Able Fire: The Next War - 2025 and Beyond

Chapter 16

Operation Clipper in the far south was a major success for the Coalition forces defending Saudi Arabia, and it immediately forced a retreat north into Kuwait. As that got underway, the 82nd Airborne had swooped in to set up blocking position on key roads, and a good many Iraqi formations were trapped, including the 8th, 10th, 15th, 28th, and 47th Motor Rifle Brigades. The prize included all that remained of the Al Faw Motorized Republican Guard Division, though the mechanized Andan Division was one of the lucky units to escape into northern Kuwait. These forces included the 1st, 6th, 9th, and 20th Motor Rifle Brigades, three Iranian Marine battalions, numerous Iranian Revolutionary Guard units, Takavar special forces, and their 92nd Armored Division, or what was left of it, about three battalions of armor.

The Iranian forces anchored their lines on the coast in northern Kuwait, forward of the port of Umm Qasr. Composed of about three to four brigades in actual strength, the line covered the Sabiryah Oil fields and stretched all the way west to the end of the Kuwaiti border. The four Iraqi MR Brigades then took over, positioning to screen and defend their own valuable Rumailah oil fields The Andan Republican Guard Division moved further north as a mobile reserve unit screening the valuable oil producing center of Basrah.

That was where all these surviving units would stay, in the south. They would not be attempting to conduct a long retreat north under withering Coalition air strikes as had been expected. Instead they would defend the key cities and installations in their sector, and of these, Basrah was the most important. To that end, Iran had promised, and was now sending, significant reinforcements into Iraq, seeing that as advantageous whether the war was won or lost.

All this was in keeping with the strategy Qusay Hussein had insisted upon—to disperse the combat power of the army to as many cities as possible, so that it could not be engaged or destroyed in any one decisive battle by the superior Western forces. If that were to be possible, it might only happen in Baghdad, which would surely be the site of major fighting. But positioning strong forces in the south, between Al Qurna and Abadan, was also forcing the Coalition to rethink its overall operational plan.

The major difference was that there would be not strong push north by US units after the liberation of Kuwait. There was only one US ground division there, 1st USMC, and the 3rd Brigade of 1st Cav, along with the 82nd Airborne. That entire corps would be needed to drive the invaders from Kuwait, and then secure Basrah and Abadan. In effect, this set up two distinct theaters for the war, SOUTHCOM based in Kuwait, and CENTCOM focused on Baghdad. So the fabled 21 day advance north by 1st Marine Division was not in the plans here. The Leathernecks would stay in the south.

There, along the marshy swamps of the Shatt al Arab waterway that ran through Basrah, the Iraqis hoped to create a kind of Stalingrad on the Tigris, or in this history, a Volgograd. Called the Arvand Rud, or “Swift River” by the Iraqis, that waterway was actually formed by the confluence of both the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, which joined further north at the city of Al Qurna. As wide as 2600 feet in some places, it presented a formidable water barrier, and had served in the south as the border between Iraq and Iran. As both nations had oil production facilities in that region, they had squabbled and fought there, until China brokered the peace.

Yet now China seemed very far away. No Chinese air squadrons had been sent to Iraq, and no troops had yet come from far away Beijing. The region was left on its own, though at least it would fight with much equipment that had been purchased from China over the years. Hot and humid in the summers, with temperatures topping 120 degrees (F), there were vast groves of date palm trees steaming in the heat. But was much cooler in January, with an average high between 63 and 68. Second only to Baghdad’s teeming 7.5 million souls, there were 2.6 million in Basrah, which made it a warren of virtually unlimited resistance fighters if things went that way.

The city was famous for the old mosque of Basrah, the first ever built outside the Arabian Peninsula. Now, in 2026, its sported shopping malls, a sports city, bustling markets and bazaars, swank hotels and amusement parks, like the Basra Fun City. Another park sat on “Sinbad Island” where one of the main bridges crossed the Shatt al Arab. Yet the thing that made it most important was oil, now as it was in WWII decades earlier. Today it was mostly managed by the Iraqi South Oil Company.

The so called “Mesopotamian Foredeep Basin” was rich with oil and gas fields. The Rumailah Oil fields alone contained 14% of the world’s known oil reserves, and further north, the West Qurna Oil Field was the second largest in the world with 42 billion recoverable barrels of oil. These were among the most lucrative supergiant fields in the world, so it was not the city, but these oil fields that would be the object of the campaign.

Executives at Western Oil Companies had been rubbing their palms together since the war began, realizing that the terrible disruption of their operations worldwide would also yield huge opportunities. They were already lining up for the bidding war on development rights after Iraq was “liberated.” Royal Dutch Shell was eying Kirkuk in the north. Both Shell and BHP Billiton were looking at the Missan fields on the Iranian border, and Petronas wanted the Majnoon field, along with the Chinese. Chevron had its mind set on taking the development contracts away from the Chinese in the big West Qurna fields complex. Exxon Mobile coveted the nearby Zubair fields, and the old master of the region dating from the last war, British Petroleum, was laying claim to the big Rumailah fields, where the Chinese presently had big interests. The fact that Basra’s 2.6 million citizens were in the region did not interest them in the least. That was just an unfortunate inconvenience, and a source of “above ground” complications they would have to deal with. So Basrah had to be tamed.

