GOLAN: This is the Future of War (Future War) Read online

  GOLAN

  This is the Future of War

  FX Holden

  © 2021 FX Holden.

  Independently Published

  159,000 words

  Typeset in 12pt Garamond

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Contact me:

  [email protected]

  https://www.facebook.com/hardcorethrillers

  KOBANI and GOLAN are prequels to the other Future War novels, Bering Strait (set in 2032), Okinawa (2033) and Orbital (2034). However all Future War novels are self-contained stories and can be read in any order.

  Cover art by Diana Buidoso: [email protected]

  With huge thanks to my fantastic beta reading team for their encouragement and constructive critique:

  Bror Appelsin

  Sim Alam

  Nick Baker

  Ken ‘BBQ’ Callan

  Christopher Eadon

  Johnny ‘Gryphon’ Bunch

  Dave ‘Throttle’ Hedrick

  Martin ‘Spikey’ Hirst

  Greg ‘Hawkeye’ Hollingsworth

  Joe Lanfrankie

  Peter ‘Gonzo’ Reed

  Yoav ‘Joe’ Saar

  Therese ‘T’ Blakemore Saffery

  Lee ‘Streaky’ Steventon

  And to editor, Brigitte Lee Messenger,

  for putting the cheese around the holes.

  “There’s always some son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word.”

  US President John F. Kennedy on learning that a US spy plane had blundered into Soviet airspace at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.

  CONTENTS

  Cast of Players

  Praeludium

  All Domain Attack: Engagement

  All Domain Attack: Assassination

  All Domain Attack: Diversion

  All Domain Attack: Cyber and Space

  All Domain Attack: Ground

  All Domain Attack: Air

  All Domain Attack: Insurrection

  All Domain Attack: Political

  All Domain Attack: Silicon

  All Domain Attack: Imbalance

  All Domain Attack: Fog

  All Domain Attack: Impasse

  All Domain Attack: Nuclear

  All Domain Attack: Chaos

  All Domain Attack: Counterstrike

  Epilogue

  Author Notes

  Preview: Archipelago

  Glossary

  Maps

  Maps

  Cast of Players

  EXCOMM

  US President Oliver Henderson

  Vice President Benjamin Sianni

  Secretary of Defense, Harold McDonald

  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Austin Clarke

  Director of National Intelligence, Lt. General (Retired) Carmine Lewis

  State Secretary Kevin Shrier

  White House Chief of Staff, Karl Allen

  Director of National Cyber Security, Tonya Dupré

  LCS-30 USS CANBERRA

  Sonarman Elvis ‘Ears’ Bell

  Lieutenant Daniel ‘Dopey’ Drysdale

  Watch Supervisor, Chief Petty Officer Hiram Goldmann

  USAF, 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing, Akrotiri Cyprus

  DARPA Project Director, Unmanned Systems, F-47 Fantom, Shelly Kovacs

  Flying Officer Karen ‘Bunny’ O’Hare, pilot, Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), attached

  RUSSIA, LATAKIA AIR BASE

  Lieutenant Yevgeny Bondarev, pilot, 7th Air Group, 7000th Air Base

  Second Lieutenant Sergei ‘Rap’ Tchakov, pilot, 7th Air Group, 7000th Air Base

  IRAN QUDS FORCE BASE, DAMASCUS, SYRIA

  Captain Abdolrasoul Delavari, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Quds Force

  BUQ’ATA, US 3rd Marines, 1st Battalion, ‘Lava Dogs’

  Gunnery Sergeant, James Jensen

  Hospital Corpsman Third Class, Calvin Bell

  Corporals Ravi Patel, Rae-Lynn Buckland

  Privates Marta Lopez, Dominic Stevens, Brendon ‘Rooster’ Johnson, Belinda Wallace

  BUQ’ATA, IDF and CIVILIAN

  Amal Azaria, Engineer, Defense Research Directorate (Corporal, IDF Reserve, Unit 351, Palhik Signals Company)

