Able Fire: The Next War - 2025 and Beyond

Chapter 28

China had started the war with 60 Type 052 or 055 Class destroyers, ten more than the US had at that time. Now, 37 of those Chinese destroyers were at the bottom of the world’s many oceans, along with three carriers and many more frigates and submarines. While the Chinese Navy had sunk 32 ships in their battles with the Royal Navy and Singapore, the USN had only seen Kentucky, Halsey and Grant damaged, and the single DDG Sherman sunk, with two more submarines. It was a lopsided score that spelled only one thing—victory—and the Chinese Navy was now fighting to simply muster enough force to be able to defend its littoral seas.

Admiral Sun Wei knew he was still in grave danger and more ships could be added to that list before he reached Colombo. The fleet was largely SAM depleted. Only two Seafire Class destroyers still had any missile defense, Haifeng and Haiying, and between them they mustered only 27 HQ-10’s. The only thing he could do was station them starboard of the main body, and press on. If the enemy still had weapons to fling at him, he knew he was going to lose more ships and men, but he had one last option.

At Karachi, the Type 055 Class destroyers had moved one of their helicopters to other ships to make room in the hangar for crates of reserve ordnance. In the heat of battle, it could not be touched, and was left sitting there, somewhat of a liability if the ship was ever hit aft. That is undoubtedly what helped kill the Dragon God, he thought. That explosion AFT was much too robust from a GBU bomb hit, which is what first damaged the ship and cut its speed. Yet Eagle God and Flying Dragon might attempt to reload their twin external HQ-10 mounts, which held 24 missiles each.

The seas are calm, thought Sun Wei, and I do not think the enemy could strike us now for another five or six hours. We are desperate, so this simply must be attempted. Those were small, easily handled missiles, just six feet in length and weighing only 44 pounds. As for the long range HQ-9’s, they weighed 1.4 tons each, and measured 22 feet in length. Missiles that large and heavy needed special dock-side handling equipment to manage them, and had to be vertically loaded with a crane, so it was impossible to replenish them at sea.

He gave the order that all engineers were to move to at least reload the HQ-10 systems, and even summoned techs from other ships to assist. Anything would help, perhaps enough to survive one more attack, and he might save many lives. So in those last hours of darkness, the engineers worked feverishly, opening crates and moving ordnance.

DDG Yingshen had taken moderate damage, but had most systems still working. The Eagle God reported they could move 48 HQ-10s to the external deck mounts. The Flying Dragon, where the Admiral now set his flag, was in better shape, and they would also uncrate and mount 48 HQ-10’s. This ship has also received two of the new laser turrets, but work on the power couplings was not finished. So the engineers made that a top priority to get the ship some additional defensive capability. The two remaining Type 052D class destroyers, Chaoyong and Naning, reported they could each replenish their HQ-10’s in the external canisters.

Eagle God was limping and could only make 20 knots, and as the Admiral was not willing to abandon that ship, the TF set its speed to match that. Seafire class Haihuo was down to 8 knots, and that ship was detached to fare for itself. It would attempt to negotiate entry to an Indian port, if that could possibly be arranged. India had not declared for the Western Alliance, and they had harbored a damaged US destroyer, so they agreed to take this one Chinese ship as a good faith gesture, and possibly to ease tensions with China if they could.

Aboard the Independence, XO Cooper also had some bad news to give Captain Holmes. “Sir,” he began, “we’re running out of stones to throw. I can get you five planes rigged with Slammers, but that will be the last of those missiles. LRASM is depleted, and then anything else we throw will have to be the GBU-53. There’s enough for one Squadron, and after that, we’re out of business, unless you want to move to JSOW. The soonest we could go with any of that would be 08:00.”

“What do we look like with the Tomahawks?” asked the Captain.

“We have 61 TacToms and 44 MMT’s, and that includes everything the New Jersey Group has.”

“Better have Hap Turner’s ships join us then. We’ll operate together as one group now. SAM Inventory?”

“Not a problem sir. That would give us 88 SM-6 and just over 600 ESSM’s. We’re well defended.”

“Good. Very well, Mister Cooper. Get that message to Turner. I’ll be in my ready room.”

The Captain would mull his situation over for the next five hours, and also request any order or feedback from OMCOM. In effect, the carrier now had the means of making just one normal strike, with a follow up using JSOW.

Those bombs hit hard, he thought. The AGM-154C JSOW had a thousand pound two stage armor penetrating warhead that could tear a ship apart. They were ship wreckers to be sure, but the planes delivering them needed to be inside 45 miles. I don’t think that would be a problem now. We didn’t see a single HQ-9 come at us during that last attack, so I’m betting they ran dry on those. They won’t have anything else that could get beyond 20 miles.

He smiled.

