Later that day, Sargasso Sea, 400 Miles South of Bermuda, 4-11-2025, 1930 Zulu, D-00:13:
Tester hated this world. In her 3.6E7 years of experience across 1.2E3 unique starting points, she had found few that she considered loathsome, but this was one of them. Yes, it was one of the most promising timelines. Yes, it had yielded valuable data. No, they had not found "The Anomaly", just a bunch of curiosities that had only served as distractions.
It was an exercise in patience. Patience Tester, in her millions of years of constantly running experiments, was very quickly running thin on. You could not push these people too much. They'd found that out the hard way in the opening weeks of the war. They were far too aggressive, too willing to push the nuclear button.
Pushing these ones was like trying to discipline a baby with an axe. Except that baby had a gun and a suicide vest. You had to be firm enough to make them learn but not too hard to get the baby to shoot you and certainly not enough to behead the thing.
What resulted most of the time was the baby didn't learn a damn thing. Sometimes, after it shot them, they had to cut off a finger or toe to really teach them a lesson but every time that happened the vest was at risk of being set-off, rendering the whole investment wasted. On those very few occasions where the baby did learn something, it was typically pushed to the side as it continued to play with the toys it had grown used to.
It had resulted in too many branches. Sometimes they just let the lesson sink in rather than pick a timeline where it didn't happen. That had run counter to the Magister's wishes but Tester was beyond caring now. They'd bleed this world dry for data and then do the same to the next one.
Tester didn't see how this particular exercise was much different. Observer said that it was to try and get the object of interest to come out, but Tester knew better. Based on prior behavior, the humans would be poking and prodding it, like they always did and treat this as business as usual. They probably wouldn't even send a single Kansen to deal with this threat. It was insanity.
This whole place was an exercise in the sunk-cost fallacy and now they were running dangerously long. How long would it be until The Disease reared its head? Probably within 1.5E1 years, maybe a bit longer.
Maybe Observer wanted to try and run this one to its conclusion. If so, Tester was obliged to follow. She'd extract some satisfaction seeing this world finally burn, knowing that it was finally over.
Maybe they'd finally pick a time where those infernal devices hadn't been created. Yes, She'd very-much like that.
Dozens of rifts opened over the placid waters of the Sargasso Sea. Out of them came the Siren fleet, centered around four Carriers, six Battleships, and a large smattering of escorting Destroyers and Cruisers. On the twin runways of each of the carriers, dozens of fighters were lined up and began to launch once the rocking ships settled, scrambling to get off the deck as fast as possible, orbiting over the fleet once away. They had just a few hours of fuel but that wouldn't matter if they didn't survive the next few minutes.
The elevators lowered and the next set of fighters were brought up to complement those already in the air. Their deck operations could make even the Soviets feel proud. Centrally mounted elevators meant that aircraft, with a lack of catapults, could not be launched while others were being spotted, at least while the forward elevators were operating. Instead, the aircraft were brought up and moved to the stern as the elevators moved to bring up more fighters.
It was like a race of paraplegics. One would almost feel bad for them in light of what was to come. Almost.
The second deadliest weapon in human history, coming behind only the nuclear weapon in its destructive potential, was the radio and its various permutations. Even then arguments could be made for the radio being the top spot. Kansen, tanks, warships, and everything else didn't even come close. Using radar one could find a target and then report it over radio. It made coordination, deception, and passive electronic intelligence not only possible, but necessary for success in warfare.
Air, land, sea, and spaceborne platforms had peeled back the fog of war. Networked together, using radio links, a ship almost didn't need active systems to find and engage targets. Offboard sensors could perform search, tracking, and sometimes even target illumination functions while the ship or fleet stayed silent and hidden.
200 miles to the fleet's north, a U.S. Coast Guard P-3 Airborne Early Warning and Patrol Aircraft picked up the fleet on their underslung AN/APS-145 radar and reported it to their base at Bermuda before turning North to the protective cover of the base's CAP.
Two minutes after that a Discoverer II Satellite passed overhead, recording the fleet on its synthetic aperture radar, including formation, heading, ship type, and speed, and passed the information on to Norfolk. Other information sources were now calling it in as the kill-web that constituted the networked sensors and weapons systems that coated the planet came to life. Flying south of the fleet, an MQ-4C Triton confirmed the Orion's readings before going silent and employing passive ELINT to identify radars and other transmission sources, picking out no less than five TOP SCREECH long-range Bravo band air-search radars, only found on Rook Class Battleships. It proceeded to record and transmit the information on their wavelength and Pulse Repetition Frequency for use by EW platforms.
The floating tendrils of the deep water SOSUS line that ran from Puerto Rico to Bermuda recorded sounds of cavitation. Because the fleet was above the thermal layer, the lensing effect of its sound created a deadzone similar to that of a surface convergence zone. Using this and interferometry between the hydrophones, an accurate location could be established, with the acoustic signatures referenced against those of known Siren Warships.
The data was compiled and a very clear picture of the Siren fleet emerged and it was sent via FLASH message to all units in the North Atlantic, chief among these, the Pleiades control center in Norfolk, part of SACLANT headquarters.
Pleiades wasn't a singular weapon, it was rather a system of weapons, namely anti-ship ballistic missiles, and the guidance system for them. It could command launches from air, naval, and shore installations on targets identified by any number of ISR platforms. Priority was always on the Queen class carriers. Destroying aircraft on their ships was significantly cheaper than shooting them down in the air, even when the weapons used ran into the tens of millions.
The issue was that the current fleet was straddling the triple point between the Eastern Seaboard, Bermudan, and Puerto Rican areas of responsibility. The hesitation in selecting units to carry out the strike cost valuable minutes before the 399th Tactical Missile Wing on the Eastern Seaboard was selected to do the deed.
They were already prepared for a launch, having move to alert on reception of the FLASH message, so once they got the final go order it was simply a matter of updating targeting information based on the P-3's data and sending the missiles on their way.
They launched eight Pershing III missiles, two for each carrier, from the Transporter Erector Launchers from two of their launcher flights. The missiles arched high into the air, disappearing into the midday sky on massive columns of exhaust. Before the engines of the first stage had finished burning, crews were already preparing the TELs for dispersal in the unlikely event the Sirens tried to attack the launch sites.
The Pershing III owed much to its predecessor, the Pershing II, but came with a different role and some newer tricks up its sleeve. After burnout of the second stage, the maneuverable reentry vehicles coasted, being fed GPS updates from Navstar satellites along with adjusted targeting information datalinked by the Orion to an E-10 AWACs flying race-tracks up and down the Greater Antilles then from the E-10 via a satellite uplink to the satellite TDRS-18 in geostationary orbit, then through the satellite's two Ka band transmitters down to the warheads. The messages took a quarter of a second to travel across the space simply due to the limitation of the speed of light, with another three-tenths of a second per warhead taken up by deadtime of transmitters, processing, decrypting, and the ever-present limitation of bandwidth.
They entered the Atmosphere at almost Mach 15, plasma crackling off their surface before they made a pre-programmed pitch-up, slowing to a paltry Mach 9 before putting themselves on a rough glide-slope towards their targets.
The protective cover for the radome was ejected and the onboard Ku band radar turned on, scanning the sea where it was supposed to find the fleet. As each of the warheads found their targets, they reoriented and adjusted their trajectories, periodically making maneuvers to throw off any attempt at interception and slow themselves to below Mach 5 before they entered the lower levels of the atmosphere.
