Sword of Shiva - Страница 38

It took him a couple of seconds to realize that something didn’t look quite right about the geometry of target motion playing out on the big display screen. The hostile air symbols were approaching steadily, but the rate of closure didn’t seem high enough.

“How fast are those Bogies moving?” he asked.

The TAO checked a digital readout on his console. “Airspeed around four hundred knots.”

Bowie frowned. “Four hundred knots? That’s a little slow for a strike approach, isn’t it?”

“It’s definitely not typical,” the TAO said. “But we’ve never actually seen the Chinese navy carry out a strike mission against a carrier. Nobody knows exactly what their tactical doctrine looks like for this kind of thing.”

“You’re right about that,” Commander Silva said quietly, “but four hundred knots is still awfully damned slow for a strike approach.”

Before the TAO could respond, a report came over the tactical net from the Electronics Warfare module. “TAO — EW. The Bogies just lit up! I am tracking twenty — that is two-zero — active X-band emitters. Pulse-doppler signature indicates KLJ-10 fire control radars. First cut looks like Chinese J-10 strike fighters.”

The TAO keyed his microphone. “EW — TAO. Copy all. Stand by on jamming and chaff.”

He released the mike button and turned to his commanding officer. “Captain, request batteries released on inbound Bogies.”

Bowie hesitated. Something wasn’t quite right about the way the Bogies were acting. The EW emissions and angle of approach added up to a large raid of strike fighters from the Chinese aircraft carrier, but the relatively low airspeed of the raid was puzzling.

Two-thirds the speed of sound wasn’t exactly poking along, but the J-10 was capable of better than Mach 2. Why weren’t they taking advantage of the aircraft’s speed? It didn’t make sense.

Or rather, it didn’t make sense to Bowie. It obviously made sense to whoever had planned the raid. There was definitely a reason for the departure from accepted aerial tactics. Of course, there was little or no chance that Bowie was going to spontaneously guess what that reason might be within the next few seconds. Low airspeed or not, the hostile planes were heading toward the American aircraft carrier. It was up to the Towers to ensure that they never got close enough to launch their missiles at the Midway.

That made the decision a no-brainer. Bowie made eye contact with his TAO. “Do it,” he said. “You have batteries released.”

The Tactical Action Officer keyed the net again immediately. “Weapons Control — TAO. Engage air tracks Zero Zero One through Zero Two Zero with missiles.”

“TAO — Weapons Control. Engage air tracks Zero Zero One through Zero Two Zero with missiles, aye. Stand by…”

A series of rapid shudders propagated down the length of the warship’s hull, accompanied by a sequence of muffled roars as nearly two dozen SM-3 missiles streaked into the sky.

The Weapons Officer’s voice came over the net. “TAO — Weapons Control. Twenty birds away. No apparent casualties.”

They appeared on the Aegis display within a couple of seconds: the blue shapes of twenty friendly missile symbols, closing rapidly on the hostile air symbols.

Bowie watched the converging symbology for several heartbeats before he reached for a communications headset and punched into the ship’s 1-MC system. When he spoke, his voice came from every speaker within the skin of the ship.

“All hands, this is the Captain. We’re currently launching missiles against a large raid of hostile aircraft. This is the real thing, people. This is what you’ve been training for, and I know you’re ready. Stay sharp. Stay tough. And be prepared for anything.”

He released the mike button and spoke under his breath. “Good luck. To all of us.”

Xianglong:

With its top-mounted jet engine and v-configured tail wings, the Xianglong Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was similar in appearance to the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk that had drawn so much media attention during U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But despite its physical resemblance to the American UAV, the capabilities of the Xianglong were still largely a mystery to the analysts and engineers of the United States.

Its name could be translated loosely into English as ‘flying lizard,’ but the UAV’s builders preferred the more auspicious translation of ‘soaring dragon.’

Western analysts were correct in believing that the Xianglong’s primary purpose was long-range, high-altitude strategic reconnaissance. But the mission modules currently attached to the UAV’s wings had a quite different purpose.

The module under the port wing was an electronic blip enhancer, designed to amplify and retransmit incoming radar signals, to make the 7.5 ton UAV seem much larger to enemy sensors. For this mission the drone’s apparent radar cross-section had been effectively doubled, giving the slender Xianglong a radar profile that closely mimicked the 16 ton airframe of a Chinese J-10 fighter.

