believe they had more than Cheyenne with which to contend, a ploy which the submarine force had used in previous conflicts.
The briefing officer continued with the latest status of the location of the USS Independence Battle Group and background on the Battle Group transit into the South China Sea. Prior to Mack's rendezvous and reporting in as the SSN(DS), Independence had steamed to the southern coast of Borneo, having passed through the Lombok Strait with her AO (oiler) and AE (ammunition ship), while several of her surface ships, including the two Ticonderoga class cruisers Gettysburg and Princeton, had slipped through the Sunda Strait to the west under the cover of darkness the night before.
The CVBG admiral had wisely split his forces to ensure that all his eggs were not in the same basket should the Chinese have sympathizers, or even their own soldiers, on Java, Sumatra, or Bali. Both the Lombok and Sunda Straits were narrow enough that even small-arms fire from the cliffs overlooking the straits could inflict damage to personnel on deck.
At any rate, the no-longer-covert show of force from the CVBG, which rendezvoused in the Java Sea near Belitung Island, was intended to flush the Chinese at Cuarteron Reef to sea for attacks on the Battle Group.
The briefing officer went on to explain that once Independence had recovered the S-J aircraft, which had provided air cover of both straits, the Battle Group steamed north to a position northwest of Natuna Island. There they maintained position until Cheyenne had rendezvoused and notified the submarine element coordinator (SEC) and the anti-submarine warfare commander (ASWC), co-located on board Independence with the SEC's submarine advisory team (SAT), that the time was right for the Battle Group to continue safely to the Spratly Islands without fear of Chinese submarine attacks.
The orders for Cheyenne at this stage of the naval war against China were clear and simple: unrestricted submarine warfare on Chinese submarines and surface warships, with the main targets expected to be those departing Cuarteron Reef.
Mack had known this, of course. Because there was a strong possibility of encountering Chinese warships, Cheyenne had taken on four UGM-84 Harpoon missiles instead of a full load of twenty-six Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes. In addition, a mix of TLAM-C and TASM had been reloaded into the twelve vertical-launch tubes: TLAM-C in case another land attack would be authorized while Cheyenne was at sea, and TASM in case they needed their longer range against the Chinese surface ships. The TASM had an extra two hundred nautical miles of range over the Harpoon. Either way, for those long range shots, over-the-horizon targeting from Battle Group aircraft would be necessary unless the Chinese surface ships themselves provided enough radar targeting information to Cheyenne's ESM antenna for bearing-only launches.
So far, there was no need for TLAM-N, which would be a waste on the relatively tiny islands. Besides, the digital terrain data of the Chinese mainland itself, which met the Tomahawk TERCOM and DSMAC data requirements, more fully supported TLAM-N. Unlike the Spratlys, data on the mainland had been accumulated and processed years earlier, in less of a rush, against the possibility of future U.S. nuclear bomb attacks on China.
The briefing was professional and highly detailed. Mack came away with all his questions answered, and a clear sense of Cheyenne's mission. But no briefing was ever absolutely complete. The briefing officer could not pass along information he didn't have, and on the last day of Cheyenne's refit naval intelligence had not discovered-or, as sometimes happened, had somehow neglected to pass on-the fact that there was a new player in the area. The Chinese already had a large fleet of submarines purchased from the economically ailing Russians, and that fleet had just gotten bigger. The Chinese had recently acquired a Russian Alfa class SSN, and the Alfa was now on patrol in the South China Sea.
Mack didn't know about the Alfa yet, but he did know that his submarine and his crew were ready for anything the Chinese cared to throw at them, though with the sheer numbers of assets the Chinese had hunting them, Cheyenne would have to be cautious. The Chinese had the advantage of being used to dealing en masse; Cheyenne had the advantage that their enemy obviously had no coordination of surface and subsurface forces- something Mack had noted in his previous encounters.
After the briefing, Mack's officers went back to Cheyenne to get her ready for departure. Mack stayed behind for a little while longer.
Mack met with the McKee captain and CTF 74 in the admiral's sea cabin. Cheyenne was facing the possibility of shallow water operations, and her crew needed to prepare for that. Shallow water operations were difficult and dangerous, and there had simply been no opportunity to practice before Cheyenne was ordered to ready herself for deployment.
In the admiral's sea cabin. Mack reported to the other two officers that after departure, Cheyenne's crew would practice shallow water, high speed maneuvering, and shallow water towed-array operations first. That way, if the TB-16 array were to touch bottom before their proficiency had peaked, the soft bottom of the Sulu Sea would ensure that the array would be undamaged. Mack needed to ensure that his diving officers, helmsmen, and planes-men were ready so that they would not overreact during high speed, shallow water maneuvers, and either broach the ship or drag the propeller and lower rudder through the bottom. Mack knew that it didn't take much angle for a 360-foot submarine in 20 fathoms of water to subject itself to the dangers of the surface or the ocean bottom.
In addition, Mack requested and received permission to use the McKee captain's gig in their exercises. This would provide an adequate surface target for active sonar detection and tracking in the irregular contours and the varying wind driven thermal gradients. Mack would use the gig to practice active sonar tracking with the BSY-1 spherical array at low power and short pulse lengths and with the higher-frequency MIDAS under-ice and mine- hunting sonar as they approached the Balabac Strait south of Palawan.
Cheyenne would have to wait for the rocky bottom and shoals off Cuarteron Reef to once again be their proving grounds should the Chinese submarines decide not to venture forth into deep water. The Captain hoped MIDAS would be able to distinguish between the coral reefs and the anechoic coatings of the Chinese submarines. But then, active sonar would be used only if Cheyenne's presence were otherwise known.
There was one other point Mack had to bring up. He liked to assume that the Chinese had equivalent overhead satellite imagery capability, and he was concerned for McKee's safety.
The admiral advised him not to worry, however, since they intended to weigh anchor shortly after Cheyenne's departure and would periodically relocate outside the Chinese intelligence satellites' footprints. The actual location of the next rendezvous would be provided to Cheyenne as soon as it was decided upon. It might even be in port in Brunei, or off that coast, where carrier air protection could be afforded both McKee and Cheyenne during their next reload period.
Mack was pleased to hear that-and doubly pleased to know that chances for another reload were good-but he also knew that it would only be true if he could keep the Chinese submarines away from the basically defenseless McKee before the Independence Battle Group arrived to relieve him of the burden of protecting the tender.
Shortly after getting under way from alongside McKee, Cheyenne quietly submerged. They weren't scheduled to come to the surface again for quite some time-and, depending on how much action they saw and how well they fared in Cheyenne^ next war patrol off Cuarteron Reef, it might be even longer before they saw McKee again.
As he had briefed his admiral. Mack made sure that they practiced the shallow water, high speed maneuvering en route. This maneuvering was not unlike flying an airplane-even some of the terminology was similar. In deep water, where the automatic depth-control system would frequently be used, the submarine's vertical position in the water column was referred to as 'depth.' During these maneuvers, however, the term was 'altitude,' with added emphasis on maintaining a comfortable safety margin or altitude in the water column above the ocean bottom. To help with this, the upward-looking beams of the under-ice sonar, MIDAS, continually displayed the distance to the surface, while the secure fathometer, with its narrow sonar beam, provided the altitude information.
As Mack had hoped, the McKee captain's gig turned out to be a useful target for active sonar tracking. In addition, it provided a source of sonar passive tonal information. In shallow water like this, the TB-16 towed array's entire 2,600-foot tow cable, with its 240 feet of hydrophones at the end, could not be totally deployed. Instead, it would be deployed at a 'short stay,' an optimum length for all hydrophones to be at some distance away from its
