Battlefield China

Chapter 1 Winds of Change

“Here’s your change,” the cafeteria cashier said to Katelyn Mackie, the President’s Chief Cyberwarfare Advisor.

“Thank you,” she replied, swiftly shoving the coins into her wallet. Then she grabbed her morning cup of joe and bagel with cream cheese. Had Katelyn not been in such a hurry to get to work, she probably would have stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts for her staple macchiato and veggie and egg white sandwich.

Walking down the hall away from the cafeteria, she swiped her access card, which let her into the secured side of the building. After a couple of minutes of wandering down a hallway that was surprisingly crowded for that hour of the morning, she eventually reached the elevator bank in the center of the cavernous building. Rather than hitting a button to travel to one of the various floors like the others around her, she walked past the gaggle of government workers and sauntered up to a door being guarded by two United States Marines.

She smiled as she saw the familiar faces. One of the Marines at the door had lost a leg during the first days of the war in Korea. The government had issued him a prosthetic limb and sent him right back to work — this time guarding the nation’s utmost secrets.

“Good morning, Corporal Daniels, Lance Corporal Tips,” she said cheerfully.

“Good morning, Ma’am. Got your breakfast and a new haircut, I see,” replied Corporal Daniels. He had a mischievous look that almost seemed to say that if they’d met at a bar, he might ask her out.

“Come on, Corporal, you know the world runs on caffeine and adrenaline,” she said lightheartedly, eliciting a laugh and nods from the two sentinels. Katelyn presented her NSA credentials for them to read and then ran her coffee and brown-bagged bagel through the security scanner. She placed her JWICS-capable Blackberry in one of the locking metal phone boxes next to the guards and smiled as she walked through the scanner.

Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, the Marines returned her smile and let her pass. She then entered an access code into a keypad, which turned on the two biometric verification devices next to the door. She placed her right hand on the flat panel, which quickly lit up and carried out a scan of her five fingers and her palm, verifying the match. Seconds later, the iris scanner just above the panel turned on. She leaned in and looked directly at the soft blue light. Moments later, there was a soft beep and a hiss as the locked door popped open, allowing her to enter the nerve center of a very secretive office space tucked away inside the building.

As she walked toward her private office, adjacent to the operations floor, she was greeted by the duty officer and a few of her colleagues.

One of her male counterparts sidled up to her as he approached her office. “New haircut — you have a new boyfriend I should know about?” he asked playfully, an eager smile on his face.

Katelyn shot him a disapproving look. “No, Tyler. I just wanted to change things up. I’m visiting the White House a lot more lately, and I want to make sure I look professional and presentable in case I’m asked to speak to anyone outside of the National Security Council.”

Tyler held his hands up in mock surrender. “OK, OK. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool with me.”

Sitting down in her chair, she immediately started to log in to her numerous computer terminals, emails and accounts. Tyler plopped down in the chair across from her desk.

“Seeing that you’re still here, I presume you have something important you needed to talk to me about?” she asked, continuing to type her passwords into one system after another.

“You did get my text message, right?” he asked, his left eyebrow raised quizzically.

“You mean the message you sent me at 1:09 a.m.? Yeah, I saw it. That’s why I’m here thirty minutes early.”

“It’s happening,” he said. “It’s finally happening, Kate.”

“Lightning Wing?” she asked, swiveling her chair around to face him.

“Yeah,” Tyler answered. “Our source in the PLA Air Force sent a coded message an hour before I sent you that text. He didn’t know exactly when, but he said it was happening and soon.”

“Did you and the rest of the team make sure everything on our end is set? That we’re ready when this happens? I need to know we’re prepared before I call the White House,” she said cautiously. She hoped everything was going to work out.

Tyler nodded. “I double-checked the code myself. It’s ready to go. Once they start things, they’ll have no way of knowing we’re mirroring everything. If they ever did find out, they’d have to replace every drone to completely get rid of the firmware in them — not an easy task.”

Katelyn leaned back in her chair, looking nervously at the ceiling. What they were about to do could totally screw up the economy, but it would probably win the war. “God, I hope we’re not making a huge mistake,” she reflected.

Katelyn took a deep breath and let it out. “OK,” she said. “Inform the Director that it’s happening, so the agency can begin to prepare for it. I need to let the National Security Advisor know.”

With the decision made, Tyler stood and exited her office, leaving Katelyn to inform her own masters in D.C.

