Cyber Warfare and the New World Order

On my Mark, Engage

Captain Hughes had guided the USS Utah as close to the path of the JDF transports as possible without giving away his position. Their goal was to fire a spread of torpedoes at the transports and get a shot off at the Japanese cruiser guarding them. Those transports were bringing troops, tanks and other material to support their ground forces in LA; if the Utah could send a few of them to the bottom, then maybe they could give the ground forces a better fighting chance of repulsing the invasion.

Looking at his XO, Captain Hughes said, “Commander Mitcham, do we have a firing solution yet on those ships?”

Receiving a nod from his weapons officer, Commander Mitcham replied, “Sir, we have four torpedoes targeting the freighters, one each. The other two are targeted at the guided missile cruiser escorting them. We are ready to fire when you give the order,” he said nervously.

The tension in the air was immense; once they fired their weapons, the Japanese would know where they were. Their sonar technicians had already detected two enemy submarines in the area, in addition to the five destroyers with the Japanese fleet and the rest of their anti-submarine helicopters. The chances of them surviving this attack were slim, and they all knew it. They also knew they had a duty to try and stop the enemy troops from landing in America, if at all possible.

Looking at the men and women manning the Con, the captain could see fear in their eyes, but also anger and determination to avenge their fallen brethren. Captain Hughes steeled his own nerves and ordered, “Fire all tubes!”

“Tubes one through six are firing! One, two, three, four, five, six. All tubes fired. Torpedoes are tracking their targets,” one of the sailors said as he read off the times to impact.

Without missing a beat, the Captain yelled, “Chief of the Boat, take us down to five hundred feet! Launch the decoy now and get us out of here!”

As the Utah began to dive, they deployed their submarine decoy, which was essentially a large torpedo that was designed to sound just like the Utah at a higher rate of speed. This would make it appear to the enemy sonar operators that the Utah was trying to flee the area. If all went well, they would go after and attack the decoy and the Utah would be able to slip away to fight another day.

Within a minute, several enemy torpedoes were in the water heading towards the decoy. Just as the men of the Utah thought they might have escaped, a Chinese submarine who had been monitoring the area spotted the Utah as she descended to below 500 feet. The Chinese sub was less than 5,000 meters away from the Utah when they fired two torpedoes at nearly point blank range. The Utah was still reloading her own torpedo tubes, so they were unable to fire back. Within two minutes, the Chinese torpedoes zeroed in on their mark and struck the Utah, imploding her hull and killing everyone on board.