We Didn't Start the Fire...
The World of Double Victory before the Departure (Part ONE)
This is Part ONE of an explainer series elaborating on the world of DOUBLE VICTORY before the Composite Testing Force is sent back in time to 1942; read Part TWO here.
The world of Double Victory does not start in 2042—when the Departure occurs, and the ships of the Composite Testing Force are sent back in time to 1942—it begins in 2020. Those twenty-two years are not great for the globe. In fact, they actually suck.
However, the pain and trials of the Rolling ‘20s and Burning ‘30s are at least matched with the global economic prosperity brought by the Fifth Industrial Revolution, which touches everything from production methods to material science to computing to bionics to medicine and more.
The net-net is straight up not a good time.
Double Victory is not trying to predict the future. It is merely an alternative history that leads to an alternative past. These years before the Departure serve to increase the size of the United States Armed Forces so that the Composite Testing Force described in a future post can exist with the weapons and technologies I want it to possess, especially the future forward-manufacturing capabilities which will become incredibly important for the progression of the post-Departure Second World War. This history also exists to build a cadre of experienced Sailors, Soldiers, Aeros, and Marines who can go through the Departure and have the confidence to stand up to the titans of the Second World War and hold their ground. The Fleet that disappears from Puget Sound is the best of the best.
They have nothing to prove. They’ve already won their generation’s World War.
Point of Divergence — November 6, 2020
When The Clock Strikes Thirteen
Shortly after Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife leave their Fair Oaks mansion for what would’ve been a fateful birthday dinner at The French Laundry, thirteen shots ring out. Nine rounds strike the Newsoms’ Chevy Tahoe, leaving the Governor and First Lady rattled but unharmed. A bystander leaving Siam Patio Thai Cuisine—Mrs. Janelle Page, 32—is not so fortunate and is hit by an errant bullet. She is pronounced dead on arrival at Mercy San Juan Medical Center. The shooter is never identified or apprehended; the only lead is grainy CCTV footage of a masked, hoody-wearing figure driving a recently stolen 2006 Honda Civic.
Without The French Laundry scandal and with a massive wave of sympathy, the Recall Petition fails to secure sufficient support by March 17, 2021, missing the threshold by 365,000 signatures. In most other aspects, history progresses without alteration. The Capitol is attacked on January 6th. The Freedom to Vote Act dies on a procedural vote to overturn the filibuster. The US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturns Roe v. Wade. However, Joe Biden makes a fateful divergent choice for Attorney General—nominating former Senator Doug Jones.
Jones appoints a Special Counsel, Jack Smith, to handle the prosecution of January 6th offenders on February 1, 2021. Following this, on May 18, 2021, Donald Trump is indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. The day before his indictment, Trump announces his re-election bid. His trial is set to start on January 1, 2022, before appeals to the DC Court of Appeals and then the US Supreme Court are processed. An attempt by the Special Counsel Jack Smith to appeal directly to the Supreme Court is rejected, slowing down the review of Trump’s immunity claims. The day after the opinion is delivered in Dobbs, the Supreme Court delivers a 6-3 opinion establishing absolute presidential immunity for acts committed as president within their core constitutional purview, at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of their official responsibility, and no immunity for unofficial acts. This delays the trial until after the 2022 Midterms.
Dobbs v. Jackson and Trump v. United States—along with Gavin Newsom running an active re-election campaign instead of focusing on ballot measures—narrows the outcome of the midterms. California Democrats narrowly win CA-13, CA-22, and CA-41. Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives—but only by one seat. Democrats secure two more seats in the Senate— Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—with Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes defeating incumbent Senator Ron Johnson by just two-hundred-and-fourteen votes after a mandatory recount.
Lost in the buzz of Election Day in the States, stories of a Finnish volunteer in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion stopping an attempted ambush of a NATO diplomatic junket in Kyiv are buried, along with nineteen Russian Spetsnaz.
On January 1, 2023, Donald Trump is indicted by the Federal Government again, this time in Florida, for the mishandling of classified documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago. The case is assigned to District Court Judge Kathleen Williams, and the trial is set for August.
United States Continuing Speakership Crisis of 2023
Mr. Speaker, Bring Me a Dream; Make Him the Damnedest That I've Ever Seen
The narrow Republican victory in the 2022 Midterms instantly became an albatross around the party's neck. The January 2023 Speaker Election goes on for twenty-six ballots over five sessions. The final day of voting, January 9, would see eleven back-to-back ballots following a weekend of fruitless, frustrating machinations. Fears of an “Alaska Coalition” between Democrats and moderate Republicans, and the vacancy caused the death of Virginia Democrat Donald McEachin, would provide just enough motivation and wiggle room to elect Kevin McCarthy the 55th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives with 217 votes (Matt Gaetz voting Present) against all 216 Democrats voting for Hakeem Jeffries.
The 118th Congress will be the single least productive and most chaotic session of Congress of the 21st Century thus far. The Debt Ceiling Crisis is resolved after threats to Mint The Coin materialize into an actionable, quiet plan in an even messier fight within the vanishingly thin majority. Infighting culminates with the defenestration of Kevin McCarthy despite his caving to the Freedom Caucus. The Speaker refuses to bring a ‘compromise’ government funding bill to the floor (without major spending cuts but without additional Ukraine funding), but eight rightist Republicans still turn on him over the failure to pass budget cuts; his speakership collapses on a 219-206 vote on October 3, 2023.
The successive Speakership fight lasts for over three weeks and twenty-nine ballots, tearing apart the Republican Conference in the process. The House GOP nominates a total of nine different people across twelve separate nominations (Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Tom Emmer, Mike Johnson, Byron Donalds, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Kevin Hern, Elise Stefanik, Jim Jordan, and Patrick McHenry); neither Emmer’s nor Hern’s bids survive long enough to have a vote. McHenry’s nomination is termed “acting,” as he is nominated by default following changes to the Conference Rules after a deadlock prevents any nominee from reaching a majority. The House Republican Conference is pushed well past the breaking point, and there is a brawl on the floor. Kevin McCarthy is punched in the face by Steve Scalise, who was attempting to hit Jim Jordan, before also being struck over the head with a bookstand by Matt Gaetz.
In an unprecedented move, the Democratic Caucus and twelve moderate Republicans elected a compromise speaker, former Republican Representative Fred Upton; only three of the rebel Republicans—Dan Newhouse, Don Bacon, and Ken Buck—vote in the affirmative instead of voting Present. Upton’s speakership lasts for a little over two months—from November 3 to January 9—with Congress only in session for about half of that time. This unlikely coalition secures the passage of a clean government funding bill in mid-November and the passage of the National Security Supplement in mid-December. However, the vote to expel George Santos falls short of the needed supermajority, but Kevin McCarthy still resigns from the House at the end of the year, bringing the House down to a 217-217 tie.
The next Speaker fight would be over before it began.
Upton would select moderate Pennsylvania Republican Brian Fitzpatrick as Speaker Pro Tempore. Problem Solver Caucus Republicans were elated, thinking that this was a way to ensure a continuation of the coalition, as Fitzpatrick would become de facto permanent after the Republican Conference inevitably failed to elect one of their own. At the same time, the House Freedom Caucus prepares to shiv McHenry—currently serving as Leader of the House Republican Conference, Speaker Pro Tempore Emeritus, and Acting Republican Nominee for Speaker of the House.
To the shock of everyone chamber, save for a few in Democratic leadership, the first ballot on January 10 elects Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Gasps fill the House chamber as ur-Tea Party firebrand Ken Buck votes for the Brooklyn Democrat, joined later in the roll call by Speaker Pro Tempore Fitzpatrick voting present. The margin of Jeffries is buoyed by eight absences. Bacon and Newhouse are not in DC, conspicuously late getting back to town. The majority of absences—Luna, Gaetz, Mace, Rosendale, Good, Crane—however, were holding a press conference in the Ford Office Building—having misunderstood the time of the vote—and they would fail to reach the chamber in time after tripping each other down a flight of stairs. The two rebels would be stripped of their committee assignments by the Republican Conference and form an “Independent Republican Conference.” Buck also announces he will not run for re-election; he makes his bed.
The Supreme Court intervenes again in Trump’s prosecution, as the litigation over immunity percolates up to the Supreme Court in April 2023, shortly after Donald Trump is indicted in New York. The 6-3 opinion throws out the charges for obstructing official proceedings and forces Smith to issue a second superseeding indictment. Smith issues the new indictment on May 20, 2023, this time including charging Donald J. Trump with seditious conspiracy. The trial date is set for December. Then, in June, ahead of his Florida trial, the Supreme Court again intervenes to cover Trump; the 6-3 ruling does not stop the prosecution but does delay the trial until May 2024. In August, Trump is indicted in Georgia.