I have the means, he knew. I can tear what’s left of that fleet apart, ship by ship. The only reason I hesitate at all is that it will leave this carrier toothless after I’m done. I’ll have to retire to Diego Garcia for full replenishment.

He got on the secure data inventory system and looked up Diego Garcia. They had enough in the nest to get him squared away, but after that, even that arsenal would have to await the next convoy from the states. They had been throwing a lot of lead around out there, and the weapons were expensive monsters that were in limited supply. There had been just enough delivered to Salaha in the 1st USMC convoy to replenish Roosevelt, and Diego Garcia had only one typical carrier magazine load remaining for his use.

I’ll let OMCOM make the call, he thought, and slept on it. At 08:00 he had his answer. He was ordered to use his own prudent judgment and continue to put harm on the enemy while preserving as much of his Strike Group’s combat power as possible. OMCOM had punted.

After a well-deserved breakfast in the wardroom, the Captain looked over his ready board and made a decision. Then he went up to the bridge to watch the Hawkeye rotation and morning CAP deployment. At a little after 09:00, he would send his order to the Air Boss, and then he got on the ship’s intercom.

“All hands, this is the Captain. We’ve been out here after these guys for the last week, and now we got them on the run. If we wait for them to gain the safety of a friendly port, then we’re going to have to do this all over again to wear them down for the count. I know we’re going to put men in the sea now, and sink ships, and believe me, I take no pleasure in that. But that’s what we’re here for, and we’re going to do our job and finish the mission. Until and unless they end this, and we reach a diplomatic solution, then it’s on us to do our very best to prevail. Strike groups, man your planes, and go get ‘em. That is all.”

As he hung up the handset, he could hear cheers throughout the ship. The crew was fired up, and ready to finish the job. At 09:15 that morning the first flights of assigned strike planes began taking off.

The previous night, Captain Holmes had thought about what his XO said, knowing he had some heavy metal in that JSOW ordnance. So he had sent down the word that he wanted two flights of three to carry that weapon in close, believing they would not be facing a heavy SAM threat now.

Nine F-35’s were going to be tasked for this initial strike, six with JSOW and three with the GBU-53 to lead the attack. Six more Avenger II’s would take off carrying the SLAM-ER, four missiles each. They would get into range and orbit until called. The strike would be led by six F-35’s on escort, and the Growlers would get into the game to work over the enemy electronics.

The SLAM Flight got inside 60 miles undetected and released, and the Avengers were cleared hot as they did so. The six planes carrying JSOW continued to close until they got the word.

“JSOW, JSOW, ram it home.”

“Roger that, Bertha, We are Winchester.”

Admiral Sun Wei stood on the bridge, the Flying Dragon leading the formation south. When the attack alarms rang, he heard the crews rushing, and now they would unleash the precious missiles they had labored so hard to make ready for this hour. As the HQ-10’s began to fire, he gave the order to deploy and use the new laser turrets that were now operational on his ship, and they proved to be very deadly. The smoke rose about the fleet as the missiles fired, the smell of the rocket fuel heavy in the air. Then he saw the lasers lancing through the haze, only visible because of that smoke, and soon he heard distant explosions indicating they had score kills.

All the action was inside the five mile line, and it was far more tense and exacting without the HQ-9’s able to engage out to 80 miles. Now you could both see and hear the incoming enemy missiles, and the grinding fire from the 30mm guns filled the air, the rounds streaming out to try and shred the Vampires and knock them out. They beat down the first wave, about two dozen contacts, and the lasers got four kills. Twelve more Vampires followed, the JSOW with the tandem BROACH warhead and a heavy punch. They would come in sets of two, on a front six miles wide.

Flying Dragon’s lasers flashed in anger, firing, retargeting, and firing again. While the HQ-10’s were struggling to lock on, his lasers were able to track and fire, getting an astounding ten kills as the Vampires crossed the 10 mile range marker.

“Yes!” he said. “Why did we wait so long to get those weapons on-line? They are fearsome defenders!”

He breathed in, finally seeing just a little hope that they might survive. The alarm rang yet again as the final wave approached, this time the 24 Slammers that had been brought in by the Avengers. Again, it was the incredible effectiveness of the laser turrets that decided the hour, chewing right through the small trains of missiles and damaging them enough to send them into the sea. It was an evolutionary leap in fleet defense, only installed on about a third of the Type 055’s, but this was the first time it had proven itself to be a reliable shield. Quite literally, the Slammers were defeated in a flash, the lighting swift and unerringly targeted lasers ripping the attack apart.

Two missiles got very close to the wounded Eagle God near the end of the formation, and Sun Wei held his breath when he saw Vampires close inside two miles. HQ-10’s fired, and got the last just 500 meters from the ship. The radar screens were now blank, and the bridge crew cheered in jubilation. The men had feared this might be their last battle, but they had survived.