She turned her SECRET Tandberg on, which would provide her a secured video connection, and dialed Tom McMillan’s line, hoping to catch him in his office. It rang three times. Then the screen opened up and she saw Tom sitting in his chair behind a stack of folders.

“Good morning, Katelyn. I suspect you’re about to give me some bad news, calling me first thing in the morning like this,” he remarked, getting up from his desk to close his office door before sitting back down.

She sighed. “I’m afraid so. You remember during the summer, we provided you with a brief about a Chinese operation called Lightning Wind? The one that entailed the use of those new UAVs and the disabling of the Allies’ commercial satellites?”

Tom thought for a moment, then his entire demeanor changed. “I thought you guys said the Chinese would probably not tamper with the global commercial satellite systems. Are you saying something has changed?”

She nodded. “We received a coded message from our source. He told us they’re moving forward with the entire plan, and soon.”

Tom looked concerned. He turned away from her and looked at something on the wall for a few seconds, obviously collecting his thoughts. “This is going to change everything. I need you here to brief the President. I’m sending a helicopter to pick you up. We don’t have time to waste with you stuck in the morning commute. Be ready to meet your ride at the helipad in ten minutes,” he ordered. Then he disconnected the call without saying goodbye.

Katelyn was not offended by the abrupt ending. She knew McMillan had to get the President’s schedule cleared, and a lot of other people needed to be brought up to speed on what was about to happen.

President Wally Foss was sitting outside on the upper portico of the White House, which overlooked the front lawn and the city. The morning rush hour was in full swing, complete with the periodic honking of horns, the bumper-to-bumper traffic, and the sidewalks bustling with people heading to their places of work.

He reached down and grabbed another slice of duck bacon as he thumbed through the morning headlines on his tablet. He didn’t have time to read all the articles, but he liked to get caught up on the initial morning bullet points to get a sense of where things stood with the public. He’d have his morning intelligence brief in another half hour, and that would get him up to speed on the behind-the-scenes stuff the public seldom knew about.

Just as Foss polished off his second piece of duck bacon, Josh Morgan, his Chief of Staff, opened the door to the portico and walked up to him. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. President,” he said, “but an urgent matter has come up that you need to address.”

Foss looked up and examined his friend’s face, which registered a mix of anxiety and anger. This was obviously serious. The President scooped up a quick mouthful of eggs and grabbed the last piece of bacon before following him down to the working level of the White House.

They skipped going to the Oval and went straight to the Presidential Emergency Operation Center, deep underground. The PEOC had essentially become Foss’s war room after the President had sought to separate the duties of the war and domestic affairs by holding the meetings for each in separate rooms on different levels of the White House.

When Foss entered the room, Tom McMillan cleared his throat, silencing everyone at the table. “Katelyn should be here momentarily, Mr. President, but I can go ahead and get you up to speed on what’s happening.”

Foss nodded and reached for the pen sitting next to the pad of paper in front of him. “OK,” he answered. “Let’s get going, then, but don’t get too far ahead of Kate. I suspect this is going to be more of her show once she arrives.”

Tom nodded. “This past summer, we briefed President Gates about a secret Chinese Air Force program forming up at that time that could radically impact the landscape of the war. The PLA had developed several new UAVs — drones that will most certainly will change the face of modern warfare.”

The tension in the room thickened. Foss and the others shifted in their seats a bit, but everyone held their tongues for the moment.

“Their new UAV weapon platforms appear to be at least a decade ahead of ours. Each design has a specific mechanism for countering our defenses.”

Tom brought up an image of a very sleek-looking fighter drone. “This image was captured and smuggled out of China at great expense. It’s the first of the UAVs, though there appear to be two versions of it. It’s called the Long Huo, or Dragon’s Fire. DARPA has been developing a similar capability with Raytheon and General Dynamics for nearly fifteen years. It’s a hunter-killer drone — in many ways, it’s similar to our Reaper drone or the Russians’ Zhukov, but these are much more advanced.”

He pulled up some more detailed schematics of the drone to display on the screen. “The key difference is that, unlike other UAVs, this one operates much like a fighter plane. Without a pilot, the PLA was able to eliminate a lot of safety and redundancy systems a manned aircraft would naturally have, which means this aircraft can outfly and outmaneuver anything we’ve ever built. The UAV is large, almost the size of an F-16, with a wingspan of nine meters. It’s built like a fighter plane, and in reality, it is a fighter plane. It’s jet-powered, with a flight range of 550 kilometers fully loaded and a ferry range of 3,900 kilometers.

