Posted on 05/05/2014 4:26:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
Ironically, the blizzard of YJ-82X cruise missiles launched from the Chinese subs lying off the coast of Baja California crossed the beach directly over the SEAL training complex on Coronado. America had decided that its special forces were a cheap substitute for the less glamorous hardware and formations that had traditionally been the foundation of American military power. Now, those elite warriors watched helplessly as the missiles roared overhead north toward the two carriers berthed at North Island.
The casualties would have been much higher if the Navy had been able to fully man the U.S.S. Carl Vinson and the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan. As it was, when the missiles tore into their hulls and exploded, only several hundred sailors died instead of thousands. Still, in a few moments, two of America’s nine carriers were twisted hulks spewing radioactive smoke. Another dozen Navy ships berthed at local bases were in flames.
Only the people lining the downtown San Diego waterfront saw what was happening, though local TV camera crews were filming the carnage live. Their stations tried to upload the footage to the network satellites but they could not connect. The satellites were gone, knocked out by Russian ASAT missiles.
The rest of America was oblivious to the catastrophe in San Diego, and the similar disaster in Norfolk.
The TV stations next tried the Internet, but it was as if someone had just flicked it off. There was nothing but electronic silence. A coordinated cyber strike had hacked through America’s electronic defenses and shut down the web. Many of the hacks came not from Chinese and Russian teams across the world but from agents within America, infiltrated into key positions in American government and business, who introduced their malware directly into vital systems with thumb drives.
Simultaneously, outside major metropolises, groups of well-trained commandos, driving SUVs, followed the routes between power transmission stations that they had rehearsed using paper street maps (America’s GPS satellites having been eliminated in the opening minutes). With rifles, they opened fire on the critical transformer equipment, which was guarded only by chain link fences and cameras that no one monitored. When the irreplaceable equipment was shorted out and burning, they drove on to the next site and destroyed it. Between the cyber chaos and physical attacks, cities began to black out.
America ground to a halt, blind and paralyzed.
At sea in the Far East, anti-ship ballistic missiles appeared on the screens of the U.S.S. George Washington, the flagship of the only American carrier task force still in the Pacific. The guided missile cruisers cut when military budgets were slashed to fund record entitlement spending might have been able to save it. As it was, the missiles dived in at hypersonic speeds, punching through the flight deck and ripping the mighty ship apart.
American warships, for so long the hunters, became the hunted. Within a few hours, America’s 265-ship Navy had become a 100-ship Navy.
The President was about to speak at a rally to protest the opposition party’s “War on the Poor.” The other side had suggested holding military budget cuts to 15% instead of 18%, and the President was gleefully citing the cruelty of the opposition for funding the military-industrial complex on the backs of those living off of entitlements.
The military’s first instinct was to hustle the President to the 747 flying command post aircraft, which the enemy expected. The enemy could have disrupted that plan if it wished with an attack on the airfield by commandos, but they preferred the President remain in control.
The President’s flying command post took off, guarded by a flight of four F-15C fighters that were pushing 35 years old. It would have been six escorts, but two planes were down awaiting parts.
The President’s senior military advisor was a general, chosen for the job not because of a sterling combat record but for being the Public Affairs section’s telegenic face of “The New Military.” The general would have been hard pressed to explain the President’s options if they had not been so stark.
“Your options? You do have the capacity to launch a nuclear strike,” said the general.
There were still 100 Minuteman III missiles in silos in Montana that had not been eliminated during the last round of arms negotiations. Due to cuts in maintenance, only 62 were functional that day; they were safe from cyber-attack only because their 1970’s era computer systems were literally too primitive to be hacked. And there were three nuclear missile subs on patrol in the oceans; two were known to be combat effective, while the third may have been sunk – it was unclear.
“I won’t use nuclear weapons. Ever,” said the President, confirming the opinion reached by the teams of Chinese and Russian intelligence analysts, psychologists and game theorists who had studied the Commander-in-Chief in preparation for that very moment. Deterrence only deters when the threat is credible.
“What are my other options?” asked the President. The general looked down, shuffling papers.
“We don’t have a conventional option.”
“The Army? The Marines?”
“There are a few units forward deployed, but we’ve brought most of our forces home. What we have left we can’t move fast enough and most of it is designed for counterinsurgency, not conventional warfare – we’ve cut our armored forces because they cost so much to maintain. And to move them we’d need foreign ships, but we can’t count on them. We can’t even count on the sea lanes being clear.”
“The Air Force doesn’t have bombers? Fighters?” the President asked.
“Not enough, and not modern enough to get through Chinese and Russian air defenses.”
The President turned to the Secretary of State. “What about our allies?”
“No commitments yet. In fact, there’s been no response from several key allies.”
“We invoked NATO Article 5, didn’t we? We’ve been attacked!” the President shouted.
“They don’t have any significant forces left. Even if they were inclined to assist…”
“Inclined?” asked the President, stunned.
“We need to understand that they may be making a calculated decision…”
The President did understand. “To go with the winner.”