Yet it was cities like this that made the modern world unconquerable. The 1st USMC division had about 23,000 troops, which included a good number of “Pogue” support troops. That meant there were over 100 Iraqi citizens for every Marine in Basrah, perhaps 200 for each actual combat Marine in the division. Occupying and attempting to control such a city was a daunting, if not impossible, task. Yet at that time, the Coalition planners were thinking that they could simply defeat the Iraqi Army in the south and then gain the good will of a liberated local population.

It would not happen that way.

The Iraqis planned to fight forward of the city to protect the oil fields, but if beaten, they intended to fall back into the concrete maze of Basrah, joined by thousands of Iranians that were even now making their way to the city, both regular troops and Revolutionary Guard units. There they would find a teeming host of young men of military age, and the process of radicalizing them to resist the Western Infidels would begin in earnest.

The odd thing about oil infrastructure was that you couldn’t really occupy and defend it militarily. You could do this to guard against small threats or planned terrorist acts, but not against a big conventional military force. Defending on or too near these fragile and volatile facilities would only lead to their destruction, and so the strategy was to yield the ground if the line could not be held forward of the fields. Then you would wait out the resolution of the conflict to see who could claim the prizes in the end. Basrah was where the Iraqis and Iranians would be waiting….

The Marines were ready.

They had already broken the back of the Iraqi defense in Saudi Arabia, sent them retreating north, then outmaneuvered them with the help of 82nd Airborne, and cut their numbers in half in a great pocket. The road ahead was just what was left, and they were going to get some more. While the Iraqi Army remained in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, they were in a position that was tailor made for an envelopment to the West. Given the extreme mobility of the US forces, the result was virtually inevitable. The Iraqis thought they could run, but they could simply not run and gun with the USMC, America’s premier shock troops. Nothing that was so boldly taken in the Iraqi Operation Desert Sword would be kept for long. By the 21st of January, the Coalition had liberated the Bahra, Burgan and Ratqa Oil Fields in Kuwait, and they were about to go after the Sabiryah Fields next.

“Panther, this is Wildfire. Sitrep. Over.”

“Roger Wildfire. We have movement to the northwest on both highways. Objective J-7 is occupied as well. It’s getting lonesome out here. Panther, over.”

“Roger Panther. Eagle wants you on J-7 immediately. Falcon will assist from the south. Over.”

Panther and Falcon were the 1st and 2nd BCTs of the 82nd Airborne, out on a wide envelopment mission to get the airfield at Jalibah, (J-7), and establish a blocking position astride Highways 1 and 8 connecting Baghdad with Basrah. SOUTHCOM did not want any more Iraqi reserve forces moving south into the Basrah sector as the Marines bulled their way into the port of Umm Qasr, reaching the northern border of Kuwait just before dawn on the 21st. Kuwait was officially liberated, with all hostile forces ejected and the country back in the hands of the Kuwaiti Royal Family by 06:00.

The Iranian troops were still just across that frontier, and four Iraqi Motor Rifle Brigades extended the front along the southern edge of the Rumailah Oil Fields, and on out into the desert, where fixed defensive positions had been prepared before the war. With those two BCT’s of the 82nd on Objective J-7, everything in the south was officially cut off from the north, and the war now had its two distinct theaters.

The movement to the north on Highways 1 and 8 were the 26th and 27th Iraqi Motor Rifle Brigades, the forces that had been way out on a limb near Halfar in Saudi Arabia for the entire war. They were the troops that Lieutenant Michael Ives and Sergeant James Stoker had first eyeballed crossing the Saudi border in the wee early hours of the 25th of November, almost two months earlier. That had been all the time that Qusay Hussein’s war had bought him in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Just shy of 60 days later, all his troops were back on home turf, and those two brigades were among the last to reach populated areas of Iraq again following a long march through the emptiness of the desert.

After resting briefly near Nasiriyah, they had been ordered south to join the Sibay MR Brigade, posted near the airfield they had just lost to the 82nd Airborne. A little north of their position at Nasiriyah, two more territorial brigades were mustering near that city. So even with two BCT’s out on that flank, the 82nd was still in Bad Guy territory, with elements of five Iraqi Brigades withing striking distance of their position near Jalibah Airfield. They were a thorn in the Iraqis’ side there, and a battle was slowly brewing in that sector.

That morning, the men of the 82nd watched and waited for trouble, but it never came. In taking the airfield, they had surrounded and destroyed one battalion of the Sibay MR Brigade. The remaining two did not stick around, retreating east along Highway-8 to man prepared positions elsewhere.