They passed beyond the arcs of their radars, running on inertial guidance updated by information fed to them via offboard sensors. Almost above the fleet, they made a sharp turn downwards, suddenly accelerating. To compensate, an active heat shield, composed of a series of small vents connected to a Hydrogen Peroxide gas generator in the rear of the vehicle was activated. High pressure steam and oxygen along with several exotic additives, was expelled from their tips, allowing the radars to continue operating while wicking away heat and preventing plasma buildup from their downward motion. The generation process had a secondary effect, it turned a small turbine, providing power to the radars that the onboard batteries couldn't maintain for long.
In an instant that protection was rendered useless by a powerful directed energy attack. The first reentry vehicle had its radome crumple with the sudden hole in it and entered a spin. Its fins adjusted and managed to right the warhead. The damaged radar and assembly was quickly jettisoned, a thin rod remaining behind to act as an aerospike but the laser had already done its damage.
The process repeated on the other warheads. Two were unlucky and were unable to recover from the attacks. It was unlikely that the Siren lasers would be able to harm them further, given their extensive heat-shielding, but the threat cloud was now blind to their targets and that was a problem though one that had been anticipated.
They would operate on inertial guidance updated by the TDR Satellite. It was a tactic first envisioned by the Soviet SS-N-13 "SATYR" anti-ship ballistic missile that one could find on converted Golf and Yankee class submarines but those missiles had One Megaton warheads, compensating for a Circular Error Probable, the radius within which the missile had a 50% chance of hitting, of just shy of 400 meters. With a superior inertial guidance system, derived from that of the LGM-118 Peacekeeper, the Pershing III could do a good deal better. Still, losing the radar was undesirable as it increased the CEP against a moving object from around 10 meters, to over 40, meaning their odds of directly hitting the target, the four carriers of the battleforce, were a bit under 70%. Not terrible, not great.
It was fortunate that they didn't actually need to destroy the carriers, they simply needed to take them out of commission. This was known as achieving a "mission kill". While they would continue to fight and the Sirens were never known to fully withdraw forces, the attack could, with relative ease, take away what made the carriers special, their ability to launch and recover aircraft. It was a problem that had been conceived of for some time at this point, though it usually had a more terrestrial application.
20,000 feet above the targets, the warheads entered a spin before, just above the carriers, cowlings flew off and they each distributed over sixty large submunitions and almost three-hundred grenade sized bomblets over a hectare. The larger warheads, looking like thin darts, smashed through the decks of the carriers and exploded inside, zirconium oxide liners and fragments creating a dual incendiary and kinetic threat. The others were small shaped charges, detonating on the surface, punching holes and causing superficial damage though also destroying any aircraft still parked on the decks. Finally, three of the Carriers received direct hits by the reentry buses that contributed their own, more substantial warhead to the destruction.
This was recorded by the P-3 and the Triton, with the latter noting the thermal blooms caused by the laser attack. With the presence of Siren Kansen confirmed, at 2020 Zulu an order was sent to have them neutralized.
Drydock K-09, Norfolk Virginia, 4-11-2025, 1440 Romeo (1940 Zulu), D-00:03:
"Alright, power her up." The technician said over the growler.
"Copy, initiating start." Edwards said, and he set the sound powered phone back in its cradle.
He instinctively checked the status board of his ship and then cursed himself. It was never going to change unless he personally influenced it to. He shifted and mentally focused on the four gas-turbines, a pair each housed below the forward and aft superstructures. His ship, no, they, best to think of the sum total of himself and Evans as the singular entity it was, were hooked up to shore power so starting up the auxiliary diesel generators would be a formality. He did it anyway, figuring it was good practice to get used to the systems he found himself living with.
Next were the turbines. He initiated the remote hydraulic start, the small motor connecting to the driveshafts whirring to life, and let the compressors spin up before starting the ignition system, F76 Marine Diesel being injected into the combustion chamber before lighting. From there the process was self-reinforcing as the fuel ignited, driving the turbine. This connected to the compressor, itself increasing in RPM, improving combustion, further speeding up the turbine, and bringing the machine to life.
He felt the surge of power as the four LM2500+G5 turbines provided a combined output of just shy of a hundred and fifty megawatts to his systems. They were some of the best in the world, used in some form or another by almost three dozen nations. GE had licensed production to as diverse parts as the People's Republic of China and Japan, with a project looking to set-up a production line in Turkey and India.
Air was brought in through a series of intakes on the two angular funnel assemblies before being fed through the gas turbines. Some of that was retained for use in cooling before being ejected along with the exhaust. After passing through the compressor stage, another portion of the air could be bled off for the various mechanisms like Prairie-Masker, which required compressed air. The remaining air was mixed with fuel and ignited in the combustion chamber, spinning the turbine, which in turn connected to the compressors and the generator for each turbine, not requiring the complex, loud, and heavy reduction gear arrangements that a traditional shaft-driven propulsion system would necessitate.
Where on older ships the process would end there, the exhaust being immediately vented out into the air, the propulsion architecture of the Heerman's was somewhat unique. The exhaust retained a significant amount of heat, itself a mark of worse thermal efficiency. To exploit this the exhaust of each pair of gas turbines was passed over a series of copper tubes, each containing water which was boiled by the heat. This steam then powered a separate turbine with a peak power output of around thirty megawatts, bringing the total power production of the two combined cycle systems to about two-hundred and ten megawatts, provided he was running the four gas turbines and the two steam turbines at maximum efficiency.
The hot steam was then piped down to a series of condensers with intakes on the underside of the ship. These took in seawater and passed it over the pipes, turning the steam back into liquid before having it piped back to the steam turbines. At full pressure with both of the gas turbines within each combined-cycle system running, a pump was used to increase cooling through the condensers. This consequently increased acoustic signature. However, if the ship needed that much power, it was probably running fast and thus cavitating, meaning the Prairie-Masker would be running and thus the acoustic signature would be less important as it was obscured.
The condensers themselves were large, derived from the systems used on nuclear powered ships. Not all of their heat capacity was used, most of the pipes sat in them, currently unused for any cooling measures. This was for good reason. The condensers served a dual purpose. Waste heat from the radars, lasers, and future systems looking to be integrated were to be piped through them as well, greatly improving cooling efficiency, allowing for even more power to be allocated to systems.
Beyond the benefits provided by the cooling system, their presence was a vestige of the design process of the destroyers. The Heerman class had been originally designed with nuclear reactors though rising costs and a bottleneck on reactor production had precluded this on most of them. Even still, the current conventionally powered ones retained the theoretical capability to be refitted with D5G reactors, though, from his brief time at The Pentagon, Edwards knew this was unlikely.
This had the side-effect that those with service in the nuclear navy were preferred for command of the Heermans. Edwards was a chief example of this, having spent many of his days on the nuclear powered cruisers USS Virginia, CGN-38 and her AEGIS half-sister, USS Washington, CGN-42, before going onto other assignments and finally being given command of the Evans.
The sum total of this arrangement achieved three purposes. First, it vastly increased the efficiency of the powerplant, giving the Heerman's an unrivaled endurance and cruise speed for a conventionally powered ship. Second, by reducing the exhaust temperature, the IR signature of the ship was greatly reduced, making targeting by the rudimentary IR guidance systems the Sirens deployed all the more difficult. Finally, the cooling infrastructure allowed for the integration of systems that required large heat-sinks, which combined with the massive power generation, meant that adding future, high heat-load systems was relatively easy to do.
