Джон Шеттлер - Condition Zebra - The Next War - 2025

But I can fire with Daring , Dragon , and Argos Fire . I could put 45 Sea Hawks into the sky, our handle for these newly acquired American missiles. And Argos Fire could put 40 Long Range ASM’s out there, another gift from the Yanks. Thank God someone is building missiles with the range to actually strike an enemy. Yet as before, this would be my only long range throw. Should I pile on, and try for a few kills to shift the odds my way before they can counterattack?

He simply had to try.

A barrage of 33 Sea Hawks veiled the seas with smoke as they began launching from the two destroyers. Half way through their flight track, Argos Fire would put 20 LRASM’s out after them. They had the targets fixed on radar from two F-35’s and the Merlin helo. At 15:10 the alarms were sounding on the Chinese warships as the first group of Tomahawks started training in. Jammers on all twelve ships began wailing, and the fire control computers started processing target locks.

With three Type 55 destroyers, and five Type 052D’s, the Chinese fleet was a very powerful surface action group, with tremendous air defensive capability in all the HQ-9’s those ships were carrying. For the next ten minutes they engaged the Vampires, slowly chewing them up. In two instances, it came to close range missiles and guns, but the defense prevailed. Sinking a ship in a force that well protected was no easy task. Wells had to throw more than half his total long range missile inventory, and still came up empty.

“Backstand, Whalerider 3. Looks like they have a KJ-200 coming up behind the sea toads. Over.”

“Roger Whalerider. Standby.”

Just after the standing F-35 patrol reported that AEW plane arriving, things got wild. The two J-20s Admiral Sun Wei had ordered also arrived, one to the north of the Chinese fleet, an done to the south. They continued east, widely separated by over 100 miles, and the northern plane was planning to shoot down the only enemy aircraft they could see, the Merlin AEW helo. What they could not see were the two F-35’s in the Whalerider picket, which each put Meteors in the sky after that bogie.

When they fired, the Chinese planes finally saw them on radar, and the northern plane engaged, while the southern plane stayed the course east, activating its long range radars that could finger the seas 200 miles out. Admiral Sun Wei was now inside 300 nautical miles, spoiling to counterattack, and he was counting on that single plane to paint his targets.

The British saw only the northern bogie, but when it was identified as a J-20, it was enough to prompt an immediate scramble order from both Victorious and Prince of Wales . The flights had been spotted on deck, ready to go, and the pilots were giving the deck crews thumbs up as their engines revved. Sundog flight would again take to the skies off Prince of Wales , and Skybolt flight off Victorious , each with six planes. They would race west, the mission being fleet defense, because Admiral Wells smelled an attack coming. That lone J-20 in the north was 185 miles out, but it could have seen the fleet easily on radar. He had to assume that his position was now known to the enemy, and that it might be solid enough to prosecute. The northern bogie was found and destroyed by those meteors, and seconds later, they saw the other J-20 on radar.

“Gentlemen,” said Wells to the bridge crew. “We’ve been found. The fleet will prepare to repel enemy attack—battle stations all around.”

“All ships in range,” said Admiral Sun Wei, “fire YJ-18’s!”

His brave J-20 pilots had delivered the goods.

The Chinese fleet was coming in three waves of four ships each, the first two waves being all destroyers, the last having two frigates and two older destroyers. The first wave, led by Nanchang , had no less than 100 YJ-18’s to throw, and it targeted virtually every ship in the British fleet with four to eight missiles, 52 in that salvo.

Seeing this was his supreme moment for action, Admiral Sun Wei was going in hard. His second wave had 64 YJ-18’s, and they put out enough to increase the total attack to 100 missiles. Wave 3 ships were held in reserve.

The word came loud and hot from the forward radar picket. “Backstand, Whalerider. Bigstorm… Gorilla, Gorilla. Inbound now! Over.”

Bigstorm was improvisation on the pilot’s part, but the code Gorilla was milspeak for a large, undetermined hostile force. Wells knew exactly what it must be, and raised a finger to Captain Kemp.

“Go get them, Pete,” he said, his eyes hard and determined.

“Right sir!”

That sent down the order for all ready flights to launch in defense of the fleet, and Whalerider would be calling the tune to coordinate the interception.

“Sundog 6, come right to 270 and descend to Angels 30. Cleared hot. Skybolt, come right to 260, hold present altitude and engage. Seabat, Saber, come on up and join the party—Angels 36, and standby.”

There were now two dozen F-35’s up off those carriers, and they were carrying 96 Meteors in their weapons bays. Two of them would get that last J-20, effectively blinding the Chinese fleet again, but their missiles had already been programmed, and they were on the way in.

The fighters could see them coming on radar, and moved to engage. They sent their Meteors out hunting, seeing the explosions down low on the sea as they began to get hits, but the kill ratio was far less than hoped for. Sundog and Skybolt were only able to get 14 kills, still leaving 86 Vampires for Saber and Seabat flights in the second line of defense. They would do just a little better, getting 26 kills as the cruise missile storm closed to within 100 miles of the fleet. The fighter defense had knocked down 40% of the incoming vampires, but that still left 60 missiles out there looking for targets.

All the Royal Navy ships now turned on their radars, and as it happened, it was the American built ESSM that had been a special buy for Prince of Wales that locked on first and fired, when the Vampires were about 20 miles out. Admiral Wells was watching on radar, seeing a group of seven missiles accelerate for their high speed run, and jog left, away from the fleet. They had lost their targets, and seemed off on an aimless hunt for steel on the sea.

The remainder tracked on in, their target data now being updated by that KJ-200, which had finally gotten in range. The battle opened in earnest, the speed demons raging in, the British destroyers throwing everything they had at them. At 16:15, four Vampires came lancing in towards the heart of the fleet. York was able to get two of them with Sea Darts, and an ESSM off Prince of Wales got a third, but the last was too quick, streaking right past the bow of York , and finding the frigate Lancaster , which was cruising just a little over a mile off the starboard bow of Prince of Wales . There were groans when the frigate blew up, all of its useless Sea Ceptors just sitting there in the VLS cells, never able to fire.

For the next three hot minutes, the defense held, the missiles finding and killing the Sizzlers as they broke the horizon. Where there had once been blue sky, the sea was now hazed over with a grey-white cloud of smoke, which erupted with yellow flashes as the missiles found their targets. Broadsword was in the thick of things and getting many kills, the one new Type 31 frigate on hand, also built with the ESSM.

It was a white knuckled affair as Wells watched the Vampires raging in like Zulus against those four brave destroyers holding their thin red line, but this was not to be a debacle the likes of Isandlwana. The defense was holding, getting one kill after another, though it came to guns and chaff on more than one occasion. The last three ready fighters on Prince of Wales screamed off the deck, hoping to get their Meteors into the fight. They roared out to get after the final four missiles, killing two just as they were starting their high speed run. The last two came right at Daring , but the destroyer still had Asters, and swatted them down.