The VP-3 Orion transport, the conversion of a war-weary naval patrol plane, churned slowly to the southeast, its propellers flickering against the sky. Its eventual destination: Hawaii and Pearl Harbor.
Inboard, Admiral Elliot Macintyre shifted position, trying to find a little comfort in the worn bucket seat. Giving it up as a lost cause, he returned his attention to the eternal backlog of paperwork in his briefcase.
A message hard copy tucked into an odd corner diverted him. It was that last one Amanda Garrett had sent him on the night of the Shanghai operation.
All sheep have been returned to the fold.
Amanda Garrett … Macintyre closed his briefcase. With the message brief still in his hand, he sank deeper into his seat. Thoughtfully, he gazed out through the small porthole at his side, studying the evening as it settled in over the sea.
GLOSSARY
Aegis — A mating of a sophisticated cybernetic battle management system with a series of advanced planar array radars, giving a surface warship a sea-and air-control capacity out to a 250-mile radius.
The augmented SPY-2A variant deployed aboard the Cunningham-class DDG combines increased range and firecontrol capacity with improved definition and simplicity of operation.
AEW (Airborne Early Warning) — The doctrine of mounting a highpowered search radar aboard an aircraft to enhance its coverage area. The Boeing AW ACS is the premier example of this technology.
In Stormdragon, both the Taiwanese Air Force and the U.S. Navy also utilize variants of the Grumman E-2 Hawk eye, a venerable but still effective twin-turboprop AEW aircraft, while the Cunningham’s Sea Comanche helicopters can mount a padded version of the British-built Clearwater radar.
ASW (antisubmarine warfare) — The delicate and deadly art of submarine hunting.
Barracuda — The Mark 50 Barracuda is the U.S. Navy’s latest-generation antisubmarine torpedo. A small, highspeed weapon utilizing multimode guidance, it is designed to be dropped from ASW aircraft, delivered to target via a V-ROC antisubmarine missile, or launched from the deck tubes of a surface warship. It is also being studied as a possible “interceptor” torpedo for use in an active antitorpedo defense system.
Black Hole System — A combination of anti-infrared technologies used to reduce the heat signature of a military vehicle.
Aboard the Cunningham-class destroyer, blowers mix cooler outside air with the ship’s engine-exhaust gases before they are vented outboard, reducing the thermal plume from the turbines. Likewise, seawater is circulated through cooling jackets surrounding the ship’s funnels to prevent “hot spotting,” which could provide a target for home-on-heat guided munitions.
Ching-Kuo — Produced by Taiwan’s Aero Industry Development Center, the Ching-Kuo is that nation’s first domestically produced combat aircraft. A light, twin-engined, air-defense and antishipping fighter, its design was inspired by the U. S.-built F-5. Its development, along with that of the rest of Taiwan’s rapidly developing aerospace and armaments industry, has been spurred by Red China’s continuing policy of interfering with international arms sales to the Nationalist government.
Cold Fire Launching System — A vertical-launch technology that utilizes a charge of inert gas to project a missile out of a launch cell for a midair ignition. Utilized aboard the Cunningham-class DDG to protect the RAM decking from exhaust-flame damage.
ECM (Electronic Countermeasures) — Jamming and decoy systems used to confuse and degrade search sensors and weapon-guidance systems.
Elint (Electronic Intelligence) — The collection of battlefield intelligence (target location, systems type, nationality, force strength, etc.) via the analysis of emissions produced by radars and other electronic systems.
EMCON (Emission Control) — An operational state in which a naval vessel or aircraft maintains complete radio and radar silence, rendering them undetectable to Signal Intelligence systems.
ESSM (Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missile) — Uprated follow on to the current NATO Sea Sparrow system. A medium range, surface-to-air system using radar guidance, it can be fired either from its own dedicated launcher or from a quad pack fitted into a cell of a Mark 41 or 42 VLS array.
F/A-18E Super Hornet — A stretched and souped-up variant of the current-model C F/A-18. The U.S. Navy’s next generation maid-of-all-work warplane, equally capable as both a fighter and bomber.
F/A-22 Sea Lightning — American naval aviation is facing two urgent needs in the immediate future. One will be a replacement for the elderly F-14 Tomcat fleet defense fighter.
The other will be for the deployment of a carrier-borne stealth strike aircraft. One proposed solution has been for the development of a navalized fighter-bomber variant of Lockheed’s F-22 Lightning II stealth fighter.
Fenestron — Literally “fan in tail,” an advanced helicopter technology that replaces the conventional tail rotor with a ducted fan inset into the tail fin, reducing noise, vibration, and radar cross section.
GPU (Global Positioning Unit) — A mobile navigation system that utilizes radio impulses beamed down from a network of satellites in orbit around the Earth. Simple, compaci, effective, and extremely accurate, this technology is finding literally hundreds of new uses in both the civil and military arenas, so much so that serious consideration has been given to a proposal to build a GPU into the stock of every rifle issued to the U.S. Armed Services.
Han — Class name of Red China’s first and, to date, only class of nuclear attack submarine.
Hellfire — U.S.-designed antitank missile. A powerful and accurate weapon utilizing a laser guidance system, the Hellfire is finding a second niche as an and-small-craft missile utilized by the Navy’s LAMPS helicopter force.
Hsiung-Feng (Male Bee) — The standard Taiwanese antiship missile. Air and sea launchable, the weapon is a copy of the superb Israeli Gabriel ASM.
LAMPS (Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System) — The family of maid-of-all-work helicopters that operate off the helipads of the U.S. surface Navy. While primarily intended for ASW operations, they also perform a wide variety of secondary tasks, ranging from surface search and attack to intelligence gathering and cargo and personnel transport.
Oto Melara Super Rapid — A 76mm, water-cooled autocannon produced by the Oto Melara corporation of Italy. A dual mode weapons system with an exceptionally high rate of fire, it is capable of engaging both air and surface targets with a wide variety of different munitions types. A popular and efficient design, it serves as the primary gun armament of the Cunningham-class destroyer.
PLA — People’s Liberation Army. The armed forces of Communist China. Technically, the Red Chinese Air Force and Navy are not independent services, but are merely divisions of the PLA.
RAM (Radar Absorbent Material) — A family of composite materials used in the creation of stealth weapons systems. They work by “soaking up” incoming radar waves, converting them into thermal energy within their structure rather then reflecting them off.
RBOC (Rapid Blooming Overhead Chaff) Projector — A shipboard antimissile defense system, originally intended to protect vessels against radar-guided missiles by screening them with clouds of metal foil.
In recent years, however, additional projectiles have been developed for the system, including flare and multispectral smoke rounds that can provide protection against infrared and laser-guided munitions.