  Mansur Azaria, brother

  Raza Azaria, Amal’s son

  BUQ’ATA, DRUZE SWORD BATTALION

  Lieutenant Colonel Zeidan Amar (formerly Reconnaissance Battalion Commander, Golani Brigade), now Interim Commander, Druze Sword Battalion

  ISRAEL, SUBMARINE FLOTILLA

  Captain Binyamin Ben-Zvi, INS Gal

  First Officer Ehud Mofaz, INS Gal

  SAFINEH-CLASS FRIGATE, IRIN SINJAN

  Captain Hossein Rostami, Islamic Republic of Iran Navy

  Rear Admiral Karim Daei, Islamic Republic of Iran Navy

  Praeludium

  Return of Golan Heights is precondition

  to Israel-Syria peace

  Syrian President Assad said during an interview with Russian state media Thursday that any future agreement with Israel must entail a return of the Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty.

  Assad made the remarks during an interview with Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya news agency, which was also mentioned by Syria’s official SANA news agency.

  “Our stance has been very clear since the beginning of peace talks in the 1990s … when we said peace for Syria is related to rights – and our right is our land,” Assad said.

  Assad stressed during the interview that Syria can establish normal relations with Israel “only when we regain our land.”

  Jerusalem Post, October 2020

  Iran’s strategic objectives

  Iran’s objectives are to maintain the recently established land bridge that runs between Iran through Iraq and Syria into Lebanon, limit the influence of Sunni states and Israel, and expel US and Western influence from the region. · Iran’s strategic geographic location enables it to threaten vital US interests in the Strait of Hormuz and the greater Gulf region and influence the Bab al-Mandab and Eastern Mediterranean. · Iran’s military doctrine focuses on Hybrid Warfare operations and asymmetric response options aimed at reducing the will of the United States and its partners to fight in the region. · Iran’s large military enterprise is split into two separate forces: the Iranian Army and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). · Iran maintains the largest ballistic missile program in the region.

  US Army Asymmetric Warfare Group, June 2020

  Rouhani says most Iranians want peace

  An overwhelming majority of Iranians want peace with the rest of the world, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday, defending the nuclear negotiations under way with major powers.

  “We are determined to solve our problems with the world through logic, reasoning and negotiation,” Rouhani said.

  AFP, Tuesday May 26, 2015

  All Domain Attack: Engagement

  Buq’ata township, the Golan Heights, April 15, 2030

  Her nickname was ‘The Toymaker’. Her official title was Principal Engineer Amal Azaria, Directorate for Defense Research and Development (DRD), Israeli Ministry of Defense. But she didn’t mind ‘Toymaker’; it was accurate enough, if your idea of a toy was a wide-bodied unmanned aerial vehicle with a six-foot wingspan that could be 3D printed-to-order and configured for reconnaissance, swarming gr
ound target attacks or – as for the drone she’d just been asked to deliver – assassination.

  As she unlocked the padlock on the wide sliding door of her shed, the harsh sun was already radiating off the metal. Her new shed, her workshop and, behind her, her old family home in this Druze town in the north of the Golan Heights.

  It had been her brother’s lifelong dream to return to their birthplace so he could start a business with the money he’d earned in Tel Aviv, and he’d suggested she relocate with him. She hadn’t been happy in Tel Aviv. Rather than say goodbye to one of their most creative robotics engineers, DRD had kept her on the payroll and let her take her workshop and a small team with her.

  It had taken six months to prep the 100- by 50-yard building in Buq’ata for storing all her equipment, but less than a day for their tri-mode printer and supplies to be offloaded from the container in which they traveled and set up inside. Usually there would be at least four of them working in the shed, but because of the current security situation, her three junior engineering staff had been pulled back to Tel Aviv. So today, she was alone.

  But to be honest, she liked it that way.

