“Now that everyone has been brought up to speed, here’s what I want to happen,” said President Gates, leaning forward. “The Russian Far East must be secured within the next 90 days. I don’t care how, and I don’t care what ships you have to use to accomplish that goal, but I want it done ASAP. While that is happening, I want our submarine forces to begin attacking the PLA Navy in the South China Sea. I do not want the Philippines, Guam, or any other islands captured. Is that understood, gentlemen?”
Feeling like a fish out of water, Captain Richards meekly raised his hand to ask the obvious question on his mind. The President nodded for him to speak. “Sir, I’m just curious why I was invited to this meeting. My ship, the Vinson, is going to be in the shipyard for at least twelve months, if not longer, and that’s with a double work crew working around the clock,” Richards said, feeling a bit awkward.
Laughing, the President turned to the Secretary of the Navy. “You didn’t tell him yet?”
Secretary Leahy smiled as he replied, “We thought we’d leave him in the dark a bit longer before we broke the news.”
At this point, the other officers in the room were all grinning. Clearly, they were in on whatever had been discussed prior to Richards’ arrival at the meeting. Castle finally broke the pause. “You’re here, Captain Richards, because you’re taking over as the new Seventh Fleet Commander.”
The President and the SecDef had been known for promoting people well ahead of their peers since the start of the war. The SecDef had told the President that it was important for them to find and promote aggressive, out-of-the-box leaders, and they had consistently promoted those who fit the needs of the military. Even still, Richards was a bit shocked by the sudden announcement.
Castle continued, “Captain Richards, a couple of days ago, you officially made vice admiral. However, with Admiral Kinkaid dead and Admiral Lomas still recovering, we opted to go ahead and promote you two additional grades to take over as the Seventh Fleet Commander. You have the most experience in theater, and we’re going to need that experience if we’re to defeat the Chinese. When this meeting is over, I’ll leave you to confer with your ship captains here, and we’ll hold an official pinning ceremony later today before the President leaves for some other pressing matters.” Castle slid a set of vice admiral stars to him. The other captains in the room broke out in applause; they were glad to have someone in charge who had already fought the Chinese Navy and succeeded in defeating them.
The official meeting broke up a few minutes later once the SecDef had issued a few other orders and let everyone know the timeline for when he and the President wanted certain objectives to be completed. As the VIPs left the briefing room, all eyes turned to Vice Admiral Jeff Richards.
He cleared his throat. “Well, this promotion is a complete surprise to me,” Richards said candidly. “I had no idea they were going to place me in command of the fleet. I hope you’ll bear with me as I get up to speed on the disposition of our forces. What I can tell you from my own strike group’s experience is that the Chinese anti-ship missiles are exceptionally good — far better than our intelligence had thought at the beginning of the war. To our horror, they seem to have perfected the art of ‘the missile swarm’ by hitting us with land-based, sea-launch, and air-launched anti-ship missiles, all at the same time. Had our DDGs not swapped out their Tomahawk missiles for additional SM-2 and SM-3 missiles, I would probably not be standing here with you right now.”
He paused for a second, collecting his thoughts as he looked at the ship captains and three other admirals that would form the backbone of his strike group command. “This is going to be a missile war, which means we need to change our traditional tactics and approach to fleet defense. Looking at the timeline the SecDef and the President have given us, we do not have a lot of time to get ourselves ready. Effective at once, I want all DDGs and cruisers to swap out their Tomahawk cruise missiles for additional SM-2s and SM-3 antiair missiles.”
Richards turned to look at Admiral Shelley Cord, one of the strike group commanders from the Atlantic Fleet. “Admiral Cord, your strike group has two of the Zumwalt-class destroyers with you, correct?”
Rear Admiral Shelley Cord was the strike group commander for the USS Gerald Ford. The Ford was the newest class of supercarriers and was truly an amazing ship. As the flagship for the Navy, it was also heavily protected. When the Ford made its transit to the Pacific through Panama, it was met by both Zumwalt destroyers, which had been recently upgraded with the Navy’s newest weapon, the BAE systems railgun.
Admiral Cord smiled and nodded. “Yes, they’re both with us and fully updated. I’d caution you, though, against placing a lot of hope in this new weapon system. While it’s gone through extensive tests, it has never been used in combat like our other systems have,” she replied.
Noting the uncertainty in her voice, Richards responded, “That’s a good point, Admiral. We’ll have to take that into consideration in our ship deployment plan. That said, I do want to make sure this weapon system is used in the coming fight.”
Admiral Richards paused for a second, looking over the two admirals and the other captains in the room before he continued. He was a new admiral, and by all accounts, had been promoted over some of the very admirals he was now in charge of. This made for a few awkward moments in the briefing.
Richards knew he needed to bring them up to speed and show why he had been chosen to command the revitalized Seventh Fleet. He cleared his throat. “When the Chinese launched their missile swarm attack on us, most of our escort ships burned through their entire stock of SM-2s intercepting the first two waves of missiles. Shoot, my own ship, the Vinson, nearly ran out of Rolling Airframe and Sea Sparrow missiles by the time the battle was over. If these new rail guns can help cut down on the volume of missiles we’ll be facing, it may give our fleet the edge we need to survive the next battle. Mark my words, they’re going to throw a missile swarm at us like we’ve never seen once they catch a glimpse of our fleet — the possibility of crushing the US Navy once and for all will be too big of an opportunity for them to pass up. They will hit us with everything they have,” he concluded.
The other carrier commanders nodded in agreement with his assessment. The captains and admirals wanted payback, but they were also very concerned about losing a few more carriers. Having already lost two in this war, with a third heavily damaged, had caused a lot of the naval leadership and admirals to become very gun-shy in using these weapons of war. Richards hadn’t been jaded by the losses thus far; he wasn’t afraid to lose a few carriers in a battle if it meant destroying the Chinese Navy in the process.
The meeting continued for a little while longer as Admiral Richards took a bit of time to get to know each of the strike group commanders and ship captains before dismissing them for the day. While he had served with many of them in the past, he needed to gauge how aggressive they would be in the coming battle. He wanted to make sure they wouldn’t place the safety of the ship or strike group above accomplishing the mission. Whether or not they wanted to accept it, they were going to lose more ships and aircraft in the coming battle. They might even lose their carrier, and while he would do his best to make sure that didn’t happen, he needed to know that they were committed to winning, no matter the cost.