Sword of Shiva - Страница 46

Even a year earlier, a gun attack from 37 miles would have been impossible. Against surface targets, the effective range of a standard 5-inch naval artillery shell was less than 20 nautical miles — a little better than half what was needed for Bowie’s plan. But that had been before Vulcano.

Over the past several decades, there had been several attempts to develop rocket-assisted projectiles with enhanced ranges, but none of the U.S. efforts had ever panned out. The two most promising projects — the Ballistic Trajectory Extended Range Munition (BTERM), and the Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM) — had been cancelled, due to budget overruns and lingering technical challenges.

The U.S. Navy had finally sidestepped the issue by procuring Vulcano rounds from the Italian arms firm, OTO-Melara. The Italian defense industry had succeeded where the American military-industrial complex had failed. OTO-Melara’s 127mm Vulcano projectiles were fully compatible with the 5-inch guns aboard U.S. warships, and their maximum range was 40 nautical miles.

The gun crews aboard the Towers and Gerrard had been trained on the Vulcano rounds, and they’d racked up an impressive number of attack simulations using the new ammunition. But even the most accurate training simulators have practical limitations, and actual hands-on experience with the new projectiles had been limited to a handful of live firing exercises.

In view of this, and in light of the knowledge that the U.S. Navy had never employed Vulcano munitions under real-world combat conditions, Bowie had decided to edge a little nearer to the targets before launching the attack.

Silva agreed completely with the captain’s reasoning. It made sense not to push their luck by relying on textbook assessments of a new weapon’s capabilities. Better to build in a little safety margin, in case the textbooks turned out to be wrong.

But the probability of detection readout was still climbing. As Silva watched, it changed to 91.6 / 22.9. In another few minutes, the chance of getting caught would reach 30 %. Definitely too high for comfort.

Silva looked around and met Bowie’s gaze.

He raised one eyebrow slightly. “This must be what it feels like to be a submarine commander,” he said.

He turned back to the master tactical display. “Trying to sneak into your enemy’s sensor envelope without being detected. Knowing that the only things keeping you alive are silence, and luck.”

Commander Silva nodded, but didn’t say anything. Her eyes drifted back and forth between the estimated range to target, and the probability of detection. Two sets of numbers — one decreasing, and the other increasing. Silence and luck. Silence… and luck. Silence…

A burst of encrypted UHF came in on the downlink from Fleet SATCOM, carrying the latest targeting fixes from the NightEagle III. On the Aegis display screen, the areas of uncertainty for the Chinese ships shrank instantly to distinct points.

Captain Bowie looked over the target geometry, judging angles and distances against whatever image of the battle plan he carried in his head. He nodded, cleared his throat, and spoke loudly. “Let’s do it.”

And suddenly, it was time.

CHAPTER 51

USS TOWERS (DDG-103)

BAY OF BENGAL

WEDNESDAY; 03 DECEMBER

0013 hours (12:13 AM)

TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’

The Tactical Action Officer keyed the net. “Weapons Control — TAO. You have batteries released. Kill Surface Contact Zero One and Surface Contact Zero Two with Harpoons.”

The acknowledgement came immediately. “Weapons Control, aye.”

A handful of seconds later, the steel deck vibrated with the syncopated rumble of anti-ship cruise missiles blasting free of their launch tubes.

“TAO — Weapons Control. Four birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted two-each on the hostile surface contacts.”

Commander Silva watched four friendly weapons symbols blink into existence on the tactical display, and race toward a set of programmed navigational waypoints on the far side of the targets. “How long until the second salvo?”

“About three minutes,” Captain Bowie said.

The plan was to launch the attack in two stages. The first salvo of missiles would fly past the enemy warships, remaining below the radar horizon for the Chinese sensors. When the Harpoons had covered half the distance to their respective waypoints, the second salvo of missiles would be launched toward their own waypoints, on the near side of the targets.

The timing of the launches was calculated to bring all of the Harpoons to their final navigational waypoints at the exact same instant. Then, the missiles would simultaneously turn toward the targets and shift into terminal attack phase, their radar seekers going active as they homed in for the kill.

