Then, as shards of floating metal hid the huddled and slowed landing craft from electronic targeting, a shell splashed into the water. The convoy slipped northwest at absurdly slow speeds for maritime assault vessels, but then the next round missed. Then another, and yet another.
He glanced at a tactical display and confirmed his suspicion. His ship’s electronic sensory measures suite detected electromagnetic energy from a Philippine C-295 airborne early warning and control aircraft that circled beyond the range of his surface-to-air missiles.
Until the rounds landed, the distant airborne radar energy had meant nothing. But as the picture cleared, he realized that the aircraft provided targeting data for the railgun, and as the projectiles started to miss their targets, he realized that chaff disrupted the radar energy, degrading the targeting data.
“Chaff works, sir!” he said. “They can’t guide the projectiles if they can’t get radar return on our ships!”
“Now what, Wong?” Zhang asked.
“Have the landing craft continue to make best speed to the frigate,” he said. “Order all other vessels to escape northwest under their own chaff.”
“Your idea had better work!” Zhang said.
“It’s our only hope, sir. We know the railgun projectiles are arriving from greater than forty degrees of elevation. We’re near the edge of the weapon’s maximum range.”
“Very well,” Zhang said. “I will give the order to evade.”
As the diverted and battered landing force escaped northwest, a frigate sprinted to intercept them and offer its greater supply of metallic cloud coverage.
The vessels took turns popping aluminum shards, prolonging their collected protective coverage, but as ships designed for minimal combat at sea, they carried few canisters and ran out. Their final chaff cloud draped the water with metallic slivers, exposing them to the incoming projectiles.
As Wong’s contentment of having protected the landing force ebbed with the exhaustion of chaff canisters, a railgun shell sliced through a fuel tank, setting another vessel ablaze. The fire, combined with the collection of harsh puncture wounds, sent all survivors overboard.
Rounds continued to pelt their targets. As he began to give up hope that the landing craft would reach the frigate’s chaff coverage, his operations officer hailed him.
“Sir! We may have a useful jamming frequency. We’re attempting jamming now.”
“Excellent! What frequency?”
“Military Global Positioning Satellite, sir. There’s frequency hopping, but I believe we can jam enough frequencies to disrupt the targeting.”
“Do it!”
“Already in progress, sir!”
Despite no chaff cover, the next shell missed. Then the next. Given the ninety-second flight time of each projectile and the five-second spacing between them, only three of the next eighteen rounds impaled landing craft. Wong considered the hits to be random luck as his ship jammed the incoming guidance data.
Then the barrage ceased, as the assailants adjusted to Wong’s active electronic countermeasure.
“Apparently, our attackers have realized that we have found a defense,” Wong said. “Excellent work down there.”
As his operations officer responded, he heard cautious and subdued cheers from the operations center deep within his destroyer.
“Thank you, sir. But we’re not out of trouble yet. Whoever is attacking us is already thinking of a way around our chaff and jamming. And our chaff won’t last forever.”
“That’s an astute observation,” Wong said. “Railguns can hold huge magazines of shells, since they are cheap and small. Our chaff won’t last forever, but the incoming rounds will.”
“I’m afraid I agree, sir.”
“Then we must take aggressive action. In fact, I have an idea.”
He hailed his task force commander.
“Sir, I believe we can destroy that railgun.”
“Really?” Zhang said. “How can you be so sure of yourself?”
“Sir, I believe that the Philippines have performed a strategic blunder. Our Shang-class submarine is impervious to the railgun and can defeat the Pilar.”
“Have you forgotten that there’s a hostile submarine out there? Or is that perhaps your intent — to have a nuclear submarine handle your personal vendetta against the Razak while attacking the frigate?”
“No, sir. I’m focused on the railgun now. Thitu is unreachable while the railgun is operational. We must all continue evading northwest while our submarine sinks the Pilar.”
“It will disappoint you then,” Zhang said, “to learn that I have just received satellite photographs of the gun that just attacked us. It is not, as you brilliantly surmised, the Pilar. It is instead a newly installed concrete-armored stronghold placed atop the Second Thomas Shoal.”
The report hit him like a punch in the stomach. Without needing to see the picture, he realized that a torpedo would be useless against his assailant. If the Philippine military had gone to the trouble to mount a railgun on a shoal, they would have been sure to strengthen it with reinforced concrete.
Like airdropped bombs that bounced off German submarine bunkers in World War II, a torpedo exploding next to — but not underneath — a concrete edifice would deliver at best a glancing blow, and that was if the weapon could pass above the shoals and through wiring or netting that was sure to surround the structure.
“Does the stronghold appear vulnerable to submarine-launched missiles?” he asked.
“You tell me. I’m transmitting the picture to you now.”
The night vision satellite image showed a huge block of blackness. Annotations by intelligence analysts called out what little his countrymen knew of the new threat, but they suggested concrete surrounding all sides.
“No, sir. Submarine-launched missiles may have an effect, but I wouldn’t expect to inflict meaningful damage on that structure without landing a large salvo of missiles or naval bombardment.”
“What about air power?”
“It’s close to Philippine airspace, and they have two new squadrons of respectable Korean-designed TA-50 fighter aircraft. I also expect that the railguns themselves can attack air targets.”
“That’s not a recommendation, Wong.”
He clenched his jaw and then continued.
“If air power is available, sir, we would need bunker busters to make a difference. But I’m sure they were smart enough to include anti-air defenses as part of the structure to mitigate any air attack we could launch. So it would need to be a large-scale air assault, but I expect it would succeed.”
“Other than running away and hoping that a submarine or squadron of bombers solves the problem, what do you plan to do about it?”
He wanted to keep command of the Chengdu, he wanted to find the Razak, and he wanted to destroy the railgun. He believed that he could accomplish all three goals with one new mission.
“Sir, the Philippine forces on that shoal surprised us with new technology, but I’ve already found two countermeasures with chaff and jamming. Let me take the surface combatants and the Shang and launch an attack on the structure on the Second Thomas Shoal.”
“Just a subset of this task force? Against a railgun?”
“The time to take this on is now. When else will our nation have the guns of a destroyer and two frigates this close to the railgun? When else will the Razak likely be working with the Philippine forces and ripe for hunting by a Shang-class submarine and five surface ships capable of anti-submarine warfare?”
“So you consider yourself a hero?”