** FLEET BATTLE STUDY 93-1169 ** T.O.T. NLACM U.S. EAST COAST ATTACK PURPOSE: TO EXAMINE THE EFFECT, IF NECESSARY, OF A TIME-ON-TARGET NUCLEAR LAND ATTACK CRUISE MISSILE (NLACM) ASSAULT ON THE UNITED STATES BY A FORCE OF ATTACK SUBMARINES DEPLOYED TO THE WESTERN ATLANTIC.
ABSTRACT: THE ATTACK WOULD REQUIRE A MINIMUM OF 100 SSN-X-27 NUCLEAR LAND ATTACK CRUISE MISSILES FIRED FROM AS MANY PLATFORMS AS POSSIBLE TO AVOID UNIT LOSSES. THE T.O.T. ASSAULT WOULD INSURE THAT ALL WARHEADS, REGARDLESS OF FLIGHT TIME, WOULD DETONATE AT THE SAME INSTANT. THE EFFECT OF A TIME-ON-TARGET ASSAULT ON THE EAST COAST OF THE USA COULD ACHIEVE CASTRATION/CAPITATION STRATEGY OBJECTIVE.
Vlasenko slammed the book shut, put back the volume and chart and locked the safe. He looked around the stateroom, to make sure that no trace of his search was visible, moved into the passageway outside and went quickly to the First Officer’s stateroom, slamming the door behind him. He tried to reassure himself with the words “if necessary,” “could achieve.” Novskoyy wasn’t crazy, he just had a contingency plan. Maybe he was planning to target U.S. cities, not actually fire on them — but even that was inevitably dangerous. The admiral, self-convinced of his course as always… Vlasenko could not forget the wanton sinking of the U.S. boat years ago. He was frustrated by the dismemberment of the old Soviet Union and with it so much of his power. He had concocted this operation. For Novskoyy, an enemy was an enemy forever. He was an old man from another era who couldn’t believe he had ever been wrong. No, he wasn’t crazy. It was worse. He was a desperate man, highly skilled, who never doubted his righteousness. Much worse than mere crazy… Novskoyy would have to be stopped.
Low earth orbit arctic circle The KH-17 Bigbird II satellite sent up that year had been launched into a polar orbit. Such an orbit facilitated looking at the Chinese activity in the antarctic as well as monitoring the Russian naval force strength up north. The latter was the key to the Naval Disarmament Treaty. As Reagan had said years before, “Trust but verify.” The KH-17’s were built to verify.
As the twelve-ton spy-platform crossed the Arctic Circle, it trained its high-resolution visual mirror to search to the east of track. The prime-viewing area this orbit was deemed to be to the right side of the Bigbird’s path over the icepack. While the optics trained over, the infrared sensors followed, scanning the same swath, searching for heat attributable only to warm-blooded life or a man-made source in the frigid cold. For the last hundred orbits, only seven arctic heat traces had been scanned. All had been polar bears. Now the Bigbird’s computer found its eighth heat trace, much larger than the others. Twelve meters long, five meters high. The computer searched its memory as its program commanded. Nothing in its flight history to date had been this big. The next program step told the onboard radio to send an alarm message to the Langley CIA Reconnaissance Section control facility. As the alarm message transmitted, the third program command instructed the optical telescope to train over the heat trace and zoom in. The Bigbird relayed the telemetry back to Langley until the images shrank and were lost in the clouds over the horizon. Start to finish, the detection episode had lasted less than four minutes.
Four thousand miles away, in the east wing of Langley’s CIA Reconnaissance Center, the four-minute-long optical trace slowly printed out on the high-resolution facsimile machine. The senior duty analyst pulled the image trace from the machine. Probably another polar bear, he thought.
He laid the image out on the table to the side of the fax machine and emitted a low whistle. It was a submarine’s conning tower that had pushed through the ice. A damn big conning tower. He reached for a secure phone and dialed in the code for COMSUBLANT Headquarters, Norfolk, Virginia.
CHAPTER 11
Admiral Richard Donchez stared at the Flag Plot room’s North Atlantic electronic wall chart, at the mass of red X’s blinking on and off, as they cleared Great Britain and headed to the west Atlantic. Just offshore, Donchez felt certain. The neighboring chart, the western Atlantic, showed blue X’s moving away from the coastline. His fast-attack submarines headed out into a zone-defense of the coast. With some luck, his ships should be able to confront… or intercept… the Russian boats as they pulled up at America’s east coast. Except the Rules of Engagement said that no offensive action could be taken until one of the enemy ships did something — no fair hitting unless the other guy hits first. Donchez shook his head as he crouched over a table with the CIA photographic intelligence of the OMEGA submarine surfaced at the icecap, the detail fine enough to see the rungs of the handholds going up the side of the sail to the bridge. It was more than an implicit revenge sanction now, he thought, in the context of officially making Pacino’s mission one of getting a probing sonar profile of the guts of the new OMEGA. Before the Russian deployment, he had let Patch’s son believe his mission was also a belated payback for Stingray. But now… Novskoyy and the OMEGA had to have something to do with the Russian deployment. And Novskoyy must have anticipated some sort of counterdeployment, he might even be expecting a U.S. attack sub to visit him. This was turning into a potential general skirmish…
Donchez handed back the intelligence-update message to the radioman and stepped back to look at the plots. One thousand miles northeast of Norfolk, one blue X was all alone. Black block letters beside the X read USS DEVILFISH SSN-666 SUBMERGED TRANSIT. Donchez tried to visualize Pacino and the Devilfish. Would it be better to tell Pacino the OMEGA was surfaced now and later tell him about the major deployment? No doubt there was enough turmoil in Mikey’s mind with the implicit and explicit mandates. It would be best to wait at least until evening for further developments before giving the Devilfish a mission update. Soon, though, he would have to tell Pacino that the OMEGA might be expecting him, even gunning for him.
Three hours later Donchez was joined in Flag Plot by Admiral Casper “Bobby” McGee. Donchez pointed his cigar at the advancing blinking red X’s on the chart, now approaching the middle of the Atlantic.
“The red X’s are the Russian attack submarines,” he said. “The blue ones off the U.S. continental shelf are mine.”
McGee stared at the wall chart. As Commander in Chief U.S. Atlantic Fleet, CINCLANTFLEET, he was Donchez’s boss. He was slightly shorter than Donchez, heavyset with bushy gray eyebrows and jowls. He looked like a caricature of an authoritarian southern traffic-court judge, and hailing from Waycross, Georgia, even sounded the part. Appearances were deceiving; anyone who mistook his folksiness for ignorance could find themselves up against a ruthless intelligence. Still, he was not a submariner.
“Why them red ones flashin’?” he asked Donchez.
“The flashing means their position is only approximate. We have a position within five hundred square miles from SOSUS, sometimes within one hundred square miles. The position is good enough for you and me to see the progress but not good enough for us to… shoot at him. I know those red ones are there, plus or minus an inch or two on that chart, but I can’t sink them—”