Chains of War | Air Sea Battle

[Knightpawn]

FIVE DAYS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
24–29 July 2018 - OUTCOME: TRIUMPH — 5,200 POINTS

(When I first tried this scenario 1 year ago my carries were hammered by Chinese ABSM. I tried to do it correctly and deliberately this time)

Prologue: The Orders

At 1300 hours Zulu on July 24th, 2018, the commander of Task Force 77 received the order that every Pacific Fleet admiral had war-gamed a hundred times but never expected to execute: Move Task force to Mindanao Sea and in the process neutralize PLAN force projection in the South China Sea and clear the Spratly and Paracel island chains.

The plan was as follows:
• First demonstrate patience and focus on the destruction of China's SAR Satellites to defang the ASBM threat. A convenient persistent tropical storm system dragging cloud across the theater rendered optical satellites useless.
• The Raptors, all tankers and maritime surveillance / ASW planes would ferry to Christmas Island to establish a base closer to the theater of operations
• Then, the three carrier and expeditionary strike groups—Nimitz, Eisenhower, and America—would advance north but hold station roughly 500 nautical miles southwest of the Spratly and Paracel Islands, close enough to sustain continuous air operations but far enough to complicate any Chinese targeting solution. The main reason to keep them together was to have the all anti satellite missiles in close proximity to each other.
• The HMAS Canberra Amphibious Group would break away and push travel to the Mindanao Sea via Makassar Strait-Celebes Sear-Sulu Sea route , where Marines could land to secure bases for incoming Air Force squadrons. The move of Canberra would be supported by AWS operations by submarines in the areas and air assets taking off from Australia and Christmas Island.

If all went well, the PLAN would never know exactly where they were.

The rules of engagement were specific. No strikes on the Chinese mainland or Hainan Island—those targets would come later. Tomahawk cruise missiles were to be conserved for the coming raids on China. Emissions control would be absolute: the carrier groups would fight under strict EMCON, minimizing their electronic signatures to avoid detection by Chinese reconnaissance assets.

Somewhere beyond the horizon, the People’s Liberation Army Navy was waiting. Their reconnaissance satellites watched. Their island fortresses were armed. Their submarine lurked in the deep thermal layers of the Philippine Sea. Beijing’s strategy was straightforward: hold the first island chain, inflict one catastrophic blow on the American carriers, and trust that a war-weary public would force Washington to the negotiating table. The decisive clash between China’s anti-access network and surged US carrier groups—the battle that strategists on both sides had anticipated for decades—was about to begin.

But first, they would have to find them.
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Day One — Peking Duck shooting in orbit
July 24, 1300–2400 Zulu

In the hours of staging, F-22 Raptors, all unmanned reckon assets and all tankers were ordered to gradually ferry forward from their Australian bases to Christmas Island. I also transferred the F-35Bs from America to Nimitz making the latter the sole F-35 base.

The first shots of the war were fired not at ships or aircraft, but upward—into orbit.

At 1357 hours, the Aegis cruisers and destroyers of the task force’s ballistic missile defense picket began launching SM-3 Block IIA interceptors at Chinese Yaogan reconnaissance satellites as they passed overhead. These were the ocean surveillance constellation—the eyes that would guide the DF-21D “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles to their targets. Without them, the PLAN’s vaunted A2/AD kill chain would be severed at the source. The logic was: blind the archer before he can draw.

The mathematics were clear. Each SM-3 had roughly a 35% probability of hitting a satellite screaming across the sky at over 14,000 knots. The cruisers fired in salvos of three, burning through their most expensive munitions at a staggering rate and praying the odds would hold. Sixty-six SM-3s would be fired before the campaign ended on the premise that killing a satellite was cheaper than losing a carrier.

The first salvo targeted Yaogan-17A. Two missiles streaked past their target and self-destructed in the void. The third slammed home—a direct kinetic kill at orbital velocity. Within minutes, Yaogan-20A and 20C followed it into debris clouds. By 1412, a second wave had destroyed Yaogan-17B and 17C. Then Yaogan-13. Then Yaogan-14, 29, and 10.

