Once everyone was seated in front of the digital battle simulator, Marshal Levchenko called over a staff officer. The young major was tall and skinny, his eyes squinted into slits, as if they had trouble adjusting to the war room’s brightness. “Let me introduce Major Bondarenko. His most obvious trait is his severe myopia. His glasses are different from other people’s—their lenses rest inside the frame, while his stick out. Ha, they’re as thick as the bottom of a teacup! This morning they got smashed when the major’s jeep was hit in an airstrike, which is why we don’t see them now. I think he lost his contacts too?”
“Marshal, it was five days ago at Minsk. My eyes only became like this in the last half year. If it happened earlier, I wouldn’t have been admitted into Frunze Military Academy,” the major said stolidly.
No one knew why the marshal had chosen to introduce the major like this, though a few chuckled in the audience.
“Since the beginning of the war,” the marshal continued, “events have shown that despite Russian losses on the battlefield, our aerial and ground weapons aren’t far behind the enemy’s. But in the field of electronic warfare, we’ve been unexpectedly left in the dust. Many events in the past contributed to this situation, but we’re not here to point fingers. We’re here to state this: In our situation, electronic warfare is the key to taking back the initiative in the war! We must first admit that the enemy has an advantage in this area, perhaps an overwhelming advantage. Then we must work within our army’s hardware and software limitations to create an effective plan of battle. The goal of this plan is to even out our and NATO’s electronic-warfare capabilities within a short period of time. Maybe you all think this is impossible—our military planning since the end of the last century has been based on the assumption of a limited-scope war. We really haven’t done enough research for an invasion on all fronts by as powerful an enemy as the one we’re facing right now. In our dire situation, we have to think in a completely new way. The central command’s new electronic-warfare strategy, which I’m introducing next, will demonstrate the results of this mode of thinking.”
The lights went out, the computer screens and digital battle simulator dimmed, and the heavy anti-radiation doors shut tightly. The war room was plunged into total darkness.
“I had the lights turned off.” The marshal’s voice came through the darkness.
A minute passed in dark and silence.
“How’s everyone feeling?” Marshal Levchenko asked.
No one answered. The cloying darkness left the officers feeling as if they were at the bottom of a dark sea. It even felt hard to breathe.
“General Andreyev, tell it to us.”
“Like it felt on the battlefield these few days,” the commander of the Fifth Army said, eliciting a wave of quiet laughter from the darkness.
“Everyone else empathizes with him, I think,” said the marshal. “Of course you do! Think of it—nothing but static in your headsets, solid white on your screens, not a clue as to your orders or the battlefield around you. That same feeling! The darkness presses down until you can’t breathe!
“But not everyone feels like that. How are you, Major Bondarenko?” asked Marshal Levchenko.
Major Bondarenko’s voice came from one corner of the room. “It’s not so bad for me. Everything was a blur around me anyway back when the lights were on.”
“Maybe you even feel an advantage?” asked Marshal Levchenko.
“Yes, sir. You may have heard the story of the New York blackout, where blind people led everyone out of the skyscrapers.”
“But General Andreyev’s sentiments are understandable. He’s eagle-eyed, a legendary marksman—when he drinks, he uses his revolver to take the caps off his bottles at ten-odd meters. Wouldn’t it be interesting to picture him having a gun duel with Major Bondarenko at this moment?”
The darkened war room once again sank into silence as the officers considered this.
The lights turned on. Everyone narrowed their eyes, less because of the discomfort of the sudden brightness, and more for the shock of what the marshal had just implied.
Marshal Levchenko stood up. “I think I’ve explained our army’s new electronic-warfare strategy: large-scale, full-spectrum barrage jamming. With regard to EM communications, we’re going to let both sides enjoy a blacked-out battlefield!”
“This will cause our own battlefield command system to completely break down!” someone said fearfully.
“NATO’s will too! If we’re going to be blind, let’s both be blind. If we’re going to be deaf, let’s both be deaf. We can then reach equal footing with the enemy’s electronic-warfare capabilities. This is the central tenet of our new strategy.”
“But what are we supposed to do now, send messengers on motorcycles to transmit orders?”
“If the roads are bad, they’ll have to ride horses,” Marshal Levchenko said. “Our rough prediction shows that this kind of full-spectrum barrage jamming will cover at least seventy percent of NATO’s battlefield communication network, meaning that their C3I system will suffer a complete breakdown. Simultaneously, we’ll be leaving fifty to sixty percent of the enemy’s long-range weapons useless. The best example is with the Tomahawk satellite-guided missile. Missile guidance has changed a lot since last century. Before, it primarily navigated using onboard TERCOM with a small-scale radar altimeter, but now these methods are only used in end-stage guidance, while most of the launch process relies on a GPS system. General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas Corporation thought this change was a big step forward, but the Americans trust their EM wave guidance from space too well. Once we disrupt the GPS transmission, the Tomahawk will be blind. The dependency on GPS exists in most of NATO’s long-range weapons. Under the battlefield conditions we’ve planned, we’ll force the enemy into a traditional battle, allowing us to fully utilize our strengths.”
“I’m still unsure about this,” the commander of the Twelfth Army sent from the eastern front said anxiously. “Under these battlefield communication conditions, I’m not even sure my division can smoothly reach the western front from the east.”
“Of course it will!” said Marshal Levchenko. “The distance was nothing even for Kutuzov, in Napoleon’s time. I don’t believe the Russian army needs wireless to do it today! The Americans should be the ones spoiled rotten by modern equipment, not us. I know that an EM blackout over all the battlefield will put fear in your hearts. But you have to remember, the enemy will feel ten times your fear!”
Watching Kalina disappear among the other camo-clad officers as they exited the war room, Marshal Levchenko felt apprehension rise in his heart. She was returning to the front, and her unit was stationed right in the middle of the enemy’s most concentrated firepower. Yesterday, during his five minutes of communication with his son a hundred million miles away, the marshal had told him that Kalina was perfectly well. But she nearly hadn’t come back from this morning’s battle.
Misha and Kalina had met at one of the military exercises. The marshal had been eating dinner with his son one night, silently as usual, Misha’s late mother looking on from her picture frame. Suddenly, Misha had said, “Papa, I recall that tomorrow is your fifty-first birthday. I should give you a gift. I thought of it when I saw the telescope; that was a wonderful present.”
“How about you give me a few days of your time?”
Son quietly raised his head to look at father.
“You have your own work, and I’m happy for you. But surely it’s not unreasonable for a father to want his son to understand his life’s work! How about you come with me to observe the military exercises?”
Misha smiled and nodded. He smiled very rarely.