Those vast fields extended from the Kuwaiti border as far north as Al Qurna, and they had been producing 1.4 million barrels of oil per day before the war, with almost all of that running southeast through pipelines to the oil terminal port of Fao. From there the tankers would take it all out through the Persian Gulf to destinations all over the world, though the Chinese had drawn heavily on that supply, until the war stopped virtually all tanker traffic to and from the Gulf.

But there in the south of Iraq, the world’s 2nd, 3rd and 4th largest oil fields, West Qurna, Majnoon, and Rumailah, and of these only the latter was now in full production. The other two sat as vast untapped reserves, with only modest production underway in this history, but they were the fields that would carry much of the weight of the world’s energy needs to the year 2050. China had bet heavily on them, and now it was seeing that bet in danger of being lost.

Qusay Hussein and his brother might have good reason to complain now. They had risked a great deal to make a bold play for control of the world’s greatest oil prize, Ghawar, along with the fields in Kuwait, but now all of that had been for naught. The question now was whether or not Iraq could defend these tremendous field assets in the south, and the Chinese were nowhere to be seen.

Geography was the principle reason. In our history, there is no direct rail line from China to Pakistan. The formidable obstacle of high rugged mountains made this near impossible. But China had invested heavily in a major pipeline project through Kazakhstan and also in the Central Asia-China pipeline through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. These steel arteries were reaching to tap the new oil fields of the Caspian Basin, and with them in this history, China financed and built railways into those regions as well.

It was another case of an apparent economic infrastructure project that would now have a secondary role in time of war. China could not send troops to Pakistan by rail easily, or at all, but it could send them to Iran. In this history, a 425 mile rail connection between Kashgar in China and Dushanbe in Tajikistan had been completed by the year 2020, and from there, existing lines reached through Turkmenistan into Iran. There the rails ran from Mashad to Tehran, and then south through Arak, Khorramabad, Dezful, and on to Avhaz, which was just 65 miles north of Basrah.

That was what was now on the table in Beijing as the Chinese General Staff saw the inevitable collapse of the Iraqi Army as only a matter of time. With the Siberian front settled down to a glare across the newly established DMZ, the General Staff was asked to consider the moment of the Chinese 13th Army to Iran.

That would change everything, or so they believed….

Chapter 17

“As you were.” The assembled officers were meeting at SOUTHCOM in Kuwait City for a status conference and planning session, including General Bergman of the 1st Marine Division, and now overall commander of the SOUTHCOM forces, with Air Force commander General Goldman. EUROCOM Commander Black Jack Arnold joined, and CENTCOM Commander Jonas Walker flew in from the north to attend and report on progress there, As the senior commander in theater, he took the podium.

“Gentlemen, we’ve made exceptional progress since Zero Hour. All our initial objectives have been obtained, principally Ramadi and Karbala, and we own the gaps. In the north, the enemy defensive front is now on a line from Fallujah to Al Taji north of Baghdad, and that has pulled in the Qusar Hussein Division to cover the northern approaches to Baghdad through Al Taji. General Arnold and associates have done an outstanding job at Karbala, and the French contingent is now involved at Hillah to clear that flank as EUROCOM prepares to move north. In that sector, we note that the Iraqis have pulled the Hammurabi Division out of Alexandria, tightening their defenses around Baghdad. It’s clear they mean to make a fight for the capital, but we’re up to the task. General Bergman will now brief us on SOUTHCOM operations.”

“Thank you, sir.” Bergman was in camos, a big man, and all square jawed business.

“SOUTHCOM is pleased to report that as of 06:00 this morning, all enemy forces had been driven north across the border into Iraq, and Kuwait is liberated. That fulfills our principle objective, with Operation Clipper liberating Saudi Arabia, and now Southern Eagle liberating Kuwait. But before we celebrate, General Goldman’s air intelligence arm has been reporting a considerable influx of Iranian forces crossing into Iraq over the last 24 hours. These forces include the 64th Bandar Motor Rifle Brigade, three Marine Battalions, The Dezful Reserve Armored Brigade, and a significant number of Revolutionary Guard units. General?”

Goldman was in his dress uniform, laden with ribbons and medals, and looked all the world like a highly decorated insurance salesman. He ran up some digital slides showing the latest intelligence, and now focused on the north.

“Gentlemen, I have good news, and bad news. The Erbil Division left that city near the Turkish frontier and moved south yesterday to join a column of Iranian units emerging from the Kirkuk district. Thus far, we’ve identified the Iranian 77th Khorasan and 84th Lorestan MR Brigades approaching Baqubah, the Karukh Mountain Brigade on Highway-3 heading south with brigades from Tehran, Hamedan, and Azerbaijan, so those forces constitute two Iranian divisions in the north, and let’s also remember the Iraqi Mosul Division is up there too. Given this increased concentration of enemy units, we need to assess the wisdom of moving too far north, especially since we still have what looks to be a hard nut to crack at Baghdad.”