The module under the starboard wing was a microwave transmitter, and it was busily broadcasting X-band signals that were virtually indistinguishable from the pulse-doppler emissions of the Chengdu KLJ-10 fire control radar carried by J-10 aircraft.

The decoy modules and electronic emulators of the deceptive mission package did an extraordinary job of simulating a J-10 fighter jet. The primary flaw in the deception was the drone’s lack of speed.

The jet-powered Xianglong was one of the fastest UAVs on the planet, more than 100 knots faster than the American MQ-9 Reaper. But — as impressive as the Xianglong’s top speed was for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle — it was not fast enough to accurately simulate the airspeed of a real J-10.

The Soaring Dragon was not perfect bait, but it was very good bait, and its lack of absolute perfection was offset by numbers. The UAV was not operating alone. It was surrounded by nineteen other drones of the exact same design and capability. Their collective spoofery was intended to make them such attractive targets that minor details like airspeed would be overlooked.

And the deceptive mission packages had not yet exhausted all the tactical cheats at their disposal. They still had a few tricks left to play.

USS Towers:

“TAO — Air, Bogies are launching chaff and going evasive!”

“TAO, aye!”

The maneuvers were quickly visible on the Aegis display screens, as the enemy aircraft dodged and weaved to avoid the missiles bearing down on them.

Bowie’s eyes stayed locked on the dancing blue and red symbols. It still didn’t feel right. He couldn’t quite put his finger on the problem, but he couldn’t shake the idea that there was something wrong with the way the Bogies were maneuvering.

Then, it hit him. He tapped the TAO on the shoulder. “Check their airspeed now. How fast are the Bogies moving?”

The Tactical Action Officer punched a quick series of keys on his console. “Looks like… about four hundred knots. Give or take.”

The TAO looked up at his commanding officer. “That’s not right…”

“No,” Bowie said. “It isn’t. Those Bogies are jinking and jiving like crazy, but not a single one of them has kicked in the afterburners to get away from our missiles.”

“They’re some kind of decoys,” the TAO said.

Bowie nodded. “They’ve got to be.”

He reached into the overhead, jerked the red handset of the Navy Red terminal out of its cradle, and shoved it against his right ear. He keyed the mike, and waited a half-second for the crypto burst — a rapid string of warbling tones that the UHF transmitter used to synchronize its encryption signal with the secure communications satellite. “Alpha Whiskey, this is Towers. Hostile strike raid from my bearing two-one-four, is evaluated as a ruse. I say again, Bogies bearing two-one-four are probable decoys! My unit will continue to engage and monitor, but expect additional attacks from other vectors, over!”

The Air Warfare Coordinator on the aircraft carrier responded within ten seconds. “Towers, this is Alpha Whiskey. Roger all, and concur. We have rapid pop-ups on multiple inbound Vipers, threat axis zero-seven-five. Keep your head down. Alpha Whiskey, out!”

Vipers (mid-flight):

They came in very low, and very fast — forty 3M-54E2 anti-ship missiles, flying three and a half meters above the waves at Mach 0.8.

By official NATO designation, they belonged to the family of SSN-27 cruise missiles lumped together under the code name Sizzler. The Chinese variants of this missile class had been alternately over-hyped and under-hyped by the U.S. Department of Defense for more than a decade.

The western press had taken to referring to the 3M-54E2 as China’s Carrier Killer. That assertion had never been demonstrated under battle conditions. Until now.

Each missile had its radar seeker turned off during this phase of its trajectory, following a pre-programmed flight path, adjusted by periodic updates from the Beidou navigation positioning satellites that comprised China’s indigenous version of the Global Positioning System.

The missiles were flying blind, but their nose-on radar cross-sections were relatively low. Coupled with their lack of active emissions and wave-hugging flight profiles, this made them difficult to detect and track.

That would change in a few hundred milliseconds, when the missiles would all energize their target acquisition radars at the same instant. All forty missiles would instantly become visible to the sensors of the American ships and aircraft, but the missiles would compensate for the lack of stealth by accelerating to Mach 2.2 for the terminal phase of the attack.