GWOT VII - Carrier Battle Group
Aug. 7th, 2021 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VII - Carrier Battle Group
"General Quarters, General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. The flow of traffic is up and forward on the starboard side, down and aft on the port side. Set material condition Zebra throughout the ship. This is not a drill. This is not a drill."
The carrier group was operating off California. In peaceful times, she'd be steaming into San Diego harbor for a long-needed chance at R&R.
These were not peaceful times. And the only thing she would get within a hundred nautical miles of San Diego would be a sheaf of missiles sufficient to overwhelm any Aegis defense. California had proven it, more than once.
In peaceful times she'd be escorted by one or two nuclear submarines. Again, not peaceful times. She had no underwater escort. They had other missions. A screen of continuously 'pinging' destroyers, each contributing both surface to air missiles and expendable ASW helicopters to the defense of the carrier group, would have to do. Not to mention the enormous numbers of consumables, mostly sonobuoys, they were going through to operate within a thousand nautical miles of the California coast.
The California Navy, or "Naval Militia" as they styled themselves, had only a handful of ships too large to put on trailers. Their fleet was an underwater one. But underwater, they ruled any quiet patch of ocean within range of their underwater recharge cables.
"Situation?" the Captain demanded.
"That Indian carrier group is closing the distance. Now at three hundred nautical miles. They're closing the gap at flank speed."
When a big fleet of ships turns, the ships on the outside have to move faster than the ones in the center to remain in formation. Thus "all ahead full" and "all ahead flank."
In other words, the Indian carrier group was running to get closer.
Technically India was a neutral. Which begged the question of why India had sent a carrier battle group - her ONLY carrier battle group - so far from home.
Admittedly China was no longer a threat. The only threat to India's dominance of the Indian Ocean was the United States Navy. But the USN was itself operating closer to home than ever before, under the many demands of trying to be the world's occupation force rather than the world's policeman.
"What does Intel say?"
"That they're gathering intelligence on us. Testing their systems and doctrine."
"Captain, they're launching fighters!"
"What? Launch the alert aircraft immediately. Aegis spin up, give me strike options. I want anti-shipping loads on Cats 5 and 6."
"Bullshit they're gathering intel. They're picking a fight with us."
"Why? We're at peace with India, as much as we are with anyone else."
"There's no point to calling Atlantic Command. Call that carrier directly."
"What?"
Some things were Just Not Done. They could talk on internationally agreed upon radio frequencies. But direct Admiral to Admiral diplomacy was something that belonged to the age of port visits and letters sent by the fastest method, naval courier.
The bureaucracies would slow down any message sent up through Atlantic Command, to the State Department, to the Indian government, back down to their Ministry of Defense and to their Navy.
Even in the age of E-mail, missiles travel much faster than memorandums.
He picked up the phone. Signals put the call through via INMARSAT to the satphone registered to the Indian carrier.
"Hello, who is speaking?" a sailor answered.
"This is Admiral McClelland of the _USS John C. Stennis_. I need to talk to your commanding Admiral, now."
After some confusion, and clicks.
"This is Admiral Nirmal Singh. What do you want?"
"Your group is maneuvering in an aggressive posture. You have launched aircraft. We need to establish some separation to avoid the chance of an unpleasant incident."
"We agree," came the instant reply. "You are manuevering in a provocative manner in waters that are not your own. Withdraw to the west and we will not follow."
McClelland blinked. He looked again at the PPI, Plot Position Indicator. A comfortable four hundred miles east of San Diego, well outside California missile range. In home waters... no, not in home waters.
He grasped what Admiral Singh was getting at. He was in fact off a hostile coast, with the nearest ports he could reasonably visit - but not enter - being Hawaii and Japan.
But he had his mission. Some of the aircraft on his hangar deck, outside the prying eyes of Indian and Californian satellites, were guarded by Marines. Red pills, express. And only the one target to deliver them to.
Not today. Not tomorrow. But maybe within days. So he couldn't allow himself to be pushed too far west, to allow Californian air defense the time and space to engage his alpha strikes on the way in.
"You are interfering in American domestic politics. I have no intention of retreating from the North American coast."
"Very well," Admiral Singh replied sadly. "Admiral McClelland, I must inform you that a state of war exists between my government and yours as of this moment. Goodbye."
The tiny _click_ of the headset was very loud.