  She booted up the printer. Given the right feedstock, it could print in metal, carbon or nylon, or combinations of all three. Her basic drone design was simple. Tail, propeller and wings were printed separately and then fastened with screws that would hold them together at forces up to 5G. The internal steering mechanism and propeller shaft were assembled from printed rods. The payload module in the center of the aircraft was customizable, and she had the different components with her, arrayed across row after row of folding aluminum shelves: electric engines with built-in power cells, GPS navigation units, high-powered digital zoom cameras, detachable mounts for anti-personnel or anti-armor grenades … the list was as varied as her client base, which included every branch of the Israeli Defense Forces.

  But her favorite payload, because it was the newest capability she had added to the Skyprint Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or UAV, was the ability for the larger drone to deploy smaller microdrones. Circling high, out of sight of an enemy below, her Skyprint mothership could drop up to two of the quadrotor microdrones, each no bigger than a human hand, and then an operator could use the radio, camera and optical sight on the Skyprint to pilot the microdrones to their target. Just like their mother ship, the microdrones could be fitted with various payloads, most commonly microphones or other electronic eavesdropping devices, but also … other payloads.

  Such as a box-shaped pistol.

  The man watching Azaria painstakingly assemble the Skyprint and mount the assassination module had sounded skeptical on the telephone. He was a Captain in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Sayaret, or special forces. And he was Druze, like her: a separate ethnic and religious group that had coexisted with Muslims and Christians and Zoroastrians and Jews in Israel for thousands of years.

  “I have to tell you, Azaria, I am a fan of old-fashioned methods. Proven methods,” he’d said. “Men on the ground, looking at their targets through scopes. Or Eitan drones, armed with Hellfire missiles…”

  Azaria had sighed. The army was still full of many such hold-outs. “You just explained, Captain Kasem, that the target is always heavily guarded. You said, and I quote, ‘The swine is never alone, never exposed for more than a moment,’ did you not?”

  “Yes. So I don’t see how some build-a-bear hobby drone is going to…”

  “Come over to my workshop,” Azaria told him. “I will show you.”

  Now it was Kasem’s turn to sigh. “Alright. I am at Camp Biranit, I will see you around mid-morning.”

  “Very good. And can you send me your ID photo before you leave? I will give you an email address…”

  “Why?”

  “You will need a photo ID pass. This is a secure facility.”

  “Alright, what’s the address?”

  Azaria had been smiling to herself as he read out his email address. The old shed in which she worked was the very opposite of secure. A stiff wind would probably carry the entire structure away. But it was large, and empty, and adaptable, which were her three main criteria.

  Azaria didn’t need Kasem’s photo to make up a pass for him. She needed it to program into the facial recognition software for upload into the microdrone she had sitting on her desk. She hummed to herself as the software scanned the photograph, mapped Kasem’s facial features and then fed the data into the memory of the microdrone. Then she loaded the microdrone into the payload module of a readymade Skyprint UAV – she always had a few preassembled, with assorted payload modules for clients who were in a hurry. Then she waited.

  Kasem appeared at the shed about an hour later, just as he’d promised. He pulled the rusted metal door open and peered into the dark cavernous space, lit only by lamps over Azaria’s workbench. “Amal Azaria?” he asked, dubiously.

  In grubby overalls, long dark hair shoved untidily into a bun behind her head, with freckles across an aquiline nose, Azaria looked up and waved. “Ah, Captain Kasem! Come in, come in. Leave the door open.”

  The Commando officer was lean, prematurely bald, with a hook nose and jutting jaw, and a stride that matched his countenance. The door was on rollers and he slid it open, then covered the fifty feet to Azaria’s workbench in a few economical strides and frowned as he stopped up in front of the engineer. “I thought you said this was a secure facility?”

  “I lied,” Azaria replied simply. She looked behind him. “You are alone?”

  “This is a sensitive operation. You may speak of it to no one, is that clear?”

  She smiled. “Everything I do is sensitive. Now, would you like a demonstration of the system?”

  Kasem looked at the UAV sitting on the bench. “This is it? I’ve seen UAVs before, Azaria.”

