part0036

The missiles rose into the clear morning sky, climbing rapidly up and reaching speeds of 3000 knots in a matter of seconds. They were a secret weapon Iran had been working on for some time with assistance from Chinese engineers. The weapon system was called Kalij Fars, which meant, simply enough, “Persian Gulf,” built from the Fateh-110 single stage solid fuel ballistic missile, mounted with a 650Kg warhead. Its relatively short range of 300 kilometers meant that its targets would be limited to the Gulf, and the Strait of Hormuz, which made it a kind of defensive weapon against naval incursions into those maritime spaces—because Kalij Fars was a ship killer, designed with an optical seeker to look for moving targets at sea.

The Iranians had dropped the chador on the missile in 2015 in this history, announcing it now had the means to find and kill American carriers entering the Persian Gulf. That was one reason why the Navy ended big deck carrier patrols there years ago. Operating only from the Arabian Sea with those valuable assets, and on a sporadic basis. The shift to the Pacific saw four US carriers based there, and two on the Atlantic. Of those, one was assigned to the Med, the other to the Arabian Sea, but it had been in Norfolk for maintenance when these events flared up.

That was why Carrier Strike Group Roosevelt had taken so long to get to the scene, departing from San Diego for the long journey to Darwin, only this time, the Iranian missiles were not targeting a carrier. The US Security Patrol out of As Sultan Harbor in Oman had been spotted approaching the Strait of Hormuz, and so the Iranians thought they would test the system on the cruiser at the heart of that small task force.

CG Bull Run was ready for trouble of this sort, for US intelligence knew the missiles had been deployed, and so every cruiser they floated had the latest version of their long lance SM-3. Three times faster than the ballistic missiles it was targeting, they were away in a fiery wash once that enemy launch was spotted. Four Vampires had been detected, and eight SM-3’s went out after them, finding and killing all four targets before they even got half way over the Gulf they were named for. Their broken shards would fall there that morning, and take their rest in the sea.

Captain Peter Duncan on the cruiser Bull Run took offense to that attack, and for more than one reason. His ship had sailed with 16 SM-3’s, and he had just expended half of them to stop those missiles. “They want to play darts this morning,” he said to his XO, James, Fallon. Have we refined that contact up ahead?”

“Has to be a patrol boat,” said the Captain. “Let’s say hello with one of the escorts. Give it to an LCS. We’ll see what that new Norwegian missile can do.”

“Aye sir.” The Captain was speaking of the new Naval Strike Missile that had been added to all Freedom Class Littoral Combat Ships. Before that addition, they had been relatively toothless, having Hellfire mission modules that could let them threaten fishing boats at a range of five miles, or discourage Somali Pirates, but little else. Iranian patrol boats outranged the LCS, and would have fired and fled long before the they ever got close, but that was no longer the case with the NSM mounts added. Each Freedom Class ship now carried eight of the missiles, with a 100 mile range.

The US Navy had superb radars and support from aerial recon assets and satellites, so finding a target was generally not their problem. But you had to have a missile with the range to hit the damn thing, and here the glaring flaw in the LCS concept was finally corrected. The ships could finally fight at range, and two Naval Strike Missiles were sent out after that skunk, only to discover that the single target was actually a group of five Iranian Patrol boats. Unlike Bull Run , they had no SAM systems to defend against the missile attack, and so PB Zafar went up in smoke and fire at 08:45 that morning.

Bull Run then joined Hunter and Ranger , with two Harpoons, while the LCS ships threw out a couple more NSM’s. They soon wiped the table clean, sinking the remaining four Iranian attack boats. Three years earlier. The Iranians would have had the draw on the US Littoral Combat Ships with four times the range, and that with the Iranian C-704 miles, which could only get out 20 miles. This time the tables were turned, and it was the US that had the advantage of range.

In our history, there were 16 ships in the Freedom LCS class, and all of them combined could not have successfully engaged or defeated the five Iranian patrol boats under fire that morning. They were, in effect, lightly armed coast guard cutters, with a 57mm deck gun that had a five mile range to go along with its Hellfires. The Iranian boats would have scooted just inside that 20 mile range and fired off ten C-704’s, with a strong possibility of hitting and sinking several ships, while all the US force could do in return was use harsh language.