Back aboard the Independence, Captain Holmes had been listening to his pilots during the attack, and he heard them call out the word lasers more than a few times. The Chinese had brought something to the game here that he did not expect, and swatted his ordnance down. Why weren’t they using this weapon earlier? Word came soon after.

“Strike leader to Mother. No Joy. We are RTB. Over.”

The enemy had a new magic wand.

The next surprise was the sudden appearance of J-20 fighters, picked up by the Daywatch Flight out on the right flank of the operation. They called in bogies and then engaged, with their AIM-260’s, getting a kill and driving the enemy down on the deck. The remaining five came roaring back up into the fight, closing on the Growlers and shooting one of them down, before the escort burned south to get at them with their AAMRAM’s. All six enemy fighters would be killed in that melee, proving the superiority of the US pilots, if nothing else.

When he got the report on that from Cooper, Captain Holmes knew the situation had changed. Apparently the Chinese had loaded up with fighters at Colombo, and the J-20 now had the range to get far enough out to assist their comrades on the sea. That may have been a CAP patrol, but now they would be certain to double down on that tactic, and the next time they could come in force, providing as much air cover as they could.

He liked the kill ratio in that fight, six to one, and with none of the F-35’s lost in the action. Yet he lost another Growler, and knew they would be easy targets when deployed to support a strike. In this kind of atmosphere, with 5th generation stealth fighters ruling the skies, it was a case of use them and lose them for any 4th generation fighter. Even the upgraded Eagle-X fighters had a rough time earlier out of bases in Oman.

In his mind, the strike had gone bust, and he would now have to think things over before he put together another attack. I thought I had this guy down on the mat for the final pin, he mused. Then he goes and pulls a knife on me.

He looked at his ready board and saw that he had plenty of fighters, but only four more Avengers ready now with 16 GBU-53’s each. It wouldn’t be enough, he knew. Not seeing the effectiveness of their laser defense. I’d have to bulk up again, and throw all 44 remaining Tomahawks with those 64 GBU’s and then that would leave me an empty shell with a ticket to Diego Garcia—New Jersey too. I was to operate against the enemy while preserving the striking power of this task force, and that is all I’ve got left on the deck right now. I could go to more JSOW’s, but they were swept right out of the sky in this last attack.

Damnit, he swore inwardly. I had their number, and now they may get to Colombo after all. I’ll need time to recover planes, and then another six hours to beef up the package before I could hit them again. The earliest we could rumble would be right around sunset.

And I’ll bet that cagey Admiral out there knows that….

The enemy operation ended at 10:30 on the 22nd, and Sun Wei knew he had just won priceless time here. He was now only 382 miles from Colombo, and he could shave another 150 miles off that before the enemy might be ready to strike him again. That would put him under heavy air cover, and long last.

The lasers, he thought. The lasers!

We must get those modules on each and every heavy destroyer we have. I will propose sweeping changes to standard fleet loadouts now.

This changes everything.

Chapter 29

“We’re not done,” said Captain Holmes. He adjusted his eyeglasses and looked over a clipboard, a stickler for paper based reports in the digital age. So that’s the way XO Cooper fed it to him, the whole shebang when it came to what was still in the carrier magazine.

There were things in there that they would seldom use in these long range naval duels. His wariness for committing his Growlers to anti-radiation attacks because of their vulnerability to enemy fighters had left a good deal of those munitions in stock, and they had standoff ranges at 70 miles. The Avengers could each carry four, and so he ordered five of those planes to rig out with the new advanced ant-radiation missile, the AGM-88E. Five more Avengers could carry GBU-53, (16 per plane), finishing up the inventory on that weapon. That would put 100 weapons in the air, but he had more tricks up his sleeve.

“We go to the MALD decoys on this one,” he said. “Give me four planes with those, a full loadout of eight each. The rest of the Avengers go with JSOW, another flight of five planes. That totals out to 152 weapons in this throw, which looks like our last dance with these guys out here before they reach Colombo. Get the crews busy, and I want this ready to go at 18:00, right around sunset. In the meantime, we go to the Tomahawks, but this time the target is not the enemy fleet. We’ve still got 61 TacToms, and I want a good package delivered to that air base at Colombo to try and preempt any air cover they might throw up. That attack goes in now.” That was the order.

The Tomahawk TacToms had a journey of 500 miles to make to Colombo AFB, and they would be an hour getting there. So as the crews began that arming order, Independence turned south intending to navigate the treacherous Maldives through the gap south of Laamu Atoll. The long archipelago had hundreds of islands that stretched over 300 miles into the Indian Ocean, and there were places where shallows ran to as little as seven feet, which was bad news for deep draft ships like a carrier. They could not go north of the archipelago, as that would bring them well inside the range of any YJ-18’s the Chinese might still have, so it was south to the Laamu Gap.