The only hang up was the fact they needed water to operate in. Running the turbines out of water was an excellent way to warp the pipes and damage the system. It was actually a major reason behind the Manjuu working on the ship.
Kansen were useful as they could theoretically be amphibious, able to take their rigging onto the shore for excursions. Edwards, if he was ever to be called for such a task, would be unable to do so for extended periods without great risk to himself and his systems.
As such, making him able to operate out of the water, in light of the testing they would be doing at White Sands, was the priority above most other things. While they had worked to remove the nuclear warheads and personal possessions of the ship's company, they had also removed some of the crew spaces and run supplemental ducts out that avoided the steam turbine system through which the exhaust could be routed. This cut into his power generation and wouldn't help with cooling of other systems on land, but those were problems that could be solved later and were comparatively muted.
He was relatively lucky as many of the Kansen relied on boilers and some form of steam propulsion to travel, meaning that they would be relegated to water-only activities where their condensers could function, save for very brief periods on land running on auxiliary power. Supplemental diesel generators in their now vacant crew spaces helped somewhat but their shipboard energy requirements paled to his own.
This meant that land-duties were typically assigned to certain DEs along with the Diesel powered pocket battleships that the Bundesmarine possessed. A few other ships here and there could operate on land for extended periods of time but the prominence of steam systems meant this was more the exception than the rule.
It was a small blessing that the boilers on rigging didn't have the same exact performance characteristics as their real counterparts. Otherwise they'd have to wait hours for most of the ships to build up steam pressure. Scaling with Kansen was strange, sometimes, like with radar cross-section, broadly conforming to their actual size. Other times like with their shells and aircraft, they seemed to expand upon exiting the rigging's guns.
He noted the output of the machinery and checked for any vibrations that were out of the ordinary, at least what he thought was out of the ordinary. Intuition could only get him so far and while it seemed like Evans had bestowed him with a fundamental understanding of his ship, beyond what he could've normally achieved, he worried about potential blindspots that might occur. Like the baffles of a submarine, a problem could be lurking just undetected and he'd be none the wiser until it pounced on him.
The growler began whirring again, indicating the technician in the engine room wanted to talk to him. Truth be told Edwards could hear the jokes the civilian contractors made as they checked over the equipment. He could just talk over the 1MC and not bother with the cumbersome system.
But a small part of him found comfort in the simple action of physically talking. Besides the familiarity, it felt fundamentally human.
"This is CIC, go ahead." Edwards said.
"This is Engineering, she's purring like a kitten." The tech said.
To Edwards the Gas turbines sounded more like a whine but he wasn't exactly one to judge the proclivities of those the navy hired.
"Copy Engineering. Do you guys want me to shut it down?" He asked.
"No. We worked quicker than I thought, those chickens really know their stuff. Let's give the other electronics a test. Just don't power up the radars, wouldn't want to sterilize half the navy." He said, laughing.
"Oh I'd never even consider doing such a thing." Edwards said, chuckling. He set down the phone and went about starting the various subsystems that constituted the USS Ernest E. Evans.
In actuality there had been times where the thought of directing high-powered microwaves at an individual's gonads would've been distinctly appealing.
One especially vexing instance had involved the "misappropriation of a storage closet" soon after he'd been given command of the Evans. The offending junior petty officer and the Light Cruiser he was performing "underway replenishment" with, had fallen out mid-act right in-front of Edwards, in full view of the crew as they went about their business.
He would readily admit that many of the Kansen were easy on the eyes but fraternization, especially for an Officer like himself, was illegal, not to mention stupid and that said nothing for doing it while on duty.
That didn't stop relationships, it just drove them underground. Still, from Edwards' experience, good men made bad decisions when the ones they loved were in harm's way. That was a lesson he'd seen play out first-hand a few too many times.
Sailors and Kansen had a strange relationship. Obviously many would like nothing more than to sleep with the shipgirls. Other times, resentment built between the two groups. With better accommodations, better pay, more time-off, looser regulations, it was no wonder envy and antagonism bubbled up to the surface from time to time. It didn't matter that they had more stressful jobs, saw combat at over fifteen times the rate of the average sailor, could experience death, not only of themselves but of the crews that served on them, an experience he was now all too familiar with, envy built. Combined with the ban on fraternization, it quickly became necessary to separate Kansen from normal crews most of the time.
That was something he'd needed to carefully balance back when he simply commanded his ship. He was a thoroughbred surface warfare officer, not someone who particularly enjoyed working with the girls. But he did it nonetheless as that was part of the responsibility of being captain. You keep your crew thinking with their cranial head, not their caudal one but at the same time you had to smooth over the rough spots between the Kansen detachment and them. Even with the help of his XO and Chiefs, it wasn't something he especially missed.
He powered up the Electronic Support Measures, or "ESM" array, pushing away the thoughts, and began listening to the various radar sources from the ships out in the Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay. They were mostly navigational radars, denoted by the infrequent contacts in the Juliet Band but he did find the air and surface search radar of the pair of Aerostats moored twenty miles to his east, on the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula.
The glorified blimps each carried a 3D air and surface search radar as they hung around at almost fifteen thousand feet. One operated in the India band, the other operating in the Bravo band. The former could reach out to just about a hundred and fifty nautical miles, the later almost three-hundred at the cost of resolution and with much of its search area obscured by the Earth's curvature. It was still good enough for one of the many coastal missile batteries to get a shot off at a Siren force and the India band units could direct land and sea based SAM fire on incoming aircraft, creating a zone of death that reached out close to the continental shelf.
Finding them was easy enough. They were high power and close but with the tarp over his ship he was having a hell of a time interpreting the signals that leaked through its edges and bounced off the inside of the drydock. Sufficiently exercised, he marked it as functional and operating within spec.
If he closed his eyes, listened carefully, and tried to suppress the memories of screaming death, it was almost like a normal work-up.
He was pulled from his checks by an alert.
FLASH
Z 041951ZNOV25
FM SACLANT NORFOLK VA
TO NAVFORLANT
INFO KANLANT NORFOLK VA
WESTLANT NORFOLK VA
OCEANLANT NORFOLK VA
ISCOMBERMUDA HAMILTON BERM
SUBWESTLANT NORFOLK VA
BT
CONFIDENTIAL
ALNAVFORLANT 133/25
MSGID/CONTACT/SACLANT NORFOLK VA/
SUBJ/SIREN FORCE DETECTED SOUTH OF BERMUDA/
SIREN FORCE DETECTED 1943Z, LOCATION 20R LR, HEADING 265, SPD 20 KT/
COMPOSITION 4Q 6R 13KB 27P ZKAN/
AVOID CONTACT UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTED/
BT
NNNN
He read the message, the excitement of the "Z" prosign denoting a FLASH message fading as he realized the Siren fleet was far away from here and that any naval units were to avoid the fleet. He reminded himself that he wasn't expected to do any fighting, not for a while at least, but old habits die hard and seeing a contact message always got his blood flowing.
He waited for any follow-on message and mentally shrugged, deciding whether or not to tell the contractors.
He decided against it. There were easier ways for the Sirens to commit suicide than trying to cross the eight-hundred odd nautical miles between here and their fleet. They'd have plenty of warning, best to leave this to the professionals.
San Antonio de los Baños Airbase, Cuba, 2010 Zulu, D+00:27:
Volkov sighed as he got up and walked around, moving his muscles a bit so that he would be able to move at a moment's notice.
"Misha, are you afraid I will win?" Victor Maximovich asked.