By evening, the task force had knocked down Yaogan-23 and Yaogan-18, and the Huan Jing-1C synthetic aperture radar satellite was added to the tally. Nine satellites destroyed on Day One alone. Nineteen would fall by day’s end of operations—every single one targeted, every single one confirmed killed. The PLAN’s ability to find and target the carrier groups from the Chinese mainland was degrading by the hour.

Meanwhile, combat air patrols from the carriers detected two WZ-7 Soaring Dragon high-altitude reconnaissance UAVs probing toward the task force’s general operating area. The big drones were the PLAN’s backup eyes—if the satellites went dark, the Soaring Dragons could still provide targeting data for the ballistic missiles. AMRAAM missiles from F18s picked them off at extreme range, long before they could close to detection distance. The carrier groups were invisible, and they intended to stay that way.

(Note: In what would prove to be the campaign’s most remarkable achievement, the carriers themselves remained ghosts thought the six days. Operating under strict EMCON discipline they would advance north and then northeast with the aim to reach a position 550nm southwest of the Spratlys. Not a single ship in any of the three carrier groups was detected by PLAN surveillance at any point during the battle. Not by satellite. Not by submarine. Not by reconnaissance aircraft. The Chinese knew the Americans were coming—they simply could not find them.)

[Eboreg]

Interesting stuff. I do wonder how Canberra is going to deal with all the submarines you sent her through.

[Knightpawn]

Day Two — Hunters Below
July 25, 0001–2400 Zulu

While the satellite campaign continued through the night—Yaogan-8 fell just after midnight, Yaogan-20B and 21 by morning—the undersea war began in earnest.

Submarines and ASW planes from Darwin AB were tasked with eliminating any submarines lurking in the path of Canberra group (Java Sea-Makassar straight – Celebes Sea – Sulu Sea – Bohol Sea). PLAN had seeded the task force’s projected advance routes with diesel-electric submarines: Kilo-class boats bought from Russia and domestically-built Song-class boats, all running silent on battery power in the deep thermal layers. They were patient, professional, and deadly. Finding them would fall to the task force’s extensive maritime patrol network—P-8A Poseidons and Australian AP-3C Orions flying out of Darwin and Christmas Island, dropping patterns of sonobuoys across hundreds of square miles of ocean.

A P-8A Poseidon, working off a datum from a towed array contact, localized the first kill in the south entry of Celebes Sea. A Kilo-class boat was lurking along Canberra's group projected advance routes, creeping through the thermal layer on electric motors. The Poseidon’s sonobuoy field had boxed it in. At 1153, the P-8 dropped a Mk54 lightweight torpedo. The Kilo launched a decoy—a primitive acoustic countermeasure from the early 1980s. It failed. The torpedo struck the submarine’s hull with a thunderous underwater detonation. A second Mk54 followed, missing on its first run but circling back for a reattack that found its mark. The Kilo broke apart beneath the waves.

The same morning brought the task force’s first surface engagement. A Harpoon strike—launched from an AP-3C Orion from Darwin AB—targeted PLAN Meizhou, a Jiangdao-class corvette operating as a forward picket. The corvette’s defenses were overwhelmed: its 30mm close-in weapon system missed repeatedly, its chaff rockets failed to seduce the Harpoon seekers, and three AGM-84D missiles slammed into the ship in rapid succession. One Harpoon was intercepted by a last-ditch HQ-10 point-defense missile, but it was too late. The Meizhou was left burning and dead in the water.

That evening, as the first stars appeared, Growler electronic warfare aircraft began their work. A pair of AGM-88E AARGM anti-radiation missiles homed in on the emissions of Chinese early warning radars—a JY-11B surveillance radar and a JY-14 “Great Wall”—and destroyed them both. It was the opening salvo of what would become the largest SEAD campaign since Iraq: over the coming days, one hundred and fifteen AARGMs would be fired at Chinese radar and air defense systems across the Spratlys. The campaign to peel back the PLAN’s air defense umbrella had begun.

But the day was not without cost. Late that night, a PL-12 missile fired from a PLAN fighter found its mark on an MQ-4C Triton surveillance UAV. The task force had taken its first loss.