Since Hap Turner and the New Jersey had last worked over Colombo with their TacToms, the Chinese engineers and Army had been quite busy restoring that field to full operation. Even after losing those six fighters earlier, they still had 20 more J-20’s there, and another dozen at China Bay AFB near Trincomalee. With these two excellent roosts, their old base at Hambantoa was now just a secondary port, and a small base for helicopters. They had also flown in HQ-9A and HQ-16 SAM batteries to protect all these facilities, in addition to mobile radars sites and the better part of an airborne brigade for muscle on the ground.

The island was in no way as secure as Karachi had been in Pakistan, but it was closer to the Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea, waters that China saw as fertile areas for the next round of fighting with the US Navy.

The “Malacca Dilemma” continued to haunt them, in spite of attack they made to chase the Royal Navy from Singapore and neuter the local fleet there. Admiral Thomas Cook still had the Enterprise in the Java Sea, and that meant he could challenge or interdict any move through the straits, a problem the Chinese Naval command was now feverishly working on. At the moment, however, they had to look after the dumplings that were already in the wok. Admiral Sun Wei was coming home, and they had to help him get there any way they could.

At 13:50, those radars spotted the incoming TacToms, and the Air Commandant immediately issued a scramble order. He had a three plane CAP patrol up, and also vectored them in to attack the Vampires at once. The CAP planes expended their PL-15’s to get several kills, then closed to use their short range PL-10’s. As the leading Tomahawk was about 12 miles out over the sea, the first HQ-9’s started to fire from a battery north of the airfield. More J-20’s roared into the sky, banked in a deafening turn, and the leveled off at 12000 feet to get after those Vampires. This time, the Chinese were determined to defend that crucial base.

Twelve more Mighty Dragons lifted from the field like great grey bats, and with each plane carrying four PL-15’s and a pair of PL-10’s. It was the weight and effectiveness of those missiles, combined with the land batteries, that broke the back of the TacTom strike. Only two missiles would get through, destroying one of eleven hangars that had been thankfully emptied minutes earlier when the fighters scrambled.

So the Chinese had some fresh wind in their sails now, intending to fight to preserve that vital base at all costs. The strike defeated, six of the fighters turned out to sea, soaring up to 50,000 feet to take up a high overwatch of their fleet. It had never occurred to Captain Holmes that he would need to send an F-35 fighter escort in to watch over those Tomahawks, and it was a costly mistake that galled him when he got the news that yet another strike mission had gone bust.

At 17:45 the strike leaders had finished their briefings and the planes and pilots were on the flight deck. As Captain Holmes looked at the men mounting their war steeds, he could only feel pride for the fact that he was given command of this ship, this crew, and for this mission.

This is it, he thought. Time to see if we know how to use a sword. We hit them early, and often, and hit them hard. We bled them dry, and then they brought out those lasers and gave us a surprise, just when we were ready to make our kill. It’s a long haul this time out, as they are hugging the coast of India, and we had to stay west of the Maldives, but we’ve still got the range, almost 400 miles to the targets.

“Alright, gentlemen,” he said aloud to the bridge crew. “This is our last dance. Start the music.”

The F-35 escort of 12 planes would go first, followed by the 18 Avengers for the strike, and then another flight of six Panthers for backup, rigged for air-to air. The four planes with MALD did not have far to go, as they could throw their decoys out 500 miles. They would fire immediately, a bearing only attack that would see the decoys arriving about the same time the other planes put their live ordnance on the targets.

The Avenger strike flights would wing their way north first, before spotting an island that would clue them to make their right turn towards the targets. This was taking the strike planes well away from the possibility of being found by enemy fighters, and the F-35 escorts would also be sweeping the skies far off their right flank as they began to make their final approach to the enemy fleet.

As it happened, the six J-20’s that had been out to provide air cover saw the decoys, and went after them. As soon as they did so, the Panthers unleashed a torrent of AAMRAM’s on them, intending to clear the skies of bogies. That got the attention of the J-20’s and the Avengers then had clear skies to get to their release points and fire.

As the strike ordnance released, the GBU’s went first to create that telltale cloud of glide bombs that was so threatening. It would compel all the targets would switch on active radars, and that lit them up and gave the anti-radiation missiles something to home in on.

The Chinese fleet had become a long line of ships, with the frigates somewhat behind the leading group, with a few Seafire Class destroyers. Last in the line, was the wounded Eagle God, a prime target that had been struggling to keep up. That ship was work for twelve JSOW’s, and everything else went after the tail end of the formation. It was the speedy AGM-88E’s that raced in to get the first hits, with four smashing into FFG Hengshui, and another for hitting FFG Xianning.