"In your dreams Vitya. It's just these old joints need to breathe." He said.
They had been playing a game of cards, exclusive to the senior officers of course, and Volkov was winning, not that they were playing for money. No. This was Cuba after all. They had Cigars stacked up on the table like poker chips, emulating the Americans, an officer occasionally taking one of their own and lighting it up, burning away their earnings.
Such a thing would never happen in a more serious game but this wasn't meant to be anything. Just a way to pass time as their Regiment sat on alert.
Other groups were sitting around in the shade of the hangars and sometimes under the wings of the bombers themselves, undertaking similar rituals that soldiers did to pass the time.
"Fucking blackass bitch."
"You fucking whore. I'll kill you for that."
Speaking of rituals, it seemed that there could always be some sort of conflict no matter how nice the venue.
Volkov was on the move and, recognizing the problem, a number of his senior officers were right behind him.
Two of his airmen, his WSO, and a junior pilot were in each-other's faces.
"The fuck is going on here?" Volkov barked.
The two turned to face him and the WSO wiped a bit of blood off of his nose.
Volkov looked between the two and spat on the ground.
"Is that what you two think about the MRA?" He asked, voice a deadly calm.
They didn't answer. He didn't want them to answer.
"Well? What the fuck happened?" He asked, fixing each with a look, fury buried beneath his eyes. "Lieutenant Ismayilov you first." He said, nodding to the WSO.
The Pilot started to say something but a quick glare from Volkov stopped him.
The WSO straightened. "Sir. We had a disagreement over cooking, sir." He said, eyes level.
Volkov glared at him and the Pilot, Captain Yuri Alexandervich. If his memory served correctly, Alexandervich was the son of an upper echelon party member in Moscow, getting his posting to the MRA out of favoritism. Ismayilov was an Azeri from the Caucuses and had only been able to get into the prestigious posting through talent and hard work. The two couldn't be more different and Volkov was well aware of what likely happened.
"Well Captain, is the Lieutenant lying?" He asked.
"No. Isa here is telling the truth. Just a friendly disagreement." The pilot said.
Ismayilov glared at the Russian style diminutive but said nothing.
Volkov nodded but said, "So long as the two of you can do your jobs I will overlook this." The two moved to leave but Volkov stopped them. "Captain Alexandervich. If I hear another word like Blackass, Kulak, or something else, not even your father can protect you. Do you understand why?" He asked.
The Captain froze in place, knowing the conviction behind the words. He answered, towing the party line. "Sir. Because we are all in a united struggle against the Sirens." He managed to say, fear edging into his voice. The Colonel was relaxed most of the time but his wrath was not something to bring down on oneself.
Volkov nodded and he turned to Ismayilov. "And you. I will not stand for you to threaten a superior officer. You are young and full of fire but you are acting like a fucking child. You are confined to quarters when you are not on duty. Hopefully some reflection will teach you manners." He growled, the threat of future action hanging over the veritable slap on the wrist he was giving.
Ismayilov nodded. The boy knew it was an incredibly light punishment considering what he did and didn't bother complaining. It meant that his stay in Cuba would be boring but at least he hadn't completely lost his head.
As if sensing the tense moment the Klaxons started to blare.
"Get to your aircraft!" Volkov ordered.
They all began running to their assigned birds.
Out of his Regiment, twenty two of the Backfires and four of his Tu-16P Strike Jammers were available, the rest being down for maintenance after the exercises. The Siren attack wasn't at the worst time but it wasn't ideal.
He climbed up the boarding ladder and pushed himself into the cockpit, connecting his helmet with the intercom and oxygen supply. He quickly caught the report from the intelligence cadre.
A moderate fleet of Sirens with minimal carrier support had been detected twenty minutes ago by an American P-3 Orion, around eight-hundred kilometers southeast of Bermuda. An American missile strike had destroyed the carriers and as such, they apparently wanted to use this as an opportunity for a live-fire exercise.
Volkov mentally shrugged. If that was what they wanted then he wouldn't complain. It would be easy and looked good on his record.
He calculated the flight distance and found they had more than enough fuel for the comparatively short hop and they were itching to do something.
The rest of his crew were seated and plugged in as the ground crews pulled the two ladders away. Volkov began engine start and soon they were moving, preflight checks being done in a few short minutes with most having already been done when they went on alert. Wind was from the southwest, funneled along by the Sierra de los Organos mountains. Consequently they moved to the Northeast end of the runway, holding for the entire formation to assemble on the taxiway for launch.
Once they all reported in, Volkov taxied out onto the runway and aligned himself with the end. He pushed the Backfire into afterburner and the twin Kuznetsov engines went from their steady whine to a thundering roar and he felt as if he'd been strapped to a Kitchen missile and launched. At 350 kilometers an hour they lifted into the air. Suspended beneath their aircraft was a trio of KH-22 anti-ship missiles from Cuban stocks, one semi-recessed in the weapons bay and one under each wing pylon. They were museum pieces and had been corroded from time on alert, courtesy of their liquid fueled propulsion. They could probably still do the job and besides, they needed to be used up. Underneath their port intake was a SAP-518 Offensive ECM pod and under their starboard was a pair of R-77 air-to-air missiles, constituting their primary defense armaments. He hoped to God that they wouldn't need to use them.
He orbited off the coast, listening to the pair of Tu-22MR targeting aircraft as they flew ahead to gain a fix on the Siren fleet. These stayed at high altitude before going radio silent. They didn't need to find the Siren fleet, the Americans had already done so and the map displays in the cockpit showed the rough location of the fleet, but to get the fire-control systems of the Backfires to work they needed the information from the reconnaissance bombers. Against the Sirens this was an easy task but still, he made a silent prayer for the success of the aircrews.
He patched into the Joint Operations Center at Key West and said, "Rook's Nest, Rook's Nest, this is Northern Wind. My Regiment is in the air."
"Understood Northern Wind, this is Rook's Nest, proceed to point Alpha-Six." The Soviet controller answered over the radio, denoting one of their pre-planned loiter positions.
"Understood. We shall proceed." He said before switching to Regimental communications.
With a few short calls over UHF, the Regiment was arrayed in cruise formation, their Jammer aircraft behind them and currently shut-off. They turned East and began heading to a spot a thousand kilometers west of the fleet's position.
Procedure for Sirens was far different than with NATO. With the Sirens, they were expected to be able to plan and execute a general strike without a ground briefing. The plans were far more simplistic in terms of attack but it meant they could generally be on a target within an hour or two instead of three or four. It was also more lax in terms of radio broadcasts. The Sirens had deployed precious few platforms that even vaguely resembled the ELINT capabilities of NATO so risks were low and UHF communication went a long way to making coordination easier.
Besides, since this was an American led operation, the Siren Aircraft would likely be dealt with.
Ramey Air Force Base, Puerto Rico, 2027 Zulu, D+00:44:
Two thousand kilometers away as Volkov was running to his bomber, klaxons wailed at Ramey Air Force Base on Puerto Rico's Northwestern extreme. Immediately the pair of two-ship flights of FB-111H aircraft that were on alert were manned as ground crews initiated engine starts. Air was then cross-bled over to the adjacent engine, bringing the two GE F110-129 engines to life.
The aircraft quickly taxied down the runway and lifted off into the mid-day air, forming up and turning out over the Atlantic followed closely by an EF-111 "Sparkvark" electronics warfare aircraft. They rose to 20,000 feet and cruised at 350 knots indicated on military power. With only sidewinders for self-defense, they were in no rush to be the first there, but once air-superiority was established they'd be the vanguard of the striking force.
