My eyes met those of Admiral Bainbridge and I said quietly, “Admiral, I have a security clearance from a consultation I did once for the Army. If you let me watch the battle from the ops center, I will ensure that your retirement is extremely comfortable.”
I was really going out on a limb. Bribing senior military officers is more of a defense contractor thing, something I had never done before. But, I figured it was worth a shot. Bainbridge had already told me the government would intervene to stop my team from fighting, so I really had nothing to lose.
Bainbridge looked at me hard for a moment. Then, his eyes softened slightly. “We don’t have time for this, just follow me and don’t get in anyone’s way. If you so much as talk to me when I am in the ops center, I’ll have you arrested. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
The operations center at the Pentagon looked like it had been trying to keep up with movie reproductions for the past thirty years. Big screen TVs and digital projection screens dominated the walls while two dozen enlisted men and officers from the various armed forces occupied workstations that controlled the assembled technology. High-ranking officers ran about between the various stations, working to ensure that the very latest information was coordinated and displayed. About fifty more officers, almost entirely sailors with a rank of captain or higher, were crowded into a viewing gallery to watch the proceedings.
Bainbridge strode into the viewing gallery and quickly surveyed the area for higher-ranking officers. As an assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the only people above him in the pecking order were the Joint Chiefs themselves. None were present, so Bainbridge confidently asked in a brusque voice, “What the hell is going on?”
No one responded for a moment. The responsibility of being the bearer of bad news was apparently not in high-demand among the junior officers.
Finally, a lowly lieutenant wearing a microphone headset and thick glasses answered, “Sir, the Chinese appear to have disabled one of our maritime surveillance satellites with an ASAT missile.”
Bainbridge said, “I thought our satellites could evade the Chinese ASAT missiles.”
The bespectacled lieutenant said, “Y-yes sir, we thought so too. But the Chinese missile appears to have had significantly higher speed and maneuverability than our estimates had allowed for.”
Bainbridge swore. “That satellite was monitoring the western Pacific for Task Force 61. Do we still have coverage over their area of operations?”
“Negative, sir. We’ll have another bird overhead in one hour, but until then, Task Force 61 is sailing blind.”
Bainbridge looked at a digital map of the western Pacific projected onto the main display at the center of the room. “What’s the fleet's current position?”
“About 500 miles east of the Philippines, a hundred miles south of the Northern Marianas Islands.”
“Shit.” Bainbridge stalked off to consult with a coterie of naval officers gathered around a display console.
I turned to another low-level officer, apparently a captain in the Marines. “Why is this so bad?” I whispered the question so as not to rile Bainbridge further.
The young officer gave me a long look, then decided that if I was in the room I must be a superior to fear. “Sir, the trick to getting the Navy safely to Taiwan is having the Task Force keep all its radars and active sonar equipment off. If they use their radars or active sonar, the Chinese will hear and see it and know where the fleet is. Once the Chinese know where the Task Force is, they’ll send everything they’ve got to sink it. Bombers, submarines, missiles, you name it.
"The maritime surveillance satellite was our way of allowing the Task Force to know what was around them without having to blast out radar and sonar, telling the whole world where they are. See, they can detect radar emissions—”
I interrupted, one prerogative of being a perceived superior. “And now the fleet is going to have to light up their radars if they want to be able to see incoming threats.”
"Yes, sir."
“So you’re saying there’s going to be a battle.”
The young man nodded grimly. "Sure looks that way, sir. But we still have secure satellite communications with the Task Force. We’ll tell them about the gap in satellite coverage, and once their radars are up and running, we’ll get the data feed as it comes in.”
As the young officer spoke, the image on the giant wall mounted screen lit up with an image of an enlisted technician on the bridge of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, the flagship of the fleet, the a carrier barely ten years old. An indicator light must have lit up when the video connection was opened, because the technician on the other side of the planet started speaking immediately, demanding authentication codes.
After various subordinates relayed the proper codes to each other, Rear Admiral Accomando finally came to the screen. He might have been a carbon copy of Vice Admiral Bainbridge from about ten years ago, so similar were the two in appearance and bearing.
“Admiral Accomando, this is Admiral Bainbridge at the Pentagon. The Chinese appear to have knocked out our maritime surveillance satellite.”
Accomando replied, “We figured as much, sir. We’ve lit up our radars, you should start getting the feed soon. We have also received a warning from the Taiwanese, they’ve spotted a force of three hundred fighters and bombers headed our way, about 1000 miles out now. Very nearly all of the four carrier air wings are being shot off to meet them, about 150 F-35’s.”
“Very good, Admiral. Your ASPIS ships are ready?”
I whispered to the Marine officer, “What's an ASPIS ship?”
He replied, “Sir, for thirty years, everyone had known that the Chinese were developing ballistic missiles that could beat AEGIS missile defense systems through decoys, stealth, maneuvering, or sheer numbers. The problem was so obvious that Congress scrounged up the money to field a new system, called ASPIS. ASPIS missiles have greater range, greater maneuverability to hit faster missiles, and a state-of-the-art computer system to discern stealthy missiles against background clutter and decoys.”
“So they're the ace in the hole that's going to win this battle?”
“That's the theory, sir.
Admiral Accomando answered, “We’ve got seven ASPIS-armed destroyers ringing the carriers. They’ll get the job done, sir.”
Bainbridge crusty face tightened. “Good man. The Chinese have never fought a carrier battle, Admiral. Show them what the U.S. Navy can do.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The picture went blank as the video connection was cut. The display on the big screen reverted to a real-time data feed from the carrier group showing the position of the Chinese planes, American fighters, and Task Force 61 projected onto a map of the western Pacific.
The red plane symbols on the map marched east steadily as the Chinese bombers — Russian-made Tu-160 Blackjacks — screamed east at twice the speed of sound. The blue American jets raced west at half the speed of the Blackjacks, striving to reach missile range before the Chinese could fire on the carriers.
The Marine whispered, “It's a math game now, sir. The Chinese are a thousand miles out from the carriers and they have to close to within 300 miles of Task Force 61 before they can fire their BrahMos stealth antiship cruise missiles. Our F-35's have to close to 50 miles from the bombers before they can launch their AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles to shoot down the bombers.”
I replied impatiently, “Alright, so who's going to get into position first?”
The officer did the math in his head. “At this rate, our fighters will engage the Chinese in about 25 minutes, when the bombers are still about 370 miles away from the carriers. That leaves a little over two and a half minutes for our pilots to engage the Chinese before they get into launch range.”