Lockheed saw the problem clearly enough, and submitted a proposal to the Navy to convert the ships to a “Small Surface Combatant Variant.” They wanted to add a VLS section for ESSM or SM-2, and swap in a better deck gun, but the US Navy passed on the proposal. Instead, the Saudis bought the idea, ordered four ships, and they would get that boat with an Italian made 76mm deck gun, 64 ESSM’s for air defense, supported by 21 more RIM-116C’s, and they even strapped on eight Harpoon II’s. Just one of those ships would have put down all five Iranian patrol boats, where all 16 of the US boats, the entire class, would have remained helpless to lay a finger on them.

Go figure…. At least in this history, the United States Navy wasn’t about to build ships that could not fight known threats it was likely to face, and prevail. It was never any mystery as to what kind of threat the LCS might encounter in littoral waters. They were the province of the fast attack craft, offshore patrol boats, and larger corvettes, all known, right down to the missiles each were carrying. The mystery was why the Navy commissioned ships that could not engage and win against these threats, and why they never corrected the problem in our timeline.

Those five boats had been based on the island of Abu Musa, and an hour later, a pair of Raptors up on CAP detected two more patrol boats near that island. The data was shared with the navy ships, and Captain Duncan saw that they were just outside the firing range of the LCS boats. So he handed the mission to his destroyers. DDG’s Rodes and Starke each had 28 Multi-Mission Tomahawks, with plenty of range for any fight at sea, so they fired four. But all this commotion had given away the position of that task force, allowing the Iranians to try and get off a shot in return.

These boats had a better missile, the Chinese made C-802 with a 110 mile range. The Separ had the range first, and fired all four of its missiles. Then, in a coordinated attack, two Iranian shore batteries would also fire their C-201 Silkworms, so both sides had missiles in the air at 09:45. Four minutes later, the crew of Separ pointed excitedly at a low flying cruise missile, just five miles out. That boat would die seconds later, along with Derafsh , which never had a chance to fire. When the remaining Silkworms tried to creep across the Musandam Peninsula and get at the American ships, the US air defense was more than adequate, killing seven more missiles without breaking a sweat.

In that brief hour, the US Maritime Security TF had just eliminated the Iranian surface threat in the Strait of Hormuz region, and it would be some time before those silkworm batteries were reloaded. Thoughts now turned to the expected undersea threat when LCS Hunter detected a Goblin just five miles from the TF on its towed CAPTAS Mark 4 sonar. They had stumbled upon a hidden diesel boat, Ghadir Class #944.

Captain Duncan was quick to lay out his orders. “Let’s get ASROC on that contact, on the double, then launch the ready Seahawk. The task force will come about to 180 degrees and all ahead flank.

It was shoot and scoot. You never wanted to be inside ten miles from a hostile sub—ever. The ASROC was a rocket torpedo with a 22 kilometer range that could get a weapon on the target very quickly, and possibly force it to go defensive if they were sitting there ready to fire torpedoes. Then the ships had to be somewhere else, and fast. Those orders filled the bill, and it was the Seahawk that got to the Goblin first, and just before the Iranian boat could get its firing solution locked in. Captain Duncan was pleased at the result, but he knew that had been a close call.

That improved LA Class sub had not detected the Iranian boat, as it was just starting to slow after a sprint at 20 knots. Drifting at five knots, it might have heard the threat ahead, and now it was on guard. With surface threats dispatched, the mission had changed to ASW patrol as the TF began to enter the narrow Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranians had yet another Ghadir Class boat lying in wait ahead, #943, and it was creeping just over the layer at 3 knots, silently stalking the noisome US ships. What that boat could not hear was the Seahawk out there looking for it, now flying with impunity under US SAM and air cover, and dropping passive sonobuoys well forward of the US ships. They turned up trouble at 12:18 Local time, ruining the lunch mess.

The sub contact was about five miles beyond ASROC range, so it was going to be up to the Seahawk to put harm on the enemy sub. Luckily, it had a very refined contact, and swooped in to get a Mark 54 torpedo in the water. Drifting at 100 feet below the surface, the Iranians had no idea they had been found until that torpedo hit the water, less than half a mile from the sub. By that time, it was far too late, and number 943 would be struck and killed less than a minute after the Captain gave the order to turn and run.

A diesel sub relied on one thing—stealth. If it was found, it was usually dead within minutes, because it could simply not run and hide after that. The shallow water in the Strait also prevented it from diving deep, leaving it few evasive maneuvers that might save its life.