Now Admiral Sun Wei looked over his shoulder and saw the danger. His lasers had engaged and killed missiles heading his way, but the frigates had fallen too far behind. The simple lapse of not keeping proper stations relative to the leading ships made the them vulnerable, and the light sabers of the Flying Dragon could no longer cover them. The GBU-53’s now came in a massive steel cloud, and most of those ships were SAM depleted.

He was shaken when the bombs started to hit, slamming into the already listing Hengshui, then delivering a pounding of many hits to FFG Weifang. Xianning was struck again with many bombs, and that ship would not survive. FFG Nantong was pummeled and on fire, and the escorting Seafire Class DDG Haiwang was a burning wreck. It was the blow that should have been struck hours ago, before the lasers and rearmed HQ-10’s in the leading ships so changed the equation.

Only two ships aft of the leading ships would survive, the destroyer Taizhou, and to his great relief, the Eagle God. The 48 HQ-10’s the ship had managed to reload had been just enough of a defense to save its life. The engineers had saved the ship. Now he saw many other targets still coming, but realized they were hitting nothing, sailing harmlessly over his ships, mere decoys meant to draw his fire.

The attack was soon over, a beautiful dance in the sky, perfectly coordinated throughout the entire mission. It was all Captain Holmes was going to throw at his enemy, but it had thinned his ranks considerably that hour, sinking three frigates and a destroyer.

Of the 17 ships that had left Karachi on the night of the 20th of January under Admiral Sun Wei’s command, only eight were still afloat, and one more had reached the safety of an Indian port. So his fleet had been cut in half, and he had lost too many good men and women in the long and desperate race south.

Yet the main body was still alive. The Flying Dragon and Eagle God would reach Colombo safely now, along with two good Type 052D class destroyers, two Seafire Class destroyers, and two more upgraded Type 051D class ships. It was the better half of his command, but he would not sleep well for many days now, the faces of the men he had lost haunting him.

In Beijing, while the losses were heavy, the Admiral was lauded for his daring courage. Now those eight ships would refuel and rearm, and they would send fighters to replace all they had lost in the effort to cover that grueling redeployment. Admiral Shen Jinlong,[9] Commander in Chief of the Navy, flew directly to Colombo to meet with Sun Wei, a medal in hand. But the gritty fighting Admiral refused to accept it.

“I want no such medal on my chest,” he said. “It would serve only to remind me of my many failures—the many ships and sailors I lost in the Indian Ocean adventure.”

“Regrettable, but the fortunes of war, Admiral.”

“Yes, the bad fortunes this war has brought to us all. You know me well, Admiral, but realize that the cost of this war gets ever higher, and for what? Those useless islands in the Ryukyus?”

“Okinawa is far from useless, Sun Wei, as you well know.”

“Perhaps, but was it worth all this? We have lost our positions in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, all of Africa, and now the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean!”

“Not just yet,” said Shen Jinlong. “You are here in Colombo, and we have two new destroyers here to help offset your losses, both Type 052D’s. They were at Bangkok, and I sent them here some days ago.”

“Good foresight,” said Sun Wei, “but now what am I to do here? We have just come over 1200 sea miles, through fire and steel, under constant attack, and seen much that I would wish to forget. Yet in fighting this withdrawal, I learned some very valuable lessons.”

“Tell me,” said the fleet Commander.

“Very well… First, while the YJ-18 was a superb weapon against the British, I had only one occasion where I could get in range to use it against the Americans, and even that could have been prevented by them if they wished. They all just sailed off into the blue. The missile is too demanding, and needs precise downrange targeting data. While it has good range, the Americans always stay beyond 300 miles, and none of our ships has the speed to catch them. So Admiral, if we are to have any offense at sea at all, then it must come from the YJ-100. Please tell me our war supplies on that weapon are still holding up.”

“For the moment. Beijing has ordered three more factories to produce that missile round the clock. You should find adequate stocks here, flown in over many days by the Air Force—enough to give you some punch.”

“Good, but I must tell you, it is seldom enough. Lesson two—we do not have the offensive strength to overcome the defense of an American Carrier Strike group. The hope we placed in the Dong Feng-21D has not proven fruitful. Their Standard Missile-3 is simply too capable. And the combined defense of their SM-6, augmented by fighters on CAP, sees most of our missile strikes defeated as far away as 80 miles from the carrier. Not once did I ever get a missile inside 20 miles. That shows you how weak we are offensively relative to the Americans, who strike us with a dizzying array of different weapons on their carriers. And what do we strike back with from our carriers?”

It was an uncomfortable moment, but the two men knew it was the truth, and it had to be spoken. Yet the news Sun Wei wanted to deliver was not all bad, and now he spoke of changes that must be made to fleet weapons loadouts.