He smiled. “In case you were wondering, that was the good news. Now for the bad… The Chinese have mobilized significant forces from their Western Military District, notably from the 13th and 21st Armies, and they are on the move. The first elements crossed the border by rail into Tajikistan, heading for Dushanbe, and that can only mean they are intending to move into Iran. Whether they stay there, or deploy here remains to be seen, but this is a complication that no one on the operational planning side anticipated. It was generally believed, particularly given the situation in Manchuria with the Siberians, that we would not see any significant ground force from PLAN in this theater. Unfortunately, that may be about to change, and I’ll yield the podium back to General Walker to take it from here.”

“Thank you, General Goldman. I’m sure you’ll be watching that strategic rail lift like a hawk. As for what this may mean for our situation, I can report that the two Armored BCT’s of 1st Infantry Division have arrived in Israel, and they are moving into Saudi Arabia to take Highway 85 down to your sector, General Bergman. With the single BCT from 1st Cav, the addition of the Big Red One will augment your core ground force to two full divisions. Beyond that, we are releasing the 173rd’s Air Mobile Brigade from theater reserve, and it will be coming down to join the 82nd airborne as well.”

“Any help from the Saudis, sir? After all, we pulled their chestnuts out of the fire.”

“That we did, and that’s an affirmative. The Saudis wanted to keep their forces in the Kingdom, but considering what we did to eject the Iraqis, they have put together a heavy contingent composed of their King Khalid Armored Brigade, and the 11th Mech Brigade. This was, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs, the minimum reinforcement necessary if we are to continue with Able Fire, and gentlemen, I’ll be blunt—we are continuing. The liberation of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait under Able Sentry has come to a conclusion here with General Bergman’s report this morning. Now Able Fire has a new task list. The operations we move to stage and conduct at this point have two goals.”

General Walker, short, graying, a 30 year Army Veteran, now put up a new slide showing the general state of operations in Iraq as a whole. The audience could see the lines curving around Fallujah in the north, and extending northeast towards Al Taji. This front was largely manned by the six brigades in 1st Armored and the 3rd I.D. The two brigades of 1st Cav had been detached north, sweeping above Al Taji to cut Highway-1, and now probing towards Samarra.

South of Baghdad, the European Brigades had secured both Karbala and Al Hillah, with British forces entering Alexandria, which had been abandoned by the Hammurabi Division. That force was now organizing for a thrust towards Baghdad to complete the pincer operation with US forces and squeeze the capital from two sides. Walker addressed the issues at hand.

“In the north, the taking of Baghdad is largely a political goal, aimed at unseating or badly destabilizing the Hussein regime to the point where we render it ineffective as a controlling and governing force in Iraq that can oppose our other objectives. At this junction, I want to bring up a Special Central Intelligence Agency Agent, Mister James Coleman.

“Thank you, General Walker. I’ll put up a slide of Baghdad to get a look at what we’re about to bite off and chew here. As you can see, it’s a vast sprawling city, bisected by the Tigris River, which makes this sharp hairpin turn just south of city center. A good many of our objective sites in the city will be just above that hairpin, which is the centered on the great twin swords of the Victory Arch, commemorating the fallen in the Iran-Iraq war. It seems they’ve put their differences aside to fight this one, and so this is no small matter. The operations we now conduct are going to reshape the entire Middle East, a political upheaval the ends of which are still not clearly seen.

“Please bear in mind that we are on a short leash here. The President has authorized both Able Sentry and our transition now to Able Fire, but the Army was put on notice in the planning stages, and we were given 90 days to conclude major fighting that would liberate both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, neuter the Hussein Regime so we don’t have to come back here in another five years, and then secure the vital oil facilities in country, as far as we are able—and ladies and gentlemen, from all battlefield reports I’ve seen to date, we are able.”

At that, the junior officers in the room let out the expected “Uraah,” and Coleman smiled.

“I wanted to give you just a list of some of the facilities and objectives we have in entering Baghdad. This city is the heartbeat of Iraq, and here they are marked in red on this next slide. We’ll find the Iraqi Directorate of Military Intelligence and Ministry of Defense, their Secret Police complex, Army storage depots and barracks, SCUD missile factory, Baath Party HQ and Presidential Palace, the Ministry of Propaganda, command centers and bunkers, the National Air Defense Operations Center, and a host of economic infrastructure targets. These would include the bridges, power stations, TV and radio transmission sites, and the Ad Dawrah Oil Refinery. Also on the list is the Iraq Museum, right in central Baghdad.”

Coleman could see that last objective didn’t seem to fit with the others, so he offered an explanation.