In December, the day before Trump’s DC trial is supposed to start, the Supreme Court once again intervenes, this time tossing the seditious conspiracy charge with a 5-4 opinion (Barrett joining the liberals). This forces Smith to issue a third superseding indictment and pushes the trial to June.
United States Presidential Election of 2024
When The Fevers Breaks, So Does a Levee
Donald Trump, despite everything, decisively wins the Republican primaries, but does hemorrhage slightly more support. He is convicted in New York in April. His trial in Florida finally begins on May 20, 2024, and grinds on for weeks. Joe Biden wins the Democratic primaries without major contest, and a small bipartisan reconciliation bill is passed at the start of June. Trump’s DC trial starts on June 18. Then the June 27 Debate comes in like a hurricane. The Biden Campaign is left totally reeling as their gamble to neutralize the President’s biggest liability backfires.
On July 1, 2024, Donald Trump is convicted of all 40 counts in his Florida trial. The GOP has its best fundraising day, decrying a political prosecution. Trump delivers an address from Mar-a-Lago demanding that the Supreme Court overturn the conviction and expunge it from his record. This chaos appears to give Biden the breathing room needed to salvage his ambitions for a second term. He launches a belated blitz of the swing states starting on July 4, with historic consequences. Trump’s sentencing hearing is set for September 20.
On July 11, Trump is sentenced to four years in home detention and four years on probation, along with a $170,000 fine. Not before the Supreme Court issues an emergency injunction (with 6-3 of the court supporting the motion) on July 12, ordering that the President not be detained until after a Supreme Court review.
On July 13, 2024, as he speaks at an event at Gateway Center Park in Pittsburgh for the United Steelworkers Union, Joseph Robinette Biden is shot three times by Thomas Crooks. Crooks opens fire from City Charter High School—having slipped into the school after security assumes he is there for a planned Magic: The Gathering tournament; Crooks kills a Secret Service agent and two bystanders before being killed by a Secret Service Counter-Sniper Team. The President is rushed to the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. In Washington, Vice President Harris and the Cabinet invoke Section Four of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to discharge the duties of President of the United States.
The 2024 Republican National Convention rushes to adapt, and is a shambles. It is simultaneously triumphalist pre-mature celebration of landslide that has not yet actually happened and a gathering of deers-in-the-headlights. Donald Trump selects JD Vance as his running mate under the advice of his sons. The opening speeches of the Convention rail against Biden, despite it being unclear if the President will even live. The next day, five speakers have to pause for minutes on stage for their revised speeches to be updated into the teleprompter. Marco Rubio spends 23 minutes on stage staring into the distance, waiting for his updated speech to load after referring to “President Joe Harris” seven times. As the days drag on, the speeches finally begin to target Kamala Harris as the days drag on, but they often so hastily rewritten that they are barely coherent. On the final day of the RNC, the President is deemed stable enough to be transported to the Presidential Suite at Walter Reed Medical Center.
It is amid this Storm that Acting President Harris, with her hands briefly on the levers of power, takes decisive action. CIA Director Bill Burns is dispatched to Jersualem, he first meets with Aryeh Deri, the leader of Shas, not with Prime Minister Netanyahu. On Tuesdsay, July 16 (day two of the RNC), the Acting President delivers a brief address in the East Room announcing the deployment of a THAAD Battery to Israel, at the same time the State Department publishes a new memorandum preparing to unleash a full bore gamit of sanction against settlers and settlements. The next day, Shas brings a motion of confidence to the floor of the Knesset. Burns had brough with him an ultimatum, Israel would arrest a list of Jewish terrorists or the United States would unleashed a comprehensive sanction package. Harris would offer a raised shield—and a knife between the ribs.
Nine days after his attempted assassination, President Biden delivers an address from Walter Reid, announcing he intends to finish his term but suspends his re-election bid. The 37th Government of Israel falls to a motion of no confidence on Monday July 22, with Shas, half of UTJ, and a smattering of rebels from Otzma and RZP voting for dissolution. Kamala Harris secures the Democratic nomination for President in just 21 hours and goes on to select Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Thirteen days after the shooting (July 26), President Biden transmits his written declaration to Congress and resumes the presidency but stays in Walter Reid for another five days.
Donald Trump is then convicted of conspiracy against rights and conspiracy to defraud the United States on July 25. His sentencing hearing is set for October 6.
Attempting to regain the momentum, the Trump Campaign spies an opportunity to create a strong line of attack on Harris and Biden—a fabricated memorial event at Arlington National Cemetery. It devolves into a historic farce. A staffer is videotaped shoving an ANC worker to the ground; JD Vance trips while carrying a wreath and falls down the step of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; Trump is photographed smiling with a thumb up over a grave—the wrong grave—the grave of SCPO Ryan Owens. Steven Cheung will later claim the event was actually a trap laid by Biden to harm Vance. It is a mess of monumental proportions, but it is far from the last.
The Supreme Court delivers a 5-4 opinion (ACB joining the liberals), permitting Trump to campaign in contravention of his state conviction, asserting that it violated the supremacy clause.
The next attempt to reset the narrative is Trump’s Fox News “debate” on September 4. It is a fizzle, a painfully dreary town hall. Trump rambles incoherently at a bored and confused audience as Bret Baier tries to get him to answer basic questions. He goes on a five-minute monologue about “his friend” Hannibal Lecter and an extended riff about hormones and RFK Jr.’s endorsement, where it is apparent he does not actually know what hormones are. He also promises to fill the Rio Grande with “military grade alligators [sic] for the cartels.” He also waxes nostalgically for Joe Biden and his regret that Biden left the race, ending with, “Sometimes it feels so alone up to be up here,” before jumping into a rant about how Harris wants to “kill all of our beautiful chickens.”
The September 10 debate does not go well for Trump. He is belligerent, confused, and mostly just comes off as an asshole. His attempts to provoke Harris fail. After she calls him weird, he spirals and shouts denials. This culminates in Trump potentially calling Harris a bitch under his breath, but it’s unclear what he actually said; his words were mumbled and slurred to the point of indecipherability. Trump loses his composure again when Harris pushes him on who exactly would pay for his proposed 10% tariff on foreign goods. Trump, in general, appears unwell, unfocused, and unprepared, spending about a third of his speaking time talking about Joe Biden and/or how it was unfair that Joe Biden was forced out of the race. He appears more interested in talking about Biden than trying to attack Harris for much of the debate, leaving the viewers deeply confused.
On September 15, while golfing at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, Ryan Wesley Routh opens fires at Donald Trump, killing Trump’s caddy and nicking the Former President’s ear.
Stuck in neutral, infighting begins to bubble and boil in the Trump Campaign after the debate. A video of Vance tripping, yet again, this time on a curb in Philadelphia, becomes a watershed moment within the campaign as increasingly belligerent staff factions start to draw battle lines. The incident itself is forgotten in short order—outside of the campaign, at least. Trump is then sentenced to thirty-one years in federal prison in the Mar-a-Lago Documents Case the next day.
At this point, the primary objective of the Trump Campaign staff is restoring their candidate’s morale; taking back the momentum becomes a reach goal. Accordingly, they embark on a rally blitz across the seven swing states. However, at a September 21 rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump cancels his appearance 20 minutes after he was scheduled to speak—despite being on site. No reason is given for the departure; some noise is made about a security concern while the other speakers give their stump speeches. Eric and Don Junior attempt to take the place of their father, only for a hot mic to pick up Eric calling Harris a slur (it was a hard r). The campaign will claim that Iran had hacked the rally, but Eric will not attend any other campaign events after saying the n-word five times during his apology interview.
Questions over why Trump departed the rally are overshadowed by Eric, but the bad news does not stop. On September 23, the Supreme Court intervenes for the seventh time to cover Trump, punting Trump’s processing until they have ruled on the matter. So, the campaign goes on. Occasionally, Trump misses a rally that he could otherwise have attended for reasons that remain unclear, causing grumbling in his campaign about his behavior but muted attention by the press despite Democratic protestations.