“The lasers,” he began. “We left Karachi with work incomplete on the installation of those modules, but in desperate need when our ship ran out of SAM’s, I ordered those turret assemblies and power couplings made ready. The engineers and service crews are the real heroes. Give them the medals. In six hours they managed to reload our HQ-10 mounts and get the lasers operational on the Flying Dragon. They are lethal! I saw them strike down whole groups of enemy cruise missiles three and four at a time, and with twice the range of our HQ-10. Without them, I believe that ship would have also been sunk, but with them, we survived. So Admiral, you must get them onto every ship with enough power generation capability to use them. This is what the Americans might call a game changer.”

“Indeed,” said Shen Jinlong. “Then I will do all I can to do exactly what you suggest. What more?”

“The Type 055 is a wonderful ship, but it need not be configured for either ASW or even naval strike missions now. Give it a token defensive missile load of eight YJ-18’s, and then use every other cell on the ship for the HQ-9’s. In effect, they must be reconfigured to become heavy fleet air defense ships, and each one must have at least two operational laser turrets and two deck mounted HQ-10 systems instead of one. The remaining Type 052D’s can yield their YJ-18s and send them to the Type-055’s. Then they should all be rearmed with the YJ-100’s to provide our offensive punch.”

“I see… Then you advise we must strengthen our defense.”

“Of course! I found myself regretting that I brought any offensive missiles with me at all. If I had an HQ-9B for each one of them, I might have saved a four more ships.”

“Very well,” said the Fleet Commander. “I will take all this to heart, and we will make the necessary changes you advise. I must say that Admiral Wu Jinlong suffered from these same shortcomings—an inability to reach and hurt his enemy, while the fleet was continually attacked by the enemy carriers. Operation Sea Eagle and the entire strike east plan he devised was a complete failure. The Americans are now preparing to land troops on Mindanao, and we have had to withdraw to the South China Sea again.”

“Most unfortunate,” said Sun Wei. “Yes, we need an offense. We must begin to hurt the enemy, or this war is surely lost. In fact, any sane man would see that it has already been lost. We have seen over ten years’ worth of ship production sunk, while the enemy’s losses are not even worth mentioning. If this does not change, and immediately, then you know the outcome as well as I do, Admiral. I will fight, as honor demands it, but a man must have the means. What was it Confucius said? Never give a sword to a man who does not know how to dance. Well Admiral, I think I have finally learned how to dance… but I have no sword….”

Chapter 30

That was a most disheartening characterization of the present situation faced by China in this war. Before this conflict, there were think tanks and would-be Admirals all claiming the day of the big deck aircraft carrier was over, and that these massive, expensive ships were becoming too vulnerable. They had begun to spout new warfighting theories with names like “Distributed Lethality,” to devise a strategy that would make their operations less dependent on that single ship. They had started to think about drones and unmanned ships and subs.

To some extent, the evolution of the Gator Navy to deploy and use the F-35 was a step in the right direction, but when it came to the real work, facing down these massive flotillas and fleets the Chinese sent to sea, it was the Carrier Strike Group that prevailed time and time again.

90 Chinese warships had been sunk, a staggering total that has seen their navy swept from the seas and sent into retreat to the homeland. Submarines had taken the greatest toll, sinking nearly a third of those ships, with 28 confirmed kills and HMS Anson leading the pack getting eight of those. The Siberians were in second place, with 19 ships sunk, including three carriers, and they were the overall winners for actual tonnage sunk if that mattered. Then the US carriers had put 17 ships under the sea, with Holmes on the Independence leading that group with eight kills, and the Roosevelt right behind him with seven.

The Chinese had reinforced their Indian Ocean Fleet by withdrawing from the Med, to a point where Admiral Sun Wei once had 40 warships and six submarines under his command. He reached Colombo with eight, leaving three others behind in friendly or neutral ports. That was a staggering loss of 29 ships, and all the waters they had thought to contest and control, from Aden to Karachi. They had, in turn, sunk 12 British ships and one American Destroyer, (Sherman), damaging one more, (Grant). Any way you counted it, that 29 to 13 score was a thumping defeat, and it was achieved by the Roosevelt, Independence, and a handful of lethal submarines.

No “Distributed Lethality” was involved.

The Navy had concentrated its offensive and defensive power in those Carrier Strike Groups, both the sword and shield of the USN. The carriers were every bit as effective as they had been in WWII, if not more so. One big deck supercarrier was now doing the work that whole fleets of carriers did under Halsey’s command. That roving airfield at sea, with a lethal, stealthy strike wing, was a big reason the war was now so lop-sided, with Kudos to the undersea fleet as well. That was the same carrier-sub combination that had won WWII in the Pacific Theater.

