“Come to 138 degrees southeast,” said Holmes. He was altering course to keep those bird dogs heading his way at bay.
“Sir, Avengers report they have reached assembly point and have the range.”
“Clear them hot, and the escort is to engage the Vampires.”
“Aye sir.” His XO, Lt. Commander Cooper, was fast and efficient.
The battle was on, 40 YJ-100’s inbound, 48 LRASM’s about to be released in reprisal from the Avengers. The F-35’s would be a while closing the range for their saturation attack, and the Captain looked at his watch. He was going to follow them with Maritime Tomahawks. He had about the same number of those long range missiles as the Chinese had. There were 118 MMT’s in the strike group, and about 175 miles to the southeast, the New Jersey Surface Action Group under Captain Hap Turner had another 150.
For the next ten minutes, the Captain watched as the combination of SM-6 and AAMRAM’s off his F-35’s slowly cut those trains of 40 YJ-100’s to pieces. Not one would get as close as 80 miles from the US ships.
Pakistan had 15 ships at sea, and one group of nine ships had slipped inside the 30 mile limit line. Under normal circumstances, planes might have been scrambled from the nearest Indian airbase, which was now at Jamnagar, just 80 miles away. That base was home to the 6th and 224th Squadrons of Jaguars and the 28th Fighter squadron, which had a dozen Soviet built Mig-29’s.
India had made most of its military hardware purchases from the Soviets. In fact, they had a modified Kiev Class carrier still in service, now at sea as the Vikramaditya. Their own newest carrier, Vikrant (Courageous), was also at sea, and both ships had squadrons of Mig-29K’s and a lot of Russian built ordnance. The presence of these two carriers, and the fact that India could also call on support now from several airfields, made the sortie by the Pakistani fleet a dangerous ploy. It had worked insofar as getting the attention of the Indian forces, but now, after thumbing their noses at their old foe, the Pakistani Admiral Zahid Ilyas, Commander of COMKAR, (Naval Group Karachi), realized he was badly outgunned. His fifteen ships carried a total of 64 C-803 Chinese built missiles, with a range of 100 miles, and not much else.
Relatively speaking, the Indian Navy was armed to the teeth. It had fighters that could carry fast and dangerously effective missiles like the KH-35 Russian Star, and the deadly Brahmos high speed cruise missile. The Indian ships also carried those missiles, and they also had the export variant of the Klub “Sizzler.” Their weapons were much better than anything Pakistan had, and that meant Admiral Ilyas was going to now exercise the better part of valor, and turn for Karachi before things got hot. They were now 240 miles from the Indian fleet, and the order was given to return to port at 15:00 that afternoon.
But then there was Kalvari….
The Indian Sub Captain had been told to investigate, and he was eager to do so. So he cruised, just over the layer, and got himself very close to the intruding ships… too close. His boat was detected, the Pakistani Fleet got very edgy, thinking they might have stumbled upon an American sub, and a YU-7 torpedo was put in the water.
As soon as the Captain of Kalvari realized he was under attack, he accelerated to 20 knots to try and evade, and then counterattacked the nearest enemy ship, which was the Frigate Zufliquar, a Chinese 053H3 class ship sold to Pakistan. When that YU-7 failed to lock on and hit, the Indian Captain fired two torpedoes, and he would put that frigate down. Seconds after that explosion was heard, another torpedo made a run at the sub, this time a Mark-46, but it swept past, spoofed by countermeasures.
The torpedo soon realized it had no target, and began to circle to re-acquire. It would make one more pass at Kalvari, but fail a second time before it ran out of energy and died. Kalvari had escaped, but its attack had sent the entire Pakistani fleet into wild evasive maneuvers like a lion coming on a herd of Wildebeests. Once the sub got to clear water, out of range of enemy torpedoes, it would send up an emergency buoy for a flash comm signal to Mumbai stating that it had been fired upon, and returned fire in self-defense, sinking a Pakistani frigate.
The hellcat was out of the bag…
As this was playing out, the nine F-35’s carrying a total of 72 GBU-53’s snuck inside HQ-9 range and released without being detected. They had targeted the main body, and particularly the heavy destroyers where all the Chinese offensive, and most of their defensive capability was roosting. About 25 miles out, the HQ-9’s rose up in a furious stream of missiles that tore into the glide bomb cloud and savaged it. The defense was rock solid, and they would find and destroy every target, none reaching even the 15 mile range mark before they died. But there went over 100 SAM’s….
The Chinese screening formation was now getting close to the 300 mile marker as it kept closing the range, which prompted Captain Holmes to turn due south after his Avengers were recovered. He would not allow Independence to be put inside the range of those YJ-18’s.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “The GBU’s didn’t get any hits, but they did their job and pulled some teeth. Now we go to the Tomahawks. All ships are cleared hot to engage as planned.”
That plan would allocate 80 missiles, keeping up the pressure on the enemy SAM bays, and intending to slowly wear down the defensive viability of the enemy fleet. Unlike the GBU’s which would do minor damage if one hit, a Tomahawk could not be ignored, because a single hit would likely kill any ship it struck.
At 16:00, the Chinese satellite Yaogan-7 made its timely overflight and updated all the positions of the US ships. Without it, Sun Wei might have been largely blind, but at least he knew where his antagonist was. That data hit the updated situation screens a few minutes later, and it showed a lone US destroyer, identified as DDG Sherman, now within range of YJ-18’s in both TF’s.
“A lost sheep,” said Sun Wei.
“That is the ship that escorted the damaged US destroyer to Mumbai,” said the Watch Officer.
“Yes,” said the Admiral, “and if India wishes to remain neutral, it should demand that ship be interned there for the duration of this war. Very well, let us see if we can kill this ship before it reaches the protection of one of the other task forces.”
“DDG Chaoyong reports they have target lock, sir, and with 16 missiles.”
“Then they must fire at once. I want first blood in this fight.”
Chapter 26
Two Seafire Class[8] destroyers in the screen also reported they had a target lock on the Sherman, and they were authorized to join the attack with 8 missiles each. As it happened, Yaogan-7 flew almost directly over the US destroyer, further refining its position. The YJ-18 was a fussy missile, and needed very precise position data before it could be fired. So it wasn’t merely a question of having the range, it also needed down range certainty as to the location of the target.
The attack was fired just before the first of the US Tomahawks were picked up, and now the alarms sounded for fleet defense. The Vampires were coming in on many different vectors, but they were slow enough to allow the Chinese defense systems to acquire and target them easily enough. The missile was an old dog dating from decades past that had been upgraded and taught new tricks, but it was still the same old dog when it came to speed at just 500 knots. If these missiles had been designed to make a terminal run at three times that speed, they might have scored some hits. As it was, they were threatening weapons that had to be respected, but not unduly feared as long as Sun Wei still had SAM’s. There were a little over 200 HQ-9’s still available, and they were going to work.
8
These ships were copies of an older