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

  Kasem no longer looked indifferent. He was wiping his forehead where the drone had smacked into it, and watching it move around the workshop with dread fascination on his face.

  “It will avoid humans who are not the target, though: won’t attack them. You know, sentries, guards, children, that kind of thing. Ideally you send it in through an open window at night, but an unguarded door is fine. It can go up and down stairs, can’t open locks of course, but it’s small enough to slide through prison bars and such. It can search a two-story, eight-room house inside about ten minutes.”

  “What did it fire?” Kasem asked.

  “Well, that was just a noisemaker. You can use them for distractions. But for the mission you described, I’d go with .45 hollow point.” Azaria pointed between his eyes. “Make a proper mess.”

  Kasem was still rubbing his forehead. Azaria turned, switched the video feed to the Skyprint still circling overhead, and instructed it to land on the dirt outside. She turned back to the Sayaret Captain. “This is my only prototype. I would need to print you a copy. So – when do you need it?”

  The Red Sea, May 14, 2030, aboard

  LCS-30 USS Canberra

  “Contact! Bearing zero three zero, depth 150, range ten.”

  Sonar Technician (Submarine) ‘Ears’ Bell had been hunting the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN) submarine Fateh for three days. He watched his screens for minute changes in the data that might give him a heading. It was possible the Iranian was maneuvering for a simulated torpedo shot.

  Possible, but not likely, unfortunately for Ears. The Fateh was shy. Since the Independence-class warship USS Canberra had sailed from Oman and started its patrol in the northern reaches of the Red Sea three days earlier, Ears had picked up the acoustic signature of the first submarine in the Iranian Fateh class just three times, including this one, and never closer than 10 nautical miles away.

  But the first contact had been a good one, long enough for Bell’s AI to record and analyze the signature, confirming he’d hooked the Fateh. One of Iran’s newest and most modern submarines, the Fateh-class boats were no easy target. They were small, only 600 tons submerged, and less than 150 feet long. Near silent twin-diesel electric engines could push them through the water at a modest 11 knots submerged, which made them unsuited for chasing their prey, but ideal for sneaking through the outer pickets of carrier strike groups and lying in wait to strike with their four wire-guided Hoot rocket torpedoes, or Jask anti-ship missiles.

  Tensions between the superpowers and their allies were high in the Middle East. A simmering conflict between Syria and Turkey had turned into a full-scale shooting war six months earlier, and with Syrian tanks rolling across Syria’s northern border into NATO partner Turkey with Russian air support, the US and its allies had been forced to step in to stem the Syrian advance. A ceasefire had returned Turkey and Syria to pre-conflict lines, with each back behind their borders and licking their wounds, but Russia’s ambitions in the region had only intensified. From its new naval base at Tartus in Syria it had begun to challenge US freedom of navigation in the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea. Russian destroyers had stopped and boarded a small US flagged freighter bound for Lebanon from Cyprus, claiming it had entered Syrian waters. And sheltering among the skirts of Mother Russia, Iran had also begun to lift its profile, sending submarines far into the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal on exercises with the Russian fleet. Two weeks after the boarding of the US freighter, the Iranian Republican Guard Corps spy ship Saviz hit a mine in the Red Sea and was towed to the Russian naval facility at Port Sudan. Iran accused an Israeli submarine of laying the mine, Russia accused the US.

  Sabers were also rattling ashore, with Russian-backed Syrian ground forces, released from combat against Turkey, now being moved in strength to Syria’s southwest military district: on the borders of Lebanon and Israel. Stock markets were jittery, and 24-hour news channel pundits were predicting trouble between Israel and Syria any day.