“This museum holds thousands of artifacts, the cultural heritage of not only Iraq, but the world itself. In any operation on the scale we are now planning, there is going to be a breakdown of local civil authority, and the chances are therefore high that we could see that facility heavily looted, or even destroyed. I’m here to tell you that will not happen, and I’ve been assured that I will have the full support of General Walker in this. We will have some of our paramilitary people on the ground riding with forces entering the city, and they will take a particular interest in the places just I’ve highlighted on this map.”

Walker stood briefly and spoke. “You’ll not only my support, but this is a directive that comes down from the Joint Chiefs. So Mister Coleman here is the Hammer of God when it comes to any and all matters concerning these targets. His people are going to have broad authority, to the point where they will be authorized to commandeer and direct any element of our military to assure they secure those objectives—including the museum. Consider it the top of the list he has just presented here. I want no questions in the field as to the who, what, when, where or why of this. Just listen up if you meet CIA in the field, and do whatever they order.”

“Thank you, General Walker. You might all take comfort in the fact that I’m CIA also with the Paramilitary Division, so please don’t think of me as a meddling civilian. That said, I’ll yield the podium now so you can speak to the SOUTHCOM operations.”

Walker resumed his post and changed slides to show the situation in the south from the Kuwaiti Border north to Basrah and beyond.

Ladies and gentlemen, in the south there will be no politics involved, and I will be quite frank and call it like it is. General Bergman’s operation there is all about the oil. It’s been about the oil since the day he put his troops ashore at Salaha in Oman, and it will continue to be about the oil from this day forward. We have just successfully defended production facilities and fields friendly to the West in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Now we’re after the other fellah’s luggage. The Joint Chiefs have directed me to proceed with Able Fire with the aim of securing and controlling as many of the fields and production sites you now see on this map.”

They were all there, Rumailah and Zubayr southwest of Basrah, the big Siba Gas fields near Abadan, and the Al Qurna and Majnoon fields north of Basrah.

“Gentlemen, control of these production sites and proven reserves is the principle strategic goal of this war—not only for us, but given this latest intelligence from General Goldman, apparently for the Chinese as well. The President has been informed and has approved the Joint Chief’s assessment on this.”

The General switched on his laser pointer, circling locations on the map as he continued.

“We do not anticipate difficulties in securing the two main segments of the big Rumailah field, but that field is in active production, and so we want to tread lightly. Any air or indirect fire missions must be approved at brigade level, which means no battalion fire missions. This smaller field here is the Zubayr Field, just forward of that town. As we take that, you will note that geography will no longer be our friend. On our right is the marshland of Abu Al Khasib, still passable in places as it approaches Basrah, but on our left the heavy marshland of Hawr Al Hammar will impede all mechanized operations. There is a gap here at the north end of the Rumaliah Fields that leads to Al Qurna at the confluence of the Euphtates and Tigris Rivers. The West Qurna Field is tucked right into that elbow, just north of the Euphrates. Majnoon, is here in this region between the Tigris and the Iranian border. That field is largely undeveloped, but crazy with oil reserves, which is what the word Majnoon means—crazy.”

“Sir,” came a question, “do you figure the Chinese have their eyes on those two big northern fields?”

“Well, as West Qurna and Majnoon are the second and third largest fields on the planet for proven reserves, I’d say that was a good bet. If they do get in there before we do, moving them out won’t be easy. We would have to fight our way over the rivers at Al Qurna, or swing all the way out west to Nasiriyah. There it is, gentlemen, plain and simple. We need to get there before the Chinese do, and Get Some.”

That got another “Uraah,” much to Walker’s satisfaction.

“Music to my ears,” he said, and flipped to the next slide, which was the underlying rationale and need for the operations now being planned. A huge portion of the world’s total daily oil supply was coming from fields that had been discovered before 1970, and after that, fewer and fewer resources were surveyed and found. In those older fields over 80 percent of them had peaked and were already in decline.

A perfect example was Canterell, Mexico’s big offshore field discovered in 1976. It had a meteoric rise to just over 2 million barrels per day because of a massive gas bubble that maintained pressure on the oil reservoir making it easy to extract. Then production started to falter as the pressure lowered. This prompted Mexico to consider injecting water or steam to keep up the pressure, as the Saudis had done in their supergiant Ghawar fields, and in the end, they decided to inject nitrogen at the turn of the century. Over the next four years, Cantarell was the fastest growing field in the world, and then production faltered again, and would never recover. Once the world’s number two field behind Ghawar, it reached “Peak oil” in 2004 and saw production fall by 14% per year to just 400,000 BB/d.

Too many other fields had faced the same fate, and in the United States, production levels were only increased because they were literally squeezing oil embedded in shale by “fracking,” a costly process that needed solid oil prices to remain profitable. The steep decline of the supergiants meant the world would need to find another 40 million barrels per day to meet current demand—four times the production of Saudi Arabia. This is why the untapped proven reserves in fields like West Qurna and Majnoon were now key strategic resources.