“As I said earlier, there are two versions of this UAV. The first image I just showed you was the fighter version. On each wingtip is an air-to-air missile, and underneath the UAV is an internal weapons bay that we believe can hold either six or eight additional air-to-air missiles. Our source was not able to get us the full schematics of the aircraft, only parts of it.

“I don’t have much further information to give other than what I’ve just shown you. There’s a small group at DARPA who can provide more detailed specifics. What I can share are the few specs we have on the ground-attack version of this beast.”

He pulled up another image of a similar UAV — though the shape was slightly different than the fighter version, more squatted with wider wings. “The ground version isn’t nearly as aerodynamic as its sister, and from what DARPA’s been able to extrapolate from the information on it, it’s also a bit slower. They estimate its speed to be around 720 kilometers per hour, with a flight range of between 350 and 400 kilometers when fully loaded. We have no idea if the UAV is armored, or what its full payload capacity is. We do know we’ve spotted it once or twice in use in Vietnam, but we were never able to get any video or pictures of it. We only knew about it from stories some of our ground assets were able to relay to us. We’re still learning a lot about this UAV. Again, DARPA can probably provide more information on it than I can.”

The Air Force Chief of Staff jumped in. “Do we know where this UAV is being constructed? Perhaps we can try to target where they’re building them and reduce the likelihood of seeing any sort of swarm impacting us on the battlefield.”

Admiral Meyers took this question for Tom. “I spoke with the same people at DARPA Tom has been consulting with, along with our guys at NSA and DIA. They told us a large part of the Chinese aerospace industry was actually located in Shenyang, the city we nuked during the opening hours of the Korean War. Last we heard, most of the aerospace industry had been moved down to the city of Guangzhou and the surrounding area. It’s pretty heavily defended, and just far enough inland that it would require a large-scale ground invasion for us to attack them there.”

The President chewed on that for a moment. “If this is where the Chinese are building their new superweapon, then perhaps it’s where we need to focus our efforts,” he asserted, pausing to let out a deep breath before he turned back to his generals. “Look, I know President Gates was all for invading the Chinese mainland and bringing the fight to the enemy, but after the most recent Chinese raid on our B-2 and B-1 bomber bases, I’d say they nearly knocked our strategic bombing ability out of consideration. We’ve lost 65 % of our B-2s since the start of the war and nearly 50 % of our B-1s. We’re burning through cruise missiles faster than we can make them.”

Before the President could continue, the outer door to the PEOC opened and Katelyn Mackie walked in. The room grew silent as she headed to her seat, next to McMillan’s. “Sorry I’m late. My ride from Fort Meade was a few minutes behind schedule,” she said, looking at the slide McMillan had just finished briefing. She immediately knew from the looks on everyone’s faces that she had just interrupted an important discussion, so she stayed silent, waiting to be called on next.

The President commented, “All I’m saying is that, in light of what Tom’s been discussing and what I’m sure Katelyn is going to bring up, I just have some serious reservations about the upcoming offensives, that’s all.” He gestured for the cyberwarfare advisor to take the floor. “Please, Katelyn, bring us up to speed. I can continue my discussion with the generals later. Besides, I have a feeling what you’re about to tell us is going to change a few plans we already had in the works,” the President said with a slight wink. He liked Katelyn; she was incredibly smart, and somehow wise for someone so young. She was an out-of-the-box thinker, and he knew Gates had thought she would be one of the key people in helping the US defeat the Chinese.

“Yes, Mr. President. Again, sorry for my tardiness,” Katelyn said. She pulled her NSA-issued laptop out of her small carrying bag and swiftly hooked it up to the overhead projector. “If I may, Mr. President, I want to use some illustrations and videos to demonstrate the next UAVs and our plans for countering them. Before we go down this road, I want to take a moment to let you know that as grave as these new weapons sound, we do have a plan in place to respond to them.”

While the President seemed skeptical, she could hear several of her counterparts breathe a sigh of relief. She smiled. It was nice to have such a vote of confidence in her abilities. Of course, her programs had already wreaked havoc in Russia, and the attack on the Indian transportation sector had sent that country’s economy into a tailspin. Her actions might very well be the impetus for the Indians to end the conflict with the Allies.