  When Bell had first picked up the faint sounds of the Fateh’s screw cavitating, he’d hoped it was the Israeli submarine Dakar, playing hide and seek with them. Firstly, because there was a political element to any engagement with an Iranian sub that got in the way of prosecuting the contact the way he’d like. But also because if it was Israeli, he’d have a chance to compare notes with a sonarman off the Israeli boat one day and see how close it had really gotten before he picked it up. Unfortunately, the acoustic AI had tagged it as the Iranian. The Fateh often played tag with US and Israeli warships in the Red Sea or Persian Gulf, its crew testing their potential enemies to see how close they could approach before being detected. It usually kept its distance though, closing only to within standoff missile range. Occasionally it crept closer and tried for a simulated torpedo shot.

  Israeli boat drivers weren’t so timid. They loved getting their German-made diesel electric boats with their whisper-quiet Siemens 2.85 MW electric engines right in under the keels of American ships and then sending a compressed air shot out their torpedo tubes, to scare the bejeezus out of the poor sonarman who had let them do it. Which was nothing compared to the pain and suffering awaiting him when his Captain found out about it.

  However, on one famous and highly classified occasion, the IRIN Fateh had broken the surface two miles from the Ford-class carrier USS Enterprise, deep inside that carrier’s ring of protective frigates and destroyers. Of course it could have surfaced unintentionally, the Captain or helmsman misjudging his depth, but it had been interpreted by everyone who saw or heard about it as a definite ‘screw you America’ gesture. Bell heard the commander of anti-submarine operations in the Enterprise carrier strike group that day had last been seen sailing a desk. In Guam.

  Whoever was driving the Fateh on this particular patrol wasn’t interested in showing off. But he’d gotten sloppy. Bell refined the contact on his passive sonar and pushed it to the new 360-degree view wall of the Canberra’s refurbished Combat Information Center, or CIC. “Sonar to TAO, contact on passive sonar classified as Iranian submarine Fateh, designating target as Charlie one zero, bearing zero three one, heading zero niner eight, depth one fifty, speed six knots.”

  The Canberra’s circular CIC was lined with wall to ceiling screens showing a simulated view all around the ship. Around the bottom of the screens were compass markings and every civilian or military sea, air or subsea contact being tracked by the warship was visible as an icon on the screen, with data beside it showing its type, ID or ship name if known, and data on its bearing, course and speed. The icon for the Fateh appeared on the view wall as a flashing red symbol. The data was automatically pushed to screens for the attention of the various CIC supervisory officers, but Ears was old school and didn’t like to assume his superiors were awake and alert.

  Especially when the Tactical Action Officer, or TAO, on this watch was Lieutenant Daniel ‘Dopey’ Drysdale. Bell wouldn’t have put Drysdale in charge of anything more complicated than an alarm clock, let alone the newest CIC on one of the newest ships in the Navy. Luckily, a lot of his job was automated and AI assisted on the Canberra, leaving less for him to screw up.

  “Roger, Ears, contact confirmed. Subsurface Search Coordinator, spin up a quadrotor and get a Hunter over that sub pronto.”

  “Aye, sir, deploying quadrotor and Hunter for subsurface contact Charlie one zero,” the Subsurface Contact Supervisor or SSC replied, repeating the order. The quadrotor was a drone that could drop a dipping sonar on top of the Iranian sub to get a more precise lock on it in case the ship’s anti-submarine weapons systems were needed. The Fleet-class Hunter was an autonomous surface vessel that supplemented the Canberra as the warship’s ‘wingman’, either following along behind it, or sweeping the sea ahead of it, trying to pick up mines, surface or subsurface vessels before they got within range of the Canberra’s sensors. It was fitted with the same towed sonar and phased array radar that the Canberra carried, which gave it a potent ability to detect hostile ships and subma
rines.

  Bell watched the submarine’s track as it started to develop. It looked like the Fateh was creeping south-southeast, trying to sneak past the Canberra in the flukey warmer waters of the Red Sea’s northern inclines. They were shallower, but sound waves were more likely to be scattered by the different temperature layers between the Fateh and the Canberra, which was sailing in the deeper central waters of the sea. He checked their position. This part of the sea, right between Medina in Saudi Arabia in the east and the Sudan/Egyptian border in the west, was just about the widest part of the upper Red Sea, stretching about a hundred and fifty miles across. Further down, at the entrance to the sea near Djibouti, the navigable part of the channel narrowed to under twenty miles. Where they were right now was a favorite place for submarines to test their ability to pass surface warships undetected.

