WORLD WAR III
Missiles launched from subs are easily able to destroy Australia’s fleet Jim Molan
have an idea of what is happening, there is no quick way to report it; the sophisticated comms systems, which depend on space communications, very low frequency radio waves and then various cyber systems, are so degraded as to be inoperative. What the US crew know is that China has probably detonated nuclear depth charges under water (the one exception to China’s self-imposed non-nuclear rule) and that the other three US subs may have been destroyed.
The US Pacific Fleet has two groupings of ships deployed in the region at the time of the attack, which is fairly normal for the past few years. The first is a carrier strike group which has entered the South China Sea through Luzon Strait in the Philippines.
The second group carrying a US Marine Corps unit of several thousand soldiers, vehicles, aircraft and equipment is threading its way through the Indonesian Archipelago. Like the carrier strike group, this expeditionary strike group is proceeding in a peaceful manner, unaware that its location is being intensely monitored by China’s satellites and that its fate is sealed.
The ballistic and cruise missiles China launches against these groups have maximum ranges of between 1000 and 5000 kilometres.
Crimson explosions bloom as the missiles penetrate the flight decks of the carriers, fuel is ignited and weapons magazines explode, tearing these gigantic ships and their thousands of crew members to bits. Several of the accompanying cruisers are also hit and break apart. The wrecks burn red until they sink, as smaller supporting ships move in to try and rescue troops or train hoses on the fires. But these ships too are soon hit by missiles and lost. The cost in human lives is appalling.
It is not just an attack on US forces that occurs on this disastrous night, however. Strikes are also launched against US allies. China’s attacks on US bases in Japan kill tens of thousands of
Americans and many thousands of Japanese on the bases or in their vicinity. China does not attack Japan’s military forces, which are not insignificant and of high quality, reasoning its own missile stocks are not infinite and that some have to be held in reserve, and that the US will be so hurt in the Western Pacific by the initial attacks that Japan will not fight on while the bases are burning and the Japanese first responders are still digging out their casualties.
Australia is a different matter. The Chinese hope – indeed expect – the US will now acknowledge China as paramount in the Western Pacific. This is the most logical course of action from China’s point of view.
Yet China cannot blindly rely on this hope. It has to consider the possibility the US might fight back and the most likely way to do this (without using nuclear weapons) is by assembling both its allies and its military forces from around the world.
Mobilising military forces and shifting them to the Pacific from the US and from Europe will take time and will need a firm base, a trusted ally somewhere in the region closer than Hawaii. Australia is likely to be that base, China has reasoned, and it will therefore have to be dealt with in this first round of attacks.
To this end, eight Chinese submarines have been deployed to four critical locations around the Australian continent. Cruise missiles launched from the subs are easily able to destroy Australia’s fleet of F-18F Super Hornet fighters, Growler electronic warfare aircraft and most of the F-35 fighter aircraft sitting on criminally unprotected bases in the north and the east of the country.
Over the next day or so, the Chinese submarines dispatch automated and self-propelled sea mines to the vicinity of key military facilities in the harbours of Darwin, Sydney and Garden Island, south of Perth.
These advanced, unmanned undersea weapons are programmed to destroy any warships that attempt to move out of the harbours.
China has taken a step from which there is no retreat. It has redefined the power struggle in the Western Pacific and perhaps across the world.