Sighing deeply, the President asked, “How much time do we have before this planned invasion, and what is the CIA’s assessment of this?”
Director Rubio spoke up, “The CIA does believe the information to be credible. The various troop movements, ships and so on is consistent with preparations for an invasion. As to the timeline, the Japanese source says it will happen within the next 30 to 45 days. Our sources also believe that timeline is accurate as well.”
“Then we do not have much time, do we?” pondered the President aloud. “What are your suggestions gentlemen?”
General Branson signaled to speak first, saying, “Mr. President, I recommend we move quickly to get as much of our equipment and troops out of Japan and to Alaska as possible. We also have 400,000 new recruits coming out of basic and advanced training in two weeks. I move that we send them all to Alaska and begin building up the defenses. We will also need to move additional mobile laser systems and mobile railguns once the roads start to clear from the snow. These blasted blizzards are really hurting our ability to build up any sort of defenses.”
General Rice the Air Force Chief of Staff added, “We have 400 fighter drones being delivered from the factory next week. I will order all of them to Alaska. That will bring our manned aircraft to 300 fighters and our fighter drones to 1,100. I know the Navy has been hit pretty hard, but if they can focus their subs in the Alaskan waters that would greatly aid our defense.”
Admiral Juliano knew he had to do something; his submarine force has been getting hammered. The Chinese had sunken five submarines in the last three weeks in the South Pacific. “I can transfer three subs from the South Pacific, but that is about it. I only have seven operational attack submarines in the Pacific; I’ve lost twelve subs in the last three months, five in the last three weeks. I can move three of our cruise missile subs, but with the laser defense systems that they have, I am not convinced they will be very effective. Right now they are causing havoc, hitting their shipping lanes, which of course are less protected than their carrier fleets.”
Knowing he needed to offer more, Admiral Juliano decided this meeting was a good time to bring everyone up to date on a secret navy initiative to reclaim the waters of the Pacific. Taking a deep breath before continuing, Admiral Juliano explained, “There is a new weapon that we have been developing for some time that we believe could be a game changer. It’s our new Swordfish Underwater Drone or SUD. It’s going to be the first of what we hope to be many UDs we are currently developing—”
The President interjected to ask, “—Is this something that can or will be able to deployed in the next thirty days?”
“Yes, Mr. President. We have two of them completed; one of them just completed its test trial and is currently being moved to Anchorage as we speak.”
“I think I was briefed about this when it was still a concept. Can you bring us up to speed on this Admiral Juliano?” asked the Secretary of Defense.
Juliano opened a file on his tablet and began to play several test videos and demos of how the new weapon would work. “Essentially, the SUD is an underwater Reaper Drone. It has a speed of 70 knots, a depth of 2,000 meters, and an unlimited range. It carries eight of our new advanced anti-ship torpedoes.”
The President raised his hand for the Admiral to pause for a second and interpolated, “Tell me more about these anti-ship torpedoes and how they are different than the ones we are currently using on our submarines.”
Knowing the President might ask this, Admiral Juliano pulled up the dimensions of the current torpedoes and the new torpedoes. “As you can see, the newer torpedoes are much smaller, about 1/3 the size of the current torpedoes, but they are significantly faster and have a much longer range. The newer torpedoes have a 60-mile range giving the attacking submarine, or in this case SUD, a much higher survival rate. The newer torpedo uses a new detonation chemical component which makes the torpedo three times as explosive. It also uses a much newer AI targeting software, so once the torpedo is launched, it has the approximate GPS and depth of the target it was fired at and proceeds towards it without an active sonar. Once the torpedo gets within two miles of the target’s last known position, it activates its sonar, but at that range, it’s too late for the target to evade.”
“This new torpedo sounds amazing,” the President said. “So, how are we going to make use of it now?” asked the President, eager to find a way to employ it quickly.
“We still have a few bugs to work out in the new torpedo. Some of them have been failing to detonate on impact; we are not 100 % sure what is causing the failure, but we hope to have it worked out over the next few months. As to why they are not on our current subs, presently the torpedo does not fit on them. Our new submarines being built going forward are going to use the newer torpedo, which we are calling the Hammerhead. The SUDs will also use the Hammerhead, and so will our anti-submarine helicopters and aircraft starting at the end of the month. We presently only have a small stockpile, and they have been allocated for the two SUDs that we have,” the Admiral said, while going over the inventory numbers and the projected monthly delivery numbers from the factory.
“How soon could we retrofit our existing fleet of submarines to use them?” asked General Branson.
“We are already working on that right now; the older Los Angeles attack submarines that we are taking out of mothball are having their torpedo tubes retrofitted to use the Hammerheads while they are in dry docks getting the rest of their upgrades completed. The timing of this works out well because they needed to be in dry dock to have their sound proofing upgraded, along with their propeller screws. We anticipate having eight of them ready for service starting in June and will have eight more a month coming into service until all forty-four have been brought out of mothball,” the Admiral said with a smile.
The President smiled from ear to ear and said, “Admiral this is great news. Absolutely wonderful. How many of the new SUDs are going to be coming online per month as well?”
“We have the first two right now; we are supposed to receive a total of eighty of them over the next three years. I am working with the contracting company to expedite them, but some of the materials needed for them are also being heavily used by the Pershings.”
General Branson jumped in to say, “We will have to stick to that timeline then Admiral. The Pershings are far too important right now to cut back on their production. The Chinese and Russians both have a new MBT coming online soon that we have not seen yet.”
“I have to agree with the general on this one Admiral; we will have to stick to the timeline the manufacturer is giving you then. I’m not ready to shift resources away from the Pershings. We are still working on solving the material problem,” The President concurred.
The Admiral paused for a moment, not sure if he should bring up the following topic or not. “I had heard from one of my science advisors that some of the rare materials that we use in the new armor for the Pershings can actually be found on the Moon in the asteroids. If that is the case, then is there any way we can collectively find a way to acquire more of it? I mean, if this material is so rare and yet so vital to our military equipment, how can we obtain more of it so we can ramp up our production?” asked Juliano, hoping he didn’t sound crazy.
The President was actually surprised to hear the Admiral ask this question, and clearly wanted to discuss this more, but his own science advisor was not in the room to facilitate that discussion. “You bring up a good point. I believe we will have to have that discussion at a later date when I can bring in the chief scientist who is leading that effort presently. Professor Rickenbacker is at one of our other facilities right now.”