Excellent style and well-paced, and good thinking for the F-25's name (I wonder if they'll get around to correcting the out-of-sequence designation -reputedly a typo in somebody's speech- by the time they come into full service?). One problem, though; it has been well understood since the 1950s that aircraft carriers are a liability against an enemy with nuclear weapons and the will to light them off, which any future Chinese administration willing to lose all those lucrative manufacturing contracts would surely be mad enough to do. Instant sunrise is a great leveller, and carrier battle groups are by their very nature highly vulnerable.

PS: Here's a thought for giving the old Cobra a good all-weather engagement capability. You've probably heard that MBDA have developed an active-radar seeker for the Hellfire, tweaked the aerodynamics to permit carriage by supersonic aircraft and gave it the imaginative name Brimstone. Since later marks of Cobra carry Hellfires already there shouldn't be huge problems with clearance, and it has a couple of advantages over the semi-active homing version. It's less vulnerable to ECM (and you can bet there are people working on ways to jam Longbow) and it's not dependent on a radar antenna that seems awfully vulnerable to damage by groundfire; a heavy-calibre sniper rifle handled by a really good marksman could probably put it out of action.

Any thoughts?

Nice story you've written.

Few things I want to note you. First, China has the land launched SSMs, which can reach the Strait. Secondly, I noted the Chinas Badger fleer eas missing. I gather they'd be using Soviet doctrine, so at least one heavy bomber attack would've been made.

Otherwise, it was a great story

A page turner!

Superb, very well written

very good story, keep them coming

As a Navy vet, I always enjoy a good naval story. I had a question on the Communist Chinese naming their carrier Chaing Kai-Shek instead of, say, Mao Tse-Tung, but that's already been observed. A good extrapolation of possible weapons systems in the near future.

You're right on all counts, John. I called the command ship Mt. McKinley because that's the name Clancy gave it in the scenario he wrote for CARRIER. His rationale was probably that it was to be a command ship, and thus followed the tradition started by the first command ship, Mount Whitney. As for Chiang Kai-Shek, I didn't realize it was the name of the Nationalist president until started reading a book that included some history of WWII in Asia. I remembered the name, but not why it was significant. I just didn't want to call it the Sun Tzu, my first thought, because that had already been done in a Dale Brown book, and no other significant Chinese names struck me at the time I started writing it (though, of course, I could have used Mao Tse-Tung, Deng Xaioping...Oh well).

Very Clancy-esque battle scene - you had the tone down and did quite well in such a short space, but a couple minor little things I noticed. I am wondering - why would Communist China name a carrier the "Chiang Kai-Shek", after a Nationalist Chinese hero of World War II and first leader (I don't remember if he was president or prime minister) of the ROC government in exile on Formosa (Taiwan)? It just doesn't seem to scan... Also, on ship classes, at least on American ships, they usually follow a pattern, like if the first ship of a class is a city or a battle, the rest are, too, of that class... meaning that a USS Mt. McKinley would be more likely to be in a Mt. Mauna Loa-class, or be a San Antonio-class Cincinatti. These are just little picky things from a history geek (me) - they did not detract from the quality of the story, but they just made me ask questions.

Great!

Wonderful. You have the tone down perfect and it kept me intrigued. Hope you keep writing.