KAMCHATKA PACIFIC MISSILE TEST RANGE, EASTERN SIBERIA
SUMMER 2014
“Bridge, Combat, ballistic missile inbound!” the urgent call came. “Altitude six-seven miles, range three-three-zero nautical, closing speed eight thousand!”
The skipper of the USS Chosin, captain of an American guided-missile cruiser, activated a stopwatch hanging on a lanyard around his neck. “Sound general quarters,” Captain Edward Taverna said calmly. He glanced at the visitor seated beside him on the bridge as the warning horns sounded throughout the ship. Everyone on the bridge already had helmets and life jackets on. “Combat, Bridge, weapons tight, engagement as briefed, acknowledge.”
“Bridge, Combat, weapons tight, engagement as briefed, aye,” came the response.
“Count it down, Combat,” Taverna ordered. He raised a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon to the north, and the visitor did likewise.
“Impact in fifteen seconds . . .” The skipper couldn’t believe how fast this was happening . . . “Ten . . . five . . . zero.”
A tremendous geyser of water reaching hundreds of feet in the sky erupted on the horizon, just a few miles away. Through his binoculars, Taverna could briefly see the shape of a large vessel cartwheeling in the air. “Looks like a direct hit,” he said. “What’s it look like, Combat?”
“Direct hit, sir,” came the reply. Taverna knew there were multiple cameras recording this test, both on the surface and in the sky—he’d look at the video later with the Intelligence section, with the Pentagon and probably the White House watching as well.
“What speed was the target going?”
“The target was being towed at twenty-seven knots, sir.”
Impressive—and ominous, Taverna thought. He turned to his visitor and said, “Congratulations, Admiral.” Then, in the best and oft-practiced Chinese he could muster, he said, “Gong ji, Shao Jiang.” Sign of the times, Taverna thought—more and more senior officers in the U.S. military were learning Mandarin Chinese, much like many learned Russian during the height of the Cold War.
This was shaping up to be the new Cold War: America versus China.
One faint glimmer of hope for a nonconfrontational tone to U.S.-China relations was this very occurrence: an invitation for the U.S. Navy to not only observe this test up close and personal, but to have a senior Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer on board. It had several implications. Yes, China was being much more open about its military capabilities and intentions; it could also imply that, should there be a targeting error, a few Chinese officers would be casualties along with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American sailors—faint consolation, but something. Also, this test was being run on a Russian ballistic missile test range, which implied a high degree of cooperation between China and Russia.
But this was obviously a warning to America as well as an olive branch. The message was clear: your warships are no longer safe in the western Pacific.
“Thank you very much, Captain,” People’s Liberation Army Shao Jiang (Major General) Hua Zhilun said in excellent English. The thin, handsome admiral with the seemingly perpetual smile, young for a Chinese general at age fifty-four, bowed, then shook hands with Taverna. General Hua was commander of the Eleventh Tactical Rocket Division, or Ha Zhao: “Tiger’s Claw,” the special division set up to deploy China’s antisatellite and antiship ballistic missiles. Hua’s division was part of China’s Strategic Rocket Forces, also known as the Second Artillery Corps, the branch of the army that controlled all of China’s land-based ballistic missiles, both nuclear and conventional. “I shall prepare a full debriefing and return in the morning to brief you and your department heads on the results of today’s test.”
“I’m looking forward to it, General,” Taverna said. Hua bowed deeply again, then followed his aide off the bridge, escorted by the Chosin’s executive officer.
“He’s got a reason to smile, the prick,” Taverna said under his breath after Hua had departed. It was not lost on Taverna, and certainly not on Hua or his contingent, that the cruiser Chosin was named for the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, in which a force of sixty thousand Chinese troops encircled a force of thirty thousand American-led United Nations troops at Changjin Lake in northeast North Korea. Although the Chinese lost nearly two-thirds of their attacking forces in two and a half weeks of fighting, it was the first major defeat of United Nations forces in the Korean War and was the beginning of a massive all-out Chinese offensive that nearly pushed American forces south right off the Korean Peninsula and into the East China Sea.
Taverna also knew that Hua was in command of the forces that attacked American Kingfisher antisatellite and antiballistic missile weapon garages in Earth orbit last year, causing the death of an American astronaut and the eventual suspension of the entire U.S. Space Defense Force program. There had never been any meaningful American response to those attacks or to other antisatellite attacks by Russia, something that really steamed Taverna. Chinese and Russian carrier battle groups were now everywhere, shadowing American warships and shipping—and still no response from anyone in Washington except more cutbacks. It was getting pretty pathetic.
Taverna shook himself out of his reverie and picked up the phone to the Combat Information Center. “Yes, sir,” Commander Ted Lang, the operations officer, responded.
“So how did it look, Ted?”
“Pretty awesome, sir,” Lang replied. “Direct hit from fifteen hundred miles away. I haven’t seen the slow-mo video yet, but judging by the effects it looked like a good penetration angle. Sawed that target ship right in half.”
“So you think it could penetrate an armored carrier deck?”
“If they use a nuclear warhead, it doesn’t need to, sir,” Lang said. “If it’s just a kinetic warhead, it has to hit almost perfectly vertical—if it hits at an angle it would probably glance off a carrier’s deck, even going eight thousand miles an hour.”
“And the missile was directed by satellite?”
“That’s what they claim, sir,” Lang replied. “The Chinese have several radar and infrared ocean-surveillance satellite systems in orbit. They certainly have the technology. They had lots of aircraft in the area observing the test, and one or more of them could have actually aimed the missile. The missile uses inertial guidance with GPS updates—our GPS satellites, by the way—to get within the target area. Then the warhead itself supposedly gets updates from outside sensors—satellites or aircraft, communicating directly with the warhead’s terminal guidance package—then uses its own on-board radar to steer itself in for the kill.”
“Big question, Ted: Could a Standard SM-3 have knocked it down if it was aimed at us?” Taverna asked. The Standard missile was the carrier battle group’s primary antiaircraft missile; the SM-3 was an upgraded version designed to knock down ballistic missiles and even satellites in low Earth orbit.
There was an uncomfortably long pause before the operations officer replied. “Today, we had the advantage of knowing exactly from where and when it was coming, sir,” Lang said. “The SM-3’s auto-engage system is normally not activated unless we’re heading into a fight, so if it’s a ‘bolt from the blue’ attack . . . no, sir, I don’t think we’d have the time. If it’s engaged, I think the SM-3 would get one warhead. If there are multiple maneuvering warheads . . .” And his voice trailed off.
“Got it, Ted,” Taverna said. “Let me know when Intel is ready to debrief.”
“Yes, sir.”
The skipper hung up the phone. The chill he felt just then was not because of the weather.