Midway.”
She keyed the remote again, and a group of red missile silhouettes appeared to the right of the strike group. “The second wave appeared from the east, approximately ten minutes later, as the carrier’s escorts and aircraft were engaging the decoys of the first wave. The second wave consisted of forty anti-ship cruise missiles, all targeted on the aircraft carrier.”
She nodded toward the CNO. “As Admiral Casey pointed out, these missiles were probably a Chinese air-launched variant of the SSN-27 Sizzler. The launching platforms were not detected, leading us to assume that the attacking aircraft stayed extremely low to the water, and fired from close to the maximum range of the SSN-27. Roughly 160 nautical miles. The missiles remained undetected until they switched on their radars for the terminal phase, and accelerated to Mach 2.”
SECDEF pressed another key on the remote, and the easternmost of the blue destroyer silhouettes was highlighted on the display. “The only shooter in a position to intercept was USS Frank W. Fenno. The targeting window was extremely narrow, but the Fenno successfully killed thirty-one of the inbound missiles. The Midway’s defensive weapons managed to knock out seven of the remaining nine.”
The Secretary of Defense sat down. “The last two missiles made it all the way through to the Midway. And we’ve just seen the results of that.”
President Wainwright looked at the map on the big screen. “So the second wave, the planes that lau
nched the attack, came from the Chinese aircraft carrier as well?”
The CNO shook his head. “Probably not, Mr. President. To stay outside the radar coverage of our strike group, aircraft from the Liaoning would have had to divert east, past the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; turn north and fly up the long axis of the Andaman Sea; and then turn west, back into the Bay of Bengal. Even with several aerial refuelings, that’s beyond the capacity of Chinese carrier-based aircraft. And then, they’d have to turn around and do it all in reverse, on the return leg.”
“Okay,” the president said, “where the hell did they come from?”
“We don’t know for certain,” the Secretary of Defense said, “but our best guess is Myanmar. They share a border with China, and the PRC is a close ally of the Burmese, as well as one of their top economic trading partners. We don’t think the Burmese military actually launched the attack, but they may have permitted their airbases to be used as a staging area for Chinese strike planes.”
The president suppressed a grimace. The Republic of Myanmar had no particular love for the United States. The U.S. had been imposing economic sanctions against the country since the late 1990s, to penalize the government for decades of continually worsening human rights violations.
During his days in the Senate, Wainwright himself had led a multinational initiative to convince the European Union to tighten their economic sanctions against Myanmar. The Burmese government didn’t have the military or economic muscle to stand directly against the United States, but they might welcome the opportunity to help their Chinese buddies poke America in the eye.
“Alright,” the president said. “What are our options?”
No one spoke for several seconds.
Finally, the Chief of Naval Operations leaned forward. The lined skin of his tanned face gave his features the weather beaten gravitas of that famous Gloucester Fisherman painting by Joseph Margulies. “Frankly, Mr. President, I think it’s time for us to turn up the heat. Just before the strike on the Midway, we issued new Rules of Engagement to our naval forces in the area. Since the attack, we’ve been on a defensive footing. I say we continue with the plan, and go after the Chinese carrier, and every PRC military unit in the region.”