Then, at a town hall hosted by CNN—after an otherwise adequate performance—JD Vance faces down the most profound threat to his political career in his life—an unaccompanied ten-year-old girl. Becky Rodgers is allegedly the child born out of an affair shortly before Vance married his wife. The bizarre scene shocks the studio into silence, especially the CNN producers, who were caught completely blindsided. Vance spurns his purported love child on National TV. He raises his voice—which cracks heavily—at the child, causing Ms. Rodgers to burst into tears. The saga erupts into a media firestorm over the veracity of the claims of the unattended pre-teen and CNN’s handling of the fiasco. Vance stalwartly rejects any notion that the child is his while refusing to take a paternity test, saying that it would be demeaning to his wife and family. There is also massive speculation over who had set events up to get Rodgers to the event with a printed speech. Steven Cheung alleges it was the work of the Harris campaign. JD Vance, however, will claim that the 10-year-old girl is “very potentially an agent of Iran.” For the first time in the campaign, Democrats are unsure about how to handle the moment, but in general, they tend towards ignoring it, dubbing it a mere distraction. Some whispers that it was a move by anti-Vance staffers within the Trump campaign bubble to the surface, but it is not covered widely.
Less than a week later, there is the Vice Presidential debate. A rattled Vance goes all out on the attack, but he comes across as desperate and cruel. Walz easily parries the attacks with his Midwest demeanor and affable nature while launching devastating attacks on Vance’s record. He only alludes to the Becky Rodgers incident as another example of the chaos brought by Trump that the American people are tired of and want to move past—and to reject its importance. “I really don’t care if he’s the father. I don’t! I care that he’s a grown man that made a little girl cry!” becomes the defining quote of the debate.
In the aftermath of the debate, Democrats maintain a roughly 2-point lead in the polls. In the Trump camp, there are rumblings that Trump is sounding out replacing Vance with Robert F. Kennedy. Campaign lawyers even begin to make moves to try to speed along the process and ensure that ballot changes can be made before E-Day.
The day after reports of these internal machinations surface in the mainstream press, a massive leak hits the Trump Campaign. They are caught completely flat-footed as their dirty laundry is paraded before the public—and the world.
Unleashed, not only to the mainstream press—but also released to the general public—is a series of internal campaign documents on one single topic: Becky Rodgers. She was not a plot by Iran or Kamala Harris—but orchestrated by Anti-Vance staffers on the campaign who wanted him replaced by RFK Jr. There is also a dossier assessing the validity of her claims, which admits that there can be no definitive answer without DNA testing but it appears as if he is not the father because the timeline does not add up.
Then, a second set of leaks hit the press and the internet, seemingly from the same source. It includes the rest of the campaign dossier on the Becky Rodgers incident, which goes through Vance’s many affairs in graphic, Ken Starr detail. It also includes a shaky backstage video of Trump’s canceled Michigan rally, which heavily implies that Trump suffered a heart or panic attack, a video of Donald Trump saying the n-word on the set of The Apprentice, and a video of RFK going on an antisemitic ranting praising Himmler for “creating” veganism. In the Michigan video, the former President is heard saying, “I don’t need a stretcher. I don’t need a stretcher. Get me out of here. I need to get out!” to gathered Secret Service agents, medics, and staffers.
The next morning, there are still yet more leaks, and the campaign infighting reaches a dramatic crescendo. The new material—in some cases just hours old—reveals that the second leak was made by Anti-Vance Staffers in retaliation for Trump canning plans to swap Vance; the Anti-Vancers hoped to frame the Anti-RFK and Anti-Anti-Vance factions for the leak by appearing to be from the same source as the first. The leaks also include the full written agreement between the Trump Campaign and RFK made in exchange for Kennedy’s endorsement. Trump promised to appoint RFK as Secretary of Health and Human Services—even if RFK is rejected by the Senate. Other promises include a “full scope, critical review of FDA standards for authorizing vaccinations of any kind” and a “retraction of FDA certification of all COVID-19 vaccines.”
The day apparently sees several altercations and allegedly a twenty-person brawl at the Trump Campaign Headquarters in Arlington. Anti-Vance staffers are removed from the building by police and private security, and at least two are arrested.
Just a few days later, Trump makes a sudden, unscheduled trip to New York, and the campaign begins a mad dash to put together a Madison Square Garden rally. NYC’s Department of Probation releases a statement that Trump had been recalled to the state after violating the terms of his probation and getting into a “verbal altercation” with his probation officer over the phone. Trump is brought before a judge and is sentenced to a week in jail and is fined $200,000.
American politics goes mad. There are demonstrations outside of Rikers and City Hall. There are plans for a Trump Convoy to cut off NYC (which fail to materialize). Trump breaks fundraising records for the GOP when he is sentenced (virtually) to fifteen years in federal prison for his January 6th-related crimes. He promises to fight on, calling the crisis a coordinated attempt to derail his certain victory: “This is the only way they know how to stop me, folks. The only way. But we have our own ways, don’t we?”
While Trump is in Rikers, JD Vance, Robert Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard serve as his main surrogates. They launch an aggressive schedule of rallies and events. The event schedule is so intense that Vance actually faints of heatstroke while on a marathon bus tour of Wisconsin, falling into a bowl of fruit punch, requiring nine stitches and a night in the hospital. Tulsi Gabbard is attacked by a flock of geese in North Carolina. RFK gets lost trying to drive to Flagstaff on a Trump bus and runs out of gas, where he is then recorded drinking his urine on the side of the road after accidentally flashing a school bus full of children.
After an extremely long week, Trump leaves jail with crowds lining the streets. He fills Madison Square Garden to capacity. There are 20,000 people calling his name and howling in glee. It appears as if the bad luck has swung back. Donald Trump steps out on stage to a ten-minute standing ovation. He delivers the most mid-performance of his life. He is visibly tired, with massive bags under his eyes that not even concealer can hide. He slurs his speech and complains about the unfairness of having to go to jail for violating his probation. “They wouldn’t do this to anyone else; no one has ever been treated so unfairly in our history. Not even Abraham Lincoln—and they killed him!” He narrowly avoids insulting his probation officer, stopping himself mid-sentence and saying, “Can’t say that, folks! Can’t say that!”
However, Trump’s stump speech is overshadowed by one of his warm-up acts—RFK.
Kennedy makes an admission of his own volition and, out of nowhere—cannibalism. Kennedy admits that he had eaten the corpse of a gym buddy in 2004 because he was “curious” and because, allegedly, his friend wished for it. The blunder is so deranged and bizarre that it makes Trump calling for someone to “9/11” New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg a secondary story.
As the campaign returns to normal for the final sprint, polling settles into a roughly D+4 environment, with a mix of polls showing higher (D+4 to D+6) and lower (R+1 to D+2).
First Sino-American War of 2024
South China Sea War / West Philippine Sea War / First Sino
On 21 October, a pair of Jiangdao-class corvettes of the Chinese Coast Guard open fire on the Philippine Navy’s offshore patrol vessel BRP Andrés Bonifacio as it escorts a resupply convoy to Scarborough Shoal and the BRP Sierra Madre.
Bonifacio is crippled, while the corvette Zhuzhou is sunk by naval gunfire.
Anderson Cooper’s interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., elaborating that he did not, in fact, have written consent for what he described as “consensual cannibalism,” is interrupted by news of the incident.
China claims Bonifacio opened fire first, but the video of the inciting incident is ambiguous. It is likely that both sides mistook noise from a collision for a gunshot. However, before the dust settles, PLAAF fighter-bombers strike Subic Bay, sinking the ex-USCG cutter and destroying adjacent port facilities, killing about 40 Filipino sailors and a dozen civilian contractors (including three Americans). The Philippine Air Force does not miss a step—seeing additional PLA air assets shifting south—and launches a pre-emptive alpha strike-cum-last ride against Fiery Cross Reef. The 7th Tactical Fighter Squadron is annihilated in the process, losing all but a single of their twelve FA-50PH Fighting Eagle fighters while crippling PLAAF facilities on the atoll.
Over the next hours, the Spratly Islands become a free-for-all multi-way war zone as hypersensitive PLA units launch pre-emptive spoiling attacks (sometimes believing they are actually counter-attacks) on the local Taiwanese and Vietnamese garrisons.
Any hope for de-escalation—let alone peace—dies the next day.
The 8th and 10th Bomber Divisions of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force cross the northern edge of the South China Sea to deliver an “overwhelming punitive strike against the hostility and impudence of the Philippines.” It is the largest bomber raid since LINEBACKER II. The 176 bombers, nearly 80% of the PLA bomber force, are hurled against Manila. The government and military centers of the Philippines are struck by a deluge of cruise missiles, with heavy collateral damage as American assets flow into the country. A flight of legacy F-18Cs from VMFA-232 is the first to engage the PLA, stumbling through clouds and walls of jamming into the 24th Bomber Regiment just as they release their weapons.