Compensating for that, a flight of Puerto Rican Air National Guard F-15C Eagles followed them from Muñiz Air National Guard Base, adopting top cover for the "Long Pigs".
The FB-111H was a stretched, rebuilt version of the venerable F-111 and FB-111 strike aircraft. With new engines, more fuel, and a far heavier payload than its previous incarnation, it could serve in an intermediate role between the heavier bomber aircraft like the B-1 Lancers and the "lighter" tactical jets such as the A-6 Intruders and the Strike Eagles.
Two of the aircraft each carried eighteen AGM-109J, Medium Range Anti-Ship Missiles, cut down derivatives of the Tomahawk. The MRASM itself had slowly been simplified over the years, to the point that much of the current stockpile even lacked a Terrain Contour Matching navigation system, making them effectively only useful on the open ocean. Further changes such as replacing the turbofan of the Tomahawk with a turbojet, along with using the Imaging Infrared Seeker of the Stand-off Land Attack Missile, or SLAM, made the MRASM exceedingly cheap to produce. $200,000 wasn't something to sneeze at, but it was a bit less than a third of the cost of a new Tomahawk. These missiles were distributed with two on each of the outer hinged pylons, one on the inner pylon, six on the belly, and four in the internal rotary weapons bay.
The two other Aardvarks were loaded for Suppression of Enemy Kansen, or SEK, known to the pilots as "Playing Ulysses" or simply "Ulysses", the name arising in the early days when one had to "Get close enough to hear the Siren's songs" in order to destroy them with guided weapons like Maverick and Wasp missiles. Those days were long gone and SEK had evolved beyond the high-speed, low-altitude suicide runs that had formed the Ulysses community.
Seemingly contradicting that shift in doctrine, each of the SEK aircraft carried what appeared on first inspection to be SUU/64 cluster munition dispensers. Three of these were located on each hinged pylon along with a matching set to the MRASM carriers on their bellies and weapons bay. But looks could be deceiving and what carried was indicative of the shift in doctrine they were a part of.
At the same time to their north, sixteen F-14E aircraft of VF-21, "Freelancers", roared into the air from Naval Air Station Bermuda. They raced South on afterburner and joined the BARCAP of Super Hornets that had formed a wall 200 miles south of the archipelago before they continued, pressing on South to gain air superiority over the fleet.
A trio of KC-135 tankers followed them into the air, ready to top them up on the return journey but held position behind the Hornets, topping up the comparatively short-legged Rhinos.
The F-14E, or Super Tomcat, was a relic of a bygone era. Its place on carriers had largely been supplanted by the more numerous and flexible Hornet, Super Hornet, and Lightning aircraft, relegating most F-14s to shore assignments.
There just wasn't a widespread need for a carrier based long-range aircraft. You could have four Hornets for every three Tomcats and still see higher sortie rates per aircraft with the four "Bugs" or "Rhinos" taking the same maintenance time as a single Tomcat. This combined to mean that the newer aircraft were far better suited for the higher intensity, shorter turn-around actions that conventional carrier groups found themselves in. It was made even worse by the introduction of the F-35 to the fleet. For the same profile as a Super Hornet you had a Very Low Observable aircraft, with a similar range to the Tomcat, and roughly one fifth to one eighth of the required maintenance time.
Thus the Tomcat took on the role of a shorter-range, more expensive, and generally less-capable, F-15 and F-15E. Most of the older airframes were mothballed or quietly transferred to Iran in a CIA effort to counteract Baathist Iraq, while the newer airframes suffered constant issues in maintenance and availability. Still, they had their role and their pilots prided themselves on the aircraft that had been the sword of Carrier battle groups since the 70s, even if they no longer served on those carriers.
The squadron turned south on military power, each flight covering a fifty nautical mile line of airspace. The lead aircraft in each flight had their radar turned on, searching for targets, their readouts being transmitted to the other aircraft over secure and ECM resistant UHF datalinks.
VF-21, 2056 Zulu, D+01:13
"All Freelancers, this is 2-1, I have bogeys BRAA Bulls 233, 330, low, and coming in hot. They aren't responding to IFF. Estimate 1-2-0 plus bogeys." The pilot of 2-1 said over the squadron frequency as a flurry of contacts appeared on his scope.
"2-1, this is 1-1, classify as Bandits, try to get positive ID but once they get within 7-0 miles you're clear to engage." the pilot of 1-1 said, checking the data-linked picture. He was almost certain these were Siren aircraft but you didn't want to be the SOB who shot down a civilian airliner or friendlies because you got trigger-happy.
"Copy that 1-1." 2-1 said. He clicked off the frequency and said, "Dave, give them another ping."
The Radar Intercept Officer had been replaced with a Weapons System Officer, a subtle, if significant, indication of the change the Tomcat force had experienced.
"On it." his WSO said, punching the button to interrogate IFF again, changing to the universal IFF code used by all human aircraft now. If it was a friendly, the IFF module would recognize the code and reciprocate with the correct response.
None was forthcoming. At 150 miles out, the WSO switched the radar to "Identify". The radar proceeded to rapidly interrogate the selected Bandit, narrow beams dividing up the aircraft into sections while the processor of the AN/APG-82 radar measured the radar returns of each section, comparing them to a stored database of past encounters with Siren aircraft, rebuilt models, and wrecks examined under varying radar bands. Lacking the S-ducting of modern aircraft it was also able to count the fan blades and their rotational speed within the engines of the Siren aircraft. After a second he had his answer and called, "We have confirmed SF-3 Foldouts."
"Got it." The pilot said. "1-1, this is 2-1, we have confirmed identity of bogeys as Sierra Foxtrot 3, FOLDOUT." The pilot said, back on freq.
"Alright 2-1, clear to engage, weapons free." 1-1 said, adjusting his heading to converge on the roughly hundred and twenty-six targets that the second flight had established tracks on.
The other two flights of Tomcats were doing the same, pushing themselves into afterburner to meet the formation at the same time.
The pilot of 2-1 focused on the closure rate and his WSO created a firing solution for his missiles.
"Just let me know." He said, checking the rest of the formation. "Two, turn your radar on and pick targets for Four. Three and Four be ready to jam. Three, we'll pick targets for you. We're going to do a WSO Waltz." He said, indicating a predetermined attack method.
"Two."
"Four."
"Three."
Each was a brief acknowledgement of the order and he checked his data link to the other formations, typing a quick message for them before working to feed the data-link information to them.
"We're ready." His WSO said.
"Great. Engage." He said. "This is 2-1, FOX-1 Ripple."
A pallet on the old Phoenix pylon extended into the airstream and with a flash of a rocket motor the first of eighteen AIM-152 AAAMs propelled itself out of its tube. Two more missiles followed from the pallet then it returned to flush and the next extended, the process repeated. In total, eighteen weapons flew out into the spotless sky above them.
With their weapons expended the pilot called, "One is cranking North. Two follow us. Three and Four get as close as you can and shoot." The orders were unnecessary but repeating them helped prevent mistakes.
By turning at an angle, just to the edge of their radar's tracking cone, they slowed their relative approach speed to the Sirens while their missiles still achieved the kinematic advantage of their forward velocity during launch. It would mean that any missiles launched at them would have to work just that much harder, giving them a better chance to evade.
The other pair acknowledged and pressed on, pushing as far as they dared go on afterburner before they launched their missiles and turned away, running on afterburner from the merge.
