“Makes tangling with them a chancy thing,” said Fedorov.
“Quite so,” said Karpov. “I wish I had Admiral’s Lazarev and Nakhimov with me now, and a few more new destroyers like Kursk.”
“Don’t forget Kazan,” said Fedorov. “Ivan Gromyko is out there somewhere.”
“Yes,” said Karpov with a smile. “He is.”
The New Jersey Task Force was nearly 1300 miles away from the nearest Chinese ship in the South China Sea that morning when they fired, but the missiles would not be aimed at any ships. The Big J, or the “Black Dragon” as the ship was called, is sitting in harbor as a museum in our world, but here the ship had been extensively modernized with a major refit. The navy wanted to see what a ship could do if it retained armor to resist damage from missile strikes, and then carried a load of firepower to deal out devastating blows in reprisal. Big J was one of two chosen, the other being the Iowa, and now it was steaming forward of the new US carrier Independence, in effect, acting as the forward screen with two companions, destroyers Buckner and Thomas.
The battleship had four Mark 41 VLS bays, or twice the missile load of a Ticonderoga class cruiser. It also retained one of its former 406mm main gun turrets, which could still fling shells out over 20 miles. Throw in six twin 127mm secondary batteries and four Phalanx mounts, and the Black Dragon could really breathe fire. Those VLS cells presently held 32 SM 2’s, 32 SM-3’s, 48 SM-6’s, 160 ESSM’s and a whopping 96 Multi Mission Tomahawks. For all that power, New Jersey would not fire that hour. The mission was instead handed off to her two escorting destroyers They each carrier 28 TACTOMs and 28 more MMT’s, and it was the TACTOM that would rule the hour. Those missiles were going out after the Chinese airfield at Miri.
The long arm of the US fleet wanted any assets there reduced or destroyed, because they intended to take up a position about 300 miles east of Miri, in the Celebes Sea, and they did not want their operations challenged or interfered with by Chinese fighters based there. Malaysian Borneo (the provinces of Sarawak and Sabah), was independent from the long Malaysian Peninsula in this history, and China had been cozy with it for some time. So it had secured basing rights at Miri, and permission to build a radar site. There it placed a dozen J-10 fighters, and six J-31’s to act as replacements for the carriers, along with several helicopters and a single J-20 that had landed there after having engine trouble.
A massive fan of cruise missiles were launched creating a vast arc as they all veered off on separate vectors. In time the missiles formed a great letter C on the US radar scopes, extending over 350 miles from north to south. They were going to cruise right over the Philippines in the northern half a of that arc, and the rest would come in over the Celebes Sea. Their targets at Miri were 1025 nautical miles away, and cruising at 500 knots, it was going to take them a little over two hours to get west to Miri.
As they made that long approach that morning, the British were using a few of their F-35’s off the Invincible to scout the Chinese positions. They had found one of the two Chinese carriers, cruising southwest of the main Riau Island in the South China Sea, another of the many island bastions in those waters that had been claimed by China. Admiral Pearson’s problem was that he had no means of striking that target, as it was presently 160 miles away, outside the range of his ship’s missiles. But that was not a problem for Admiral Wu Jinlong that morning. He had the range hours ago….
The four DDG escorts with the carrier Zhendong would open the battle from the Chinese side that morning, each one picking a target in the British formation and firing four YJ-18’s. At the same time, five J-31’s would rise from the upturned ski-lift deck of the carrier, each carrying a pair of anti-radiation missiles to target the British radars once they went active. They would be detected on radar about 110 miles out, coming at 530 knots, which raised the adrenaline in the British Fleet. Their assumption was that these were the fast YJ-18’s, or Sizzlers as they called them, and they were the missiles that had killed the majority of Royal Navy ships lost in the war to date.
That detection triggered alarms all through the fleet, and a scramble order rattled Tengah airfield on Singapore, where six ready Eagles took to the sky. Two had launched earlier as a radar picket, and now they turned towards the threat, each carrying six AIM-120C missiles. As with Admiral Wells earlier, the British would rely heavily on the support of fighters as a defensive shield, and they knew they had to get to the YJ-18’s before they started their high speed sprint. Two F-35’s were the first to fire four Meteors, then those first two Eagles engaged.
“Tally ho!” shouted an Eagle pilot to his mate. “Fox Three, Missiles away!”
Those four fighters would score a heartening 14 kills. The last two leakers were then taken down by the Type 31 frigate, Battleaxe. Seconds later the missile warning lights came on and those two Eagles were under attack.
“Break right!” came the call as the two planes maneuvered. They had been fired on by unseen J-31’s, stalked by the long range PL-15 missile, and one of the two planes was hit. The other evaded, diving for the weeds, the riveting nature of the moment smothering the realization that a friend was suddenly gone. There would be no time to grieve. That second Eagle pilot would not get home to think about it, dying 30 seconds later when a PL-15 ran up his flaming tail.
The ready alert Eagles that had just scrambled from Tengah AFB were now 35miles off the coast, moving swiftly at 520 knots. Up ahead they got radar hits on a tight formation of J-31’s, surprised they could see the planes. That could mean only one thing—the planes were carrying something externally which was reflecting the radar. Otherwise, the stealthy Chinese fighters would have been damn near invisible.
The Eagles had the AIM-120C, with a 60 mile range, and might have been under fire by now if the Chinese fighters were carrying the PL-15, but with those anti-radiation missiles, the loadout called for the lighter PL-12, which had just a 50 mile range. Now the Eagles would have their revenge, firing a flurry of AIM-120’s. The AMRAAM’s were good that day, finding and killing all five of the valuable J-31’s, much to the chagrin of Admiral Wu Jinlong. Only one of the Eagles was killed in return. Eagle Flight had avenged the loss of the radar picket planes, and then some.
The first Chinese attack had been a dismal failure. The planes were not escorted, they arrived too late, and there was not enough mass in the attack to make any real breakthrough.
That was a great waste of five good planes, thought Wu Jinlong. The attack was ill timed, and had no saturation. It was entirely defeated by their fighters, and no more than two missiles off one of their ships. Now I must order the six reserve J-31’s to deploy from Miri Airfield to replace those losses. This carrier must maintain a full air wing. That leaves me with 15 fighters, but those from Miri will bring us back up to strength.