China had already maneuvered into the good graces of the Hussein regime in Iraq, and had courted the Mullahs In Iran to gain pipeline routes that would bring that oil to China. It was why Admiral Sun Wei had amassed a forty ship fleet in the Indian Ocean to control and guard the Gulf of Oman. And it was why the navies of the United States and Britain, the founders of the industry that had discovered all that oil, were there to give challenge and renew those old claims. Churchill had fretted over the assets and operations of British Petroleum in 1943 when Heinz Guderian went to Baghdad. Now the British and Americans were going there, not for the city, not to liberate anyone, but to unseat a government hostile to their interests in those vast oil fields in the south. Without question, World War Three was an “Oil War.”

Chapter 18

One aspect of that oil war would unquestionably involve the sea lanes. Thus far, the West had cleared the Med, albeit with the cooperation of the Chinese Navy, which migrated through the Suez Canal and Red Sea into the Arabian Sea. The lightning campaign in Sinai had also cleared those last two vital transit lanes, though commercial traffic was not yet moving through the canal.

After savaging the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean, Admiral Sun Wei had been forced to withdraw on the port of Karachi, yielding the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea to the US and Great Britain, whereupon Aden and Djibouti were cleared and captured as Admiral Wells swept through the Gulf of Aden. In his initial clashes with US carriers, Sun Wei had seen the difficulty of his situation in the Gulf of Oman, learning the same hard lesson being taught by the Enterprise .

It was really just a question of simple math. Outside the range of 300 miles, the Chinese air force and navy had a limited strike capability. For SSM’s it was restricted to the YJ-100, with its 430 mile range. For the Air force, the JH-7B Flying Leopard could carry a YJ-12 out to a target 535 miles away. They had nothing else that could get at a target beyond the range of 300 miles. That meant that Admiral Sun Wei had 120 YJ-100’s to throw from his ships, and after losses, only 13 JH-7B Flying Leopards that could bring 26 YJ-12’s to the fight. It was 146 weapons, and every battle fought to date in the war had clearly shown that was just not enough saturation to break through the highly effective and potent defensive shell of a US Carrier Strike Group.

While Admiral Wu Jinlong was pitching his plan to strike east at the American Pacific island bases, Admiral Sun Wei got news of the operation, and he would not sit mute in Karachi bemoaning his fate. He had hoped Wu Jinlong would have been sent through the risky transit of the Malacca Strait, but that was not going to happen. So when he learned that the Air Force had allocated 36 heavy bombers to Operation Sea Eagle in the Celebes Sea, he was quite irate.

“Here I have been struggling for weeks, with few resources, and look what they give to Wu Jinlong! I must make my voice heard with the Naval General Staff, and protest if this theater is not supported with equal strategic assets.”

As it happened, the General Staff had been generous. China was realizing that if it was to have any chance to prevail, it simply had to start committing its strategic assets to support the tactical operations of the Admirals at sea. So Admiral Sun Wei would get his wish. The air force had 120 H-6 Bombers, and while Wu Jinlong had received 36, another 24 would be sent into Pakistan, a commitment now of half the total bomber force. The remaining 60 planes would be locked down on mainland China bases, and would not be touched for any reason.

China also had a total of 120 Flying Leopard strike planes, and by now half of those were deployed or lost. 36 had been sent to Wu Jinlong, with half of them killed on the field at Clark AFB. Admiral Sun Wei had lost about half of those sent to his theater, and so the Air Force vowed to send replacements and bring him back to two full squadrons of 12 planes each. That still left 60 planes in China, again, reserved for the defense of the East and South China Seas.

In fighter strength, both theaters had been allocated 60 of the land based J-20’s, which accounted for a little over a third of China’s total production on that plane. While Wu Jinlong had augmented his fighter strength with his carrier based J-31’s, Admiral Sun Wei had received one squadron of J-31A, land based versions of that fighter, and had ten left. No more would be forthcoming, but he was promised another squadron of 12 J-20’s would arrive with the bombers. Hyderabad AFB in Pakistan was the chosen bomber base, and it would be defended by two new batteries of HQ-9A SAM’s.

The War Gods of Hyderabad were the H-6M variant, capable of carrying three anti-ship missiles, the YJ-100, YJ-12, and C-803, a short range missile that was not sent to the base. The preferred weapon would be those YJ-100’s but only 60 had been sent to Hyderabad. After that, there were 60 of the shorter range YJ-12’s.

These much needed reinforcements took three days to arrive, but that gave Sun Wei time to refuel and rearm his ships in Karachi. Now when he sortied, his long range strength had nearly doubled with the 96 missiles the bombers and extra Flying Leopards might deliver. That would give him the ability to put 236 weapons on enemy targets, assuming all the planes got to their release points safely, and that was beginning to reach a saturation level that might get hits. If, by any chance he could get inside 290 miles, he could then deliver another 100 YJ-18’s.