Hours later, on October 22, Biden addresses a Joint Session of Congress and calls for an Authorization of Military Force in the South China Sea. While Congress debates the motion, the INDOPACOM has already started combat operations under the name CARABAO DEFENDER after the Philippines triggers its Mutual Defense Treaty in response to the attack on Manila. Strictly speaking, an AUMF is not necessary, but Biden demands it. The Senate approves the Authorization with an overwhelming 93-7 majority, while the House passes it with a 321-98 majority. Its narrow scope reflects generalized hopes of preventing the conflict from escalating into a general war along the length of the Pacific Rim. The parties agree to an unspoken rule that fighting will be contained to the South China Sea.
The 2024 AUMF once more breaks the House Republican Conference, and the House of Representatives devolves into yet another brawl, during which Matt Gaetz is beaten into unconsciousness after attempting to sucker punch Permanent Acting Leader of the Republican House Conference Patrick McHenry.
Trump, already left listless by his flailing campaign, attempts to grab the reigns and delivers a forceful but utterly meaningless and totally inconsequential speech, which attempts to cut the baby in half on the war—blaming the Biden Administration for starting a war but also claiming that he would be fighting it better, would’ve nuked China already, but also have gotten a deal that would’ve ended the war just after it had started. More importantly, Trump does not seize the narrative. He is ignored, much to his frustration. The press covers the blow-by-blow—a Kabul Crisis in reverse—but fail to find fault in the Administration or military’s handling of the conflict, despite their best efforts to “provide a balanced and neutral perspective.” Trump stumbles forward on his final sprint, a broken man watching his life end right before his own eyes, and helpless to do anything about it.
The Biden Administration (but mostly Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell) does the impossible and manages to convince market leaders not to panic, or at least not to panic after trading resumes. Powell meets with his counterpart at a dialogue in Switzerland, and a formal agreement to avoid targeting civilian ships is reached, including a secret annex to facilitate “origin washing” of goods from China via reprocessing at ports in Malaysia, Indonesia, and South Korea. This deal is reached with the understand that the war is temporary and business must continue. Under immense US pressure to conserve stocks of interceptors missiles, the Netanyahu Government suspends combat operations in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire. It is, briefly, CENTCOver.
The press coverage for the last two weeks of the presidential campaign is hour after hour of live reporting on American advance after American advance—success after success. Peace demonstrations give way to celebration rallies as the first days of chaos clear, and the DOD begins making seminal announcements daily, like claiming the first sunk PLAN warship and then the first PLAN submarine sunk. Bars begin offering free shots equal to the number of PLAN ships sunk (these offers do not last long as that tally grows larger). Aerial footage of a submarine battle in shallow water goes viral as the public is enraptured by success, at least temporarily. The seizure of the first PLA-controlled island is spoiled to the public, announced on Twitter by Dwayne Johnson ahead of President Biden’s address on the matter. A Jake Tapper segment attempting to hit the DOD over the wanton expenditures of missiles and the impact of that on the deficit is interrupted when an annoyed Tapper interrupts himself to read the announcement of the first American fighter ace in 52 years.
As voting begins on Election Day, Joe Biden has 56% approval, and Kamala Harris has a 63% favorability rating. Polls estimate a Democratic lead of four points, while Harris Campaign internals show a D+4 environment. Trump’s internals have him up by one (the fake ones to show to Trump) and down by three (the real ones for LaCivita and Wiles). In the South China Sea, the USAF rules the skies over the Spratlys Islands as a joint force of Filipino and American troops close in on Fiery Cross Reef in a methodical, textbook campaign of Expeditionary Advance Base Operations. There is further good news on E-Day itself: reports that a US Navy attack sub has sunk the carrier Shandong and several of its escorts as they sprinted into the military exclusion zone; another of what the media calls a “subush” fails to catch a supporting surface action group, which escapes to the PLAN bases on Hainan Island.
On November 5, 2024, as the first polls close on the East Coast, the Harris Campaign is caught completely off guard. Hush falls over the campaign headquarters.
South Carolina is too close to call.
They have overshot their final internal poll twofold. Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to be elected President of the United States with the largest popular vote margin since 1996—an unbelievable 8.5 point margin. Despite early returns, Harris does not win South Carolina, but she sweeps the swing states while also winning Texas, Iowa, Ohio, and Alaska in a string of upsets. The final popular vote is 54.4% Harris-Walz against 43.5% Trump-Vance—no other candidate breaches one percent.
House Democrats net 39 seats in the House for a 258-177 seat majority. A miracle happens in the Senate: Democrats net three seats—picking up Florida, Missouri, Texas, and Nebraska while losing West Virginia—for a majority of 55-45; that number increases to 56-44, the strongest majority since 2009, when Senator Lisa Murkowski crosses the floor and joins the Democratic Caucus as an Independent.
Trump’s attempts to overturn the election mostly fall on deaf ears. He is a shadow of himself—reeling from an overwhelming defeat. He leaves most of the post-election rallies to JD Vance. However, this second attempt to overturn a presidential election comes crashing down when the Junior Senator from Ohio falls from the cabin of a parked combine harvester and dies in Poweshiek County, Iowa on November 11.
The Save America Tour fades with a whimper and a broken neck. Trump is then ordered to present himself to federal custody on December 1. The war, however, does not merely go away.
Just a week after the election, the Spratlys are declared secured by the DOD, having been cleared of PLA presence. Shortly after, the US signs the Cam Ranh Charter with the Philippines and Vietnam, establishing a formal basis of military cooperation and converting the three belligerent powers into allies. In short order, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom add their signature to the Charter. Armistice talks begin in Casablanca and last for most of November, without much success. No one in the region is interested in seeing the conflict escalate into a general war, but both sides are extremely cautious about what kind of exit they get, fearing domestic backlash or bad precedent. At the end of November, the Assad Regime begins to collapse.
The Casablanca talks are then fully derailed when the Central Military Commission officially acknowledges the sinking of the carrier Shandong—having maintained that the flat-top had not been lost for weeks. They also announce that they will “formally” retaliate. This is an orthogonal move to strengthen their hand at the negotiating table by reminding the Biden Administration that China “is not the lamb.” A massed salvo of 43 DF-21 IRBMs is hurled at Guam and Saipan. Only six actually impact sovereign American soil. A visibly irate Joe Biden delivers a prime-time Oval Office Address announcing the US withdrawal from the Casablanca Talks and warning that the coming response will be swift and overwhelming. The Politburo and CMC are caught completely off-guard, having underestimated the escalation factor of the first attack on American soil since 9/11, believing that DC would not treat Guam like CONUS.
The Biden Administration greenlights Operation THUNDER DOME—an invasion of the Paracel Islands. This begins with Operation TOP ROPE on December 7, a bomber sortie against PLAAF airfields on Hainan—home to the better part of the PLA’s Southern Theater Commander’s air forces. The American prohibition on striking Mainland China is lifted (temporarily) as a force of forty-six B-52 Stratofortress, twenty-two B-1 Lancer, ten B-2 Spirit, and two B-21 Raider (pressed into service for the mission) launch a wall of cruise missiles to join a wave of sea-launched 219 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles.
At the same time, JSOC launches Operation TANGENT EDSON, a joint battlespace preparation action against a new high-power radar complex covering the Paracels. EDSON sees the first use of a SOLO (sub-orbital, low-opening) jump in combat, when 63 personnel (Red Squadron of DEVGRU plus attachments) are deployed by the hastily readied“X-33B” spaceplane pulled straight from Dyson’s Dock—Groom Lake’s official-unofficial museum—along with fourX-37Bs (including two not disclosed to the public) and the sole X-37C prototype (pressed into its first ever flight as a cargo hauler). The raid goes badly. The SEALs are able to knock out the radar despite most of their supply canisters landing in the ocean, but their extraction force (Alpha Co, 2nd Ranger Battalion and Special Boat Team TWELVE) is delayed deploying from USS Ohio (SSGN-726). The assault suffer forces 100% casualties, with 52% KIA and 48% WIA. They are out of ammunition by the time the Rangers arrive, who are met with vicious fire from well-sited defenses. After a continuous fight, where the Rangers’ lack of amphibious training is laid bare, the two forces regroup and withdraw just after dawn. The assault force is spared the indignity of a final destruction at the hands of a PLAAF retaliatory strike, when Ohio tests a new capability—sub-launched SM-6 (the program was originally for submarine-based terminal BMD). Direct by a Hawkeye loitering at extreme range, only one of the seven missiles hits—but fails to destroy the flight of JH-7s. However, it is enough to end the pursuit.