The undersea fleet of China had some success, but it was too slow to ever really threaten an American Carrier when that force was skillfully operated. The Americans stayed out in the Deep Blue, where the Chinese Fleet sailed at their own peril. From there, far from littoral waters where the diesel boats might operate, they struck at their whim with that devastating air wing, and the US conversion of the Tomahawk to the Maritime Strike Missile gave the supporting destroyers and cruisers a reach of 1500 miles on offense with that weapon. Their inventories of TACTOM’s were also hounding and pounding all the vital support bases the Chinese relied upon. The United States Navy had simply cut the so called “String of Pearls” to pieces. They had taught China the most important lesson of the war—you cannot control your maritime lines of communication.

Period.

It was a lesson that both Wu Jinlong and now Sun Wei had learned in the hardest possible way. China had counted too heavily on unproven technology with its DF-21D’s. In that duel, when Standard Missile-3 had shown itself capable of defending the fleet from ballistic missile attack, China had lost that great fearsome trump card. After that, the only way it could engage the American carriers was with the YJ-100, and there were just not enough of those missiles to do the job.

“I might have held out another few weeks at Karachi,” said Sun Wei. “I had good air cover there, though the Pakistani Air Force was useless, as was their navy.”

“Yes,” said Shen Jinlong. “You may have seen the report, but there was a flareup with India, and their navy inflicted severe losses on the Pakistani fleet.”

“So they have fled to Karachi, as I was forced to do,” said Sun Wei. “This shameful withdrawal now cedes the Persian Gulf to the West.”

“Not until they fight their way in,” said Shen Jinlong.

“They will turn to those operations directly. I have not had time to follow the news from Iraq. Can you brief me?”

“No good news there,” said the Fleet Admiral. “The Western Coalition forces have encircled Baghdad in the north, and liberated Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the south. They have even gone so far as to seize many oil fields in southern Iraq, including fields where we held the major development contracts. That prompted the Party to send the Army, and a kind of stalemate has developed. We have kept the Majnoon oil fields, and the Army is drawing up offensive plans to take back the West Qurna fields if the Americans do not withdraw from them. But that is not our concern.”

“Yes,” said Sun Wei. “It matters not how much oil we control there if we cannot also control the sea lanes between the Persian Gulf and China. As you can see, Shen Jinlong, that is a task that seems beyond our means.”

“Perhaps, but this is not yet over. Nothing is decided yet. So this is what we will do. I will have the laser turret modules you need for the Eagle God sent immediately. We will also look into installing them on other ships with the necessary space, weight, electrical power, and cooling capacity to accommodate these weapons. Our new LDH carriers, all our remaining aircraft carriers, are perfect candidates. They have the power required, and I will see that every Type 055 gets them as you advise. The Type 052D can also generate sufficient power, and we may be able to install perhaps a single laser turret on those ships.”

“While they last,” Sun Wei said darkly. “What we need is a new missile. Look at the Siberians! Where did they get that battlecruiser, and the deadly hypersonic missiles it carries?”

“That question has been on the lips of many,” said Shen Jinlong. “We can only believe that this is Soviet technology, but we have been working hard on a number of new weapons, with excellent speed and range. You will see them very soon. In the meantime, we must make the best use of the weapons we have. Now we must discuss future operations. You are correct, Sun Wei, we cannot control the sea lanes we decorated with all those distant support bases, our String of Pearls. Except at Karachi, there was never sufficient airfield capacity in and around the bases to enable them to hold out against a concerted attack. Our losses in the Gulf of Aden were most telling. You bested the British Fleet when you outnumbered them, even against their carriers, but when the tables were turned, we lost much.”

“That stone was first thrown by the Americans,” said Sun Wei. “In the first hours of the operation, when our various Task Forces were maneuvering to assemble into the main fleet, the Americans focused on the Aden group, and so weakened it that I had to retire it to replenish. As it happened, that group was never again able to rejoin the fleet, and brave Nanchang made a gallant stand at Aden, but could not hold. Once isolated like that, a task force is extremely vulnerable.”

“Well,” said Shen Jinlong, “you have two airfields at your disposal here on Sri Lanka, and we will keep them well provisioned.”

“Is this my mission? Am I to defend this island?”

“That has not been decided. The General Staff has a mind to recall your entire task force to the south China Sea.”

“What? It is over a thousand nautical miles to reach the western approaches to the Malacca Strait, and from there another six or seven hundred miles to make the transit. If we are pursued by the Independence, that would become another suicide mission.”

“When you depart, you will get strong air cover from all our fighters here on Sri Lanka, and the J-20’s can give you that 600 miles out.”

“Can they? Twelve were lost trying to welcome me here.”

“They were not deployed in good numbers, and overwhelmed by the American fighters, but we will correct that. We have acquired basing rights at Yangon in Burma, and the Air Force will move both fighters and bombers there.”