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Day Three — Into the Fortress
July 26, 0001–2400 Zulu

The third day brought the war to the Spratly Islands—the chain of fortified reefs and artificial islands that formed the backbone of China’s South China Sea strategy. These were not natural islands casually garrisoned. Beijing had spent years dredging sand, pouring concrete, and installing runways, hardened aircraft shelters, HQ-9 long-range SAM batteries, anti-ship missile launchers, and layered radar networks. They were purpose-built to deny the South China Sea to the United States Navy. Now the Navy had come to take it back.

Before dawn, the submarine war claimed another victim. HMSA Farncomb attack submarine patrolling in Sulu Sea detected a Song-class submarine on passive sonar. Two Mk48 ADCAP heavyweight torpedoes were fired. The Song’s acoustic decoys were a generation behind—both failed to seduce the ADCAP seekers. The first torpedo struck at 1104. The second followed thirty seconds later. The Song-class boat imploded under the crushing pressure of the deep ocean. By afternoon, a second Kilo-class submarine was cornered and destroyed by another pair of Mk48s. The PLAN’s submarine barrier was being methodically dismantled: three boats sunk in two days, and not a single torpedo had been fired in return.

But the main event was the assault on Fiery Cross Reef.

At 1619, Tomahawk cruise missiles began arriving over the artificial island. Despite the standing order to conserve Tomahawks for the coming mainland strikes, the task force commander judged that Fiery Cross—the largest and most capable of China’s island bases—warranted the expenditure. The first wave targeted the island’s air defenses. CIWS guns managed to shoot down two Tomahawks, but the sheer volume overwhelmed the garrison. Missiles struck the JY-11B radar, the JY-26 long-range surveillance radar, and then began cratering the 8,000-foot runway. Three Tomahawks punched through the concrete, rendering it unusable for fixed-wing operations. More struck the island’s HQ-9A SAM battery and its associated radar vehicles, tearing apart the launchers and their fire control systems.

The evening brought a second wave. B-1B Lancers flying from Tinian—missions of extraordinary duration, sustained by tanker aircraft staging from Australia—delivered GBU-31 penetrator JDAMs onto the island’s underground fuel storage and ammunition revetments. The 2,000-pound bunker-busting bombs hammered the AvGas tanks and ammunition stores, their delayed fuzes ensuring maximum subsurface destruction. The control tower was hit. Runway access points were cratered. Then the Tomahawks returned after dark, pounding what was left. Fiery Cross Reef was being systematically dismantled—the crown jewel of China’s island-building program reduced to burning rubble.
In the skies above Mischief Reef, carrier-launched F/A-18s tangled with J-11BH Flankers scrambled from the island’s garrison. The Flankers were decent aircraft—Chinese-built copies of the Russian Su-27—but their 1990s-era ECM jammers were no match for the latest AMRAAM seekers. An AMRAAM caught one Flanker in a rear-quarter shot. A Sidewinder finished another in a low-altitude pursuit. Over Fiery Cross, more Flankers fell in the early hours of the 26th, and one engagement produced a rarity in modern air combat: a Flanker finished off by 20mm Vulcan cannon fire in a close-range turning fight.

The era of Chinese air superiority over the Spratlys was ending.

[Eboreg]

Personally, I made extensive use of the Long-Range Strategic Strike Group and a lot of tankers to clear the air over the Spratly Islands by Day 1 and Woody Island by Day 2. I also find your pro-active approach to taking out submarines to be rather interesting.

[Knightpawn]

Personally, I made extensive use of the Long-Range Strategic Strike Group and a lot of tankers to clear the air over the Spratly Islands by Day 1 and Woody Island by Day 2.

You are ferocious. I guess I am too cautious and risk averse in my planning. Why attack a lion first when there are some lamps in the field? (Not sure if this a good trait or not)

[Knightpawn]

Day Four — The Killing Blow
July 27, 0001–2400 Zulu

Day Four was the most intense of the battle, a convergence of every domain of modern warfare into a single violent crescendo.