Following up, the US begins its joint forcible entry into the Paracels. They’re initially met with success. It appears as if it will be a repeat of the operations in the Spratlys, as they peel away PLA defenses and often capture islands without a single shot fired (excluding air and missile bombardment). This changes on Phú Lâm Island (called Yongxing Island by the PRC), the capital of the Spratlys and Paracels—the largest island in the chain. The DOD had expected light resistance after the expenditure of 64 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles against the island. However, US Intelligence badly underestimates the strength and disposition of the PLA defenders. Even worse, the pre-invasion hydrographic reconnaissance by SEAL Team Three (hastily redirected to the theater to relieve an exhausted SEAL Team One) is badly botched, forcing the invasion ahead by six hours.
Waiting for the US invasion force is not the expected “reinforced battalion group, plus incidental support personnel” but the entire 127th Airborne Brigade of the PLAAF Airborne Corps. The brigade had be rushed to the island early in the war, but it had not been missed in the cacophony of movement—rather, US intelligence believed they had been returned home several weeks early. The brigade—and the rest of the island’s almost 8,000 defenders—would lose much (but not all) of their heavy equipment but otherwise remain intact during the pre-invasion bombardment due to the rapid fortification program undertaken since the beginning of the war (to harden the island from potential TLAM or air strikes). The island was said to have “become eleven-tenths concrete in a month.”
As Alpha Company, 3rd Littoral Combat Team rushes to beaches to rescue the exposed SEAL Team, the island wakes with terrible fury. The last few launchers still operational in the hardened shelters spit forth rockets, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles in a point-blank surprise attack. The amphibious force is caught totally off guard, but luckily, the escorts—not the amphibs—bear most of the damage. USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) is struck by at least four weapons, wrecking the upper works and setting her ablaze. She will be abandoned. The ship burns for 30 hours before USS Seawolf (SSN-21) finally scuttles her in the early hours of December 10. McCain is the first US warship lost to enemy action since USS Bullhead (SS-332) in August 1945.
In the twilight of early morning, A/3rd LCT and SEAL Team Three are pushed to the water’s edge—and the very brink. In fact, SEAL Team Three ceases to exist as an effective force, taking 94% casualties. At one point, as dawn breaks, the fate of the landing force is determined by a single platoon holding off a PLA battalion-sized element. This force, led by Second Lieutenant Alice M. Hanlon—the USMC’s only woman rifle PL—holds out just long enough for 160th SOAR and the 1st Raider Battalion to crash (not land) four overloaded MH-47G Chinooks directly into the fight. This, in turn, buys enough time for the rest of the 3rd LCT and every available Marine in the 3rd MLR to be hurled into combat. Hanlon is killed, but not before a war-defining photo is taken of her standing upright, despite losing an arm to a direct hit from a dud-RPG, to fire a M320 grenade launcher to hold back a PLA night attack.
The Battle of Sansha City / Battle of Phú Lâm is an attritional, grueling fight as allied forces fight house to house against well-entrenched and motivated defenders. In all, it would require seven battalions to capture the island: 3rd Littoral Combat Team, 3/1 Marines (31st MEU), 1/4 Marines, 2 Royal Australian Regiment, 2nd Ranger Battalion, 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, and the Marine Composite Battalion (two companies of Marine Raiders and most of the 3rd Littoral Logistics Battalion pressed into combat duty).
As the battle rages throughout December, the US is hamstrung by the fact that the island is so small and so exposed; bringing in additional combat units to the AO is difficult, and getting them onto the line is practically impossible. Despite this, there were discussions of a combat drop by the 82nd Airborne Division onto the island’s airfield. The idea was rejected by the commanders on the ground as “the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard in my fucking miserable life. Just give us more ammo, for fuck’s sake. Christ. What the Hell is wrong with you guys?”
The Navy establishes a staggeringly efficient medical chain that allows them to treat and triage the staggering casualties of the ongoing slug-fest across thousands of miles of ocean. USNS Mercy is forward deployed to Quy Nhon in Vietnam as the main forward medical center for US forces in the Paracels Islands, while USS New York is converted into a forward hospital and triage center, saving the lives of hundreds of Marines and soldiers. However, the rest of the Navy grows complacent as op-temp slams headlong into sustainment.
The USN has been sustaining six carriers and strike groups in support of Operation GYPSY DANGER, the overall name for carrier operations in the Western Pacific, but was getting ready to rotate those on the line. At this point (December 14, a week into THUNDER DOME), one CVN is at sea in Japanese waters (Washington), one is in port at Yokosuka (Nimitz), two are operating in defense of Guam (Vinson and Roosevelt), one is operating in the Military Exclusion Zone (Truman), and one is in port at Manila (Reagan). Truman was due to sail for Pearl, to be replaced by Reagan, while Ford—sailing from the Med—was due to replace Reagan in Manila. However, Reagan’s departure was pushed back twice; an engineering casualty had disabled both of her port screws. Reagan’s captain first bluffed and then outright lied about the state of his ship to buy time for his CHENG to fix the issue.
This breakdown of communication and ships creates a window of opportunity for the PLAN as the allied amphibious task force is left weakened and unaware of Reagan’s delay. The PLA grasps the crisis with both hands. The carrier Fujian sorties with a large surface force towards Guam, successfully baiting the attention of Vinson, Roosevelt, Washington, and Nimitz away from the MEZ. At the same time, a pair of PLAN surface action groups make staggered sorties from Hong Kong and Hainan—timed so that they will arrive within range of the Paracel Islands at the same time. The combined striking forces include 37 modern surface combatants (24 from Yulin and Longpo, and 13 from Stonecutter’s Island) and most of the PLAN’s nuclear-powered submarine force. To cover this massive concentration of forces, the PLA launches the first “true orbital offensive” using every trick in their book to soft and hard kill America’s space-based awareness infrastructure.
Operation DISCOTHEQUE III—landings of Phú Lâm Island—and the entirety of THUNDER DOME are immediately put in grave danger. The amphibious force, Task Force 76, is attacked by multiple multi-regiment bomber raids along with a constant stream of harassing potshots from fighter-bombers. The second major bomber attack sinks USS Preble (DDG-88), the second US warship to be sunk in the conflict, HMS Daring (D32) joins her at the bottom. Several Arleigh Burke DDGs and Ticonderoga CGs are damaged, and the attached British, Australian, and Canadian surface combatants are left winchester or otherwise missioned killed. The forces assigned to the defense of TF 76—Operation ROYAL FLUSH—are pushed to the limit and must play their last, deeply unreassuring card.
They call upon Task Force 76.1—Frigate Squadron Three—eight Canberra-class light frigates. The former Independence-class littoral combat ships were redesignated “FF” after a series of hasty upgrades cooked up on the fly and installed in theater (mostly at Subic, at what would forever be known as The Chop Shop). They have had the walls of their under-flight deck mission bay pierced to permit missiles to be launched from within the mission bay. They are armed with a motley mix of modified Mark 141 (Harpoon), Mark 87 (Naval Strike Missile), and Mark 145 (Adaptable Deck Launcher). The Mark 145s are some of the first ADLs deployed and have to be run off of laptops jury-rigged into the ships’ combat systems of the three ships equipped with them. Six of the ships also have had their 30mm cannon anti-surface modules replaced by 8-cell VLS modules flown in by C-5 Galaxy. In a mad dash from Cam Ramh, the frigates are attacked by the PLAAF, leaving several of the frigates moderately damaged and most with near-empty quivers. As the night falls and Hainian Force closes on the Paracel Islands, the largest surface action of the 21st Century unfolds.
The Stonecutter Force, conserving fuel, loses time and falls behind schedule. The Hainan Force, unaware, continues to charge ahead. Before PLAN officers realize, a three-hour gap forms between the forces. On the American side, the Truman Strike Group commander realizes the dire nature of the moment and orders his force to turn around, beginning a mad sprint back to the Paracels. This decision is mirrored aboard Gerald R. Ford, having barely entered the South China Sea. Reagan detaches most of her escorts and redeploys her fighters, finally getting into gear—but far too late. However, Truman is still roughly half a day away from the Paracels. Ford closes the gap with a Hail Mary strike to reinforce the Rhinos filling the skies of the Military Exclusion Zone.