On the western side of the battle group, the USS Donald Gerrard would be carrying out a mirror image of the attack against the two frigates on her edge of the enemy formation.

The tactic was called simultaneous time-on-target. If it was executed properly, each Chinese escort ship would suddenly find itself with four incoming Harpoon missiles, all converging from different points of the compass.

The Jiangkai II multi-role frigates and the Luzhou air-defense destroyers were known to carry strong anti-ship cruise missile defenses. Faced with one (or even several) Harpoons coming in from the same general direction, there was an excellent chance that the Chinese ships could intercept most or all of them. But the odds that they could simultaneously engage four hostile missiles from widely-separated bearings were much lower.

If the latest tactical assessments were accurate, a simultaneous time-on-target attack should yield one or two successful hits on each of the enemy destroyers and frigates.

For Silva, time had somehow shifted into overdrive. The three minutes between missile salvos seemed to flash by in a few seconds, and then the deck was vibrating with the launch of the second set of Harpoons. Four new friendly weapons symbols popped up on the Aegis display screen, and instantly began vectoring toward their assigned waypoints.

The missiles had been in flight less than a minute when a report from the Electronic Warfare module broke over the net. “TAO — EW. I have two X-band emitters, bearing two-eight-zero. Signal characteristics and pulse repetition frequencies are consistent with fire control radars for Chengdu J-15 fighter aircraft.”

Before anyone had time to react to this message, it was followed by a report from the Air Warfare Supervisor. “TAO — Air. The data stream from NightEagle III just chopped off in mid-transmission.”

The TAO keyed his mike. “Air — TAO. Clarify your report. Have you lost the satellite downlink?”

“TAO — Air. That’s a negative, sir. We’ve still got a good latch on SATCOM 7, but the satellite has lost comms with the drone.”

Silva made eye contact with Bowie. “Captain, unless I miss my guess, a Chinese air patrol just blasted our UAV out of the sky.”

Her assessment was confirmed by the Officer of the Deck about two seconds later. “TAO — Bridge. Lookouts are reporting a fireball bearing two-seven-five. Position angle fifty-one.”

Bowie turned toward the TAO. “Stand by to go active on SPY. Our Chinese friends have just figured out that we’re in the neighborhood. I want to be ready to shift to full Aegis combat mode on a second’s notice.”

He raised his voice so that the entire CIC crew could hear him. “Listen up, people. It’s about to get hot around here. Let’s stay sharp, and be ready for anything.”

On the Aegis display, the Harpoon missile symbols were reaching their final waypoints and turning toward the enemy warships. The missiles were sea skimmers, hugging the wave tops to remain below the radar coverage of the target vessels until the last possible instant. In another ninety seconds or so, they would become visible to the Chinese radar operators.

Bowie had no intention of giving the enemy ships time to react properly to the incoming missiles. He nodded to the TAO. “Nail ‘em with the gun.”

The Tactical Action Officer relayed the order to Weapons Control, and the ship jerked as the 5-inch deck gun loosed its first round. The muzzle report reverberated through CIC like a clap of thunder, only partially muffled by the steel bulkheads and insulated lagging that separated the compartment from the gun deck.

The gun cycled into its auto-load sequence, pumping out another projectile every three seconds, with bone-jarring booms. When the first five rounds were in the air, the gun swung its aim toward the second Chinese destroyer, and pumped out another five shells. Then the gun shifted its attention back to the first destroyer, and fired another five-round salvo.

Vulcano Round:

Moving at a half mile per second, the first round took just under 74 seconds to close the distance to the target. As the projectile neared the end of its trajectory, the canard control module near the nose took a fix from GPS and compared the result to the position estimate from its own inertial measurement unit. The control module adjusted the angle of the stubby canard fins, and the Vulcano round pitched over into its terminal descent phase.

The infrared sensor locked onto the largest heat source within its field of view. The canard control module made a final angular correction, and the self-guided artillery shell streaked down toward the target like a meteor.