He reached down and grabbed another slice of duck bacon as he thumbed through the morning headlines on his tablet. He didn’t have time to read all the articles, but he liked to get caught up on the initial morning bullet points to get a sense of where things stood with the public. He’d have his morning intelligence brief in another half hour, and that would get him up to speed on the behind-the-scenes stuff the public seldom knew about.
Just as Foss polished off his second piece of duck bacon, Josh Morgan, his Chief of Staff, opened the door to the portico and walked up to him. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. President,” he said, “but an urgent matter has come up that you need to address.”
Foss looked up and examined his friend’s face, which registered a mix of anxiety and anger. This was obviously serious. The President scooped up a quick mouthful of eggs and grabbed the last piece of bacon before following him down to the working level of the White House.
They skipped going to the Oval and went straight to the Presidential Emergency Operation Center, deep underground. The PEOC had essentially become Foss’s war room after the President had sought to separate the duties of the war and domestic affairs by holding the meetings for each in separate rooms on different levels of the White House.
When Foss entered the room, Tom McMillan cleared his throat, silencing everyone at the table. “Katelyn should be here momentarily, Mr. President, but I can go ahead and get you up to speed on what’s happening.”
Foss nodded and reached for the pen sitting next to the pad of paper in front of him. “OK,” he answered. “Let’s get going, then, but don’t get too far ahead of Kate. I suspect this is going to be more of her show once she arrives.”
Tom nodded. “This past summer, we briefed President Gates about a secret Chinese Air Force program forming up at that time that could radically impact the landscape of the war. The PLA had developed several new UAVs — drones that will most certainly will change the face of modern warfare.”
The tension in the room thickened. Foss and the others shifted in their seats a bit, but everyone held their tongues for the moment.
“Their new UAV weapon platforms appear to be at least a decade ahead of ours. Each design has a specific mechanism for countering our defenses.”
Tom brought up an image of a very sleek-looking fighter drone. “This image was captured and smuggled out of China at great expense. It’s the first of the UAVs, though there appear to be two versions of it. It’s called the Long Huo, or Dragon’s Fire. DARPA has been developing a similar capability with Raytheon and General Dynamics for nearly fifteen years. It’s a hunter-killer drone — in many ways, it’s similar to our Reaper drone or the Russians’ Zhukov, but these are much more advanced.”
He pulled up some more detailed schematics of the drone to display on the screen. “The key difference is that, unlike other UAVs, this one operates much like a fighter plane. Without a pilot, the PLA was able to eliminate a lot of safety and redundancy systems a manned aircraft would naturally have, which means this aircraft can outfly and outmaneuver anything we’ve ever built. The UAV is large, almost the size of an F-16, with a wingspan of nine meters. It’s built like a fighter plane, and in reality, it is a fighter plane. It’s jet-powered, with a flight range of 550 kilometers fully loaded and a ferry range of 3,900 kilometers.
“As I said earlier, there are two versions of this UAV. The first image I just showed you was the fighter version. On each wingtip is an air-to-air missile, and underneath the UAV is an internal weapons bay that we believe can hold either six or eight additional air-to-air missiles. Our source was not able to get us the full schematics of the aircraft, only parts of it.
“I don’t have much further information to give other than what I’ve just shown you. There’s a small group at DARPA who can provide more detailed specifics. What I can share are the few specs we have on the ground-attack version of this beast.”
He pulled up another image of a similar UAV — though the shape was slightly different than the fighter version, more squatted with wider wings. “The ground version isn’t nearly as aerodynamic as its sister, and from what DARPA’s been able to extrapolate from the information on it, it’s also a bit slower. They estimate its speed to be around 720 kilometers per hour, with a flight range of between 350 and 400 kilometers when fully loaded. We have no idea if the UAV is armored, or what its full payload capacity is. We do know we’ve spotted it once or twice in use in Vietnam, but we were never able to get any video or pictures of it. We only knew about it from stories some of our ground assets were able to relay to us. We’re still learning a lot about this UAV. Again, DARPA can probably provide more information on it than I can.”
The Air Force Chief of Staff jumped in. “Do we know where this UAV is being constructed? Perhaps we can try to target where they’re building them and reduce the likelihood of seeing any sort of swarm impacting us on the battlefield.”
Admiral Meyers took this question for Tom. “I spoke with the same people at DARPA Tom has been consulting with, along with our guys at NSA and DIA. They told us a large part of the Chinese aerospace industry was actually located in Shenyang, the city we nuked during the opening hours of the Korean War. Last we heard, most of the aerospace industry had been moved down to the city of Guangzhou and the surrounding area. It’s pretty heavily defended, and just far enough inland that it would require a large-scale ground invasion for us to attack them there.”
The President chewed on that for a moment. “If this is where the Chinese are building their new superweapon, then perhaps it’s where we need to focus our efforts,” he asserted, pausing to let out a deep breath before he turned back to his generals. “Look, I know President Gates was all for invading the Chinese mainland and bringing the fight to the enemy, but after the most recent Chinese raid on our B-2 and B-1 bomber bases, I’d say they nearly knocked our strategic bombing ability out of consideration. We’ve lost 65 % of our B-2s since the start of the war and nearly 50 % of our B-1s. We’re burning through cruise missiles faster than we can make them.”
Before the President could continue, the outer door to the PEOC opened and Katelyn Mackie walked in. The room grew silent as she headed to her seat, next to McMillan’s. “Sorry I’m late. My ride from Fort Meade was a few minutes behind schedule,” she said, looking at the slide McMillan had just finished briefing. She immediately knew from the looks on everyone’s faces that she had just interrupted an important discussion, so she stayed silent, waiting to be called on next.
The President commented, “All I’m saying is that, in light of what Tom’s been discussing and what I’m sure Katelyn is going to bring up, I just have some serious reservations about the upcoming offensives, that’s all.” He gestured for the cyberwarfare advisor to take the floor. “Please, Katelyn, bring us up to speed. I can continue my discussion with the generals later. Besides, I have a feeling what you’re about to tell us is going to change a few plans we already had in the works,” the President said with a slight wink. He liked Katelyn; she was incredibly smart, and somehow wise for someone so young. She was an out-of-the-box thinker, and he knew Gates had thought she would be one of the key people in helping the US defeat the Chinese.
“Yes, Mr. President. Again, sorry for my tardiness,” Katelyn said. She pulled her NSA-issued laptop out of her small carrying bag and swiftly hooked it up to the overhead projector. “If I may, Mr. President, I want to use some illustrations and videos to demonstrate the next UAVs and our plans for countering them. Before we go down this road, I want to take a moment to let you know that as grave as these new weapons sound, we do have a plan in place to respond to them.”