A coterie of shapes hidden underneath tarps is raised up from the hangar, and six pilots are trotted out of the ready room. These are not normal aviators; all but two are above the age of 47, and two are flag officers. The old salts are the only pilots qualified for the aircraft in question, currently designated TACIT MIDNIGHT (formerly HAVE KEY then SNEAKY PETE). They were built in the mid 80s as demonstrators for a special access program related to the failed Advanced Tactical Aircraft program, which was later tied into a different SAP connected to the Navy’s UCLASS strike drone program. The Ghosts of Groom Lake and The Father of X-47 are armed with the product of another forgotten Special Access Program: CASKET CHALICE, a hypersonic anti-ship missile program canceled at about the same time TACIT MIDNIGHT went back to Dyson’s Dock for good (2014). Both SAPs had been brought out of the Storeroom and readied for combat under the name Operation ADAMANT VENOM in a rushed bid to juice the strike envelope of the Navy’s CVW. The aircraft launch at a range of 1176 miles.
Their weapons collide with the Yulin Force just as the six remaining ships of FFRON 8 cross the horizon and begin to sling every missile and shell they have at the enemy in front of them. The Hainan Force is taken completely unaware. They had been running silent, hoping to pounce upon the Americans from the dark. One Type 055 cruiser, two Type 052D destroyers, four Type 054A frigates, and five Type 056 corvettes come up short against six Indies and sixteen fancy missiles.
Kimberly Scott, the newly minted, field-promoted skipper of the squadron flagship USS Canberra, is on her second day on the job, not having even been frocked for her new rank of Commander. She is pressed into even greater responsibility after the squadron commander, Captain James Ellington (Canberra’s prior skipper), is killed by shrapnel. The young SWO leads the rag-tag force to a shocking, but costly, victory. Four of the Canberra-class frigates are sunk, but they claim eight PLAN warships. Four of the PLAN losses are claimed by naval gunfire. The Hainan Force cedes the field and retreats. Shortly after the surface action ends, the Stonecutter Force is attacked by a pair of American SSNs and likewise turns tail, chased back to Hong Kong by Rhinos in the air and the subs under the waves.
The PLAN’s greatest opportunity unravels into a stinging defeat.
Scott becomes the Hero of the Second Battle of Paracel, a national hero, alongside the martyred Ellington. Ellington is awarded the Medal of Honor, and Scott is awarded her first Navy Cross; Scott would honor the memory of her mentor, having a new class of light combatants named after him, even though she thought he was an asshole.
In the wake of Second Paracel, the fighting for Sansha enters its final stage, but not before Sergeant Valencia Dominguez, the second woman to become a Recon Marine, is wounded. She loses her left arm and leg; she flatlines twice on the operating table aboard New York before being stabilized. She is pulled to safety under withering fire by a platoon leader in the 3rd Littoral Combat Team, a fresh-faced Second Lieutenant Lafayette DuSaint, who will go on to be Dominguez’s long-time superior. Dominguez is flown to the United States for further treatment on January 2, the day the battle formally ends after 34 days of ceaseless, brutal fighting. It leaves 469 Allied soldiers and marines dead (293 are Marines, more than half of that is just from 3rd LCT) and 2,000 wounded; the 12th Joint Division’s Composite Army-Marine Brigade would suffer just shy of 50% casualties in the battle.
With the war now frozen in the Americans' favor, the Central Military Commission gambles again on escalating to de-escalate, believing they need a bargaining chip to secure the return of the Paracel Islands. They plan for a kinetic action to give them that leverage. The Biden Administration, and especially the President himself, is eager to end the conflict before Harris is inaugurated as the costs of this war, in both blood and gold, begin to be felt. New talks begin in Seoul and meet with more movement than in Casablanca. However, the fall of the Paracels hangs heavy over the head of the Standing Committee, and they fear they do not have the leverage needed to win the islands back at the table. They reach the conclusion that the only way to recover the Paracels is by exchanging them for foreign territory seized by the PLA. They set their sights on the Senkaku—and Sakishima—Islands.
Their justification for such a gamble presents itself soon after when a PLAAF J-10 collides with a JMSDF P-1 over Socotra Rock in the East China Sea. The PLA claims that the MPA shot down the fighter with a high-energy laser weapon. Before the Japanese can protest that claim, a PLA air assault is already in the air. Operation IVORY SWORD begins on January 11.
PLA heliborne assault troops and paratroops assault the islands just as the diplomatic delegations in Seoul reach an agreement on the timing of a pre-armistice ceasefire (the PRC’s delegation having not been informed of the plans). The fighting on the islands is desperate and fierce. The JGSDF had not been able to surge forces to the islands before the PLA's lead elements arrived, leaving only a small (but reinforced) tripwire garrison to defend them. The move catches the Allies completely unawares, as an agreement was just about in hand. Irabu, Shimoji, Yonaguni, and Iriomote islands fall as the war escalates exponentially and violently over the next few hours.
As soon as PLA transports and helicopters are detected bearing down on the islands, the US launches Operations SUPER BOLO and readies POISON RAIN. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also present Operation MIDNIGHT CALLER to the President, a plan for a comprehensive air campaign against the Chinese Mainland to force an armistice.
Operation SUPER BOLO had been ready on the ground for weeks and springs into motion just minutes after the go order. Spoofing PLAAeF spy satellites—along with commercial imaging satellites—with false returns of a pair of lightly defended carrier groups within range of the PLAAF bomber force—with the cherry on top of a faked but authentic communications indicating yet another engineering casualty aboard one of them. The PLAAF takes the bait, and bomber regiments fill the sky, ready to hunt carriers. They are jumped by six F-35 squadrons and three F-22 squadrons after they enter the Philippine Sea. The PLAAF responds as expected. They panic. The scramble order goes out to almost their entire fighter force in a desperate bid to save their bombers. It is not a display that impresses the Americans or even the Chinese. Up to this point, air battles have included perhaps a dozen or two aircraft at any one point—now the PLAAF throws hundreds into the air. They have responded exactly as INDOPACOM expected. For the entire war, save TOP ROPE, the USAF and USN have been barred from striking airbases on mainland China. If they could not come to the PLAAF, they would make the PLAAF come to them. The scores of J-20, J-16, and J-10 brigades streaming from the mainland are surprised to find four entire CVWs massed into counter-air Alpha Strikes waiting for them, their carriers having sprinted into range as the bombers were attacked. 394 Allied land-based fighters are hot on the heels of the Navy flyboys. The over-committed PLAAF loses 429 fighters in a single afternoon (almost six fighter brigades), along with 86 bombers (slightly more than a single regiment). The PLAAF might be a large and well-trained air force, but it had not been ready to manage an air battle of this scale; they are made aware of this fact in the hardest way possible.
As the largest jet-age air battle rages across 500 miles of burning skies, the PLARF rains more DF-21s on Guam and Saipan. This is enough to make the White House give final authorization to Operation POISON RAIN. A submarine force waiting on the bottom of the shallow seas off Hainan leaps upon the PLAN assets in Yulin Bay with fangs bared. Four SSNs—three SSN-774 and one SSN-21—disgorge a cruise missile attack on the fleet bases. But the boats do not flee at first, using themselves as bait to kill whatever might try to kill them first. They are horrified when what looks like most of the PLAN submarine force comes charging at them with at least a dozen surface ships. USS Hyman G. Rickover was a little too successful, having sent four TLAMs with masterful precision straight down the throat of the PLAN’s strategically vital subterranean submarine base at Longpo. Rickover, the closest-in boat, signals the other submarines to flee with the message, “I will hold them. Run.” Against all odds, Rickover not only survives but also wins the seven-on-one subsurface fight in the knee-deep water around the harbor before slinking into the murk.
The ship’s skipper—already a legend for being the first woman to command an attack boat—becomes a living war goddess. Commander Aabria Okoye is awarded the Medal of Honor along with the ship’s XO, COB, weapons officer, helmswoman, and sonarman. The rest of the crew is awarded the Naval Cross, the only mass award in Navy history. The ship is given a pair of Presidential Unit Citations (one for the strike and one for the fight) and is awarded the first two battle stars as they are reintroduced into the fleet. Okoye will become the patron saint of the Silent Service and the world’s first and highest-scoring submarine ace, sinking a total of twenty-one enemy boats (seven nuke and fourteen conventional).
Panic reigns in Beijing as news of the Yulin Disaster arrives. An emergency session of the Central Military Commission is convened and gives authorization for a tactical nuclear strike as a move of last resort. The target? Sansha City.