"Sir, offensive jamming, the Indian carrier group is launching aircraft. Heavies first, anti-shipping loads." A loud interuption, "TAO, TAO, VAMPIRE VAMPIRE we have incoming birds."
The PPIs lit with strike icons. Missiles, targeted on his carrier group. From the aircraft the Indian Navy already had in the air, from their ships ... and from the California coast!
"Maneuver 225 degrees to unmask batteries! Hypersonic inbounds from the east!"
Hypersonics?
California had hypersonics?
"ASW, ASW, we have torpedoes in the water. LIDES close in, surfaced! Surface action 275 degrees!"
A California battery electric submarine, silently lurking. Rising on the tiniest of floatation changes, indetectable even by active sonar.
He looked at the charts. On the seamount! She'd been just sitting there, undetectable because not in motion. He'd picked the seamount as a predictable meeting point. He'd never dreamed that a California submarine would lie in wait, for weeks or even months, against that chance. Or even that having done so, she would commit suicide by surfacing ... surfacing! ... in the middle of his formation, disrupting it as each destroyer skipper had to decide to evade, fire SUBROC ... and take their eyes and brains off the threat that would actually kill his carrier group, the smaller Indian carrier and her escorts.
But in an age of missiles, small didn't matter. First to get the shots in mattered.
And he was distracted. The sub didn't matter, it was already dead. But the missile strikes did matter.
"Admiral, permission to engage Californian shore batteries?"
His orders had been firm. Do not fire on the California coast. But his orders had not anticipated hypersonics. Flight time, Mach 20, oh my God.
_Forty seconds_.
"TAO, TAO, full Aegis up, engage incoming vampires, prioritize the carrier."
"ASW officer, that is NOT the only California sub! Drop it, dead one! More tracks, bearing two five nine, two seven three."
"MWO, MWO, carrier all stop! Carrier all stop now!"
What?
The carrier rocked.
Mine Warfare Officer.
"Fire and explosion in the bow! Cats 1 and 2 are offline!" the 1MC blared. "Away fire and rescue party!"
He shook his head. He had to fight his group. He had to fight his ship.
The Californians had brilliant missiles. Those were bad enough. He had to assume they had brilliant _hypersonics_.
And that meant the lifetime of his carrier, the very ship where he was standing in the heavily armored, heavily defended Combat Information Center ... could be measured in minutes.
In a minefield, catapults partially offline, incoming missiles from at least two directions. He had to protect his nuclear launch capability, and out of an excess of caution, those aircraft were below deck. That meant, even before the cat damage, that it would take time to lift them on elevators.
Always let an enemy out in the direction you want them to go.
"Helm, bearing 270 true. Fleet steam due west. Do it now!"
"Sir?"
"No offensive launches. Defensive weapons free. Kill subs, kill missiles, do NOT launch a counterstrike! Steam west NOW, while we still can!"
The carrier lurched. He was taking a ship with bow damage into motion. That would flood compartments, complicate the damage control efforts. But his ship would not sink quickly. He had to trust the damage control efforts of her six thousand strong crew.
He could no longer talk to the Indian admiral. His actions had to speak for him.
Missiles continued to roar out as the Aegis-guided defense missiles of his fleet engaged the Indian and Californian incoming.
But the Indians stopped launching.
He had complied with their ultimatum.
The Californians had just as much battlespace awareness as he did. Would they stop launching?
Yes. Better. Their hypersonics started self destructing mid-flight.
God. Brilliant missiles. If they'd flown those into his elevators... it took six months to repair those, in a fully equipped shipyard. And the nearest shipyard available to him was Singapore.
The fleet's fight for life became a litany of damage control, rescue operations, firefighting. And dead ships. He'd lost two destroyers and three helicopters. Cheap at the price, their job to save their carrier.
The Californians had lost one LIDES with a crew of thirty. Burning on the surface, a fiery pyre centered on one of the many CIC cameras. Their second sub had escaped for the moment. Likely it had burned its batteries and emptied its tubes, so would not be a factor for hours or more.
He would withdraw. Seek deep water. Repair his vessels.
And next time, he would have his red pills on deck, not in the hangar bays.
As he watched, the Indians started landing their strike. Mostly still loaded.
Against what California and her new Indian ally might do, he had to consider ship, group and fleet expendable. As long as they survived to launch their nuclear strike before they died.