  But why was the Iranian sub headed south-east? The Iranian government had just announced that the IRIN Fateh would be visiting Egypt’s Berenice Military Base in two days’ time to make a friendship visit before beginning exercises with Egyptian warships in the Red Sea. That was how Canberra had been alerted that it might be in their sector, and their brief was to try to locate it and then monitor the Egyptian-Iranian exercises. But Berenice was north-west, not south-east. The Fateh would have a hard time making Berenice inside two days if it was headed south-east here and now. Bell frowned. Could it have run into mechanical problems?

  He checked the acoustic signature for any signs of mechanical irregularities, but he couldn’t see or hear any. Its blade noise was faint, barely registering, but it was constant. He wasn’t close enough yet to pick up engine noise, but he might be able to get a read on that once a dipping buoy was dropped. Still, it was…

  A chime sounded in his headphones. “New contact!” he called out. “Bearing two seven four degrees, depth 200, range twenty-two klicks…” His towed array sonar had picked up a second submarine. He assigned his AI to continue tracking and refining the contact on the Fateh, and began working the new contact.

  Though it was further out than the Fateh, he had a better read on it. The blade noise from its screw was coming through clearer, and there was even some engine noise. His AI got a close match, but not confirmed. It was registering as a seven-bladed screw, and the AI was calling it a possible Russian Lada-class submarine. But the acoustic signature didn’t match any of the Lada-class boats in the database and there was no intel on a new boat in the class being launched. It could be an Israeli Dolphin class, shadowing the same Iranian Fateh that they were shadowing, but only Russian designs used a seven-bladed screw, and a quick check showed Ears that all the Israeli boats were either berthed or accounted for. It made sense for a Russian boat to be in the area, given everything that was going on, but the US Navy had built a solid acoustic signature database of every Russian submarine afloat, and this signature was not in it.

  It made sense for the Iranians to have their submarines working in pairs, but the only other possible Iranian candidate was the IRIN Besat, and the last Bell had heard, it hadn’t even completed sea trials yet. US ships hadn’t gotten close enough to the newest Iranian submarine in the fleet, the Besat, to build a precise acoustic signature of it. He thought fast. The Canberra’s quadrotor and Hunter drones were already prosecuting the target that was the Fateh. He still had options, though. “Sonar, TAO, designating new contact Charlie one one, requesting MAD search on target position.”

  There was no reply. Walking and chewing gum were not Dopey Drysdale’s strengths. Anything more than one active unidentified contact tended to send him into decision paralysis. Two Iranian subs at once? Luckily his second in command, the Watch Supervisor, Chief Petty Officer Hiram Goldmann, stepped into the gap. “Goldmann to weapons, you are clear to fire MAD on contact Charlie one one, commit.”

  “Aye, launching MAD shell at contact Charlie one one, Weapons out.”

  Unlike the quadrotor drone which took off from the helo-deck, the Magnetic Anomaly Detection or MAD drone on the Canberra was fired from the ship’s 2-inch cannon like a homing artillery shell. It launched from the barrel of the gun inside a casing with fins that deployed as it was fired, before the casing dropped away and the UAV guided itself to the target using data provided by the CIC. When it reached the target area it plunged into the waves and began circling, looking for disturbances in the earth’s magnetic field.

  Almost as soon as it splashed into the water, the MAD drone started sending data on a large anomaly, two hundred feet below it. And looking at the numbers, Bell took a deep breath and started concentrating harder. After a couple of quick passes, the MAD had sent enough data for Ears to estimate the mass of the contact. One thousand, two hundred tons. He made a quick scan of likely candidates and found only one.