She continued, “At the beginning of the war with Russia and China, all sides went after each other’s military and spy satellites. They also went after the global GPS system with a DDoS attack, as you’ll recall, though that issue has largely been fixed. Within a week, the major global powers established a détente to leave the civilian satellite infrastructure alone; the interruption in the GPS system caused such an immense worldwide disruption that I think even the Russians and Chinese had to face how heavily dependent they had become on these systems. Once all parties realized that everything from transportation to logistics to weather had been affected, a compromise was put in place, and the agreement still stands today.

“All sides have done their best to move critical aspects of communications networks and other military functions onto the civilian satellite grid, surreptitiously coopting control of many of the satellites in certain cases. Everyone knew this was going on, so the Chinese went to work on devising a way around it. They couldn’t wipe out the civilian satellite grid without wiping out their own grid, so they found a way to do it without crippling themselves.”

She pulled up the slide of the newest UAV. “This little guy is called the Y’an, which translates to The Eye. The Chinese have been building these giant UAVs to act as a nationwide 5G umbrella to compensate for the inevitable loss of their civilian satellite network. While this new network won’t replace all of the satellites’ functions, it’ll provide them with consistent real-time ground surveillance and high-speed digital data and communications, ensuring their civilian population isn’t left in a data or communications blackout,” Katelyn explained.

The President held up a hand. “Excuse me if you will. What you’re saying is that at this juncture in the war, the Chinese are going to go after the global civilian satellite network in an effort to blind and cripple the Allies right before our major ground invasion?”

All eyes turned to look at her and Tom, who clearly knew more about this than anyone else in the room. Tom tipped his head toward her to take the question. “Yes, Mr. President, that’s what I’m saying,” she responded.

The President snorted. “So, if they can’t win, they’re going to make sure no one else does either,” he said, disgusted that the war was stooping down to a new low. It wasn’t enough to inflict the horrors of war on each other’s militaries, now they wanted to spread that discomfort to as much of the world’s population as possible.

Katelyn quickly brought up another briefing slide. “If I could, Mr. President, there’s more you need to know.”

He signaled for her to go on. He might as well rip the Band-Aid off rather than prolong the inevitable.

“Sir, this is going to be bad, but it’s not completely unexpected. We’ve known this was a possibility for nearly nine months, so we’ve been taking measures to prepare for it. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan was trying to tackle a major data communications problem of keeping the ground forces out on patrol in contact with their bases. The lack of infrastructure and the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan made it nearly impossible for our guys to transmit high volumes of data and maintain steady communications. The DoD came up a solution they termed ‘the last tactical mile,’ which utilized two systems to solve this problem.

“First, they placed 4G communications equipment on static aerostat blimps high above the bases, which provided a twenty-to-thirty-kilometer 4G bubble. They also explored ways of integrating 4G capability into UAVs that could be flown over the ground forces. Ironically, it was Facebook that took the latter program on and really ran with it. Mr. Zuckerberg had plans to leverage this kind of capability to bring Facebook to even the remotest parts of the world.

“When we first caught a whiff of the insidious Chinese plan to cripple the civilian satellite network, we reached out to several technology firms to discuss a plan B. SpaceX, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google all signed on to a classified program we established just six months ago. When the Chinese do begin to destroy the civilian satellite network, we have the ability to deploy aerostat blimps in 300 cities right now. That number will continue to increase by 50 cities a week at our current production scale. While this is still going to leave an enormous gap across the country, it won’t leave us completely blind. We’ve also been working with the broadband providers to be ready to pick up the data slack, which will be huge.

“For the military, SpaceX and Facebook have developed several drones that will be able to stay aloft continuously running on solar energy. That network will be able to provide 5G communications and data capability to our naval, air and ground forces in the war zones.”

She took a deep breath. “Mr. President, while the loss of the civilian satellite network will obviously hurt our economy, this development is actually going to be the key to defeating the Chinese.”

The President’s left eyebrow rose in incredulity. Several others leaned in closer, hanging on her every word.

“If I can, I want to give you a little background on this next piece. It’ll help you understand our plan better. During World War II, the Germans developed the Enigma cipher machine, which at the time was a foolproof communications system — at least until the British Navy was able to capture a German U-boat and seize an intact Enigma and the codebook. Once they had these two components, they were able to essentially read the entire German military communications system for the duration of the war, giving the Allies an enormous leg up.