The US ASW hunt would continue, but that had pretty much pulled the cork out of the bottle. The only other Iranian sub was Ghadir #942, on the other side of the long Musandam Peninsula, and the Saudi Navy was out hunting that Goblin.

This sweep of the Strait of Hormuz was just a preliminary operation. It was going to take more work before that sea lane might be declared open for anything other than a warship. Mines were always a worry, the sub threat could return, or more fast attack craft might venture out from Jask, though the latest satellite report showed no more based there. Beyond that, the Air Force was going to have to find and kill the missile batteries with anti-ship missiles inside Iran, and that meant they would have to penetrate Iranian airspace to hunt them down.

At the moment, the squadrons in theater were all generating air support and strike sorties against the Iraqi Army, but by the time the convoy carrying the USMC drew near, that work would have to be done. As to when that might happen, no one could say just yet.

The next problem was going to be much farther east, when the Chinese Fleet moved towards Singapore again—only this time, they reinforced with an additional carrier. That move underscored the importance of that sea transit zone, for Singapore had long commanded that entire region, and it simply had to be neutralized, or nothing the Chinese hauled from the Persian Gulf would ever get into the South China Sea.

China could not invade and occupy the place, as the Japanese had done in the last war. There was no way they could ever mount a campaign similar to that conducted by General Yamashita, where he earned the nickname the “Tiger of Malaya.”

In WWII, Japan, with a population of just 73 million, was able to invade and occupy Korea, Manchuria, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Java, Borneo, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, New Britain, Iwo Jima, the Marshalls, Marianas, Solomons, New Caledonia, and the Fijis, (in this history). Here, with an industrial base over ten times that of WWII Japan, a population of 1.4 billion, and a navy that would have easily crushed the IJN, modern China had expended most of its amphibious carrying capacity in the operations to seize and hold the Ryukyus, and it had precious little else to spare for other adventures.

It was a strange truth that, as weapons and military power got so much more powerful in the modern era, the ability to conquer and successfully occupy and control other countries became almost impossible to achieve. [5] Therefore a landing on Singapore, facing three enemy divisions, was completely out of the question. Yet China could use its missiles to strike and destroy the airfields and docks the Royal Navy relied upon to sustain its fleet there, and that would have the effect of opening the route through the Strait of Malacca.

To achieve this end. The South Seas Command was now upping its ante and sending 30 ships, a fleet composed of two carriers with the J-31, four Type 055 heavy destroyers, nine type 052D destroyers, and fifteen frigates. Three submarines would deploy forward of the main fleet TF’s. As before, the forward airfield at Ranai on the main island of Riau was a key contributor for air support. The next closest base was Miri in Malaysia, on the big island of Borneo.

For his part, Admiral Pearson had no business even being at sea. He had just seven ships remaining serviceable, the light carrier Invincible with just seven F-35’s left, an older Type 42 destroyer, Liverpool , and five frigates. Yet at least three of the five frigates were Type 31, armed with the American ESSM and the Naval Strike Missile. With these came the four ready frigates of the Royal Singapore Navy, and they had the Aster -15, and the American Harpoon. A group of six RSN patrol craft also carried a total of 48 harpoons, but they would have to get inside 75 miles to use them, which wasn’t likely to happen.

Admiral Pearson was conflicted with his dilemma. Intelligence indicated that he would be outnumbered three to one in warships of frigate size or better, two to one in carriers. Was he just signing the death warrants for ships and men if he sortied now? Yet what was he to do, simply sit in the harbor at Changi Naval base, until the cruise missiles found his ships there? There was a third course, and that was to simply withdraw, slipping away up the Strait of Malacca or down through the Sunda Strait into the Indian Ocean.

If he took the Malacca Strait, he was still controlling it, and might sit off the northern tip of Sumatra thumbing his nose at the Chinese and daring them to come after him. That would allow the Chinese to move into the Karimata Strait between the Java Sea and South China Sea, where they might wreak havoc on the facilities, airfields, and ports around Singapore, not to mention the 200 plus tankers and container ships hovering near that bastion. Unless ordered to do this, it would not serve honor, or do well to abandon a good ally in Singapore. So David went out into the Lion’s den, hoping against hope he could survive.

The odds were steep, but the Admiral had an unseen comrade in arms, a man named Vladimir Karpov, who had shaken the mantle of grief from his shoulders over the loss of his brother self, and turned to the one sure thing that would focus his mind and energy again—combat at sea.