In the predawn darkness, AGM-158 JASSM stealth cruise missiles—delivered by B-1B Lancers flying the long haul from Tinian—struck radar installations across the PLAN’s integrated air defense network. A Type 120 radar was destroyed. A YLC-2V mobile surveillance radar was shattered. The island chain’s CIWS batteries fought back hard, their Type 730 rotary cannons shooting down several JASSMs, but enough got through to blind the network further. Forty-seven JASSMs had been allocated to the campaign—each one a precision instrument of destruction, each one striking a carefully chosen node in the Chinese defense architecture.

At 0457, the task force suffered its most painful loss. Black Knight 3, an F/A-18F Super Hornet, was shot down over the Spratlys. The crew was lost. It was a grim reminder that the PLAN was fighting back with skill and determination, and that every sortie over the island chain carried mortal risk.

The morning brought a major surface action. A Harpoon strike targeted PLAN Changsha—a Type 052D Luyang III-class guided-missile destroyer, one of the most capable surface combatants in the Chinese fleet. The Changsha’s layered defenses were formidable: HQ-10 point-defense missiles, HQ-16A medium-range SAMs repurposed for anti-ship missile defense, and Type 1130 eleven-barrel CIWS guns. They intercepted Harpoon after Harpoon—nine missiles were shot down in a display of defensive firepower that would have stopped a lesser salvo. But a single AGM-84G Harpoon broke through and slammed into the destroyer’s superstructure. The impact destroyed her Type 364 fire control radar and laser rangefinder. Secondary explosions wrecked the helicopter magazine and ECM suite. Her helicopter, a Z-9C Haitun, was consumed in the fires. The once-proud destroyer was mission-killed.

That afternoon, AARGM anti-radiation missiles swarmed a PLAN surface action group in a coordinated strike. The frigates Yueyang and Liuzhou were hit repeatedly, their sensors and communications antennas shredded. The destroyer Haikou—a Luyang II-class ship—absorbed six AARGMs, her radar arrays and fire control systems demolished one by one. Meanwhile, submarine-launched Harpoons found targets of opportunity: a pair of Type 022 Houbei-class missile boats, the fast-attack craft that China had built in swarms to overwhelm enemy defenses with anti-ship missiles. Their limited CIWS defenses couldn’t cope with the sudden attack. By the end of operations, all eight Houbei missile boats that had been operating in the theater were confirmed destroyed—a clean sweep of one of the PLAN’s most feared asymmetric threats.

On the ground, JDAM strikes obliterated HQ-9A SAM batteries and HQ-17 TELAR short-range air defense units, their radars, guidance systems, and launchers reduced to twisted metal. The MANPADS teams that had provided the last layer of defense were hunted and destroyed. A pair of PLAN Y-8Q maritime patrol aircraft—the Chinese equivalent of the P-8—were caught and destroyed, along with all four Y-9G electronic warfare aircraft that had been attempting to jam task force sensors. Subi Reef’s J-10 Firebird fighters were destroyed in their hangars and on their parking aprons by precision strikes. Fiery Cross Reef’s hardened aircraft shelter was cracked open.

High above the Spratlys, F-22 Raptors flying from Christmas Island—their forward base deep in the Indian Ocean—provided air superiority coverage, their stealth and sensor fusion giving them an almost unfair advantage in the electromagnetic chaos of the battlespace. The Raptors tangled with J-11D Flankers and Su-30MKK2s scrambled from Suixi Air Base on the mainland—aircraft the task force could not strike on the ground due to the ROE prohibition on mainland targets. The air battles were sharp but one-sided. Six Su-30MKK2s and eight J-11Ds were shot down, their pilots never seeing the Raptors that killed them. But the PLAN exacted a price: one F-22A Raptor was brought down, likely by a long-range PL-15 missile. It was the first combat loss of an F-22 and the single most significant aircraft loss of the campaign.

Late in the evening, an RQ-180 stealth reconnaissance drone identified the ultimate prize: a DF-21D “carrier killer” ballistic missile battalion, its transporter-erector-launchers deployed in a coastal firing position of mainland China. With the satellite constellation destroyed, the reconnaissance aircraft shot down, and the carrier groups’ positions unknown to Beijing, the DF-21D was a weapon without a target. The vaunted “carrier killer” had been rendered impotent not by destroying the missiles themselves, but by destroying everything that told them where to fly.