  The Besat. It had to be! Announced in 2008, it had only been confirmed as a reality in 2020 and commissioned in 2026. It was Iran’s largest indigenously built submarine, double the size of the Fateh and capable of deploying mines as well as firing torpedoes and cruise missiles. But it had done little more than a few sea trials in Iranian waters. It had never been sighted this far outside Iranian waters and no US or allied ship had been able to get close enough to build an acoustic signature for it.

  And it was headed north-west, in the opposite direction to the Fateh.

  Ears reached for his throat mike. “Chief Goldmann, I think the Iranians are playing us.”

  “You got something on MAD? Send it through, Bell,” Drysdale ordered.

  “It’s a new class of boat, sir,” Ears replied. He was circling the MAD drone manually, trying to paint a picture of the seemingly huge metal object beneath it. “I think it’s the Besat. While we were trailing the Fateh, they tried to sneak the Besat past us.”

  “And I thought the Fateh was just being careless,” Goldmann replied. “We nearly fell for it.”

  Bell ran his finger across the screen, mumbling to himself. “Chief, I’ve got propeller cavitation and increased engine noise at position Charlie one one. I expect the contact is moving to ahead full. We need to make a call soon – stay on the Fateh, or follow the new contact.”

  Drysdale broke in again, clearly annoyed his personnel were talking around him instead of to him. “Our mission is the Fateh,” he reminded them. “We are supposed to follow it all the way to Berenice and then monitor the Egyptian navy exercises.”

  “The Fateh is heading south-east, sir,” Bell pointed out. “It’s turned around and it’s headed toward Djibouti. Away from Berenice.”

  “So we stay on it,” Drysdale said. “Toward Berenice, away … I don’t care if it’s going in damn circles.”

  Goldmann broke in again, ignoring him. “You’re thinking the Iranians are trying a bait and switch, Ears?”

  “Yes, Chief. It’s the only explanation.”

  “I’m coming over.” The CIC was arranged in a ring of concentric circles with the TAO and his assistant in the center and the specialist watchkeepers arrayed around them. Bell saw Goldmann rise from his station and make his way through the other stations toward him.

  Chief Goldmann was a small man with black curly hair and a face that was all knuckles. He’d started his navy career as a submariner, which made him especially good at hunting them. “Let me see what you’ve got … seven-bladed screw? Twelve hundred tons submerged … Russians have nothing in that category. Swedish Challenger class?”

  “Not made for warm water operations, sir,” Ears reminded him. “No aircon.”

  “German Type 209? Egyptians had a few.”

  “All retired.”

  “Then it’s got to be the Besat. Damn, that’s sassy.”

  Bell watched the data pouring into their acoustic database. “Building the signature data now. That’s my first new signature capture.” It was rare to be the first to lock horns with a new submarine: like identifying a new species of whale. It would give him bragging rights when they finished their patrol.

  “Stop preening. Does it have the same plant as the Fateh?�
��

  Bell ran the numbers. “Seems so. Air-independent diesel.”

  Goldmann was drumming his fingers along the top of Bell’s screen as he thought about what he saw, which was very annoying. But Bell knew better than to interrupt him. “Logic says they were trying to draw us off, sneak the Besat past us, but why? There has to be something about the Besat they’re trying to hide, or they wouldn’t go to all this trouble.”

  “Maybe they just didn’t want us to know it’s operational…”

  “Could be that simple.” Goldmann stopped drumming and keyed his throat mike. “Lieutenant Drysdale, I think the Iranians are playing a shell game. They’ve got us chasing the Fateh south, and they’re trying to sneak their new boat the Besat past us headed north.”

  “Well, that’s just impolite. You have confirmation it’s the Besat, Chief?” They’d been briefed on the likely threat environment before starting their patrol, and the chance of bumping into Iran’s newest submarine was one they’d all relished, though not expected.

  Goldmann raised his eyebrows, looking a question at Bell. Bell nodded emphatically and said in a low voice, “I’d bet my next liberty on it.”

  “I do, sir,” Goldmann said into his headset, sounding a lot more confident than Bell was feeling.