The cruiser shuddered as dozens of the ship’s own surface-to-air missiles began launching up towards their targets, towers of flame shooting up from the vertical launch system, followed by smoke trails leading off towards the horizon.
“TAO, we now have an additional fifty missiles inbound from the same bearing line.”
The captain gripped the armrests of his chair as the deck tilted. The bridge team was executing evasive maneuvers now. He gritted his teeth as he watched the little blue surface-to-air missile icons race towards the dozens of inbound missile tracks.
Something wasn’t right.
“The destroyers aren’t firing,” the captain said. He turned to the TAO. “Have you been able to raise them?” A chill went down his spine. With this many inbound missiles, he desperately needed the other warships in company to help defend the carrier — and themselves.
“No, sir. Comms are down.”
“There aren’t enough.” He was looking at the numbers, calculating and tapping his fingers on his armrest. The enemy simply had too many missiles. He wondered if the destroyers were still dealing with the effects of the EMP attack. Were their radars up? Did they even know that there were missiles overhead?
He wrung his sweaty hands together as dozens of the red missile symbols began to reach their battle group.
The first strike was with EMPs.
The second was with anti-ship missiles.
Hundreds of them. More than could be accounted for by air defense measures currently employed by the US Navy, let alone the slightly inferior technology of the Koreans and Japanese.
Most of the missiles were subsonic sea-skimming versions of the C-802. They sped along fifty feet above the water until the final stage of flight, when they began sprinting the last twenty-five miles at nearly three times the speed of sound — faster than many bullets travel.
Some of the missiles were the newly developed “carrier killers.” Supersonic medium-range ballistic missiles — the DF-21D. Four of them were fired at the USS Carl Vinson. Those ones weren’t among the sea-skimming missiles. The carrier killers launched up into space and then came back down with ferocious speed. The reentry vehicles traveled at Mach six and glided almost thirty miles towards their target. Two of them missed, hitting the water in between the USS Carl Vinson and her escorts.
Two of them hit.
Both reentry vehicles weighed more than a thousand pounds and carried warheads of over five hundred pounds. At six times the speed of sound, the damage was nothing short of catastrophic. The aft end of the USS Carl Vinson exploded as one of the missiles detonated upon impacting the flight deck, leaving a giant hole right where the jets normally landed. The second DF-21 hit triggered secondary explosions from stored fuel and munitions, turning huge portions of the carrier into a blazing inferno.
Miles to the west, the surface-to-air missiles fired from the USS Lake Champlain began intercepting the massive flock of subsonic anti-ship missiles. One of the destroyers was also firing now.
As some of the anti-ship missiles made it past the picket line of SAMs, the escort ships and aircraft carrier itself began firing their shorter-range defense weapons. Rolling airframe missiles began firing towards the incoming anti-ship missiles, hoping to score a kinetic kill. Then the Phalanx Close In Weapon System — a giant Gatling gun — fired thousands of tungsten penetrator rounds, the noise sounding like the giant zipper of an angry god.
Dozens of missiles made it through the defensive weapons, wisps of white shooting over the deep blue sea, and into the haze-gray Navy warships. Explosions of smoke and fire filled the air, and a rain of hot metal and ash, seawater and flesh, came down on the sea.
Scenes similar to this attack on the USS Lake Champlain and Carl Vinson battle group played out across the Western Pacific. Chinese satellites and ISR collection fed continuous tracking solutions into their military network.
And it was just the beginning.
The third wave. The cleanup crew.
The fifteen Chinese H-6K strategic bombers flew in a loose formation, each within twenty miles of the lead aircraft. Each bomber had a crew of four, a wingspan of 108 feet, and a cruise speed of just over 470 miles per hour. The planners had drawn up their route of flight to ensure that they were out of the way during the electromagnetic pulse attack. Their equipment was hardened against electromagnetic pulse weapons, but there was no need to test it. Takeoff was timed so that they were feet wet only one hour after the EMP.
“Target confirmed,” came the voice of the flight commander over the encrypted radio. He had just received updated targeting information. “All aircraft cleared to fire.”
The flight commander gave the internal instruction to his crew. Their grueling training over the past few weeks was about to be put to the test. They would strike at the heart of the great American Navy — the carrier strike groups in the Western Pacific — and cripple them within the opening hours of the war.
The cruise missiles began dropping from his aircraft. His heavy bomber weighed so much that he felt no indication that they had come off the rails. The missiles’ boosters began igniting, and he saw trails of gray smoke shooting off into the distance, one by one. More of the missiles appeared in his peripheral vision outside his cockpit window. These ones were fired from the other aircraft. Soon the sky was filled with cruise missiles, heading off to the east.
Each of the Chinese bombers carried six anti-ship cruise missiles. The shore-based missiles were timed to launch just before the strategic bombers attacked, but the mission commander had no way of knowing whether that part of the plan had been executed properly.
Ten SU-30s, purchased from Russia in 2004, were on a similar mission up north. They were armed with the lethal KH-31 anti-ship cruise missile.
Reconnaissance aircraft and Chinese satellites had spent the last few hours identifying targets. Some of the satellites would likely be damaged from the EMP, but they would make do with backup collection sources. The intelligence officers on the island were gaining coordinates and passing them on to the shooters. The planners then assigned each bomber a list of targets in flight. Truth be told, they didn’t even know which ships they were shooting at. It was just a latitude and longitude for the cruise missiles to aim for, until the missiles began their own active search.
The ocean was half ghost yard. Some of the ships had survived the EMP strikes without too much impact to their systems. Others hadn’t been so lucky.
Miles away from the Chinese bomber aircraft, the USS Lake Champlain was now floating without power, having already been hit by several land-based anti-ship missiles. The men and women aboard were busy fighting fires and trying to stop the flooding. The radar and combat systems had been damaged in the attack. And they had no warning that another was now taking place.
Two anti-ship cruise missiles launched from the H-6K bomber ripped into the injured Lake Champlain within seconds of each other. The already bad flooding became worse as fuel and munitions ignited, creating secondary explosions.
The ship sank within minutes.
The Chinese radar plane flew high above the battle space, helping the now-attacking Chinese forces to maintain a clear picture of what was going on. The KJ-3000 was China’s latest version of the American Air Force’s AWACS — the Airborne early warning radar plane. It was a massive aircraft, and odd looking as most radar planes were. The giant airframe had a saucer-shaped radar fixed atop it.