The hope is that by showing the Americans that they are willing to nuke their own territory, they can force an end to the conflict while saving face. The diplomatic mission in Seoul is not informed. The mission, working tirelessly without reliable guidance from Beijing, secures a ceasefire agreement thirty minutes after a 20-kiloton nuclear gravity bomb goes airborne aboard the LO trijet Chengdu J-36 prototype. Attempts to recall the strike package are dashed by a mix of fratricidal and hostile jamming. After an agonizing, helpless interlude of well over an hour, the best bad news possible reaches the Politburo—the fighter bomber had been downed, but the bomb had not detonated.
A mixed Australian-American fighter force engages the strike package. In fact, it is possible that the aircraft was downed by the very Marine fighter pilot who had fired the first shot of the Sino-American War, Major Faith McPherson, who would become the 41st Commandant of the Marine Corps in 2031 and then the 43rd Commandant in 2037.
American intelligence does not come to the realization that a nuclear weapon had actually been airborne until at least mid-July. However, they had been aware that the nuclear trigger had been reached—or at least was being reached for. The US change in position over the terms of an immediate ceasefire and “cold start” armistice was, in fact, motivated by the knowledge of a potential PRC nuclear response. A “cold turkey truce,” as the President described, was deemed acceptable because a post-settlement swapping of the Paracels and the Sakishima seemed “like a layup.” The agreement is met with outrage in Tokyo, with roughly 10,000 Japanese citizens under PLA occupation, but the ceasefire comes into effect at midnight on January 13.
The Second Cold War of 2024 - 2037
Fool Me Once? Shame on you. Fool me twice? — Well… can’t get fooled again.
On January 18, in a ceremony at the Blue House, President Biden and President Xi sign the armistice ending the First Sino-American War. They also sign a pair of instruments to jump-start trade between the nations and to stave off global economic collapse. Regardless, the First Sino had already fundamentally reshaped the dynamics of global commerce. The impossible was now possible. Markets and their human masters would not forget it. The United States Congress takes a step just as titanic as ending a peer war—they kill the filibuster. The Senate forces through the National Economic Security and Reform Act. The first bill to pass on a true simple majority vote would be the Second Recovery Act (so named for the economic stimulus passed to shore up markets and attempt to pre-empt goods shortages by preparing for the glut of shipments in the near future).
The 119th Congress will be the most productive Congress in the 21st Century, far outstripping even the 111th Congress of 2009-2011. They pass a flurry of landmark legislation in their first 45-days: the National Defense Act of 2025, the Naval Infrastructure Act of 2025, the Defense Industrial Mobilization Act, the National Defense Immigration and Citizenship Act, the National Defense Housing Act, and the Supply and Economic Security Act. The Harris Administration also negotiates a landmark economic treaty in record time: the Bretton Woods Agreement on the Protection of Critical Supply Chains, between the US, the EU, the UK, and certain Major Non-NATO Allies, including Japan, India, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and others.
The DC Statehood Act passes at the end of January along a party-line vote. The Puerto Rico Status & Statehood Act (named to appease Democrats in the House) passes a few weeks later after some wrangling, organizing a final status referendum. A similar act, the Marianas Unification and Admission Act passes soon after, with a dual referendum on combining Guam and the Northern Marianas into a single entity and granting them statehood. DC joins the union following a plebiscite just six weeks after the passage of its enabling act. Puerto Rico follows suit in June, voting for statehood with 59% of the vote at 89% turnout. The State of the Marianas becomes the 51st State on July 4, 2025, after an overwhelming vote for statehood (following a much closer plebiscite on unification).
Bill LePlante becomes the first Chairman of the Defense Production Board, an entity created by executive order in mid-November and made permanent by the terms of the Defense Industrial Mobilization Act. He will serve in that role from November 2024 to January 2035. He will become the All-Father of Cold War Defense Procurement.
The new Congress also passes yet another economic recovery and stabilization act: the PEACE Act (Protecting the Economic Activity of America and Creating Economic Opportunity for the World). The global economy makes a remarkable recovery after holding its breath for 85 painful days. The 119th Congress would also eventually pass the National Security Act of 2025, the Defense Reform Act, the Pacific Shipbuilding Corporation Act, and the National Sciences and Research Act.
The restored productivity of the United States Congress has an unintended benefit—it kills Clarence Thomas. The senior-most Justice dies of a massive heart attack during oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Defense Production Act in late 2025. No one in the room realizes he has died until arguments are over, and Alito taps him on the shoulder, and a limp head slams into the bench. Cedric Richmond, Harris’ Director of the Office of Personnel Management, is confirmed to replace Thomas on a 56-44 party-line vote.
The United States enters into a new era of budgetary baselines and economic growth, with defense budgets jumping up to a steady 6% of GDP on top of more than doubling research and development spending. The Era of the MBA Executive is broken upon the altar of a New Cold War. As the panic and dislocation from First Sino rapidly fades, the US enters an economic renaissance, boosted by technological innovation and the union-backed “national defense” immigration reform bill (First Sino revealed that, above all else, the US was lacking workers).
Several key technological breakthroughs occurr in the first half of Harris’s first term. The invention of the Graphene-Silicon wafer chip in 2026 is arguably the most important among these advances. Using a novel production method, graphene is used to increase the strength of silicon wafers, allowing for the production of larger wafers (600mm becomes the new industry standard) and smaller dies. This is paired with monumental breakthroughs in material sciences—especially covetics. Nanocomposite steel, high-entropy alloys, and advanced non-polymer composites enter the market as viable industrial products.
The Fifth Industrial Revolution is in full-swing by Christmas 2026.
Fourth Persian Gulf War of 2026
Dead Ayatollah’s War / Gulf War IV / (First) Middle Eastern Great War
In February 2026, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, dies from a fall in his home in Tehran. However, a hardliner clique in the Guardian Council and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—fearing the appointment of a reformist Supreme Leader—maintains an elaborate ruse that he is, in fact, still alive. This ruse is barely believed but limps on for months. Most Iranians, including some of those at the highest levels of government, believe that the Supreme Leader is merely deathly ill and not… literally dead. Even American and Israeli intelligence are unsure about Khamenei’s condition for weeks. It takes three weeks for the President of Iran to be informed. The entire Islamic Republic is set inside a cauldron of the making of a very few, and the broth begins to boil as protests begin and then begin to grow.
Just hours before Khamenei’s death, Israelis go to the polls again after turning out Bibi Netanyahu’s government in January 2025 (his government collapses shortly after the inauguration of President Harris), after a split between Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett over the budget and the collapse of the newly formed center-right union-party, Yes! - United for the State. The election results in Yisrael Beiteinu (under Avigdor Lieberman) and a weakened post-Netanyahu Likud (under Yoav Gallant) leading a messy right-wing cabinet, with Lieberman starting as Prime Minister. The new government immediately comes to blows over one bill to reinstate Haredi conscription exemptions and another to amend the Basic Law to bypass the President and pardon Netanyahu by name (he is in prison after being convicted of corruption). Eventually, Lieberman rolls the dice—allowing the conscription bill to fail while passing the pardon bill (which is revised to ban Bibi from office). The move is met with massive protests from just about every side of Israeli politics. The battle in the cabinet spreads to the floor of the Knesset and becomes literal, with one member of Otzma Yehudit biting an ear off a member of Yisrael Beiteinu.
It is just a few days after these protests break out—April—that King Salman of Saudi Arabia dies of a stroke in his sleep. The Saudis attempt to play the same trick as Iran, to play for time, but do so poorly. They noisily reject any rumors that Salman is dead before they’ve spread widely and end up wearing a “King Salman is Alive and Well” shirt. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, worried about the transition of power, makes his first move as an uncrowned King, a prophylactic purge of the Saudi Royal Guard Regiment.
It backfires. Horribly.
The Royal Guards resist what they think is a coup against MBS and/or the still-living King Salman. Gunfire rings through the halls of the Al-Yamamah Palace. Guards burst into MBS’s office as he is on the phone, plotting. They gun down his security detail after they resist. MBS is kidnapped by unwitting “dissidents.” They shout that they are here to save the Crown Prince from the Iranian traitors in the palace who are trying to kill the King, unaware that there are no traitors and that the King is dead. Soon, other loyalist guards arrive to rescue the Crown Prince, but spend fifteen minutes arguing with his captors about who is actually loyal; both groups are killed by arriving National Guardsmen who announce plans to replace MBS as Crown Prince, under purported orders from the supposedly still-living Salman. At last, another group of Guardsmen with yet other loyalist Royal Guards arrive and finally free the King, who they believe is still the Crown Prince. Approximately half of the 7,000 men of the Royal Guard Regiment are killed or wounded in about six hours of fighting, most from friendly fire. In the aftermath, the Crown Prince announces the passing of his father, without mention of the chaos at the palace. Most of the remaining Royal Guards are executed.
