“You tell me,” Pollard said. “You’ve flown one. I haven’t.” He put his hand on the plane’s wing, the first time he’d actually touched a Lightning II. He could have taken one of the new fighters out for a joyride, but Pollard’s body didn’t quite bounce back from hard carrier landings the way it used to. His back loved flying less every year, and he refused to think what an ejection seat would do to his spine now. He’d had to do that once. Although forever grateful to the Martin-Baker company for building an escape vehicle that worked every time, he was quite sure the compression of his vertebrae had left him an inch shorter. It was a small price to pay to come home to his wife.
Nagin frowned a bit. “Twice the range on internal fuel as the 18Cs, but she has a single engine, which worries me. I don’t like single points of failure and that’s a big one. And there’s no HUD. All the flight data is projected onto the inside of the helmet.” He hefted his flight helmet and showed it to the admiral. Pollard took it and examined the inside.
“That doesn’t make you sick?” Pollard asked.
“It feels a little unnatural at first, but works fine when you get used to it.”
Pollard handed the helmet back to its owner. “What about the ordnance load?”
“No question, she’s a bomb truck,” Nagin said. “She can lug around five thousand pounds of JDAM hurt inside and six hardpoints on the wings when stealth doesn’t matter. That only leaves room for two AMRAAMs mounted inside when you have to go air-to-air, and those have to mount on the bay doors.” Those bay doors were open, Nagin gestured inside. “You get two Sidewinders on the wings if you really need ’em and don’t care about the stealth.”
“Maneuverability?”
“She handles well enough to dogfight, but she’s no F-22 like the Air Force boys are flying these days. So she doesn’t carry much for it.”
“You don’t like the pistol?” Pollard asked, working his way back toward the engine. He found the gun mounted in an external pod on the undercarriage almost directly between the wings.
The CAG shook his head. “The gun’s fine. It’s a version of the GAU-12-slash-U — twenty-five millimeter four-barrel Gatling, pretty much the same thing the Harrier carries. But hanging it off the center pylon degrades the stealth a bit when it’s mounted. And I’m not too keen on the ammo load. It handles forty-one hundred rounds per minute but only carries two hundred twenty rounds in the pod. So you’ve got about three seconds worth of fire before you’re left hoping that you’ve still got some missiles.”
“Or some Hornets in the neighborhood,” Pollard said. “But nobody dogfights anymore, not like the old days, not at close range.”
“That’s the problem,” Nagin countered. “If the bogeys ever manage to get in close, we could have trouble.”
“Then don’t let ’em get in close.” Pollard watched his sailors stare at the new JSF like it was the burning bush, then finally took his gaze away from the plane and looked at the senior pilot. He motioned him away from the crowd of enlisted men. Nagin fell in behind the senior officer as the admiral sought privacy, looking for space in the hangar deck that was overrun only by equipment and not by sailors.
“Orders came in from CINCPACOM just after you left. The PLA overran Kinmen and caught everyone flat-footed. That island is so close to the coast that the Chinese were able to blitz out of their bases in range without having to move extra assets around. They could take the Matsus the same way and nobody will be able to call it more than five minutes in advance. PACOM is sending out EP-3s to ramp up ELINT coverage in case the Chinese start getting ready to make a move on Penghu or Taiwan proper. And we’re changing course. Washington is coming down too. We’ll both keep the island between us and the mainland. Washington takes the north, we get the south,” Pollard told him. “Have you seen the morning intel?”
“Not today,” the pilot said, shaking his head. “The flight schedule had me in the air too early. I was going to catch up after I finish up down here. Anything on that PLA carrier threat?”
Pollard shook his head. “CIA and Navy Intel assessments came in. They all say it probably refers to PLA subs carrying Sunburns or Exocets, maybe Shkvals.”
“Academy plebes at Annapolis could’ve made that call,” Nagin said. “True,” Pollard said.
“But it’s the safe bet, and if it comes down to straight ASW, we can handle the PLA Navy.”
“I hate people who always make the safe bet,” Nagin said.
“You never win big and you can always still lose,” Pollard agreed. “But we’re getting some help to keep the PLA Navy off our backs.” He reached into his pocket and passed a hard copy of CINCPACOM’s orders to Nagin, who turned it over in his hand and began to study the small type. “Honolulu, Tucson, Virginia, and Gettysburg.” The first three were attack submarines: the two named for cities were Los Angeles—class, the third was the lead boat of the more modern Virginia class. Gettysburg was a Ticonderoga-class cruiser. “The subs will join us by day after tomorrow. Gettysburg is coming up from the south. She’s already in the Balintang Channel, so she’ll beat us there by a day or so. Washington is getting the Salt Lake City, Columbia, New Mexico, and Leyte Gulf. Not a bad start.”
“Maybe Gettysburg will clear out the water for us and save us the trouble,” Nagin said, hopeful. “We’ll be in the PLA’s ocean by Saturday.” Chinese submarines had shadowed US carriers in past years, at least one as far north as Okinawa. The US Navy usually found the PLA units and chased them off, but everyone on both sides understood that practice made perfect and the Chinese were only getting better. “Even with the help, the numbers will still be six to one in the PLA’s favor.”
“It’ll be a target-rich environment if we have to go ‘weapons free,’” Pollard said. “Intel says that at least half of the Chinese sub fleet are old Russian Romeos. Those are easy. It’s the Kilos and the Hans that worry me. Imagery puts the Hans to the north, closer to Washington’s AOR, so we’ll probably be facing Kilos if the PLA decides to take a shot at us. Diesel-electrics, nice and quiet, but they’re getting old,” Pollard said. “If we’ve got the island between us and them, they’ll have to approach us from the south. Washington will close off the north unless they want to take the really long route around. That’ll limit their approach vectors.”
“Not looking to take us into the Strait?” Nagin asked. The attempt at humor wasn’t even halfhearted.
“Not if I can help it,” Pollard replied. “Too close to too many PLA bases for my taste. I’d prefer not to be the one who has the limited approach options.”
“Nimitz did it back in ninety-six,” Nagin observed.
“The Chinese weren’t ready to take a shot at a US carrier in ninety-six. Maybe they are now,” Pollard told his subordinate. “And I’d rather make the PLA come to us. We’ve sold the Taiwanese enough weapons over the years. No sense in us being the first line of defense for them.”
Nagin lifted his helmet and held it in both hands, looking at it. He’d been to Pollard’s office upstairs and seen the admiral’s own flight helmet behind the desk. The moniker Tycho was stenciled across the front, scratched and faded. Nagin had shared plenty of beers in plenty of bars with Pollard and heard the old man’s war stories from Iraq and Bosnia. The admiral had earned his rank the right way. The man had been ordered into a fight, flown his own fighter straight onto the enemy’s home field, fired his guns in anger, and taken fire in return. Nagin respected the man and not just his rank. The admiral didn’t fly combat missions anymore, but the old man had been into the devil’s own home more than once and could tell his men the color of the paint on the walls inside. Admirals were considered too valuable for that, so Pollard had to settle for sitting on the carrier watching his pilots launch into unfriendly skies. It was the order of military life, and Nagin’s turn to leave the cockpit and watch others fly was coming soon enough.