379: Chapter 379 The Saturation Defense Protocol Was Forced Out

But this time, from the captain down to the sailors, no one believed that statement anymore.

On the bridge, Colonel Morgan Carter was holding binoculars, observing the horizon to the northeast.

He had once commanded a guided-missile destroyer in the Persian Gulf and had witnessed the entire process of an F/A-18E being locked onto by an unknown air defense system—he had never seen that radar waveform before, but the frequency and timing of its appearance on the screen were so precise that it felt like someone was playing a game with a stopwatch.

After that, his flagship had been locked onto once by the decoy of a "Persian Gulf-3" hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile, and the interception had failed—fortunately, the one that came down was only a decoy.

His left ear still had a stress response to high-frequency noise to this day.

"Where is the report from the electronic reconnaissance team?" He lowered his binoculars.

The electronic warfare officer did not even look up. "To the northeast, at a distance of one hundred and twenty nautical miles, an X-band fire-control radar signal has appeared."

"Characteristics?"

"The waveform preliminarily matches the target illumination radar of the 'Sky Dome' air defense system—but the signal-to-noise ratio is wrong. The signal purity of this radar is too high. Our own electronic support system has performed eleven comparative cycles, and the conclusion is: this radar is continuously locking onto us."

The bridge was silent for several seconds.

"Continuously locking onto us." Carter repeated the word.

The beam width of an X-band fire-control radar is extremely narrow and highly directional, usually only turned on for a few seconds during the terminal guidance phase of a missile—because once it is turned on, the opponent can receive a warning, which means the missile is arriving immediately.

But this radar had been illuminating him for ten minutes.

No missiles.

No release of the lock.

The beam was like an invisible finger, pressing continuously against his bridge.

"What are they doing?"

"According to doctrine," the electronic warfare officer's voice lowered, "this is called 'fire-control simulated illumination.' Using fire-control radar to continuously lock onto a target without firing—this is used to convey a warning signal during peacetime."

Carter knew what that meant.

This was not a warning.

This was holding a knife point against your throat, letting you feel the temperature of the blade.

He rubbed the rubber eyecups of the binoculars with his fingers, remaining silent for a long time.

"Notify all ships to enter Condition II readiness. Keep air defense radars on at all times. Do not fire proactively. Maintain course."

After the order was passed down, the bridge became even quieter.

There was only the low-frequency hum of the air conditioning vents and the subtle, crisp clicking sounds of console keys being pressed.

There was no panic on the faces of the duty officers, but rather something heavier than panic—the operators stared at the screens, knowing in their hearts that they were being illuminated by some signal, while the order from above was "do not fire proactively."

This meant that no matter how advanced their air defense system was, they could only sit and wait until the opponent decided to fire—or not to fire.

The sailors privately called this "waiting for the gunshot."

Southeast of Pattaya, U-Tapao forward airfield.

Six J-10 "soaring dragon" stealth fighters were parked side-by-side outside the hangar.

They did not take off from the same runway—three of them had lifted off forty minutes ago from a hidden cavern hangar in Myeik, Tanintharyi Region, and the other three had taken off from a forward airfield in Chanthaburi Province, completing their formation over the Gulf of Thailand.

At this moment, they were flying at supersonic speeds at an altitude of 12,000 meters, heading directly toward the Peleliu battle group.

The lead pilot, codenamed "Saber-tooth," was the chief tactical instructor under BigDecimal own.

He glanced at the holographic situational map on his helmet-mounted display, where the icons of the six friendly fighters were arranged in a column attack formation with a depth of over twenty kilometers—the lead aircraft was responsible for deploying electronic decoys, the middle four were the simulated attack wave, and the last one was responsible for recording the entire process.

This was not a real attack formation.

This was just to make the Eagle fleet think they were being attacked.

"Supersonic pass in two minutes. All groups, check electronic decoy payloads."

"Number Two ready. Four air-launched decoy missiles loaded and set."

"Number Three ready. Electronic warfare pod powered on."

"Number Four ready."

"Number Five ready."

"Number Six ready. Recording system running."

"Saber-tooth" pushed the throttle to the supersonic range.

A subtle, low-frequency vibration came from the fuselage—it was the inherent resonance of the turbofan engines before breaking the sound barrier, which occurred every time it went transonic, as if the entire fighter was taking a deep breath.

The cumulus clouds on the horizon retreated rapidly, and the cloud tops were stretched into collage-like, light golden strips in the morning light.

"Initiate air-launched decoy deployment sequence."

The weapons bay of the lead aircraft ejected and released four air-launched electronic decoy missiles within a fraction of a second.

These bodies were only one-third the size of a standard cruise missile and carried almost no warheads, but the electronic payloads inside them could simulate the radar return characteristics of more than a dozen different types of fighters—including the F-35, F-22, Su-35, and the J-10 itself.

At the same time, the intensity of the radio frequency signals they emitted was deliberately amplified so that they could be intercepted as clearly as possible by the shipborne electronic reconnaissance system.

The decoy missiles flew skimming the sea toward the fleet, dragging four light-white wakes across the surface.

Behind them, the five J-10s simultaneously activated the active jamming mode of their electronic warfare pods, splashing a patch of neon-mottled interference noise across the fleet's air defense radar screens.

This was not stealth—stealth is used to not be seen.

This was creating a false cluster attack that was meant to be seen, making you use all your tactical reactions against a main attack wave that did not exist at all.

These four decoys plus the electronic interference released by the five real aircraft superimposed into a signal density greater than the real-time processing limit of the Eagle Navy's electronic warfare system.

The Aegis system of the USS Momsen sounded all alarms at that moment.

The bridge combat information officer stared at the screen, fingers hovering above the launch button, lips parted.

In that instant, the entire career of the combat information officer flashed before his eyes—from anti-missile simulators at the Naval Academy to the twelve-second window of live-fire interception in the Persian Gulf, he had never seen a target group emerge at such a speed.

It took only a very short time from when he saw the number of incoming targets until it exceeded the upper limit, and the screen automatically switched to simplified processing mode, marking only the path vectors and priorities, no longer displaying the specific number.

"Targets... are performing terminal maneuvers."

"Are they missiles?" The captain's voice was low, but unsteady.

"Uncertain—some trajectories are more like fighter jets. But the quantity—"

"How many?"

The combat information officer turned his head, his eyes filled with something that had never been taught in textbooks.

"The system says it exceeds the processing limit. It recommends executing the saturation defense protocol."

The Aegis system's saturation defense protocol—all vertical launch cells on the ship fire all interceptor missiles continuously in the shortest possible time, after which the destroyer basically loses its area air defense capability.

This was equivalent to a pistol firing every bullet in its magazine to repel a phantom that might just be noise.

Colonel Carter roared into the fleet channel—not cursing, but issuing a highest-priority prohibition order.

He shouted it three times, his voice tearing slightly on the third time: "Lock launch authority—all ships are prohibited from firing interceptor missiles! Repeat, do not fire!"