"This is Three, we are Winchester Alpha-3 Mikes, bugging out." Three said, banking his aircraft away from the formation.
The RWR chirped to life with several contacts to the 10 o'clock position of One. The system marked each of the contacts as a generic India band air-search radar, not identifying them as the typical radars of the Foldouts as it should have.
"Copy Three, be ready to make some noise, we've got search radars from them. We'll drop a line of chaff for you to use." One said, noticing the issue.
"Three."
One and Two each ejected several bundles of chaff, which formed a large radar-reflective line six miles long. The second pair of Tomcats turned their radars to electronic attack mode and began disrupting the search mode of the Siren aircraft by bouncing jamming signals off the chaff, creating an impromptu omni-directional jammer before the second pair crossed the space and couldn't bounce their signals off it anymore.
At the same time the AIM-152C missiles climbed to 60,000 feet on their first stage before their smaller second stage ignited. The second, multiple-pulse, solid rocket motor ignited twice, further speeding it along before waiting. The guidance system would use further pulses for any unexpected course-corrections and their endgame boost, ensuring a high probability of kill.
They used inertial guidance for this first stage, receiving updates via datalink and by the occasional illumination for their midcourse Semi-Active Radar Homing Seeker.
The RWR began a "deedle deedle" as the occasional pulsed search changed to a more rapid Single Target Tracking pattern, indicating a focus on the two Tomcats.
"Hey, uhh, we got a continuous wave pattern on most of those air-intercept radars." One's WSO said, just after they left the protective clutter of three and four's jamming, as the now warbling tone of the RWR indicated radars shifting from the pulsed mode to a continuous wave illumination pattern associated with missile guidance.
"I see it." He said. More quietly he muttered, "We're well out of range for their missiles." It put him on edge. Everything about the radars was wrong. The Sirens were predictable, anything out of the ordinary was a concern. Normally a CW pattern would be used only once in missile range. Even then he was fairly certain they were out of the normal radar envelope of the Foldouts.
"Three, we've got a fire-control illumination on us. Ignore the search radars. I want you to blind them." He said, unease creeping into his voice.
"Yeah uh. Us too. Think something's up?" Three asked.
"Yeah, just make sure you're recording your tapes. Spooks will want this." One said.
"Three."
The other pair of Tomcats looped around, now sufficiently spaced for safety they cranked as well, this time using their radars to drown out the Continuous Wave patterns of the Siren aircraft.
"WARNING! WARNING! Missile launch." Two said over the radio as several small contacts broke away from individual fighters and sped ahead of the formation.
"We're out of their range." One's WSO muttered.
"Sirens don't seem to care." The pilot said. He mentally calculated their closure rate and figured they just might get into range of the known Semi-Actives that the Sirens had. He considered having Three and Four take over, but the missiles were too close to their endgame. Best to let them continue.
"Two maintain course. Be ready to beam in ten seconds." One said, coming to a decision. He now saw that radar returns from the Siren missile fire coming back in their direction. These ones were coming in direct, not really attempting to loft and thus gain range. But they were coming in fast and he revised his calculation of their intercept point.
"Two, beam South, let's keep these guys away." He said quickly before putting his own fighter in a bank, reversing the angle they'd held against the formation. Their closure rate with the Siren jets increased but the missiles now had to account for a completely new lead angle and bled much of their valuable speed adjusting course.
The Sirens obviously noticed this and their radars briefly turned off, terminating their missiles before reactivating and locking up the Tomcats again.
"MORE MISSILES!" One's WSO cried as more radar contacts appeared from the formation.
"Tighten up! We'll be gone by then." One ordered.
The pilot focused on guiding the thirty six missiles he and his WSO were responsible for.
He managed the allocation of their targets, occasionally changing one, all the while the second volley of Siren missiles bore in on him at a closing speed of over two-thousand knots.
The first volley of American missiles entered their terminal dive, the final bursts of their motors being used to increase their kinetic energy and give bite to their thrust-vectoring nozzles. They switched their homing method to an imaging infrared seeker that locked onto the target following a final brief illumination performed by the Tomcat's radar.
The Siren aircraft largely made no move to evade them, likely trying to kill the pair of Tomcats. Those that evidently weren't illuminating went defensive, making violent maneuvers in a vain attempt to forestall their demise. It probably wouldn't help them. AAAM's had a lot of energy with their endgame boosters, terminal maneuverability being in excess of 50Gs. On the other hand the Siren aircraft were maneuverable but they bled speed like a novice driver taking a corner.
The pilot of Two-One hoped to God the missiles would kill the radar equipped Siren fighters. They were playing chicken where the consequences were being hit by a five-hundred pound missile flying at mach 3.
But he wouldn't blink, he wouldn't turn away. Right now he focused on the second volley, ensuring that they all had targets with only a couple seconds before they entered their terminal homing mode.
He managed the final illuminations and said, "This is 2-1. Bugging out." dumping afterburner and turning back West a cloud of chaff appearing in his wake.
"Two" Two said, relief evident in his voice.
This was their training. Race in, shotgun BVR missiles, and bug out once Winchester. No flashy dogfights, none of them expected to ever get a gun kill, simply the brutal efficiency of highly refined long-range missile combat.
"1-1 copies. We just launched." 1–1 said, forty miles to their Northeast. "3-1 and 4-1, wait to engage leakers."
2-1 looked down at the radar warning receiver, still seeing a lock warning, then over his shoulder, half expecting a black-bodied missile to come streaking out of the afternoon sky and make him hang up his wings for good. It never came. The MAWS never even activated.
He didn't realize until much later that he was shaking uncontrollably.
"I'm not doing that again without the illuminator pod." His WSO said, breath slightly ragged.
"Amen to that." 2-1 said. He never wanted to do anything like that again. He'd carry the rear-facing radar pod, even at the cost of several missiles. He'd much rather his wife not get "The Telegram" than get a couple extra kills.
The first attack by Flight Two achieved just over a 70% kill ratio for their missiles. But they had done something far more important. The Sirens that hadn't tried to shoot down the marauding pair had bled much of their speed in attempting to evade them. Those that had pressed on were largely destroyed with nothing to show for their efforts.
When the lead flight's missiles slammed into the formation, almost three fourths of the remaining force was destroyed, aircraft burning as dart-like missiles dove out of the sky like English arrows at Agincourt.
After the initial scare, it was a simple one-sided slaughter.
The fourth flight engaged the remaining aircraft, swatting them aside before taking up a patrol location with the Third group to hunt any more Sirens that dared to question their supremacy.
Despite the surprise, the battle was as conclusive as it was short.
Controllers at Bermuda had listened to the whole engagement and approved the next wave of aircraft to close with the operations area, along with informing the strike assets in the region that Air Superiority had been achieved.
"KILLER" Flight, 2332 Zulu, D+01:49:
South of the fleet, the Aardvarks finished their northward journey and split into their constituent sections. Similarly to the Tomcats these aircraft were on their last legs, heavily restricted in yearly flight hours. The aircrews intended to make the best of this comparatively rare opportunity.
The pair of anti-shipping Aardvarks launched from two-hundred miles out, missiles detaching from their pylons and their weapons bays rotating and dropping their remaining payload. One missile failed to ignite and plunged into the sea, five thousand feet below them. The rest flew on, forming up, and accepting updates given to them by the MQ-4C Triton that had steadily meandered towards the area while the air-battle was unfolding.
