“FOB warheads?” Wyle speculated. He knew the Chinese had FOB, or Fractional Orbital Bombardment technology — the ability to put a nuclear warhead into low Earth orbit, then deorbit it anytime it circled the Earth. The warheads could stay aloft for weeks, virtually untouchable, and could threaten targets all over the globe.
“Unknown, sir,” the controller said. “We should be able to get an eyeball on the payloads when they separate.” Space Command maintained space surveillance telescopes all over the world, which would allow technicians to visually observe and identify a satellite in orbit — the telescopes were powerful enough to read a newspaper fifty miles away!
As the Chinese missiles reached apogee, their highest point in their ballistic trajectory at almost 400 miles up, the long-range Space Command radars detected the warheads separating from the boosters and beginning their reentry. “We have one missile making an erratic track — looks like it’s breaking up in reentry,” the controller said. Wyle muttered a silent prayer, hoping more would follow suit. “Three boosters are inserting payloads into low Earth orbit, repeat, three payloads entering orbit. We have three boosters MIRVing, repeat, three MIRVing… DSSS now reporting a total of twelve reentry vehicles, repeat, twelve MIRVs inbound, target Guam. BMEWS confirms that track, twelve reentry vehicles inbound, target Guam.”
“Confirm for me that an air attack alert has been issued to all installations and on civil defense nets on Guam,” General Wyle asked in a low, somber voice.
“We’ve confirmed it, sir,” a communications officer said. “Full military and civil EBS notification.” Wyle thought about all the times he had heard the Emergency Broadcast System tests on TV and radio and simply ignored the nuisance interruption. Of course, he had been in many places where people paid attention to EBS — during the floods near Beale Air Force Base in Marysville, California; the tornadoes near Omaha, Nebraska; and even on Guam during frequent typhoon warnings in the summer. But civil defense was a thing of the past, and suitable hardened, underground shelters outside of the military bases were rare on Guam. The population of that tiny, sleepy tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was going to take the full force of the Chinese missile attack… unless the Patriot missiles could stop them.
As fast as the information could be beamed out by satellite, the air defense units on the island of Guam were scrambled and activated. Two U.S. Army Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries were stationed on Guam, one on Andersen Air Force Base in the northern part of the island, and one at Agana Naval Air Station in the central part. Each Patriot battery consisted of a command trailer, three large flat “drive-intheater screen” radar arrays, and twelve transporter-erector-launcher trailers, with four missiles per trailer, plus associated electrical power and communications relay trucks. The radars did not mechanically sweep the skies, but they electronically scanned huge sections of airspace up to fifty miles in all directions, so between the two sites the entire island of Guam was covered.
The phone at his console buzzed, and he picked it up — he knew exactly who it would be. “Wyle.”
“General Wyle, this is Admiral Balboa,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “Fm at the White House. The President and the SECDEF are here with me. What’s the situation?”
“We detected ten missile launches from central China,” Wyle reported. “We’re tracking a total of twelve inbound ballistic vehicles, all heading for Guam. All tracks confirmed. We believe with high confidence that the missiles are Chinese East Wind-4 intermediate-range nuclear ballistic weapons. The reentry warheads are believed to be everything from sixty-kiloton to two-megaton yield.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Balboa muttered. “Any other launch detections anywhere?”
“None, sir.”
“Anything headed for us at all?”
“Three missiles launched from China inserted small payloads into two-hundred-and-ninety-mile orbits, inclined approximately thirty degrees from the equator, sir,” Wyle said, reading information off the large monitors in the command center. “We haven’t identified them yet. Their orbits will take them over the Pacific, within about two hundred miles of the Hawaiian islands, but not over the CONUS. They fly over central China on the backside of their orbits, so they might be weather or communications satellites, or just decoys.”
“I want those payloads positively identified as soon as possible, General,” Balboa said sternly. “Status of the air defense sites on Guam?”
“Two Patriot batteries on Guam. Both are on full alert and will be directly tracking the inbounds in about five to six minutes,” Wyle responded.
“The NCA wants an immediate notification on any other launches,” Balboa ordered.
“Yes, sir, Fll do it personally,” Wyle said. “Is the NCA going airborne?”
“Negative, but we’ve got Marine One and Two standing by.”
“Might be a good idea to get them airborne until we sort this out,” Wyle said. “If any of the inbounds hit, we’ll lose the 720th Space Group on Guam — that cuts out a lot of missile and satellite tracking and control functions in the Pacific. The warning net might go down, or suffer a bottleneck. ”
‘Til pass along your recommendation, General,” Balboa said. “We’ll keep you advised.” And the line went dead.
Everything that could be done was being done. Along with providing land-based nuclear intercontinental missiles to Strategic Command in case of a crisis, Space Command’s primary function was surveillance, detection, tracking, and notification of an attack from space on the United States, its territories, and allies. That function was completed— now it was up to the last line of defense to minimize the damage.
The Patriot air defense missile batteries first detected the inbound warheads at ninety seconds time-to-impact, but they could not begin firing the first two-missile volleys until thirty seconds time-to-impact. The launches were done completely by computer control, sequencing the launches from both batteries so each salvo would not interfere with another. Every battery fired all of its missiles — that meant that every incoming nuclear warhead had eight Patriot missiles flying up to attack it, launched in four different volleys of two missiles each.
But despite software and hardware upgrades on the system since its debut as a ballistic-missile killer during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Patriot antiair missile system had never been designed to be an anti-ballistic missile weapon. The Patriot had the advantage of its own onboard terminal guidance radar, which meant it was much more responsive and agile and was more capable against fast-moving targets such as inbound ballistic missiles or warheads, and the new Tier 3 PUG (Patriot Upgrade Group) gave the missile a larger warhead and a new high-pressure hydraulic actuator system, so it could move its control surfaces faster to chase higher-speed targets. Nonetheless, it was still a matter of “bullet-on-bullet,” nose-to-nose precision aiming that was still several years from perfection.
Out of twelve inbound warheads, three survived the onslaught of Patriot missiles. One sixty-kiloton warhead exploded two miles west of Orote Peninsula, a total of eight miles southwest of Agana, just 3,000 feet above the ocean, leveling most of the high-rise oceanfront hotels and condominiums and creating an instant killer typhoon. Another sixty-kiloton warhead was blasted off course by a nearby exploding Patriot missile and was harmlessly fratricided by the preceding nuclear detonation near Agana. Although the blast damage, heat, and overpressure effects were enormous, casualties in the central part of the island would be termed minimal.
But one two-megaton warhead exploded just one and a half miles north of Andersen Air Force Base at an altitude of less than 3,000 feet— and every aboveground building on the base was wiped away in a blast that was greater than the power of five hundred typhoons. The nearby village of Fafalog completely disappeared in the fireball. Mount Santa Rosa, the verdant green hill overlooking the military airfield, was instantly denuded of all vegetation and then sliced nearly in half. The entire northern one-fifth of the island was immediately set ablaze, which was extinguished only by the 200- foot nuclear-spawned tsunami and typhoon-force winds that ripped into the scarred tropical island.