“Sir, it looks like that buoy field is forming a barrier parallel to the course of the Chinese convoy. Gonna be hard for us to get anywhere near them.”
The XO said, “Well, what the hell is spitting the buoys? Do we have aircraft noise?”
“Negative, sir. Might be a high-altitude maritime patrol aircraft?”
The captain rubbed his chin, looking at the chart. “How far away?”
The sonar tech called out a bearing and range to the nearest sonobuoy’s drop. “I’m assuming it’s a sonobuoy, sir. They’re sure dropping a ton of them. P-3s don’t even drop this many.”
The XO gave the captain an uneasy look. They were standing close enough that no one could hear their conversation.
The captain whispered, “XO, if they want visuals, this might be our shot.”
“Sir, the range to that buoy field—”
“Is only going to decrease as the convoy approaches. I sure as hell don’t like it. But this might be our most conservative option for gathering ELINT and FLIR.”
The XO looked between the captain and the data indicating where the latest sonobuoys had been laid and let out a breath.
The captain said, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
The XO said, “If this was any other group of targets, I wouldn’t hesitate to come up at this range. But the intel reports… there’s something different about their ASW equipment.” He paused. “Sir, I think we should take a look. But we’ll need to be cautious.”
The captain nodded. He turned to face the bridge team. “This is the captain, I have the conn. Lieutenant James retains the deck.” He waited for his statement to be acknowledged, then said, “All stop. Take us up to PD. Let’s get a look.”
“Aye, sir.”
Moments later, the camouflage-painted periscope was raised mere inches above the wavetops. The cameras and sensors fixed to the periscope rotated around twice, then the periscope retracted back down beneath the sea.
The bridge was deathly quiet, the men rapt as images of the ocean’s surface replayed on the screen. The video showed a white-gray sky with several dark silhouettes on the horizon to the northwest.
“Stop. There. Go back. Okay. Stop. Take it back to two-six-five.” The video was rewound until the heading showed two-six-five on the magnetic compass.
The XO said, “At least a dozen masts on the horizon. Looks like a few Type 52s and Type 55s too. What’s that one?”
“Frigate. Type 54. And there’s the carrier.” To the west, the silhouette of the large aircraft carrier was easily recognizable, the ramp on its flight deck protruding from the bow. The ships were very close together. Closer than most surface groups liked to operate.
The captain looked at the chart and then back at the video screen. “Where are they?”
“Where are what, sir?”
“The aircraft. What’s dropping those buoys?”
All eyes studied the screen.
That captain narrowed his eyes. “Zoom in on the horizon. There. What is that?”
“What’s what, sir?”
“Above the group three immediately aft of the carrier.”
The officer of the deck said, “What… the fuck… is that?”
“Is that a blimp?”
“Thing looks like a floating battleship.”
“Or a cloud. Sir, I think that’s just a cloud.”
“So the Chinese are dropping sonobuoys from blimps?”
“It’s not a blimp. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Sir, that doesn’t look like any blimp I’ve ever seen.”
The XO walked up and pointed at the screen. “You are talking about this? Looks like a cloud.”
“I don’t think so. It’s angled too sharply. Looks man-made. Okay, back up the video and play it in real time.”
The video rewound and then played again. It was hard to tell whether the object was moving or not due to the relative motion of the camera angle. The periscope camera had performed two spins, so everything they were watching was moving.
“Look, there’s another one. At heading two-seven-five. Aft of the formation.”
“Are you sure?”
The captain sighed. He wasn’t. The image was grainy at that distance. His eyes might have been playing tricks on him. He walked over to the chart again. “Sonar, Conn, any more buoys hit the water?”
“Conn, Sonar, negative, sir. Nothing since the last field prior to the periscope, sir.”
The captain said, “I want to take another look.”
“Sir, I don’t think we should push our luck,” the XO said.
The captain gave his XO an uneasy look. “This is what we were sent here for.” Then he said, “Up periscope.”
This time, everyone on the bridge held their breath as the image came on the screen. The captain gripped the periscope and took it through one rotation.
“Down periscope!” the captain yelled. “Take us down! Make depth six hundred feet.”
Echoes of the command and then the floor tilted forward beneath their feet, the men leaning back to keep their balance as the depth gauge ticked down.
On the monitor, the most recent periscope image had been frozen.
A giant dirigible was right on top of them.
Admiral Song watched the digital updates from the dark combat operations center on board his carrier. The three-hundred-foot-long dirigibles moved at speeds of up to one hundred knots — about the speed of a slow-moving single-engine airplane. That velocity, however, was more than enough to overcome headwinds and keep up with the ships in the battlegroup. More importantly, it could keep ahead of the submarines attempting to hunt them.
While the aircraft was optionally manned, their standard operating procedure used a line-of-sight datalink connection for control. Each dirigible was connected to the Jiaolong-class mother ship, which operated as their ground control station. Their payload was equivalent to a C-130 transport aircraft, which allowed them to carry a deadly antisubmarine warfare package: hundreds of sonobuoys, dozens of torpedoes, and even an advanced dipping sonar system. The whisper-quiet flight operations allowed for near-silent dips, a nightmare for their underwater prey.
The Jiaolong-class ships and their dirigibles had been designed to provide ASW for very large battlegroups. They were fitted with the most advanced sensors, including radar, electronic support measures, and FLIR. Using a line-of-sight datalink connection posed challenges at long distances from the motherships. To counter this challenge, new tactics had been developed, and the antisubmarine warfare drone operators had to stay vigilant in their quest to sanitize the fleet’s path. Each ship in the battlegroup, as well as each dirigible, was fitted with a special datalink antenna that would receive and transmit the encrypted information at high speed between the dirigibles and the controllers on the mothership.
This system created a network of nodes from which the dirigibles could reliably operate far from their motherships. The datalink was so advanced that all eight drones could be simultaneously controlled from a single ship, sending video imagery and acoustic data through the node ships for processing.
The eight dirigibles of the fleet operated as pack hunters. At any given time, two of the monstrous airships flew well ahead of the fleet, using their near-silent dipping sonar as a passive sensor to detect American subs at long range. Meanwhile, two other dirigibles laid dense buoy fields along each side of the convoy. Two other dirigibles were used to cover the rear of the formation. The final two were either resupplying or having maintenance performed. The dirigibles used a rigid-shell variable-buoyancy design, with inner membranes that were filled with helium using pressurized tanks. Four stabilizers formed a giant angled tail section, allowing for directional control. Two side-mounted propellers and two rear props for extra thrust. They could stay airborne for days without refueling, constantly sweeping the ocean for enemy submarines. They were overly susceptible to the effects of foul weather, but the Chinese had created procedures to mitigate that risk.