Cyber Warfare and the New World Order

A Man Named Bucky

After the naval victory off the coast of Baja California, Admiral Stonebridge directed the fleet to move up the coast towards San Diego. While the remaining ships of the enemy fleet retreated to the Hawaiian Islands, Stonebridge wanted to go after the now vulnerable transports and supply ships heading to the Californian coast and disrupt the supply of equipment being offloaded at the ports. Though his objective was to destroy the enemy fleet, the more pressing demand from the Pentagon was to hammer the enemy forces in and around the ports.

Captain Baker was deep in thought when Admiral Stonebridge walked up to him and rudely interrupted his daydreams. Without any sort of small talk, he probed, “Captain, how many aircraft do the New York and Baltimore have available?”

Captain Baker jarred himself back to reality quickly and responded, “We have 12 drones and seven F35s down for maintenance; it will be the better part of a day, maybe two, before they are operational. The Carrier Air Group Commander (CAG) reports having 19 F35s ready for combat, another 36 F38As and 42 F38Bs. Are you wanting to send them ahead of the fleet to engage the enemy transports?” asked the Captain quizzically.

Stonebridge smiled for a second before responding, “Yes. It’s going to be another five more hours before the battleships are in range, and I do not want to waste any cruise missiles on trying to destroy their escorts. We need the cruise missiles for land targets. Have our aircraft take out the escorts, and we’ll let the battleships handle the supply ships.”

Walking over to the coms position, the captain asked one of his officers to signal the captain of the Baltimore that the Admiral needed to talk with him immediately. A few minutes later Captain Bruck, the commander of the Baltimore, came on the video link.

Admiral Stonebridge looked at both of his captains, “Gentlemen, we are not out of danger just yet. The Pentagon has ordered us to interdict the enemy troop transports and equipment ships heading to California before we finish off the enemy fleet. To that end, I want you both to order your remaining aircraft to attack the escort ships guarding the transports heading to San Diego and Los Angeles. As we sail closer to LA, we’ll send a second or third wave if necessary to hit the transports heading to San Francisco. Is that understood?” Stonebridge asked.

“Yes, Sir,” they replied in unison.

Within an hour, the airwing of both carriers was heading towards San Diego and the enemy transports. Commander John Buckley (“Bucky”) was leading his squadron of F35s in the direction of the enemy transports. As they neared their targets, they saw dozens of enemy ships queued up, waiting for their turn to dock at the port and offload their cargo. They also saw half a dozen enemy destroyers and frigates, which immediately began to engage the F38B drones as they began to make their combat runs against the ships. Dozens of anti-ship missiles began to streak away from the attack drones heading towards the enemy destroyers and frigates guarding the fleet.

Missile after missile began to leave the various frigates and destroyers as they tried to intercept the incoming anti-ship missiles and counter-attack the American drones. Shortly after the conflict began, a swarm of Chinese J20s began to gather over San Diego and started to head towards the American fighters. Bucky briefly saw the J20s show up on his radar from the AWACs controller before they disappeared. The J20 was China’s version of the American F22 stealth fighter and was exceptional in combat. Like the American aircraft, it was also a stealth aircraft, only visible when taking off or landing, making it very difficult (although not impossible) to track once in the air.

Bucky got on his coms to call his squadron. “I want you all to gain altitude and put some distance between yourselves and the fighter drones. I just saw a group of J20s taking off; let’s use the fighter drones as bait and get them to give away their position while they are engaged with the fighter drones. Each time you locate one of those J20s, I want you to lock onto that target and attack them with your long-range air-to-air missiles.”

“Yes, Sir,” the squadron replied.

The enemy fighter drones began to engage the American drones, and within minutes, drone aircraft on both sides began to fall out of the sky. The enemy J20s heavily outnumbered Bucky’s squadron, but he needed to at least try and thin them out. The fleet was going to be moving his direction soon, and they needed to do their best to gain some sense of air supremacy.

Had the fleet intelligence officers known the enemy air strength, they never would have recommended the carrier airwings attack. They were heavily outnumbered, and not likely to succeed in their mission. It was unfortunate as most of the carrier fighters and ground attack drones would be destroyed during the battle.

After a while in the air, Bucky concluded that their situation was not very optimistic, and got back on his coms to change up the plan. “OK everyone, here is what we are going to do. We have four missiles each; everyone is going to be assigned a target by our AWACs. Once you have a target for your missiles, launch and then immediately go supersonic back towards the fleet. Don’t stick around to see if your missiles were successful or get in closer to engage with the Sidewinders. I want everyone back to the safety of the fleet as quickly as possible.”

The fleets air combat controllers in the AWACs had linked their screens to the C3 surveillance drone that was high above the fighting. The C3 had monitored the takeoff of the J20s and had been tracking them ever since. Using specialized heat scanners, the C3 fed the AWACs controllers the enemy coordinates, and they in turn fed the data to the targeting computers on the F35s. Once all 64 missiles had been assigned intended targets, Bucky’s squadron of 16 fighters began to send the volley of missiles on their way. Within seconds, the J20s (whose radar had spotted the launch) began to fire their own air-to-air missiles at the F35s. Now it was a race to see if the F35s could get back to the laser and missile defense screen of the fleet or not.

As Bucky’s squadron retreated to the safety of the fleet, their 64 missiles scored 19 hits; the remaining missiles were either evaded or ran out of fuel while the J20s performed evasive maneuvers. Bucky’s squadron lost only one aircraft from the enemy missiles before they made it back to the safety of the fleet’s missile defense system. As his squadron landed, they learned that most of the attacking F38Bs had been destroyed during their attack run, and half of the F38As has been shot down while trying to provide air cover for them. The fleet had effectively lost half of their airpower during the battle.

However, they had managed to destroy the remaining enemy frigates and destroyers and sink seven of the 22 transport ships they had engaged. Unfortunately though, if the fleet was going to interdict the remaining enemy cargo and transport ships, they were going to need to get in range of the battleships’ main guns and laser batteries.