"General Quarters, General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. The flow of traffic is up and forward on the starboard side, down and aft on the port side. Set material condition Zebra throughout the ship. This is not a drill. This is not a drill."
The carrier group was operating off California. In peaceful times, she'd be steaming into San Diego harbor for a long-needed chance at R&R.
These were not peaceful times. And the only thing she would get within a hundred nautical miles of San Diego would be a sheaf of missiles sufficient to overwhelm any Aegis defense. California had proven it, more than once.
In peaceful times she'd be escorted by one or two nuclear submarines. Again, not peaceful times. She had no underwater escort. They had other missions. A screen of continuously 'pinging' destroyers, each contributing both surface to air missiles and expendable ASW helicopters to the defense of the carrier group, would have to do. Not to mention the enormous numbers of consumables, mostly sonobuoys, they were going through to operate within a thousand nautical miles of the California coast.
The California Navy, or "Naval Militia" as they styled themselves, had only a handful of ships too large to put on trailers. Their fleet was an underwater one. But underwater, they ruled any quiet patch of ocean within range of their underwater recharge cables.
"Situation?" the Captain demanded.
"That Indian carrier group is closing the distance. Now at three hundred nautical miles. They're closing the gap at flank speed."
When a big fleet of ships turns, the ships on the outside have to move faster than the ones in the center to remain in formation. Thus "all ahead full" and "all ahead flank."
In other words, the Indian carrier group was running to get closer.
Technically India was a neutral. Which begged the question of why India had sent a carrier battle group - her ONLY carrier battle group - so far from home.
Admittedly China was no longer a threat. The only threat to India's dominance of the Indian Ocean was the United States Navy. But the USN was itself operating closer to home than ever before, under the many demands of trying to be the world's occupation force rather than the world's policeman.
"What does Intel say?"
"That they're gathering intelligence on us. Testing their systems and doctrine."
"Captain, they're launching fighters!"
"What? Launch the alert aircraft immediately. Aegis spin up, give me strike options. I want anti-shipping loads on Cats 5 and 6."
"Bullshit they're gathering intel. They're picking a fight with us."
"Why? We're at peace with India, as much as we are with anyone else."
"There's no point to calling Atlantic Command. Call that carrier directly."
"What?"
Some things were Just Not Done. They could talk on internationally agreed upon radio frequencies. But direct Admiral to Admiral diplomacy was something that belonged to the age of port visits and letters sent by the fastest method, naval courier.
The bureaucracies would slow down any message sent up through Atlantic Command, to the State Department, to the Indian government, back down to their Ministry of Defense and to their Navy.
Even in the age of E-mail, missiles travel much faster than memorandums.
He picked up the phone. Signals put the call through via INMARSAT to the satphone registered to the Indian carrier.
"Hello, who is speaking?" a sailor answered.
"This is Admiral McClelland of the _USS John C. Stennis_. I need to talk to your commanding Admiral, now."
After some confusion, and clicks.
"This is Admiral Nirmal Singh. What do you want?"
"Your group is maneuvering in an aggressive posture. You have launched aircraft. We need to establish some separation to avoid the chance of an unpleasant incident."
"We agree," came the instant reply. "You are manuevering in a provocative manner in waters that are not your own. Withdraw to the west and we will not follow."
McClelland blinked. He looked again at the PPI, Plot Position Indicator. A comfortable four hundred miles east of San Diego, well outside California missile range. In home waters... no, not in home waters.
He grasped what Admiral Singh was getting at. He was in fact off a hostile coast, with the nearest ports he could reasonably visit - but not enter - being Hawaii and Japan.
But he had his mission. Some of the aircraft on his hangar deck, outside the prying eyes of Indian and Californian satellites, were guarded by Marines. Red pills, express. And only the one target to deliver them to.
Not today. Not tomorrow. But maybe within days. So he couldn't allow himself to be pushed too far west, to allow Californian air defense the time and space to engage his alpha strikes on the way in.
"You are interfering in American domestic politics. I have no intention of retreating from the North American coast."
"Very well," Admiral Singh replied sadly. "Admiral McClelland, I must inform you that a state of war exists between my government and yours as of this moment. Goodbye."
The tiny _click_ of the headset was very loud.
"Sir, offensive jamming, the Indian carrier group is launching aircraft. Heavies first, anti-shipping loads." A loud interuption, "TAO, TAO, VAMPIRE VAMPIRE we have incoming birds."