No one spoke; the only sound was the noise of the 747’s jets until a communications officer spoke up.
“I have a video transmission off a Chinese satellite coming … to us. How did they get our communications data?” It was yet another security breach.
“Just put it onscreen,” ordered the President.
The transmission was a split screen, the Chinese Premier on the left, the Russian President on the right. They were smiling.
“What do you want?” the President asked.
The Russian President spoke. “We want peace. We want justice. And that is why we are here to provide you the terms of your surrender.”
This scenario is fiction, but if we fail to preserve our military it could be all too real. The views of the author are solely his own.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Just because the Military gets and spends hundreds of billions a year doesn’t mean they are worth a crap.
I mean the intelligence budget is also hundreds of billions in all and those pathetics couldn’t see the fall of the Soviet Union, 9-11, or nearly any other big bang event of the last several dacades.
And that’s probably the way it would go down with the weakest, most dishonest, corrupt and disingenuous president in the history of the U.S.
Rather than surrender, I could see Obama negotiating a price for the delivery into Russian hands other the Muslim brothers who he would betray for a higher price despite the fact that they paid for his education and training as a foreign agent.
He forgot to mention in that concluding phone call how angry obama would have been not to have been first given the opportunity to surrender before being attacked.
Psychologically it does.
What would be the terms of an American surrender? The Chinese already own large swaths of major American cities. The Russians own and have infiltrated large portions of eastern Europe and are not afraid to move west. American manufacturing has been gutted to the point that a WWII-level manufacturing boom would take over a year to begin, and by then, we would have no infrastructure left.
Obama’s had more Waterloos than Napoleon had troops. The man is political and racial Teflon. If this scenario were true, Obama would give them everything they want and get on American TV that night with a smile saying that the world’s wounds are healed.
Let’s face, America need a renaissance. Without it, we’re a smoldering husk of our former selves. We’ve given into sloth, arrogance, perversion, and materialism in a way that this country has never seen. The west is dying to an east that is bolstered by numbers and nationalism.
That one gave me the chuckles.
I was thinking about that. If we unconditionally surrendered to the Chinese, what would it look like? I’m really not sure. I suppose 300 million chinese could immigrate here. And we could take $500B (more than we already are) and send it to China to pay for their environmental cleanup (or whatever). But in many ways it feels to me that we’ve already lost — but I’m sure we can lose a lot more.
I use to play these types of war game scenarios with a buddy of mine over lunch.
it wasn’t that bad in the 90s
today, I keep coming up with things similar to this, if not worse.
then I look around at the latte sipping, self entitled twats we have infesting our country today... and my care levels decrease
The article has mistaken the greatest threat to America. It isn’t China and Russia. The gravest threat to our liberty is not from without, but from within. It’s 0bama and the other statists from both parties who are gradually removing freedom after freedom
I’m pretty sure we’re lost without a seriously painful renaissance. Entitlements would have to be cut to, essentially, zero. We would have to go back to tariffs for financials, which was how it was prior to the income tax. We would need to have a SERIOUS conversation as a nation and basically tell all of these infantile idiots on the left to sit down, shut the Hell up, and let’s let the adults take the con.
This nation, our media, everything is bordering on obscene. We have become the laughingstock of the planet.
Bump! Also to your number eight above. Excellent!
IMHO, it is naive to label this scenario ‘fiction’, as the author has.
It it ‘prescient’ and plausible, not improbable. Particularly under current ‘leadership’...
Due to the work ethic of Obama “Americans are jobless, while Obama plays Golf.
Does that mean were are now in the Nero Segment of the Obamanation First Reich?
Exactly. Neither the Chinese nor the Russians will attack us militarily. They are not that stupid. Not that they fear retaliation, not from this President. No, they are simply too smart. Why attack us, steel our resolve and give us something to unite the nation against? (ie. them) They can sit back, eat popcorn, and watch bammy and crew do a far better job of destroying everything that was America than they could ever do with all their conventional weapons combined.
"And as Attorney General Eric Holder sat in his office making plans to prosecute someone, anyone for this white/Asian-on-black hate crime, President was nowhere to be found."
The thought this piece presents is chilling. However, if such a thing were to happen, there wouldn't be any leadership to even think of a response, let alone contemplating responding with anything substantive.
The dangers to the infrastructure cited are real. The dangers with respect to Cyber terror are real, especially now that the US will be giving up any semblance of control of the internet. The vulnerability of US weapons systems to both Chinese and Russian systems is real where they likely get the classified data of a system even before the first article is delivered to the military.
About the only good thing I'd think about it all is that they lying scheming duplicitous media would be gagged and impotent and unable to spew their BS and delude people.
And that, my FRiends, is some pretty macabre irony.
Red Storm Rising, v2.0 - too bad Clancy isn’t still here to take this column and turn it into a real page-turner like RSR or The Hunt for the Red October.
“The President was about to speak at a rally to protest the opposition party’s “War on the Poor.”
Just one more part of the enemy diversion.
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