Cyber Warfare and the New World Order

In the Middle of the Night

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Hata was asleep with his wife when a knock at the door woke him out of his slumber. As he fumbled with the covers and placed his feet on the floor, he reached for a robe and slowly walked to the door just as the knocking started again. “Shhh — you are going to wake my wife. What is so urgent that it could not wait until morning?” PM Hata asked the military officer standing in front of his bedroom door.

“Sir, I was told by Admiral Hito to come and get you. He said to tell you there has been a major naval engagement with the Americans in the Pacific,” the officer muttered. He seemed to be completely out of breath.

“Perhaps if the officer hurried that much to see me, the situation is truly serious,” thought the Prime Minister.

“Tell the admiral I will be over shortly,” Hata responded aloud. “I am going to get dressed,” he said, and he closed the door, not waiting for a reply.

Twenty minutes later, PM Hata walked into the operations center in the bowels of the PM’s offices and saw several military officers talking animatedly around a holographic map while others were reviewing several different drone feeds. The room looked every bit the military headquarters it had turned into these past few weeks since the start of the war with America.

Up to this point, the invasion had been proceeding better than expected. Their forces in Los Angeles had done a marvelous job fighting the American Marines, though it did appear the war was about to take a turn for the worse as more and more American soldiers continued to pour into California from other areas of America. Their Special Forces raids in the heart of America via the airlines had also been yielding great results. They had already destroyed several critical rail bridges and tunnels in the cities surrounding the airports where a number of operatives had gotten out through security. The attacks against the transportation infrastructure of America were going to have a long-term effect on the Americans’ ability to defend themselves. However, the optimism of the situation was about to change.

Admiral Hito looked up and saw the PM had finally arrived. “PM, please, if you will come this way. We need to discuss the recent naval battle,” he said urgently.

As the PM walked towards the Admiral, he saw the look of sheer anxiety on the faces of many of the military officers. “What is so important that it could not wait until morning?” demanded Hata, clearly not happy with having been woken up in the middle of the night.

“Prime Minister, there was a major naval battle between our forces and the Americans off the Pacific coast of Mexico. The Americans had moved their new battle group called Carrier Strike Group 12, along with their newest battleships and supercarriers to the Pacific several days ago. Three hours ago, the fleets came into range of each other and the battle started,” began the Admiral.

“Near as I can tell Admiral, this battle was a success, we sunk nine American warships,” shot back the PM, not sure why his officers were acting like this was some sort of disaster.

“Sir, there is more. Following our initial attack and success against the Americans, they launched their own assault using their newest super weapons. We had no idea they had these types of weapons, and they were incredibly deadly. They destroyed three of our five carriers and both of our battleships, along with nearly our entire support fleet. What is left of the fleet has retreated to Hawaii.” As the Admiral spoke, he hung his head low, not making eye contact with the PM.

PM Hata began to fill with rage and anger. He had been assured by the PLAN and his own Admirals that the American navy would be defeated, that their navy no longer posed a serious threat if they were to join the Chinese in this war. Now most of their fleet had been destroyed in just one engagement with the Americans… this was unacceptable.

Barely able to contain his ire, the PM yelled, “What happened?!” Then he softened his voice and hissed, “Start from the beginning, Admiral.”

The Admiral stiffened his back and looked the PM in the eyes as he relayed the sequence of the battle and what led to their defeat. “The Americans hacked into our computer systems on the carriers and our battleships. They took the ships’ power systems offline; then they began to disable specific combat systems like the point defense weapon systems. In the battleships, they disabled the railgun turrets. By the time our computer specialist could regain control of the power system and some of the defenses, the battle was well underway and the Americans were already attacking them. The best they could do was turn the fleet towards Hawaii and move as fast as they could to get away from the American guns.”

He pulled up some drone footage to show the PM. “They hit us with two new weapons we were not prepared for. One was their railgun turrets — we have them on our battleships as well, but the American railguns were shooting projectiles significantly larger than anything we thought possible; they also had a range of more than 120 kilometers, which was way beyond what we thought possible. Next, they hit the Chinese ships (and ours) with a pulse beam laser. Here is a video of the laser hitting a Chinese carrier; you can see how it only hits the ship for about five seconds, but cut a hole more than ten meters deep and two meters in diameter. It devastated the ship.”

