Cyber Warfare and the New World Order

A Man, A Plan, A Canal — Panama!

As the USS New York exited the Panama Canal, the ship moved to join the rest of the battlegroup. The remaining three ships of the group were set to pass through the canal over the next few hours, and would join their fellow sailors as they prepared themselves to meet the joint Chinese and Japanese fleets sailing south from California to meet them. The naval battle that was brewing up along the Pacific coast of Mexico was gearing up to be the largest sea battle between modern naval forces since World War II.

Captain Baker approached Admiral Stonebridge in the Combat Information Center (CIC) to get his attention. “Admiral, we have the latest intelligence on the enemy fleet. The Chinese and JDF are merging their fleets and starting to make their way towards us. With both fleets moving towards each other, we will be in striking range of them with our anti-ship lasers and railguns within three days. Our fighters will be within range of each other in two days.”

Placing his coffee cup down on the table as he looked up at Captain Baker. “How long until we are in range of launching our cruise missiles?” asked the Admiral, wanting to be the one to draw first blood.

Baker smiled before responding, “We will be in range in about eight hours; then it’ll take the cruise missiles close to three hours’ flight time before they hit the fleet.”

Thinking about his strategy for a minute, the Admiral had an epiphany that it might be better if they did not attack first. Maybe they should draw the enemy in closer, let them expend their cruise missiles against his superior defenses, and then cut them apart. “Hmm, on second thought,” he said, “I want to wait to launch the cruise missiles until tomorrow. I want more time for our subs to get in range before we launch them. Then the submarines can launch their attack once the enemy fleet is fully engaged with their own cruise missiles; hopefully this will give us an opportunity to overwhelm them,” Stonebridge said as he pointed at a few sections on the map of where he wanted his ships to be when the attack began.

Captain Baker mulled over this change in strategy for a moment. “Sir, if we launch the cruise missiles tomorrow at 2100 hours, they will arrive around 0100 in the morning. Close to half of their fleet will be asleep; this will also put us in range to use our attack drones. We can also have our aircraft attack at the same time the cruise missiles and submarines are hitting them.” As Captain Baker spoke, he moved a few aircraft, submarine and cruise missile icons around on the map to illustrate his idea.

“The one thing I do not like about this scenario is that we are going to get hit first,” the Admiral said.

“We will, but we also know what direction the missiles are going to come from. We can move our destroyers and cruisers forward to act as a picket screen and have the battleships move in front of us. When we do spot the missile launches on the satellite readouts, we can scramble our fighters to go missile hunting as well.”

Thinking for a minute and taking a long sip of his coffee, the Admiral surveyed the map, trying to calculate how much damage his fleet would possibly sustain. It was hard to determine if it was worth the risk of waiting to let the enemy strike first so that he could launch a three-pronged attack.

“I generally do not like the idea of letting the enemy get the first punch in. That said, our attack against their fleet is going to be a lot more effective if we hit them with all three elements as opposed to using a piecemeal approach. If we are going to do this, then let’s have the fleet move to their battle stations and be ready to repel the attack when it comes. I need to send a message to the Pentagon and let them know what we are going to do. Admiral Juliano said we have to keep them fully appraised of any changes from our original strategy.” Stonebridge was not happy about the thought that others, several thousand miles away from him, could potentially override his tactical decisions.