  “Of course you have, but indulge me. Stand wherever you like, as long as you aren’t between myself and that door,” Azaria said, picking up the UAV. It was light enough to hand-launch, it didn’t need a slingshot. With the flick of a switch she turned it on, which booted up its electronics and started the propeller whirring. The noise reverberated inside the metal shed, making Kasem wince, but after checking two system indicator lights on the side of the small plane, Azaria planted her feet and hurled the plane toward the door. It dipped, righted itself and flew out into the daylight.

  “Now, let’s see…” Azaria said, reaching for a control pad with two small joysticks and a few other buttons on it. “If you’ll come over here.” She moved to another workbench where there was a small LED computer monitor and turned it on. It showed a view of the area around the workshop from about a hundred feet up. The shed was in a large yard behind her house, which backed up onto a quarry in the east of the town. “I’ll just move the drone higher, give us a better view,” Azaria said, as much to herself as to the officer behind her. When she had the drone circling where she wanted, the picture of the workshop below it centered and stable, she turned to look over her shoulder at a rather unimpressed Captain Kasem.

  “It can fly up to 20,000 feet and has an endurance of 12 hours,” Azaria said.

  Kasem folded his arms, clearly not impressed. “Amazing.”

  “The camera has a Zeiss 40x optical and 200x digital zoom … see.” Azaria zoomed the view in and centered on the wide-open door.

  “Azaria, I have seen UAV video before.”

  “Of course, of course.” Azaria reached for her control pad. “Now, keep watching the screen. I will deploy the microdrone.”

  “The what?”

  “The payload. Watch, watch,” Azaria said excitedly, pressing a button. The video jerked and then a second smaller window opened up on the screen, showing a new image of the workshop from above. Then the image moved as whatever was filming it moved away from the first drone. “See, they are separating, but the camera in the microdrone synchs to the target area you set for the Skyprint UAV so you don’t lose situational awareness.” The Lieutenant’s face remained impassive. “I … I can
switch from one feed to the other very easily, like this.” She flipped the left joystick with a thumb, zooming one feed out and the other in, and then back again. “It has low light and infrared capability. The … the microdrone is a quadrotor, about the size of a hummingbird, based on a racing drone design.”

  “Azaria…”

  “It can … well, it goes from zero to a hundred miles an hour in three seconds.”

  “I have a teenage son,” Kasem said. “I am sure he would be impressed, but I…”

  Azaria pointed at the screen. “Wait, wait. See the door, on the screen here. Watch.”

  As Kasem leaned forward, Azaria brought up a target crosshair on the microdrone video feed and placed it in the middle of the doorway. Without saying any more, she tapped a trigger on the controller.

  The video zoomed toward the door as the microdrone dropped toward it with lightning speed. Kasem was still watching the TV screen, but as the microdrone entered the workshop, its buzzing rotors just audible, he spun around, just as Azaria knew he would. The microdrone didn’t even hesitate as it swooped through the door, crossed the distance from the door to Kasem inside a second, and smacked into the middle of his face before his flailing arms could even get above his shoulders.

  With a loud report, the drone fired a noisemaker round and then dropped to the floor.

  Kasem staggered backwards against the bench behind him, a shocked look on his face.

  Azaria toggled her controller and restarted the microdrone, lifting it in the air to hover over Kasem’s head.

  “You might have noticed it went straight for you, not for me,” Azaria said loudly, the sharp noise inside the workshop having set both their ears ringing. “That’s because I used your ID photo to program you as the target. Of course, I cheated. I fed it a plan of the workshop and told it before it launched where you would be standing, but…” She tapped another button and the drone began moving carefully and almost silently around the workshop at head height. “… If you don’t have the target’s exact location you can set it into search mode and it will move around the inside of a structure, scanning. You can direct it via video as long as the target isn’t jamming to stop drones. If they are, the Skyprint will detect that and stand-off outside jamming range; then you can launch the microdrone in autonomous mode. Requires no radio control, so jamming won’t stop it. Of course, if you launch it in autonomous mode, you can’t call it back.”