“In our case, once we became aware of this Chinese program, we inserted a code into the firmware of a critical component used in the Y’an communication UAV. Once the Chinese activate the Y’ans and switch all their communications over from their encrypted satellite and radio systems to the 5G system on the UAVs, we’ll have complete access to their entire communications infrastructure. We’ll be able to see everything they’re transmitting on that network.” Her lips curled up in a devilish smile.

Someone in the room let out a low whistle. The President leaned forward in his chair and a smile spread across his face. “This is huge, Kate. You should’ve led with this. That said, I can’t help but wonder how this is going to impact things here at home. The level of chaos it’s going to cause when the satellite systems begin to go down isn’t something I’m even sure we can monetize, Tom.”

Foss turned to his NSA. “We’re going to have to have an emergency meeting with DHS, Treasury, and Commerce to see how bad this is going to be.”

McMillan scribbled a note on his paper. “Yes, Mr. President. I’ll make the calls as soon as we’re done here.”

Turning to face the SecDef, the President said, “Jim, I think this goes back to my original hesitation about the ground invasion. If we’re going to invade, then perhaps we should focus on going after the factories producing these new UAVs and the Chinese financial enclaves. In light of these new developments, my concerns about a wide-ranging ground war are only increased. What are your thoughts?”

The Secretary of Defense paused, adjusting his tie as he mulled over the options. Finally, he turned to Katelyn. “Ms. Mackie, does your source know for certain that these UAVs are ready to be deployed now? And do we know how many of them are currently ready for use? Lastly, what if the Chinese suddenly decide not to take down the global satellite infrastructure at all but to keep things as they currently are?”

Katelyn pulled up some other information she had on her laptop. “Sir, up to this point, the information our source has provided has been nearly 100 % accurate. He wasn’t able to tell us how many of these fighter UAVs are currently available for use, but clearly, from both the source in Vietnam and our guy, we know it’s real. As to your last question, if the Chinese suddenly develop cold feet about taking down the global satellite network and they opt to not use the Y’an UAVs, then we’ll have to keep fighting them the way we have been. We almost need to hope they take down the satellites, so we can gain access to their military communications systems.”

The SecDef, Katelyn, Tom, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs bantered back and forth for another fifteen minutes while the President listened silently. As they spoke, Foss grew more and more concerned about the current invasion plan. A ground war in mainland China would be messy, no matter how they looked at it.

“OK, people, I think I’ve heard enough,” the President finally asserted. “I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, but we’re going to change our current tactics. Instead of launching diversionary invasions in southern China and an offensive drive on Beijing, I want us to focus on going after Guangdong Province. That will disrupt their aerospace manufacturing base and interrupt their collection of tax revenues.

“Next, I want to go after China’s piggy bank. We need to attack Shanghai and the surrounding area — that will take down their financial and tech sectors in one fell swoop. I was just reading a white paper written by the Institute for the Study of War that emphasized the strategy of depriving the Chinese government of the ability to pay for the war and disturbing the manufacturing base needed to sustain the PLA. I know this kind of throws a wrench into your plans, Jim, but what are your thoughts?” the President asked. He surveyed the faces of his military leaders and tried not to be amused when he observed that most of them were just doing their best not to look irate that their Commander in Chief had just thrown out their yearlong invasion plans.

Jim didn’t say anything for a moment. He put his index fingers together and leaned into them, thinking it all over. “Mr. President, you’re the Commander in Chief,” he finally said. “If you want us to revamp our invasion plans, then that’s what we’ll do. I haven’t read that same white paper, but I believe I know who wrote it — a retired colonel, Kyle Buller, if I’m not mistaken. He had worked many years in the Pentagon’s procurement program and at DARPA. He’s a smart fellow. We hadn’t initially looked at that angle under President Gates since he favored a more direct attack strategy against Beijing, but I can also see the merit in considering the path you just outlined. If I may, would you allow us a few days to give this a good study and see how feasible it would be? We’ve spent a lot of time positioning war stock for the original plan, so I need to evaluate whether we would need to shift most of that war stock around, or if we could still use it in its current positions.”

The President nodded his approval. He knew he couldn’t spring a major change like this on the military without allowing them a chance to look at its viability. “That’s fair enough, Jim. And, yes, it was Kyle Buller who wrote the white paper. I believe it was written maybe four months ago. I’ll give you some time to look into it all, but I’d like an answer within a week. If we’re going to make this change, then we need to do it quickly.”

With that said, the meeting broke up. The various parties went to work on getting the country ready for the eventual loss of satellites and preparing for a possible change in the invasion strategy.