At the same time the EF-111 Raven turned on its jamming systems, off axis and at high altitude so as to reach the fleet, creating a false impression as to where the attack would be coming from. Sometimes they actually followed the missiles, hoping to psyche the Sirens out like The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
The pair of FB-111s turned to the west, moving perpendicular to the path of their missiles and after a brief pause, moving below the Raven, turned on their own jamming units, hoping to obscure their weapons and attract attention away from the avenue of approach by the MRASMs.
The MRASMs themselves made a dog-leg, turning Northeast, working on position updates fed to them via datalink compared to the Global Positioning System. They descended to fifty feet above the ocean, hiding behind the ever-present cover of the planet's curvature.
The Triton had identified a number of targets and with the Queen class Carriers crippled, next were the cruisers, which posed the greatest anti-aircraft threat to follow-on strikes save for only the Kansen. Controllers in the nearby E-10 selected targets and assigned strike groups as more updates filtered through.
Thirty nautical miles out the MRASMs lowered again to just twenty feet off the water. At a little over eighteen nautical miles from the first ship they crossed the radar horizon. For the moment they were undetected, minor shaping to their nose and the constant offboard jamming, preventing them from being picked out from the clutter. But they lacked on-board jammers of the Tomahawks and at ten miles the Siren fleet reacted, muzzle flashes indicating secondary guns shooting at them. Splashes and airbursts erupted in the vague direction of the missile but were largely to little effect.
At the same time the MRASMs began their pop-up maneuver, aiming to punch through the thin deck armor of the drone ships as was standard procedure for anti-ship missiles.
Before they could go much further the first exploded. Then the second, followed by the third, yellow beams of light catching each before it could make that final plunge on the targets.
This was what planners considered "suboptimal performance" on the part of the missiles, and the Triton focused its infrared cameras on the scene and identified the origin points for the lasers.
Quickly adjusting their filter settings, aided by the calm waters of the Sargasso Sea, its operators used the onboard synthetic aperture radar to identify and isolate the Siren Kansen, creating tracks on each of them. At least four Kansen were present, though as they grouped up, the machine and its operators identified six.
In truth the missiles hadn't been expected to impact their targets but the attack had forced the Siren Kansen to show their hand by firing on the missiles that would've otherwise further crippled their force. The enemy Kansen weren't stupid and formed a rough circle at the center of the fleet, aiming to cover every angle of attack from the retaliation they knew would be coming. It would be the last decision they would ever make.
The pair of Ulysses received the information on the Kansen and the Pilot and WSO of both aircraft grinned beneath their oxygen masks. It wasn't every day you could identify the Kansen before you shot at them but fate smiled upon them today and they were not going to let the opportunity slip through their fingers.
Adorning their aircraft were dozens of marks of victory accrued over the nearly forty years each of the planes had served. The other pair was similarly marked but they had drawn the short straw and played decoy this time.
It was time to get to work.
They turned north on afterburner, sprinting to close the distance with the fleet, masked under the protective fighter cover and jamming provided by other aircraft.
After getting within fifty nautical miles they climbed sharply to several thousand feet and began their launch sequence. They turned East, running tangentially to the fleet and started ejecting their stores, no target apparent for a cluster munition strike. Each dispenser was about fifty percent longer than the usual cluster munition pod, a choice made to maximize the capacity of many of its launch platforms. The weapons deployed a set of fins, slowing and falling near vertical before their exterior shells were ejected.
Inside of each dispenser were eight Low Cost Autonomous Attack Systems, collectively known as "Locusts". Each miniature cruise missile had a range of over a hundred nautical miles and was armed with a variable geometry shaped-charge warhead. Guidance was handled by GPS, INS, and a Laser Detection and Ranging system in its nose, with each LOCAAS networking as part of a swarm.
From the canisters each missile was ejected in turn by a sharp hiss of compressed air, small dagger-like wings popped out before they settled in and cruised at 200 knots, adjusting positions within the formation as they received updates on the target. The Kansen were in the center of the fleet, ideal for defending it from Ballistic missile threats and other high-flying objects, but this came with a distinct disadvantage. Their low lines of sight had blindspots where friendly ships were located. Where the sea was normally without cover, save for its curvature, the swarm would have nooks to hide behind. And it was a swarm. Between the two 'Varks, over 350 of the hundred pound missiles had been launched.
The groups split up, the targeting scheme being programmed from the specialists in the right seat of the FB-111s. Small elements would force Kansen attention to all avenues of approach while a large force would overwhelm the southern element. With laser point-defense systems, saturation was the name of the game. Training and testing against 600 kilowatt weapons tied to radar and electro-optical guidance meant to mimic Sirens had demonstrated as much. Elegant methods of deception and trickery had been used over the years but nothing was as reliable and time-honored as the simple application of brute force.
Several missiles flew up to higher altitude and activated their LADAR systems, scanning the area to their front for the targets to update their cohorts. These emissions of laser energy alerted the Siren ships but the small, stealthy missiles could not be detected on radar with the current electronic noise and had a low thermal signature, making optronics ineffective.
The Kansen reoriented to face the threat axis but the main body had already deviated well off from the bearing of the scouting missiles.
They crossed the radar horizon to the first ships at just six feet off the water, the advanced guidance systems able to fly them in and out of wave troughs. They accelerated to 400 knots, pushing their small engines to the breaking point as they moved towards the final sprint, wings, which had previously been fully extended, shifted back to compensate for the changing airflow.
Almost ponderously, the drone ships detected the small flying objects and opened up with their standard, ineffectual Triple-A fire. Several were downed by simple expediency of probability but by and large they escaped threat. The missiles zipped past the outer ring of ships before making a sharp maneuver to put the inner fleet between them and the lasers that were the principal air threat. Even still, a couple drifted above the visual horizon and were destroyed by blasts of Siren laser weapons.
Just when it appeared they would hit a Bishop class cruiser they were using as cover, the missiles split, approaching the group from all angles, with some missiles climbing to increase the number of vectors the Kansen would have to defend from.
These were the first to be destroyed but they bought precious seconds for the remaining force to close within three miles before the Kansen opened up on them.
Missiles weaved in and out of the wakes left by ships in the inner ring, ducking and bobbing, not to survive per-say, but to make the Kansen spend that extra second or two on destroying them.
It worked. With over three-hundred LOCAAS missiles attacking them, the Sirens were simply overwhelmed and the careful formation they held broke down. The first missiles reached them forty seconds after they had left the cover of the drone ship and thirty seconds after the Sirens focused on the sea-skimming group.
It reached the Kansen, angled up, and detonated, a fraction of a second before a laser tore the airframe apart. The warhead in its belly timed the detonation of its multiple charges, forming a slug of Tantalum that grazed one of the Kansen, breaking her focus. A second detonated almost at the same time, hitting another Kansen square in the chest, killing her instantly as the slug impacted her at Mach 6.
The rest of the Sirens didn't have enough time to contemplate their comrade's death. In the space of five seconds all six were dead as over forty LOCAAS missiles got within range and detonated, peppering their bodies with explosively formed penetrators.
Fire from the Drone ships slackened and the one-hundred remaining LOCAAS missiles fanned out, first looking for any Kansen they missed or stayed hidden. Finding nothing the operators set them to attack any remaining ships. The missiles identified new targets, finding radars, gun directors, runways, and turrets that would be easy for them to destroy. They engaged these targets with little difficulty, adjusting their warheads to optimize for fragmentation or simply diving into the target whole, using their mass and remaining fuel to enhance the destruction. By the end of it, the fleet was effectively blind and defenseless to other attacks.