“The War Gods?”

“Yes, those we used to support you in Karachi. They were withdrawn to Lhasa, and will be transferred to Yangon tonight. Our fighters there will help cover the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal with those based on Sri Lanka. But there’s more. Admiral Zheng Bao has assumed command of the Taifeng group, which has returned to the South China Sea. He will maneuver to the Gulf of Thailand to extend his air cover over the isthmus into the approaches to the strait. Then, as you transit the strait, he will be moving on a parallel course on the other side of the Malayan Peninsula, so you will have J-31’s over you the entire time, from not one, but two carriers. Guandong was moved from the East China Sea to enable this.”

“And what is the opposition?”

“The Enterprise group is in the Java Sea.”

“And the Independence….” Sun Wei thought about that. “Two carriers could present an insurmountable defense. So once again, in spite of the air cover, I believe I will be on another suicide mission.”

Shen Jinlong, understood why his Admiral was so recalcitrant. He had seen so many ships and crews go into the sea, and did not want to undertake another risky operation like this. But there were mitigating factors.

“You forget that the American carriers have been at sea, and in combat, for a good long while. They, too, need to replenish in port from time to time. We have learned that the Independence has been ordered to Diego Garcia. When it gets there, that strike group will be almost a thousand nautical miles from the waters off Sri Lanka. So the quicker you replenish here, the quicker you can leave. It will give you an insurmountable lead on that carrier group, and then, with Zheng Bao’s fleet, the two of you can face down the Enterprise .”

“All this simply to recover my ten ships to home waters? What of Sri Lanka?”

“We have SAM batteries and fighters to defend it, and I do not think the Americans will attempt a landing there. You will not be under attack as you move east. You will outrun the Independence, and then drive off the Enterprise with Zheng Bao.”

Sun Wei took a deep breath. “And then that is the end of our naval presence in the Indian Ocean Theater. The Army can sit on the oil in Iraq for as long as it likes, but no ship will ever carry it to Shanghai—not while this war continues.”

“Sun Wei… if you remain at Sri Lanka, you will be isolated, just like the group that tried to hold Aden. Once they replenish, then both these American carriers will come for you here. This is our only chance to salvage what remains of your fleet. You must replenish quickly, and then race east. We have technicians and shipwrights here from China. Do not worry, the damaged Eagle God will be ready to resume operations in 24 hours. They have already boarded to assess what needs to be done. Configure your fleet, Admiral. Load out the ships as you see best. When that work is completed, and before the Independence reaches Diego Garcia, slip away in the night, and run east like the wind. Operation Dong Feng is hereby ordered to commence at your earliest opportunity.”

The hidden reason behind this urgent need to recall Sun Wei was never mentioned. Zhen Bao had taken command of 17 ships returning from the Celebes Sea. There were nine ships at Manila Bay, four patrolling the Taiwan Gap north of the Philippines, and seven assigned to the reef island bases in the South China Sea. Eight more ships composed the Guandong CVBG, and two older destroyers were at Sanya Harbor on Hainan Island. Aside from submarines and Corvettes, this was the South Seas Fleet now, 40 surface ships of any note. So Sun Wei’s ten ships were sorely needed, because the General Staff had read the tea leaves and knew the war was coming to home waters sooner than they ever expected.

All thought of trying to control the Gulf of Oman or Indian Ocean dissipated with the defeat of the 40 ship Fleet Sun Wei had once commanded. Now it was becoming a question of whether the South China Sea could be held. That fleet could be further reinforced by ships from the East China Sea, which was presently holding and guarding the long Ryukyu island chain, China’s new great island wall at sea.

While Wu Jinlong’s attempt to control the Celebes and Sulu Seas had failed, those waters were still contested, the province of hidden Chinese subs, and also defended by SSM batteries ashore to some extent, and modest air power. But they were not waters where the Chinese surface fleets could sail without risk, and it was likely that the Americans would take control over the Celebes Sea soon with their Washington Carrier Strike Group.

The General Staff had watched the deployment of the US Carriers to assess where their own risk was, and it now appeared that any future enemy offensive would be aimed at the South China Sea before it happened in the East China Sea. So China was calling its last overseas squadron home, and looked to be planning a defensive war from that hour forward. Unless something happened, and the “fortunes of war” Shen Jinlong had mentioned began to favor them, China would now be fighting to defend the homeland.

It had been a grand ambition, and perhaps hubris that led them to strike so boldly into the Middle East, but now the sea lines of communications to that region had been decisively severed, and any hope for control of the Indian Ocean was lost. With Sun Wei, the war would soon be coming home, but there was a secret new reason for hope. Shen Jinlong had left much unsaid about these new missiles China was building. It would not be long before he would see them in action.