The jet-powered Xianglong was one of the fastest UAVs on the planet, more than 100 knots faster than the American MQ-9 Reaper. But — as impressive as the Xianglong’s top speed was for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle — it was not fast enough to accurately simulate the airspeed of a real J-10.
The Soaring Dragon was not perfect bait, but it was very good bait, and its lack of absolute perfection was offset by numbers. The UAV was not operating alone. It was surrounded by nineteen other drones of the exact same design and capability. Their collective spoofery was intended to make them such attractive targets that minor details like airspeed would be overlooked.
And the deceptive mission packages had not yet exhausted all the tactical cheats at their disposal. They still had a few tricks left to play.
“TAO — Air, Bogies are launching chaff and going evasive!”
“TAO, aye!”
The maneuvers were quickly visible on the Aegis display screens, as the enemy aircraft dodged and weaved to avoid the missiles bearing down on them.
Bowie’s eyes stayed locked on the dancing blue and red symbols. It still didn’t feel right. He couldn’t quite put his finger on the problem, but he couldn’t shake the idea that there was something wrong with the way the Bogies were maneuvering.
Then, it hit him. He tapped the TAO on the shoulder. “Check their airspeed now. How fast are the Bogies moving?”
The Tactical Action Officer punched a quick series of keys on his console. “Looks like… about four hundred knots. Give or take.”
The TAO looked up at his commanding officer. “That’s not right…”
“No,” Bowie said. “It isn’t. Those Bogies are jinking and jiving like crazy, but not a single one of them has kicked in the afterburners to get away from our missiles.”
“They’re some kind of decoys,” the TAO said.
Bowie nodded. “They’ve got to be.”
He reached into the overhead, jerked the red handset of the Navy Red terminal out of its cradle, and shoved it against his right ear. He keyed the mike, and waited a half-second for the crypto burst — a rapid string of warbling tones that the UHF transmitter used to synchronize its encryption signal with the secure communications satellite. “Alpha Whiskey, this is Towers. Hostile strike raid from my bearing two-one-four, is evaluated as a ruse. I say again, Bogies bearing two-one-four are probable decoys! My unit will continue to engage and monitor, but expect additional attacks from other vectors, over!”
The Air Warfare Coordinator on the aircraft carrier responded within ten seconds. “Towers, this is Alpha Whiskey. Roger all, and concur. We have rapid pop-ups on multiple inbound Vipers, threat axis zero-seven-five. Keep your head down. Alpha Whiskey, out!”
They came in very low, and very fast — forty 3M-54E2 anti-ship missiles, flying three and a half meters above the waves at Mach 0.8.
By official NATO designation, they belonged to the family of SSN-27 cruise missiles lumped together under the code name Sizzler. The Chinese variants of this missile class had been alternately over-hyped and under-hyped by the U.S. Department of Defense for more than a decade.
The western press had taken to referring to the 3M-54E2 as China’s Carrier Killer. That assertion had never been demonstrated under battle conditions. Until now.
Each missile had its radar seeker turned off during this phase of its trajectory, following a pre-programmed flight path, adjusted by periodic updates from the Beidou navigation positioning satellites that comprised China’s indigenous version of the Global Positioning System.
The missiles were flying blind, but their nose-on radar cross-sections were relatively low. Coupled with their lack of active emissions and wave-hugging flight profiles, this made them difficult to detect and track.
That would change in a few hundred milliseconds, when the missiles would all energize their target acquisition radars at the same instant. All forty missiles would instantly become visible to the sensors of the American ships and aircraft, but the missiles would compensate for the lack of stealth by accelerating to Mach 2.2 for the terminal phase of the attack.
This supersonic ‘sprint’ would give potential interceptors only seconds to identify the threat and react. Theoretically, the window of opportunity for defensive engagement would be too narrow for the target ship to exploit.
That theory was about to be tested.
The drama played itself out on the tactical display screens in two acts, separated by both time and distance. To the southwest, the First Act had nearly resolved itself. Evasive maneuvering aside, the ship’s SM-3 missiles were shredding the inbound Bogies, which — Bowie was now certain — must be decoys.
The Second Act was playing out to the east. Forty hostile missile symbols had appeared, and were closing on the Midway at incredible speed.
Two elements of Combat Air Patrol were vectoring in to intercept the Vipers, but — like everyone else in the strike group — they’d been caught looking the wrong way. Even on afterburner, by the time the F/A-18s arrived on station, the engagement would be over.
The Midway had air defenses of her own: a pair of Rolling Airframe Missile launchers, a trio of Sea Sparrow missile launchers, and four Close-In Weapon Systems — the 20mm defensive Gatling guns known to the fleet as Phalanx. The carrier could protect herself against a reasonable number of subsonic cruise missiles. But the number of inbound Vipers was not at all reasonable, and they were moving at supersonic speeds.
The only thing between the carrier and destruction was the USS Frank W. Fenno, the Arliegh-Burke class guided missile destroyer assigned to the eastern perimeter of the strike group’s screen.
As Bowie and his CIC crew watched the tactical displays, the Fenno began launching clouds of SM-3 missiles. The friendly missile symbols overlapped and obscured each other for several seconds, and then they began to diverge as the interceptor missiles homed in on individual targets.
They were too many to count visually in the limited time before intercept, but the Aegis tracking software provided the total. Eighty missiles. The Frank W. Fenno was following a shoot-shoot-look-shoot doctrine. Fire two missiles at each incoming Viper, scan with radar to see how many have been destroyed, and then fire again at any Vipers that survived the first salvo.
Bowie’s first instinct was to call that a mistake, but maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t know the other destroyer’s exact weapons load out, but it probably wasn’t much different from what the Towers was carrying. The Fenno had something like ninety SM-3s aboard, give or take a few for minor variations in mission loads. Which meant that the Fenno’s skipper had just launched about ninety percent of his SAMs in his initial salvo. Ordinarily not the kind of choice that a smart destroyer captain would make. But the Vipers were coming in too fast. The Fenno wasn’t going to get off a second salvo. Whatever they missed the first time around, was going to hit the carrier.
Bowie slammed the Navy Red handset back into its cradle. “Goddamn it! Is there any way we can help the Fenno intercept those Vipers?”
The Tactical Action Officer shook his head. “Not a chance, Captain. Even if we had a clear field of fire, they’re too far away. By the time our birds get over there, it’ll be too late.”