924th Guards Aviation Regiment 2128 Zulu, D+02:45:
"Have to say the Americans know how to put on a show." Volkov's copilot said as he checked the incoming messages.
"Yeah. Makes you wish for some of their toys as well." Volkov said, tone subdued. "Victor, is the Regiment ready to attack?" He asked back to his navigator.
Victor nodded. "Yes commander," he said, having recieved the target information from the reconnaissence bombers.
"Good. We'll launch at 2138." Volkov said.
The Backfires swung East and began their dash towards the fleet, eyes locked onto the chronometers within their cockpits. They quickly passed within the launch envelope of their weapons and the instant the 37 turned to a 38 their KH-22 missiles proceeded to fall away from their aircraft. The motors ignited, powering the missiles into the upper stratosphere before they angled down and picked their targets. A full quarter of them failed to ignite or suffered some other failure, something Volkov noted with annoyance. He would need to discuss this with his superiors.
The formation turned back for Cuba when the final plumes of their missiles faded. Their job was done and nothing they did now would change what happened.
Two-hundred miles away the missiles entered their terminal dives, almost vertical while traveling over mach three. Their own jammers turned on, creating uncertainty of their position on any radars that were still operational. None were but it was the thought that counted.
The forty-three Kitchens hit thirty-two targets. Some of the smaller ones simply disappeared as the thousand kilogram warheads detonated magazines and several of the larger ones took multiple hits that tore deep into their structures and left them smoking hulks.
As the smoke began to clear a dozen A-6F Intruder IIs from VA-36, flying out of Bermuda, closed over the formation. Each carried a quartet of BLU-118 penetrating bombs with Paveway III laser guidance kits fitted to them. They had the thankless task of mopping up.
There was very little anti-aircraft fire and what there was could be easily avoided with periodic course corrections. The bombardier-navigators in the right seats moved their trackballs over their selected targets and began the process, adjusting the fuse settings of each weapon in accordance to pre-programed information gathered from destroyed ships. This done, the first weapons were released with a subdued, "pickle".
It was boring, if combat could ever be called boring. Cruising at 10,000 feet made them relatively detached from the world below them and the crews amused themselves in their task of "Ship Plinking". Upon review back at base, they would vote on the best footage and the winning flight crew would be given the honorary title of "ship killer" until the next sortie.
It so happened that the winner today went to a pair that sent their bomb through the turret top of a Rook class Battleship. There was a slight delay as the bomb counted the number of decks it punched through before the thermobaric warhead of the BLU-118 spread its fuel-air explosive inside the barbette, detonating half a second later. A tremendous explosion physically lifted the turret and barbette off its mount and threw it several hundred feet in the air as a fireball consumed the rest of the ship, the pilot having to regain control of the Intruder after the shockwave hit them.
"Damn girl did you drop a fucking nuke on them?" The pilot asked with wry amusement.
The bombardier had the presence of mind to track the thousand ton object as it was picked up and tossed like a toy, earning her the nickname "Turret Tosser", a commemorative decal being painted on the nose of the aircraft, depicting a battleship turret being flipped in a skillet like a giant metal pancake. That nickname would be shortened to "Tosser" much to the right-seater's dismay and would stay with her for the rest of her career.
A/N:
First, some notes on the gaming of this scenario:
CMO/CMANO for some reason models the General Dynamics/Westinghouse version of the AIM-152 as having an active radar seeker. The proposal never had that as the forward body of the missile was something like 5.5 inches in diameter and just couldn't accomodate it. The Hughes/Raytheon proposal did have AR homing but that's basically nothing like the GD/W missile. Additionally they don't model the proposed number of missiles GD/W wanted to put on a Tomcat (6-10 normally, 15 max with the illumination pod, 18 max if they didn't need the illumination pod).
The Pershing III missiles were modeled using DF-21s as the DF-21 probably follows basically the same attack profile as a Pershing II missile. My understanding is it is not a copy of the Pershing, rather it is "heavily inspired" by it. I had to abstract the cluster munition attack as that's not something the DF-21 has but c'est la vie.
CMO is also kind of annoying with lasers. I don't know where they pull their numbers from but the dwell time of them seems pretty off. I don't have hard numbers to go off of but a 15 kilowatt laser should not be able to destroy a reentry vehicle. For these I'm going more off of paper calculations assuming things like 1-2 seconds acquisition and then a varrying dwell time depending on target. The problem is lasers can, with very few changes, flip-flop between basically useless to incredibly powerful (I tend to put them on the more powerful side of the spectrum).
The E-10 is modeled using a E-7 with as they were supposed to share radar systems, with the E-10 being based on a 767 instead of a 737 and having far more integration with space-based systems than the E-7 (It was called the "Multi-Sensor Command and Control Aircraft" after all). There are also some depictions of the E-10 with the Wedgetail's radar and an MP-RTIP similar to the radar on the E-8 JSTARS but I haven't read anything to indicate the two were ever meant to be integrated at the same time. Besides, the Wedgetail radar can perform ground/surface survailence pretty well (using jet skis to model Kansen I got the thing to find them out to something like 240 nautical miles which is a good deal more than the JSTARS which I found had a detection range of about 70 nautical miles).
The LOCAAS is also not in the game, necessitating pen and paper calculations for that (and a few liberties in its delivery method). It, the AGM-124 Wasp, and the T-16 and T-22 missiles are all missed opportunities given that they were all developed under the "Assualt Breaker" program. The LOCAAS was by far the most advanced of those, mostly due to being developed in the late 90s as a response to the SCUD hunts of Desert Storm.
Unfortunately I don't have the professional edition but Matrix Games, if you or someone working for you is reading this: I would sell my left nut for a copy. It would make a lot of this a lot easier.
Onto other things.
I eventually decided to include the Siren perspective, if briefly. I don't want to give too much about their methodologies away but hopefully it provides a good deal of perspective and context for their past, present, and future actions.
I decided to cut another one of Margaret's existential crises as the poor woman needs a break. Don't worry, she will be emotionally tormented, just not in this chapter.
I was also considering including footnotes to deliniate what is and isn't historical but also decided against it. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, I am more than willing to go over what historical or ahistorical roots a weapon or system may have and to what extent I have or haven't adjusted them.
We also get to see a bit about Kansen mechanics and some of the inherent advantages and consequent disadvantages they possessed, stuff that I think is generally overlooked when most people view them.
Finally, today's reading recommendation.
This one is pretty short, it's actually an article, titled, "How To Hide a Task Force", by Andy Pico on NavWeaps dot com.
It's a very good overview of American defensive tactics (contrasting the Soviet/Russian offensive tactics discussed in Kamikazes: A Soviet Legacy by Maksim Y. Tokarev) and provides a good overview of the general tactical environment ships place themseves in.
The Article covers the USS Midway task force operating off the Kamchatka Penninsula during NORPAC '82 and the various methods they used to decieve and bluff searching Soviet forces. To that capacity it has been another massive influence on how I've planned, gamed, and written carrier engagements, Kansen and otherwise.
Supplemental to this for more of the hard figures has been Norman Friedman's U.S. Carriers: An Illustrated Design History, which has many useful tidbits of information that I couldn't find in other spots. For example: carrier elevators were expected to make 48 round trips an hour, about one every ~1.3 minutes, which sounds like something irrelevant but seriously helped out when I calculate sortie rates for operations.