“That sounds fine, Debbie. Thank you.”
“You can really get me a ride up to the space station, Kai?”
“Clear it with your boss, get me an e-mail from your doctor saying you’re in good health, promise your family won’t sue me or the U.S. government if you burn up on reentry, and we’ll set it up.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it. Space travel is not just for jocks anymore. We’d love to have you.”
“I can’t wait! Thank you! Thank you!” And with squeals of joy still audible, she hung up.
Seeker looked at her boss with extreme skepticism. “You’re giving joyrides and tours of the station now, sir?” she asked.
“To tell the truth, Seeker, I offer folks rides up here all the time,” Kai admitted. “But I always hit them with the ‘burn up on reentry’ line. I figure if they’re still excited after hearing that, they’re ready to fly in space, but I haven’t had any takers yet. Miss Carlson might be the first.”
“Are we going to charge admission?”
“No,” Kai responded with a laugh, “but if you make up T-shirts and coffee mugs, I give you permission to sell them. How’s that?” Kai’s console beeped an urgent message alert, and he called it up immediately, read it-and flushed in surprise. “Seeker, you are not going to believe this,” he muttered, with a curse added in for good measure. “Get the sensors set up right away-this should be one hell of a show.”
FOUR
Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.
– BRENDAN FRANCIS BEHAN
IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA, SOUTH OF HAINAN ISLAND, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
THE NEXT DAY
The U.S. Navy had only one vessel within twenty miles of the hastily announced launch point, the USS Milius, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer-and it had to run at flank speed to get as close as possible to the launch vicinity-but it had a ringside seat for a spectacular show from the Chinese navy.
Four warships, including China ’s aircraft carrier Zhenyuan, and an intelligence-gathering vessel, a Dalang-class submarine tender that had also been modified for electronic eavesdropping duties, were on hand, surrounding a three-mile-diameter circle of open ocean. A tall buoy marked the center of the protected area. Three Z-8 Jingdezhen heavy patrol helicopters from Hainan Island circled a ten-mile radius of the area, using their French-made ORB-32 Heracles-II radars to search for unauthorized ships or submarine periscopes peeking over the surface.
At the announced time, two of the ships in the cordon blew horns and whistles, which continued for about thirty seconds…until a geyser of water erupted from a spot about a quarter mile from the buoy in the protected zone, and moments later a missile burst through the column of water and ignited its first-stage solid rocket booster. The missile was a Julang-1S sea-launched ballistic missile, the first-generation sea-launched missile modeled from the Dong Feng-21 land-based mobile ballistic missile. It had just been launched from a Xia-class ballistic-missile submarine submerged at a depth of 150 feet and traveling at three nautical miles per hour. A slug of compressed gas pushed the missile out of its launch tube and surrounded the missile in a protective cocoon as it shot toward the surface. The force of the gas pushed the missile about thirty feet out of the water, when the missile’s first stage fired.
But this was not a land-attack ballistic-missile experiment. The JL-1 did not adopt a ballistic flight path, but instead continued almost straight up, punching through the atmosphere at several thousand miles per hour. Five minutes after blasting through the surface of the South China Sea, the JL-1 flew into the path of a Chinese Fengyun FY-1D weather satellite, orbiting 320 miles above Earth, and destroyed it with a high-explosive cloud of shrapnel.
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D.C.
A SHORT TIME LATER
“They scored a bull’s-eye, sir,” Kai Raydon said on the secure video teleconference link, “and put us square in their crosshairs at the same time.”
“Let’s not be so dramatic here, General Raydon,” Secretary of Defense Miller Turner said. With him in his office was the secretary of the Air Force, Sal Banderas; Ann Page, undersecretary of the Air Force for space; and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Taylor Bain. Also in on the teleconference was Admiral Sherman Huddy, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, from his temporary command center at Battle Mountain Air Force Base in Nevada; and General Robert Wiehl, commander of U.S. Space Command, from his headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, along with several analysts and advisers from around the world. “Every Chinese missile test isn’t a direct threat to us.”
“Sir, it was an antisatellite missile launched from a submerged submarine,” Ann Page said. “The DF-21s were a big enough threat, but at least we could see where they were placed and target them, even the mobile units. The sub-launched ones can be anywhere. The land-based missiles have a range of about fifteen to nineteen hundred miles, but in antisatellite mode the sub can be positioned within a thousand miles of a satellite’s path and be able to hit it in almost any orbital inclination. It’s a radical new capability that poses a direct threat not only to Armstrong, but to all American space assets.”
“All right, Secretary Page, you made your point,” Turner said, holding up a hand. “But let’s get some perspective here, shall we? First of alclass="underline" Do we know it was a direct hit?”
“As far as we can measure, sir,” General Wiehl replied. “It’s possible they could have faked the hit. But the satellite they destroyed was a weather satellite that we’ve been tracking for many years.”
“We have some pretty clear electro-optical pictures of the engagement-it looks like a direct hit to us, sir,” Kai chimed in.
“Let’s say it was a direct hit,” Turner said. “In that case: good show. But let’s put this in some perspective, shall we? We were similarly surprised when the Chinese shot down their other weather satellite back in 2007, but this is the first ASAT test since then, am I correct?”
“Yes, sir,” Wiehl replied.
“So two successful ASAT tests in five years? Not exactly a grave threat to national security, I’d say. Next: The Chinese have how many subs capable of launching a JL-1 missile?”
“Eight, sir,” Admiral Huddy replied after checking his notes, “with two more nuclear-powered boomers in the works. But there are only four Xia-class subs active now-the other four Jin-class subs are designed to carry the larger JL-2 missiles for intercontinental ballistic-missile duties.”
“So you’re saying just four subs capable of launching ASATs?” Turner asked. “How many missiles per sub?”
“Twelve, sir.”
“And normally only two subs are at sea at a time? That’s true for us, right, so it must be true for the Chinese?”
“Yes, sir. They could surge them in times of crisis, as we would, but half on patrol and half in training, predeployment workup, or maintenance is typical.”
“So we’re down to two subs on duty with a max of twenty-four ASATs. It doesn’t sound like much of a threat to me, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Combined with the land-based antisatellite missiles, I’d say it was a very serious threat, especially in a coordinated attack against Armstrong, sir,” Kai said. “They would salvo their ASATs to try to overwhelm our defenses, dilute the number of interceptors we could use for antiballistic-missile defense, and put us on the defensive to prevent us from employing ground-attack weapons.”
“And if they load up their subs with antisatellite missiles they have fewer land-or ship-attack weapons to use against someone else,” Turner said. “The president warned about an arms race, folks, and it looks like it’s happening right before our eyes. We spooked the Chinese by firing antiballistic-missile and ground-attack weapons from space, and now they’re scrambling to make up for lost ground.”