CARRIER 8: ALPHA STRIKE By: Keith Douglass

while–I doubt anything is prepositioned on that miserable piece of rock down

there. It’s not even above water most of the time, so the self-destruct

scenario isn’t going to play.”

“But you think there’ll be another incident,” CAG said. “Something

directed at the rock, not at the Hawkeye?”

“I’m betting on it,” Tombstone replied. “Intell agrees with me on this

one. China’s not likely to attack us directly, not without some excuse for

provocation. As long as Aegis stays under control, and nobody screws up, we

won’t give them that excuse. No, they don’t want to attack us–it’s a losing

proposition, this far from their shores, with their lousy air refueling

skills. Unless they get Vietnam to allow them land-launching permission,

China’s aircraft don’t have the legs to reach out and touch us hard.”

“Now if they’d bought that aircraft carrier from Ukraine like they were

planning last year, it’d be a different story,” Ops mused. “The Soviet Union

was just starting to get the hang of carrier aviation when it collapsed.

Those Flankers–I read that they were getting halfway decent at getting on

board the Admiral Kutnezsov.”

“It might be, although I’m not convinced they’d be able to operate

effectively with it that quickly. Certainly not run flight ops the way we do,

not without a sizable contingent of Russian crew members. And somehow I just

don’t see Russia getting in the middle of this, not with all the problems

they’ve got at home,” Tombstone replied.

“Still don’t like sending the Hawkeye out like that,” CAG said somberly.

Tombstone glanced at him. In a few years, CAG might have the opportunity

to find out for himself how it felt to have to order a Hawkeye out alone.

Until then, he wouldn’t know if he could do it, wouldn’t understand the true

burden of command.

Tombstone knew he hadn’t.

CHAPTER 18

Wednesday, 3 July

0800 local (Zulu -7)

USS Jefferson

The battle group settled into standard cyclic operations quickly.

Spratly Island surveillance missions by the Hawkeyes were launched every

five hours, each flight following exactly the same patrol pattern. Every

eight hours, one lone fighter left the deck, occasionally accompanied by a

tanker. The Hawkeyes went north, the fighters south, and neither intruded on

the other’s operating area. Alert birds crowded the deck, crews in cockpits

and maintenance technicians doing busywork around them, waiting.

Further north, the Aegis prowled, silently watching the unarmed E-2C’s.

Flankers cut lazy circles in the airspace between the Aegis and the carrier,

watching the E-2C that watched them.

To the east, Chinese fighters slipped down the coast from the mainland

into Vietnam, occasionally cutting across the South China Sea to the north or

south of the battle group to land in one of the other littoral nations. With

the Aegis and the Hawkeye tracking them, the battle group kept the world

intelligence community updated on the tail count.

By the end of the first full day of the operation, the aircrews were

getting edgy. The Hawkeye crews were increasingly uneasy about the Chinese

fighters and conducting surveillance without their own fighters nearby for

protection. The Jefferson’s fighter crews were unhappy about both the alert

schedule and the lack of information on exactly why they were pulling alert

instead of flying. The atmospheric conditions continued to generate ghost

contacts that flickered into existence for a few minutes, then evaporated.

Rumors and speculation raged around the carrier, each theory more

menacing than the last. RIOs and pilots argued continually in the Officer’s

Mess about the Chinese’s capability for aerial refueling, and whether or not

China could reach out and touch the battle group from the mainland as well as

from Vietnam. The RiOs insisted on drawing out the time-distance problem for

the pilots, demonstrating time and again how the fighters could not possibly

make it to within weapons range, given their fuel package. The pilots

disagreed, fundamentally unconvinced that the Chinese were not fully capable

of deploying a long-range anti-air weapon on their aircraft, or passing

locating data to the submarines. The pilots repeatedly mentioned the

possibility that the Chinese F-10 long-range fighter was operational. After

all, the pilots argued, intelligence had been wrong before.

The F-10 was something to be concerned about. Modeled on the American

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *