Sun Ji Guoming had his own plans, and they had nothing to do with missile and air bombardments or massive naval engagements. Taiwan could be taken, without prompting war with the United States or hatred from the other Asian nations. It would be simple to isolate Taiwan, even from its staunchest supporters.
But capturing Taiwan and making it part of Zhongguo again was not the most important mission facing them right now — the biggest threat was the domination of the United States in every aspect of life in the Far East. The Americans’ ability to project its military power throughout this region was crushing China’s struggle to take its place as the most important power in Asia. Yes, the Americans’ military might was awesome, its technological superiority enormous. But Asia was far away, mysterious; its military had been greatly downsized, its economy was unsteady, its leadership tenuous. America’s influence on its Asian allies was not as strong as it once was.
Sun believed that he had a way to topple the great United States of America off its perch — and now was the time to do it.
CHAPTER ONE
“One who speaks deferentially but increases his preparations will advance; one who speaks belligerently _ and advances hastily will retreat.”
“Attention, datalink bogey, eleven o’clock low,” ‘Sharon’ reported.
U.S. Air Force Major Scott Mauer saw the flashing diamond floating before his eyes even before the computer-synthesized female voice they had named “Sharon”—after actress Sharon Stone, whose voice could have been an exact duplicate of the computer’s — issued its advisory. Mauer immediately jammed his back and butt deeper into the ejection seat of his F-22 Lightning fighter and locked the inertial reel, securing himself tightly in his seat. The action was about to start.
Mauer moved his head until a circular target designator symbol centered on the diamond symbol, then toggled the radio transmit button on his right throttle quadrant down to the “intercom” position and said, “Lock bogey.” “Sharon” was much more than a verbal warning system as the first-generation “Bitchin’ Bettys” had been in earlier fighters— Sharon had a five-thousand-word vocabulary, could respond to questions with a surprisingly human voice, and could activate almost all of the F-22’s subsystems. It was more akin to a human copilot than a computer.
BOGEY LOCKED, Sharon replied, and instandy a box surrounded the white diamond symbol and the bogey’s flight information — speed, altitude, heading — displayed in midair. Mauer’s F-22 Lightning, the Air Force’s newest air-superiority fighter and attack plane, was equipped with the new “supercockpit” system, which included a helmet-mounted virtual display (VD), replacing the standard heads-up display mounted atop the instrument panel with symbols and information that could be seen no matter where the pilot looked — left, right, straight down, or even backward, the pilot could always “see” his flight and target readouts. Most of the heads-down cockpit dials, gauges, and multifunction displays in the F-22 fighter had also been replaced with three seamless color computer monitors that could be configured to display anything the pilot wished to see — radar, infrared, digital map, satellite photos, text, or flight instruments — called up and displayed by asking the computer or by touching the screen.
“Interrogate the bogey,” Mauer ordered.
INTERROGATING … Sharon the computer replied; then, after a short pause: NEGATIVE REPLY. Sharon had sent out an IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) signal, to which only friendly aircraft would reply. The white diamond in Mauer’s VD changed to red — it was no longer just a “bogey,” an unidentified aircraft. It was now a “bandit,” a hostile aircraft.
Mauer was a ten-year Air Force fighter veteran and knew how to close in and kill a hostile aerial target from any direction, speed, or attitude, but the attack computer system was new and he wanted to put it through its paces. He keyed the intercom button: “Give me an intercept vector on the bandit.”
SAY AGAIN, PLEASE, Sharon replied in a surprisingly seductive voice.
Mauer took a deep breath, containing his frustration and forcing himself to relax. “Say again, please” was Sharon’s favorite phrase. The computer system did not need voice coaching for individual pilots, but if a pilot started to get excited or hurried, the computer would not understand his voice commands. Mauer touched the supercockpit screen to call up the weapons status display and moved it with his finger to the upper right corner of the supercockpit display — in case his voice commands wouldn’t take, he was ready to finish the intercept without it. “I said, display intercept vector on the bandit. ”
She understood that time, and a twin-tiered 3-D ribbonlike path appeared in thin air. Naturally distrustful of computers to do their thinking for them, pilots called the computer’s attack recommendation the “primrose path.” Despite its name, however, it was not a bad recommendation, Mauer thought — high, left rear quarter, the westbound bandit’s pilot would be looking into the rising sun trying to find him — so he decided to follow it. Mauer maneuvered the F-22 so he was flying in between the two parallel ribbons, then ordered, “Engage the autopilot on the intercept course.”
AUTOPILOT ENGAGED, Sharon verified. The autopilot would now automatically fly the entire intercept. Mauer was a good stick and he loved flying, but unlike most of his fighter-jock colleagues, he wasn’t afraid to let the ultrasophisticated computers relieve some of the workload. The “primrose path” pulled Mauer’s F-22 into a steep descent, and Mauer kept the throttles at just below mil power and let the airspeed build up toward the Mach. With all of its weapons and fuel stored internally, the F-22 had few speed restrictions — it could go to its max speed of Mach 1.5 at any time in clean configuration, and the Lightning liked to go fast. Its weapons bay doors opened inwardly as well, so there was no speed restriction on missile launch either.
The intercept was working out perfectly. So far the bandit was cruising along fat, dumb, and happy, still subsonic and mostly traveling in a straight, uncomplicated course, flying low but not doing any real aggressive terrain masking. The radar lock was intermittent, but that was understandable, because Mauer’s F-22 was not tracking the bandit. One hundred miles away, an Air Force E-3C Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar plane had picked up the bandit and had datalinked the target information via the JTIDS (Joint Target Information Distribution System) to Mauer’s F-22, which processed and displayed the data as if the F-22’s own radar were tracking the target. The bandit’s threat radar warning receiver would pick up only the AWACS, not the F-22. Even better, Mauer could launch the F-22’s AIM-120 AM- RAAMs (Advanced Medium-Range Air To Air Missiles) using JTIDS information until the missile’s own active radar picked up the target — he didn’t even need the fighter’s radar to launch his radar-guided missiles.
“Recommend a weapon for the attack,” Mauer asked on interphone. As before, he didn’t need Sharon to tell him which missile to fire, but it was fun and educational to play with the new system. Fie purposely did not ask only for missiles but for any weapon, just to see if the computer would select the correct one.
RECOMMEND AIM-120, Sharon replied, and both of the F-22 s AM- RAAM missiles depicted on the weapon status page blinked green. Mauer’s Lightning was lightly loaded on this mission, and carried only two AIM-120s and two AIM-9P Sidewinder missiles in the weapons bay, plus five hundred rounds of ammunition for the 20-millimeter cannon. “Arm AIM-120.”