The PPIs lit with strike icons. Missiles, targeted on his carrier group. From the aircraft the Indian Navy already had in the air, from their ships ... and from the California coast!
"Maneuver 225 degrees to unmask batteries! Hypersonic inbounds from the east!"
Hypersonics?
California had hypersonics?
"ASW, ASW, we have torpedoes in the water. LIDES close in, surfaced! Surface action 275 degrees!"
A California battery electric submarine, silently lurking. Rising on the tiniest of floatation changes, indetectable even by active sonar.
He looked at the charts. On the seamount! She'd been just sitting there, undetectable because not in motion. He'd picked the seamount as a predictable meeting point. He'd never dreamed that a California submarine would lie in wait, for weeks or even months, against that chance. Or even that having done so, she would commit suicide by surfacing ... surfacing! ... in the middle of his formation, disrupting it as each destroyer skipper had to decide to evade, fire SUBROC ... and take their eyes and brains off the threat that would actually kill his carrier group, the smaller Indian carrier and her escorts.
But in an age of missiles, small didn't matter. First to get the shots in mattered.
And he was distracted. The sub didn't matter, it was already dead. But the missile strikes did matter.
"Admiral, permission to engage Californian shore batteries?"
His orders had been firm. Do not fire on the California coast. But his orders had not anticipated hypersonics. Flight time, Mach 20, oh my God.
_Forty seconds_.
"TAO, TAO, full Aegis up, engage incoming vampires, prioritize the carrier."
"ASW officer, that is NOT the only California sub! Drop it, dead one! More tracks, bearing two five nine, two seven three."
"MWO, MWO, carrier all stop! Carrier all stop now!"
What?
The carrier rocked.
Mine Warfare Officer.
"Fire and explosion in the bow! Cats 1 and 2 are offline!" the 1MC blared. "Away fire and rescue party!"
He shook his head. He had to fight his group. He had to fight his ship.
The Californians had brilliant missiles. Those were bad enough. He had to assume they had brilliant _hypersonics_.
And that meant the lifetime of his carrier, the very ship where he was standing in the heavily armored, heavily defended Combat Information Center ... could be measured in minutes.
In a minefield, catapults partially offline, incoming missiles from at least two directions. He had to protect his nuclear launch capability, and out of an excess of caution, those aircraft were below deck. That meant, even before the cat damage, that it would take time to lift them on elevators.
Always let an enemy out in the direction you want them to go.
"Helm, bearing 270 true. Fleet steam due west. Do it now!"
"Sir?"
"No offensive launches. Defensive weapons free. Kill subs, kill missiles, do NOT launch a counterstrike! Steam west NOW, while we still can!"
The carrier lurched. He was taking a ship with bow damage into motion. That would flood compartments, complicate the damage control efforts. But his ship would not sink quickly. He had to trust the damage control efforts of her six thousand strong crew.
He could no longer talk to the Indian admiral. His actions had to speak for him.
Missiles continued to roar out as the Aegis-guided defense missiles of his fleet engaged the Indian and Californian incoming.
But the Indians stopped launching.
He had complied with their ultimatum.
The Californians had just as much battlespace awareness as he did. Would they stop launching?
Yes. Better. Their hypersonics started self destructing mid-flight.
God. Brilliant missiles. If they'd flown those into his elevators... it took six months to repair those, in a fully equipped shipyard. And the nearest shipyard available to him was Singapore.
The fleet's fight for life became a litany of damage control, rescue operations, firefighting. And dead ships. He'd lost two destroyers and three helicopters. Cheap at the price, their job to save their carrier.
The Californians had lost one LIDES with a crew of thirty. Burning on the surface, a fiery pyre centered on one of the many CIC cameras. Their second sub had escaped for the moment. Likely it had burned its batteries and emptied its tubes, so would not be a factor for hours or more.
He would withdraw. Seek deep water. Repair his vessels.
And next time, he would have his red pills on deck, not in the hangar bays.
As he watched, the Indians started landing their strike. Mostly still loaded.
Against what California and her new Indian ally might do, he had to consider ship, group and fleet expendable. As long as they survived to launch their nuclear strike before they died.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-08 02:14 am (UTC)They'd recovered one body wearing an inflatable life jacket, which had inflated. Wearing the slippers of a submariner and a nylon pistol belt with an empty holster.
And no head.