The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [141]
"So, you think hes going to whip his people into shape. What about the Russian navy?"
"They dont belong to him. Hes got Frontal Aviation tactical aircraft and ground troops, but thats all."
"Well, their navys so far down the shitter they cant see where the paper roll is," Mancuso observed. "What else?"
"A bunch of political stuff you can read up on at your leisure. The Chinese are still active in the field. Theyre running a four-division exercise now south of the Amur River."
"That big?"
"Admiral, theyve been on an increased training regimen for almost three years now. Nothing frantic or anything, but theyve been spending money to get the PLA up to speed. This ones heavy with tanks and APCs. Lots of artillery live-fire exercises. Thats a good training area for them, not much in the way of civilians, kinda like Nevada but not as flat. At first when they started this we kept a close eye on it, but its fairly routine now."
"Oh, yeah? What do the Russians think about it?"
Lahr stretched in his chair. "Sir, thats probably why Bondarenko drew this assignment. This is backward from how the Russians trained to fight. The Chinese have them heavily outnumbered in theater, but nobody sees hostilities happening. The politics are pretty smooth at the moment."
"Uh-huh," CINCPAC grunted behind his desk. "And Taiwan?"
"Some increased training near the strait, but those are mainly infantry formations, and nothing even vaguely like amphibious exercises. We keep a close eye on that, with help from our ROC friends."
Mancuso nodded. He had a filing cabinet full of plans to send 7th Fleet west, and there was almost always one of his surface ships making a "courtesy call" to that island. For his sailors, the Republic of China was one hell of a good liberty port, with lots of women whose services were subject to commercial negotiations. And having a gray U.S. Navy warship tied alongside pretty well put that city off-limits for a missile attack. Even scratching an American warship was classified delicately as a casus belli, a reason for war. And nobody thought the ChiComms were ready for that sort of thing yet. To keep things that way, Mancuso had his carriers doing constant workups, exercising their interceptor and strike-fighter forces in the manner of the 1980s. He always had at least one fast-attack or boomer slow-attack submarine in the Formosa Strait, too, something that was advertised only by casual references allowed to leak to the media from time to time. Only very rarely would a submarine make a local port call, however. They were more effective when not seen. But in another filing cabinet he had lots of periscope photos of Chinese warships, and some "hull shots," photos made from directly underneath, which was mainly good for testing the nerve of his submarine drivers.
He also occasionally had his people track ChiComm submarines, much as hed done in Dallas against the former Soviet navy. But this was much easier. The Chinese nuclear-power plants were so noisy that fish avoided them to prevent damage to their ears, or so his sonarmen joked. As much as the PRC had rattled its saber at Taiwan, an actual attack, if opposed by his 7th Fleet, would rapidly turn into a bloody shambles, and he hoped Beijing knew that. If they didnt, finding out would be a messy and expensive exercise. But the ChiComms didnt have much in