When the war with the Americans had started, Admiral Gromov had petitioned to have upgrades to the Admiral Nakhimov rushed, and to have his own flagship, the Pyotr Velikiy, equipped with their new 3M22 Zircon anti-ship missiles. NATO had called these missiles the SS-N-33, and they were petrified of them. While the Russian Navy had not been able to use them in the war up to this point, they would be heavily used in the coming naval battle.
Admiral Gromov had marshaled his meager fleet, which consisted of the lone Russian aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, two Kirov-class battlecruisers, his two remaining Slava-class cruisers, and the one remaining Sovremennyy-class destroyer the Allies had not sunk yet in an occupied Norwegian fjord. The Russian rocket forces had successfully shot down a few Allied satellites that were providing them with real-time intelligence over this area of the Barents Sea just for this operation. He also had three additional Udaloy-class destroyers for antisubmarine warfare support.
In all, his fleet comprised eight surface ships and four submarines — not much considering the fleet they were supposed to intercept, but what they had that the Allies didn’t was a hypersonic anti-ship missile capable of carrying a 2,500-pound warhead at speeds in excess of Mach 5. His fleet was equipped with a total of 120 of these missiles, and depending on how many of them made it through the Allied air-defense screen, his little fleet could still force the Allied fleet to turn around and head back to Britain.
Gromov’s greatest fear right now was not that his fleet would fail, but that Petrov might authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy the Allied fleet if it came down to it. Many of the Russian military leaders were desperate to keep the war conventional, even if it meant they ultimately lost. After seeing how the American president had responded to the use of nuclear weapons by the North Koreans, there was no question as to how the US would respond to a second use of these dastardly weapons against their forces. Even in defeat, Admiral Gromov and his men would still have a home to come back to. However, if the war turned nuclear, there was no guarantee any of them or their families would survive, and that kind of victory was not worth having.
Once the Allied fleet left their British and European ports and formed up in the North Sea, the meteorologist reported that a large winter storm would descend from the North Pole and converge into a nasty storm over the Greenland Sea and then make its way down to the Norwegian and Barents Seas. During this period, it would be nearly impossible to conduct air operations, and the dense storm cloud coverage would hamper drone surveillance after the Allies lost their satellites. The loss of the satellites would only guarantee him a day, maybe two tops, before either new ones were launched or satellites already in space were redirected to cover the Allied fleet. If Gromov rushed his fleet from Tanafjorden, where he currently had them laid up, into the opposite side of Bear Island, he just might catch the Allied fleet by surprise.
As he continued to watch the waves crash around him, his mood soured a bit. “These rollers are horrendous,” he thought. Launching an attack in this severe of a weather pattern was very risky. If the targeting officers weren’t careful, the missiles could very well fly right into a wave before they even hit an American ship.
He sighed. If they waited for calmer seas, the Allies would be able to use their Air Force and drones, and his fleet wouldn’t last an hour against the Allied airpower.
“No, we need to use this horrible storm and hope for the best,” he determined.
Turning to face his weapons officer, Admiral Gromov nodded. “Order the fleet to begin firing our missiles,” he announced.
Gromov glanced down at his watch; the submarines would begin launching their attack within the next ten minutes. If they timed things correctly, the Allied fleet would be dealing with torpedoes and missiles from the submarines when their swarm of hypersonic missiles showed up on their radar screens.
Bright flashes of light appeared on the front section of the battlecruiser as the first missiles fired out of the vertical launch system. Forty Zircon missiles packed enough punch to severely cripple a strike group — at least that was what the military developers in Moscow had told the Russian armed forces.
“Vampires! Vampires! Vampires! We have inbound missiles bearing 113, one hundred and thirty kilometers, traveling .9 Mach,” shouted one of the air-defense officers aboard the USS Enterprise. The team of radar and defensive weapons personnel were picking up handsets and shouting all sorts of information as they tried to begin the critical coordination of the fleet’s defenses.
The watch commander in the CIC turned to face the admiral. “Sir, the Gates is asking permission to slave the fleet’s air-defense systems. What should I tell him?” asked Commander Lipton, holding the receiver to his shoulder while he waited for a response.
Captain King gave the admiral a pensive look that said it was a gamble. While the Thomas Gates was a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, she had also been pulled out of mothballs and given a hasty upgrade to make her seaworthy. There were a lot of concerns about her targeting computer’s ability to properly slave and integrate the air-defense weapons of the fleet’s destroyers and frigates. In normal times, none of them would have questioned this decision. They would have had a system in place where the cruiser would have taken over and immediately engaged the enemy threats with the fleet’s missiles.
Admiral Lindal made eye contact with King. He must have seen her nervous look, but he straightened up. “Permission granted,” he ordered. “Have the Gates take control of the air-defense systems immediately. Tell Captain Tappal he’d better take those threats out.”
Captain King felt nervous, but she gritted her teeth and went about her job.
“I wish I had as much optimism as Lindal,” she thought. Then she realized that the admiral had known Captain Tappal for a long time and most likely trusted him to report any potential problems before now.
She turned to her air boss. “Captain Adel, is there any possible way we can get some aircraft in the air? I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of missiles being thrown at us soon.”
The CAG looked at her for a second and then at the weather screen and readings. “I’d advise against it, Captain, but I’ll ask for volunteers. Are you thinking of a Growler flight?”
“Yes, I want to get as many of our Growlers in the air as possible. I know the weather’s terrible, but my gut says there’s at least one or two Oscars out there that are about to make life tough for us. With the Queen Elizabeth and the Charles de Gaulle sitting still while they assess their damage, I want to make sure we have some electronic countermeasure assets airborne.”
No sooner had she finished her sentence than the lieutenant commander who oversaw their air-defense system shouted again. “Vampires, Vampires!”
She turned to look at the radar display. As she watched, she saw the original six anti-ship missiles headed toward the fleet suddenly turn into forty new contacts. Before she had any time to figure out what had happened, a second wave of twenty missiles appeared from a new heading and suddenly split into sixty missiles, further throwing her off.