The day’s cost: one F/A-18E Super Hornet lost over enemy airspace, the F-22A Raptor, and the already-reported F/A-18F. The butcher’s bill was mounting, but the exchange rate overwhelmingly favored the task force.

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Day Five — The Reckoning
July 28–29, 0001–0015 Zulu

By the fifth day, the PLAN’s South China Sea posture was in ruins.

Mischief Reef’s last Flankers—parked in the open after their hangars were destroyed—were obliterated by follow-up strikes. Subi Reef’s final J-10s burned on their aprons. Cuarteron Reef’s satellite communications hub was wrecked by precision JDAMs. The Spratly Island chain—the artificial fortresses that Beijing had spent billions building, dredging sand, pouring concrete, installing radars and missile launchers—had been reduced to cratered strips of rubble in less than a hundred hours. Their runways were unusable. Their fuel reserves were burning. Their radars were silent. Their garrisons could no longer project power beyond the reef’s edge.

The final satellite fell. Yaogan-25C was destroyed on the 26th, completing the systematic dismantlement of the ocean surveillance constellation. Of the nineteen reconnaissance satellites targeted, all nineteen were confirmed kills. The PLAN’s space-based ocean surveillance capability—the critical first link in the A2/AD kill chain—had ceased to exist.

The 24 H-6G Badger bombers that had sortied from Guiping Mengshu Air Base represented the PLAN’s last conventional attempt to strike at the task force. These were the modern descendants of the Soviet Tu-16, laden with YJ-12 anti-ship cruise missiles—each bomber capable of carrying weapons that could cripple a destroyer or mission-kill a carrier. They came in waves, flying at medium altitude to maximize their missile range. They never got close. F/A-18s and F-22s, vectored by E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, intercepted the Badger formations well outside weapons release range. AIM-120D AMRAAMs—the latest and longest-ranged variant—slashed into the bomber formations. Not a single Badger survived to launch its missiles. Not a single anti-ship cruise missile reached the fleet. Twenty-four bombers destroyed for zero weapons expended against the task force—it was the most lopsided air engagement since the Marianas Turkey Shoot.

Along the Paracel Islands to the north, strikes neutralized Woody Island’s fighter garrison and its supporting IL-78 tanker aircraft, severing the PLAN’s ability to extend fighter coverage over the central South China Sea. The J-8 Finbacks at Lingshui and the JH-7 Flounder attack aircraft at Ledong Air Base on Hainan remained untouched—the ROE boundary held—but without radar coverage, satellite targeting, or forward bases to operate from, they were weapons without eyes.

The task force pressed on, contacts fading from the tactical displays as the PLAN’s surviving units retreated toward the mainland. The LCS squadron—USS Freedom, Fort Worth, Tulsa, and Indianapolis—ran their MQ-8B Fire Scout drones ahead of the Canberra group, sweeping for stragglers and mines as the amphibious ships broke away and pushed north toward the Philippines. The Australian escorts—HMAS Hobart, Anzac, Perth, Ballarat, and Arunta—closed ranks around Canberra and Choules, their MH-60R Seahawks providing the inner anti-submarine screen. Hobart’s Aegis system remained on alert for any final ballistic missile launch, but none came. The kill chain was dead.
Three hundred and fifty miles to the southwest, USS Nimitz, USS Eisenhower, and USS America held their stations—exactly where they had been for five days, unseen and untouched. Their air wings had fought the entire campaign from stand-off distance, launching strike packages that flew hundreds of miles to their targets and returned without ever revealing the carriers’ positions. It was the ultimate vindication of the dispersal doctrine: you cannot kill what you cannot find.

By midnight on July 29th, HMAS Canberra and her escorts entered the Mindanao Sea through the Surigao Strait—the same waters where the last battleship engagement in history had been fought in October 1944. The mission was complete. The reference points V1 through V4 were reached. The Marines would soon be ashore, preparing Philippine airfields for the Air Force squadrons already loading out in Australia.

