Battlefield Korea

Trepidation

Angela Peterson had been a Chinese intelligence analyst at the DIA for the past ten years. She joined the DIA after spending her first four years after college working for Lockheed Martin in their aircraft development department. During her time at the DIA, she had seen China increase funding to the PLA at an alarming rate. The introduction of the Chinese J-20, which strongly resembled the American F-22, had caused a lot of people to question if they had obtained the designs of the F-22 and just copied the blueprints.

When China invaded Vietnam, her group observed a series of weapons the Chinese were testing and became quite concerned. Of particular trepidation was the introduction of more advanced versions of the YJ-62 anti-ship cruise missile and the CJ-10 land attack cruise missile; both of these new missiles could cause considerable problems to the US and the allies in the Pacific. The YJ-18 long-range anti-ship cruise missile had a range of 140–340 miles, and could carry a 660 lbs. warhead at an attack speed of between Mach 2.5 to Mach 3 when it began its terminal approach. The cruise missile could also maneuver and evade anti-missile interceptors, which made it significantly deadlier than previous models.

As Angela and her team considered all the implications of these new missiles, they realized that this would push out the distance that the allied carriers needed to be from the shore to keep them out of range of the cruise missiles. This would also bring the carriers out to a point where the aircraft on board would not be as effective, since they would have very limited time over a target before they ran out of fuel. Her group collected all of the applicable data and wrote up their findings.

When the tier one PLA frontline units began to withdraw from Vietnam, another analyst on her team became alarmed.

“Hey, Angela,” said her co-worker Pamela as she rolled over to her cubicle on her desk chair, “The war in Vietnam has not been fully won yet, so why are they pulling their frontline troops out before the job is done?” she asked.

The hair on Angela’s arms suddenly stood up straight. “That just doesn’t seem right,” she thought suspiciously.

“Let’s check through everything else, too,” said Angela, and the two of them began pouring through reams of raw data looking for the one fact that would explain it all.

A couple of hours later, while pouring through the most recent satellite imagery, Angela suddenly called out, “Pamela, come here and check out my screens. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

After staring at the screens for a moment, Pamela exclaimed, “My God-all of the Yuan-class diesel submarines have left their ports. They are all headed in the direction of the US Fleet…”