Джон Шеттлер - Condition Zebra - The Next War - 2025

Admiral Sun Wei was in a foul mood. The weight of the losses he had already sustained lay heavy upon him, and the battle was clearly not going as he had planned.

Our air assets are far too thin. They have been flaying us with their air power, and we have no credible defense beyond our SAM’s when their bombs come in hordes. Did I make a mistake in taking the fleet so far out into the Indian Ocean? Perhaps I should have just sat off the coast near our airfields in Yemen, using our SAM’s to help defend them. Then we could have moved up the coast of Oman, destroying all their bases as we went. With hindsight, this is what I should have done, but nothing can be done about it now. I still have 28 ships, and eight more at Aden. This is still a powerful fleet.

The alarms suddenly blared out a warning. They were under attack, yet there had been no sign of enemy planes. This was maddening, he thought. The enemy flies like vagrant spirits, unseen, unheard, until they strike like demons.

“Battle stations!” he yelled. “Prepare to repel incoming strike.”

“ Dawnrider, this is Bertha, you are cleared hot on assigned targets.”

“Roger that, Big Bertha. Going hot now.”

“Whalesign, Bertha, Mark your targets. Cleared hot.”

“Roger Bertha, Whalesign engaging now. Over.”

The attack would come in two stages, because the GBU’s fell faster than the British SPEAR, which came at only 400 knots. The Chinese formation was like a great lambchop on the sea, and the tail end of the bone was the Gwadar Group, eight ships that were the focus of both F-35 squadrons. So 96 bombs would come in the first wave, pulling so many SAM’s from the VLS bays, that every last HQ-9 in the task force was expended, and the entire group had no more than 24 short range HQ-10’s left. Only one ship had taken a serious hit, the frigate Liuzhou , which was now on fire. DDG Zhengzhou also took a hit, but no systems were damaged. Yet now the entire task force was very vulnerable, and 96 British SPEAR’s were coming in that second wave. The bill they had been sent out to get paid was only seconds away from a very hard settlement, or so they hoped.

DDG Zhengzhou was soon ripped from one end to another with a series of flashing hits, and it was not going to survive. The ship that had started its war in Algiers would die here. Captain Yu Han’s squadron flagship Chilong , the Fire Dragon , was battered to a hulk, and the first ship to sink. Liuzhou took additional systems damage, but had no flooding, and was still limping north. Amazingly, all remaining ships were unscathed.

The attack did far less damage that had been expected. Even the GBU clusters from the Strike Raptors were roundly defeated, and one plane had been unable to release. In the Flag Group, the Admiral saw DDG Naning struck forward, a blow that destroyed its deck gun, but his five destroyers had put up terrible defensive fire, and survived.

As the enemy planes broke off and turned for home, he began issuing orders to reorganize the fleet. Instead of five task forces, he regrouped to three. His Flag Group of five took the vanguard, and behind him, seven ships formed the Chihai or Red Sea Group. The last TF was the Arabian Sea Group, with nine ships, northeast of his Flag. That made 21 warships, with frigate Liuzhou and three oilers detached, and two destroyers sunk.

The attack that Captain Simpson had sent out as a haymaker had not scored the knockout blow he was hoping for. Now it seemed there would be little he could do to save Salaha if the enemy was going there to use their deck guns as he believed.

Now Admiral Sun Wei was going to throw his strategic punch at the enemy. As his fleet approached the coast, he gave orders for the other two task forces to turn northeast, heading up the Omani coast. He would continue on alone with the five destroyers in his flag group, thinking their deck guns would be sufficient to destroy the naval dock. By 09:00 on the 2nd of December, he was coming into range. Since DDG Naning had lost its deck gun, he had four 130mm guns he could use to bombard the docks. It would be the first offensive use of naval deck guns in the war. All this time, they had sat mute, showing how naval combat had now left the big guns behind, relying almost entirely on missiles in 2025.

The bombardment raked the quays and docks with fire, but 130mm rounds were not all that heavy, and did not have much thump. Dock crews had been warned of this impending attack long ago, and most any equipment of value had been evacuated inland. If the guns had been bigger like those on the old WWII battleships, they might have pounded those docks in minutes, but here, half an hour into the bombardment, it was still like throwing pebbles at them.

Rounds were sending up tall sprays of water, others making direct hits. Some sailed wildly over the docks into the warehouses and marshalling yards beyond, blasting long rows of containers lined up there. The four destroyers fired for an hour, the shell casings bouncing onto their forward decks, guns reloading from the magazines, and firing again. They continued pecking away, like icepicks against great bergs, but it would take at least 240 good hits to really destroy just one of those heavy concrete docks. The results were so bad that the Admiral had to recall his Red Sea squadron and have it join the bombardment with six more destroyers.

After two hours shelling the harbor, one of the four major docks lay in smoking ruins, the others being damaged but none hit badly enough to prevent repairs. Admiral Sun Wei’s plan had run up against the limitations of the 130mm deck guns, and while he had put harm on the port, his blow was far from fatal.

Now he had a decision to make, where to go?

If I turn west for Aden, the fleet could be trapped there. I would, in effect, be retiring, and giving up the field of battle. Going to Aden would re-unite the entire fleet, strengthening my force, but then the Americans would get between us and the Gulf. No, I will not concede.

So I must follow the lead of the Arabian Sea Squadron, and move northeast instead. Even if it means I leave the Aden group behind, we move to block the entrance to the Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf. And we also gain the support of our bases in Pakistan, and perhaps even the Pakistani Navy. So we go northeast. There is time yet. They cannot rearm and strike for some hours, which may give me time to refuel some of the destroyers. I will now absorb the Red Sea Squadron into the Flag Group for better defense. We must move quickly. Time is of the essence.

Captain Simpson on the Roosevelt had been unhappy with the big strike. Debriefing showed that the Air Force Raptors had not coordinated well, and two had failed to release their bombs after coming under SAM fire when their position was discovered. As soon as the first planes released, the Chinese had just flung HQ-9s in that direction, and some went after the planes.

He also learned that one full train of British Spears had gone astray, missed its target, attempted retargeting and then ran out of energy. All told, they had hurt the enemy, but they should have done more. Checking the magazines, he had only three GBU-53’s left, and so had to order up underway replenishment from AOE Camden . They would airlift about 120 of those bombs, and some additional missiles for the fighters. So while Sun Wei was refueling, Roosevelt was replenishing, and then the race for the Gulf of Oman would be on.