That was the math, and the numbers were unforgiving in defining his actual wartime offensive strength. While he sortied from Karachi at midnight on the 18th with all 20 ships in his fleet, most of his YJ-100’s were on just three of those ships, the Type 055’s. These were the Flying Dragon, Eagle God and Dragon God, where he himself stood on the bridge, eager to see if he could put fire on his enemy. Out in front of the fleet this time was every submarine that had been in Karachi, departing 12 hours earlier. This sent four Yuan Class boats out to join the single Song Class boat that was already at sea, and three Pakistani subs would join to watch the coastal areas of Northwest India.

It was once more into the breach, a brave war face on the Admiral as they set out. The bombers and Flying Leopards were on call when he needed them, and there was one more weapon he had coaxed from the Strategic Rocket Forces, three batteries of DF-21D ship killers.

My plan now is a simple one, thought Sun Wei. I will attack, and with everything I have. I must coordinate the bombers and air strike squadrons effectively with my ship launched attack. The two American carriers are out there, a little over 350 miles away. Do they know if I Have left Karachi tonight? The moon is dark, which is why I chose this hour to sortie, and the sun is over seven hours away. Out of this blackness, I will bring fire. The Dragon God has wakened, and woe to my enemies. But first I must find them! The satellites can only give me their general location, which will not be good enough for my DF-21’s to get after them. So it will once again be up to my J-20s to dash on the targets and get me radar locks—more brave pilots that I will ask to risk their lives this hour.

Captain Avery Holmes had been burning the midnight oil, looking over his list of available aircraft and the strike packages they were forming. They were out in the middle of the Arabian Sea, about 225 miles east of Masirah AFB on the island off the coast of Oman. Captain James Simpson and the Roosevelt were just 11 miles north of the Independence—good company. Both carriers had taken on ordnance from the AOE ships, and though they were still a little light on SAM’s each group was well defended.

They had spent the last three days undergoing the laborious and often dangerous work of at-sea replenishment, an art the Navy had insisted on returning to its operational capabilities. Chief on their list in that interval was the loading and installation of Standard Missile-6, which had nearly been depleted in the duels fought earlier. That missile was the outer crust of the carrier’s defense, and with forward deployed planes, presented a most formidable defense.[5] A big missile at 21 feet in length, the Navy had installed a special crane for these loading operations on every ship that was to carry it, which required slow speeds and calm seas to conduct.

It’s damn dark tonight, he thought. A good night for a fight. CAP is light right now, but we’ll have a Hawkeye rotation soon, and I’ll double it to six fighters. Seatiger reported an enemy submarine contact, but that’s 120 miles out and they are on the way to investigate it. So let’s hope it will be another quiet night. Things look good on paper, so its time I turned in.

As the Captain left his ready room to look over the bridge crew, he got some unwelcome news.

“Captain, sir, I have bogies due north, range 220 miles—another group bearing zero-four-five degrees northeast, but they appear to be orbiting. Sir… Identifying J-20’s and they are radiating, now just 120 miles out.”

“Well I’ll be…” said Holmes, reaching up to adjust his gold rimmed glasses. “Officer of the Watch, send to the Air Boss—launch Ready CAP. Signal all ships—Battle Stations.”

At that moment, he could see the sky to the north brighten with the fiery tails of friendly missile fire. The Roosevelt group was already locking on and sending those freshly loaded SM-6’s out to greet the interlopers.

It wasn’t long before the general scope of the attack was surmised. The radars reported high altitude ballistic missiles inbound, and now they were able to identify at least 18 JH-7 attack planes in the bogie stream, and cruise missiles coming off their wings. It was all hands on deck, the old naval war cry that no longer really applied when a battle station was a comfortable chair in front of a computer screen with a headset on. But that didn’t make things any less hectic, or less tense. Everyone knew that missiles were coming for them, and even as SM-3’s started surging up into the darkness like bats out of hell, there was always that off chance that a leaker would get through, its aim true, and chaos could reign supreme.

The first group of two ballistic Vampires were knocked down by the now proven and reliable SM-3’s, but behind them the radars had identified eight more inbound, screaming at over 6000 knots and just 80 miles away. At that speed they would reach their assigned targets in less than one minute… but none would. Sixteen SM-3’s locked on like fiery darts and smashed every last one of the DF-21’s, a weapon that had not lived up to the threat it seemed to pose before the war. Now it would be down to the slower birds out there. The YJ-12’s off those J-7s seemed to plod at 1450 knots, and the YJ-100s were much slower yet.

The fire control computers quickly targeted the faster missiles with SM-6, and a stream of those long lance SAM’s were already in the air after them. In the midst of this raging missile fire from the escorts, Roosevelt was sending its ready F-35’s off the deck in a hot rush, ten planes in all. The rest were rigged for strike when this was over, but defense was the first order of business on that dark morning.