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The Butcher’s Bill

Task Force 77 Losses: Four aircraft—two F/A-18 Super Hornets (one E-model, one F-model), one F-22A Raptor, and one MQ-4C Triton UAV. No ships lost. No ships damaged. No carriers touched. In five days of sustained high-intensity combat against the most sophisticated anti-access network on earth, no ship in any carrier group was so much as detected by PLAN forces—let alone targeted or struck.

Ammunition Expenditure: 66 SM-3 Block IIA anti-satellite interceptors. 115 AGM-88E AARGMs. 47 AGM-158A JASSMs. 27 AGM-154C JSOWs. 183 AIM-120 AMRAAMs (70 C-7 and 113 D-models). 42 Tomahawk cruise missiles (30 ship-launched, 12 submarine-launched). 17 Mk48 ADCAP torpedoes. 20 Harpoon variants. 8 Naval Strike Missiles. 44 MALD-J decoys. Over 800 sonobuoys. The expenditure was staggering—a significant fraction of the Navy’s precision munitions inventory consumed in under a week.

PLAN Losses: Nineteen reconnaissance satellites destroyed. Three submarines sunk (two Kilo-class, one Song-class). One Type 052D Luyang III destroyer mission-killed. One Type 052C Luyang II destroyer mission-killed. Two Type 054A Jiangkai II frigates damaged or destroyed. One Jiangdao-class corvette sunk. Eight Type 022 Houbei missile boats destroyed. One Type 903 replenishment ship destroyed. All fighter aircraft across three Spratly island garrisons destroyed (J-11BH Flankers, J-10AH Firebirds). Twenty-four H-6G Badger bombers shot down. Six Su-30MKK2s and eight J-11Ds destroyed in air combat. All electronic warfare and maritime patrol aircraft destroyed. All radar and SAM systems across the Spratly chain neutralized. Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, and Cuarteron Reef rendered non-operational.

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Epilogue: The South China Sea Is Open

The battle validated the Air-Sea Battle concept in the most visceral way possible. Task Force 77 had fought its way into the teeth of a modern anti-access/area-denial network—the most sophisticated in the world—and dismantled it piece by piece. The campaign had worked across every domain simultaneously: starting in orbit, working through the electromagnetic spectrum, probing beneath the waves, and finishing with precision strikes on hardened targets. It was exactly what the doctrine’s architects had envisioned, and it worked.

It was not cheap. Each SM-3 interceptor that streaked into orbit cost millions. The two Super Hornet crews would never come home. The loss of an F-22 Raptor—America’s most advanced fighter—was a shock felt from Langley to the Pentagon. The ammunition expenditure would take months to replenish, and the coming strikes on the Chinese mainland would demand even more.

But the exchange rate was devastating. For four aircraft lost, the task force had destroyed a nation’s space-based surveillance network, sunk or mission-killed a surface fleet, eliminated three submarines, wiped out the garrisons of four fortified island bases, and shot down every bomber sent against it without a single missile reaching the fleet. And they had done it all while remaining invisible. The three carrier groups had fought an entire five-day campaign from 350 miles away and the PLAN never once located them. The Chinese strategy of holding the first island chain and trading one decisive blow for American political will had been answered—not with the climactic fleet engagement Beijing had planned for, but with five days of relentless, methodical destruction delivered by an enemy they could not see.

HMAS Canberra was now in the Mindanao Sea, safe within the Philippine archipelago’s sheltering waters. The Marines would soon be ashore, preparing airfields for the Air Force squadrons already loading out in Australia. The carriers remained on station to the southwest, their magazines depleted but their decks still launching sorties, ready for the next phase. The road to China was open.
In five days, Task Force 77 had done what it was built to do.

The South China Sea was open

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AAR composed by Opus 4.6. Inputs and Editorial review @knightpawn

[tylerblakebrandon]

So you graduated top of class at the Naval War College yes?

[Knightpawn]

So you graduated top of class at the Naval War College yes?

My only real life connection with Naval Warfare is that I know how to swim