“As our ships began to turn towards Hawaii, the American fighter drones began to pounce on our ships from the sky. Our support ships luckily did not have their systems hacked, so they were able to shoot down many of the drones, but not before they destroyed a large portion of our support fleet and three of our five carriers.”

PM Hata stood there in silence for a couple of minutes watching the drone feeds and thinking to himself, “If the Americans could do this to our fleet, how much more will they be able to do when the rest of their navy on the East Coast is ready? I fear I have led Japan down the road to ruin.”

“Admiral, this battle has been clearly lost; I need time to think about what this all means and what our next steps are. I am going to go get some food and talk with the Foreign Minister. We will both return to this room in three hours, and I would like a briefing on what the military heads’ recommendations are.” The PM was in a state of shock and resignation as he looked at the military officers standing around him. He knew he should say something inspiring at that moment, but he could not think of anything to say, so he turned around and left the room as he dialed the phone number to his foreign ministers.

Admiral Kawano could not believe he had lost 9,600 sailors in the span of thirty-five minutes. What had been the pride of the Japanese navy was now reduced to two supercarriers and a handful of escort ships. The PLAN had suffered a similar loss in capital ships. His officers were also still in a state of shock at what just happened; they continued pouring over the drone images of the attack to try and determine how this all happened. He knew the Americans had been working on pulse beam lasers and heavier railguns, but had no idea they had moved from experimenting with them to full implementation of them on their next generation warships. If they did not find a way to counter this, then they were going to be in some serious trouble.

What troubled him more was that all the transports were still heading to the American ports. With his naval force unable to protect those ships, a lot of men were going to die before they ever set foot on American soil.

Hours later, Prime Minister Hata and his Foreign Minister Hirohita walked into the Command Center and made their way over to a corner in the room where the briefing table was. Several officers were setting up equipment near the table, while another aid was filling the glasses on the table with water and getting cups ready for tea.

Admiral Hito directed the officers around him to head to the table so they could begin the briefing. Fortunately, they had found some valuable information intermixed with the drone feeds and they were eager to share it. As everyone sat down, Admiral Hito cleared his throat and began to speak to the group. “PM, Foreign Minister, after careful review of the drone feeds of the battle, we have found some useful intelligence that may help us to defeat the advanced American warships. During the battle, our forces and the PLAN carried out what we in the navy call a missile swarm attack. Our ships and aircraft fired a series of waves of anti-ship cruise missiles at the American fleet. The American support ships and their capital ships did manage to destroy most of them, but a small percentage did still get through. During our attack, we managed to destroy three Zumwalt destroyers, four guided missile frigates and one heavy cruiser. That only leaves the carrier fleet with two of their older missile destroyers, three frigates and two heavy missile cruisers to assist their two battleships and three supercarriers.” The Admiral seemed to be boasting about the damage they had inflicted.

The PM seemed puzzled by the Admiral and other officers’ excitement and asked, “I commend our forces in destroying these American warships, but it sounds as if most of their fleet and their capital ships are still intact. What am I missing?”

Seeing that the PM and the Foreign Minister had not grasped the significance of what they had accomplished, the Admiral explained, “Sir, the American capital ships are powerful, but now they are vulnerable to a missile swarm attack. We launched 2,100 anti-ship cruise missiles at them. During that engagement, only 68 of our missiles got through to cause damage, but even those small numbers sank half of their missile screening defense. If we can launch another missile swarm of this magnitude or greater, there is a high likelihood that we can sink their fleet.” The Admiral’s face glowed with a genuine smile.

PM Hata’s face relaxed out of its permanent frown for the first time that day as he finally realized what his officers were saying. Yes, they had just suffered a stinging defeat, but they had also discovered a way to sink this new and powerful fleet. “Admiral, how soon until we can launch another swarm attack like this?”

After calculating in his head for a moment, the Admiral responded, “Sir, we are moving as many anti-ship cruise missiles as we can to Hawaii right now. Our ships that are left can carry and launch 810 missiles; our drones can launch another 340. We believe the Chinese ships can launch a combined 940 missiles. I have a meeting with the PLAN Admiral in two hours to discuss our findings with them. I would like to believe we can coordinate a new attack against the Americans within the next couple of days.”

Over the next two days, the Japanese and Chinese naval forces would work feverishly to bring as many anti-ship cruise missiles to Hawaii as possible. They also moved any available ships and support aircraft that were still available as well. Despite the tremendous loss, the mood of the commanders was now one of optimism.