Admiral Sun Wei had fired 90 of his 120 ship mounted YJ-100’s, and the bombers put 48 more in the air. So there would be 138 Vampires on the prowl, and another 21 YJ-12’s were still in the air. The Pakistani Air Force had sent up a dozen of their J-17 Thunder strike planes carrying the Wrecker cruise missile, but they would not have the range to get to a release point. So they were circling with four big H-6 tankers, which could refuel two planes at a time, trying to build up enough reserve fuel to enable them to continue on to the attack. It took them so long that their mission was eventually scrubbed and they all returned to base.

In the meantime, it was the lethality and range of the US SM-6 that was now defeating the first YJ-12 strike, while also chasing off any J-20’s that were identified. Yet an hour after the attack began, the missile count for SM-6 was zero on both Carrier Strike Groups. It had taken six hours to load those big missiles, and less than six minutes to fire each and every one. Even so, neither Captain was worried, because each group had a hard inner circle of defense manned by legions of the Evolved Sea Sparrows, and there were also fifteen F-35’s out there falling on the enemy missiles like hawks.

At 03:00, the nearest Vampire to the Roosevelt group was 60 miles out, and leading in 70 more YJ-100’s behind it on various attack vectors. That was all that survived against the ranged defense of SM-6 and the fighters, which killed 111 Vampires. Seventeen minutes later, the ESSM’s had killed all the rest….

The Navy’s concept of a network-centric defense, with concentric circles around its valuable carriers, once again proved to be near invulnerable in actual combat. No Vampire even made it to the innermost defensive circle where short range RIM-116 missiles and Phalanx guns or lasers might be used.

The combination of SM-6 at range, and the huge numbers of Quad packed ESSM’s (4 to every cell), provided the most potent missile defense on the planet. Theoretically, if every one of its 98 VLS cells were used, a single US destroyer could carry 392 ESSM’s. This was, of course, a loadout that was never used, but that was how powerful a ship could be made for defensive purposes if one had a mind to do so, and the missiles. 2000 ESSM’s had been delivered to the Navy by 2012. That number doubled by 2020, and then, with tensions rising and the Navy gearing up for possible conflict, the inventory doubled again by 2025 to more than 8000 before the war broke out. So wartime loadouts ranged from 60 to 120 missiles on each destroyer. Thus far, it was a defense that had not been penetrated.

Sun Wei had shaken his fist at his enemy, but he could not strike him. He was now sitting with only about 45 more missiles that could reach the American carriers, and little hope that a strike that small could break through. But in the confusion of the fighting, the range had slowly decreased, and he now found his fleet about 315 miles from the nearest American carrier. He gave a general fleet order ay 03:26—all ahead flank!

“Mister Connors, watch your range circles. How close is their main body now?”

“Sir, I read them at 315 nautical miles.”

“Well, that puts them just 25 miles from getting those YJ-18’s into the fight. Exercise Standing Order One. Signal all ships that Independence will come to course 300 southwest and run at 35 knots until we open that range to 350 miles.”

“Aye sir, I’ll sent that immediately.”

Standing Order One was a life saver that would keep the enemy at bay, and all but neuter their naval strike power now. At the same time, the US would finalize its own air strike planning, but by prearranged agreement, the destroyers would lead that attack with maritime Tomahawks at dawn.

That strike would see eight missiles allocated from all escorting ships in the two Carrier Strike Group’s, a total of 80 Tomahawks. It would keep the enemy busy while the carriers spotted strike planes and finalized the attack plan. They were going to lead with the LRASM. The forward fighter defense would be provided by 18 F-35’s, and then a mix of Super Tomcats off the Roosevelt and Avengers off the Independence would go up for a quick release of the LRASM to augment the cruise missile strike. That would be evaluated before a decision was made on ordnance requiring a closer approach to the enemy fleet.

So it was a standoff attack, a combination of Tomahawks and LRASM’s to start the day on the 19th at about 08:30. With the Avengers each carrying four missiles, and the six Toms two each that sent 72 LRASM’s out on the heels of the 80 Tomahawks, the first beginning to arrive near targets at 08:50.

The Chinese fleet was like an ancient armored warrior, slashing its way forward through the successive streams of enemy arrows with the bright flashing sword of the HQ-9B. As in many previous engagements, the Tomahawks did not prove difficult to find, track, and kill, but the LRASM was just a little more slippery. Those lances got inside 15 miles, creeping up low and slow, until they finally appeared on Chinese radars in one great mass. Their destroyers reacted quickly, weapons free and firing at will with a rain of SAM’s.

The enemy missiles were aimed at the heart of the fleet, where the defense was thick and hot, but an older Type 053H3 Frigate, the Linfen, was way out on the flank as an ASW picket, and relatively isolated. Of the eight missiles sent its way, one got through to strike the ship and end its war, the only hit achieved by the massive wave of cruise missiles that had once been 152 strong.