Free B00DSDUWIQ EBOK by John Schettler Page B

S-400s in reserve and letting Orlan do the
fighting at this point, but now he turned to communications with an order.
    “Mister
Nikolin, signal the flotilla. Tell Captain Yeltsin aboard Orlan that they
have led the way ably and we will now join the action with our Klinok system
while they switch to short range munitions. Admiral Golovko will continue
to hold fire unless directly attacked, and then they are authorized to use
their close in defense systems.”
    “Aye,
sir, signaling now.”
    “Medium
range SAM system, Samsonov; salvos of eight. Track and fire when ready.”
    “Sir!
Firing now.” Victor Samsonov was only too eager to get into the fight. The aft deck
of Kirov sounded off the loud warning claxon, and the hatches opened.
The missiles were up soon after, jetting away on fiery tails with ash-white smoke
in their wake.
    Four…Eight…Twelve…Sixteen…the
weapon was called the Klinok shipboard multi-channel self-defense system,
NATO designation SA-N-92 Gauntlet , and the pilots of the oncoming strike
wave would soon be running the gauntlet of fire and steel. The short reaction
time and high rate of fire for the missiles made it ideal in this role, and the
missiles Kirov fired had much improved range over the initial system
developed two decades earlier. It was a tried and true multi-channel tracking
system with the ability to use laser, TV, or radar to find targets. Each radar
could simultaneously prosecute eight targets, and reassign remaining live
missiles in the salvo to new missions if their original target was destroyed.
    Karpov
turned to Rodenko, who was keeping one eye on the Plexiglas situation plot adjacent
to the radar systems. “How far away is the main body?”
    “About
250 kilometers southwest of our position, sir. Speed thirty knots, heading due north
at 360 degrees.”
    “Fools
rush in. Very well, let’s send them a message that should give them something to
think about. How soon before we have them in SSM range?”
    “You’re
moving to a surface action, sir?”
    “A
preemptive action, Rodenko. If we give them a hard shove on the shoulder now, it
could spare us a much more involved battle later. If I can get them to back off
here, all the better. At the moment they may be under the illusion that we are
nothing more than a small surface flotilla—Soviet ships, or even Japanese. I
want them to know we can hit them at range, strike them like an aircraft carrier.
It should give them something to think about, and perhaps it will take the
starch out of their collars down there and we can talk sense.”
    Rodenko
nodded his agreement, though he still wondered what the Captain had in mind for
that conversation. What was he thinking to say to the Americans now? Yet this was
not the time or place for that discussion, so he considered their surface action
missile loads. They had left Vladivostok with a standard load of ten P-900 Sizzlers ,
ten MOS-III Starfires , and twenty Moskit-IIs . Four P-900s were
expended earlier against American patrols in the Kuriles.
     “Sir,
we can fire the P-900s now, but we have only six remaining for that system. The Moskit-II system should be in range momentarily. At our present speed due
south, the range is diminishing by about 100 kilometers per hour. We can fire
in about fifteen minutes.”
    “Very
well. Mister, Samsonov. Ready a half salvo on the P-900 system—four missiles please.
Target the core of the enemy fleet. Set ship target profile preference to
aircraft carrier. On my command fire at thirty second intervals.”
    “Ready
on P-900 system, sir.” The deadly missiles could be programmed to seek out a specific
target profile, analyzing a ship’s silhouette to determine the target type.
They could also fly evasive low level approach runs to avoid screening targets
to get to their primary, an evolution that made them particularly effective.
    “Are
these missiles reprogrammed for plunging fire?”
    “I’m
sorry sir, they are all in standard