Ahead of a speech declaring Iran’s posture after the chaos in the KSA, a member of the Guardian Council is caught on a hot mic complaining about having to hide that the Ayatollah is dead. These comments are carried live and are not censored, spoken as cameras roll, waiting for the President of Iran to arrive (running late because of traffic). The simmering protests boil over into riots before the President can even finish his address.
In the minutes before this shock announcement in Tehran, gunshots ring out across the Kiryat HaMemshala in Jerusalem as Hilltop Youth militants, backed by a number of radical police officers and soldiers, storm the Government Complex. The putsch, organized by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich’s new combined party “Otzma Le'umit” (National Power), immediately descends into shambles. The putschists run out of ammunition within the first three minutes after the Knesset Guard resists. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich had hoped to seize the Government’s newly inaugurated war cabinet (of which Smotrich was supposed to be a member) without firing a shot, knowing full well that the Knesset was out of session. The putschists resort to hurling scores of Molotov cocktails at the Knesset Guard as they attempt to force their way into the National Management Center bunker complex. They are stubbornly rebuffed. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich deliver an incredibly awkward twinned address from the bullet-marked steps of the Israeli Supreme Court (which is also on fire), calling for a revolt of the faithful in the army and a revolution to install a new government. After their speech ends, they are recorded arguing over whose fault the failure to capture the Cabinet was, outside of a public restroom, on their own livestream, which rapidly devolves into a literal slap-fight. As loyalist police and security forces descend on the Knesset, the putschists scatter, having totally failed—at first blush. To make matters worse for the putschists, Ben-Gvir is struck and killed by a 2011 Toyota ToyoAce while running down the street, after rolling his car over and into a clothing store.
The impromptu war cabinet had been meeting at that appointed time to monitor Israel’s first strike against Iran's air defense network and nuclear program. In the WH Situation Room, National Security Advisor Phil Gordon and Secretary of State Bill Burns are, at first, confused when their conference call with their Israeli counterparts goes silent. As the minutes pass and their questions are repeated again and again to no answer, that confusion rises into alarm and then panic. There is no missive from the NMC. There is no response to Otzma Le'umit’s declaration of civil war. The entire inner cabinet, every one of the highest-ranking members of the Government, is dead. Not just the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, but also the President, who had been invited to attend by personal invite of the PM. They have choked to death on the smoke from the fires raging across the Government Quarter. This is due to the NMC’s improperly installed hardened CBRN/HVAC system (contracted out to a corrupt ally of Prime Minister Netanyahu) that pumped fumes into the bunker complex instead of fresh air. The hardened emergency climate control system was installed perfectly—but entirely backwards—so that once activated in place of the normal HVAC, the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide it scrubbed were recirculated back into the system instead of vented.
On the other side of the region—and as Israel’s air campaign enters Iranian airspace—MBS orders a series of symbolic strikes against Iran, in an attempt to further solidify his position as King, unaware of the Israeli plans. Thus, the RSAF and IDF-AF launch two air wars against Iran, without even the slightest bit of deconfliction. The Iranians and Houthis immediately retaliate with massed salvos of ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones. Chaos and unrest in Tehran actually cause many of Israel’s expertly planned decapitation strikes to miss their targets. However, a significant portion of their target list is then killed in two uncoordinated, abortive putsches: one launched by the IRGC hardliners who had hidden the death of the Supreme Leader in a bid to escape retaliation, and one launched by a mix of outraged IRGC and Army officers who had been blindsided by revelation that people had been hiding the Supreme Leader’s death.
Shortly after the failed Knesset Putsch, Minister of Tourism Gideon Sa’ar is bodily hauled into a white panel van by masked men in between takes for a new commercial for the “It’s Real” tourism campaign, being done in the style of a classic Old Spice ad. The video of the minister being kidnapped—dressed in a suit that is a traditional grey wool suit from above the waist and blue-striped seersucker shorts from below the waist, surrounded by women in bikinis, and complaining to his aide that there is sand in his Filet-o-Fish—goes viral. Forty minutes later, once it is clear that the Cabinet is gone, Sa’ar delivers an address to the nation announcing that he was now “acting prime minister,” and the formation of a “State Committee for Security and the State of Emergency” from a briefing room in the bunker underneath Shin Bet’s headquarters. The speech is mostly memorable for the fact that someone clearly remembered what Sa’ar was wearing, so a leather couch had been pushed awkwardly in front of the briefing room’s slender glass podium to conceal his legs from view (why they did not have Sa’ar just sit behind a desk is unclear).
It is only after the speech by Sa’ar and the formation of this “Shabak GKChP” that the most reactionary elements of the IDF finally begin to revolt. Smotrich, immediately after the failed putsch, establishes himself as the prime minister of the “Gush Emunim” and promises “one hundred Masadas burning bright, holding back the dark.” Earning the putschists the name “Masadists.” However, despite surprise, the Masadists are poorly organized and unable to consolidate a foothold in metropolitan Israel. After a few days of desperate and confused fighting, they are mostly driven back into the settlements in the West Bank, which they begin to fortify into individual redoubts.
In the wake of the first Israeli and Saudi strikes on Tehran, the Iranians acknowledge the death of Khamenei, with the IRGC declaring that he had been killed by an Israeli airstrike. The State Committee denies this, while the Masadists take credit for the strike, with Smotrich promising nuclear fire. This speech sets off alarm bells across the world. With just enough forewarning, the US is able to scramble together a JSOC task force for units in Iraq and Syria. This task force, backed up by F-35Cs from the USS Midway (CVN-70, ex-Carl Vinson), interdicts the attempt by a significant portion of the putschist Netzah Yehuda Battalion to seize Sdot Micha Airbase and its nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles field. The Pentagon does not formally admit to the operation—WINTER CONTINGENCY—until 2035, after the Olive Spring. The US avoids further kinetic intervention in the Israeli Civil War, primarily because CENTCOM has its hands full with the rest of the region.
The US is successful in preventing a nuclear strike, but is totally unable to prevent a wider, regional war. This wider, regional war is (unsurprisingly) a complete and total clusterfuck of truly unimaginable proportions. It is primarily a war of long-range fires and aircraft. However, there are major naval combat operations in the Strait of Hormuz and ground combat operations in Iraq. In the latter, a vortex of paramilitary violence is mixed with up to division-sized raids by Iranian and Saudi-Gulf Coast forces. This is all conducted with all the grace and competency one could expect from three leading powers that had just violently shit themselves half to death at the same time, and a United States caught flat-footed by how quickly things unraveled on all sides. The new Federal Islamic Republic of Syria nimbly extricates itself and avoids the worst of the fighting, with only a mix of border skirmishes and the occasional burst of paramilitary violence. The air war is not entirely one-sided after a titanic effort by Iran to construct a true integrate air defense system after the failure and destruction of its old air defense network in 2024; this work had been sourced from and aided by the Chinese, and included a large purchase of J-10s and JH-7s to replace a large number of Iran’s oldest airframes. This, however, only delays the inevitable. The US delivers an overwhelming strike to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, hitting Fordow with two-dozen GBU-57 MOP bunker busters over the course of several days.
As the clusterfuck tears across the Middle East, there is only a lone US Navy warship holding the Strait of Hormuz open—USS Constellation (FFG-62). The ship is on its first tour after commissioning in late 2025, much earlier than expected (having been rushed along by the response to First Sino). In her skipper’s chair is Commander Kimberly Scott. Constellation stands alone for twenty-three and a half hours of combat against overwhelming Iranian attacks. Eventually, Connie is joined by a pair of Arleigh Burkes (The Sullivans and Delbert D. Black). The ships could have joined Constellation earlier, but were delayed by the direct order of the one-star Rear Admiral (Lower Half) serving as Acting Commander, Naval Forces Central Commander / United States Fifth Fleet. Having ordered that the DDGs be repainted before they are permitted to sortie. The RDML is in charge due to an ongoing freeze in the confirmation flag officer postings due to Mike Lee’s infamous “Pantless Talking Filibuster.”
Constellation earns two Presidential Unit Citations and seven battle stars. Scott earns her second Navy Cross for the First Battle of Hormuz and then a Silver Star for the Seventeenth. She also very nearly earns a court-martial for refusing to follow orders from COMNAVCENT. Scott barters with friendly warships and auxiliaries for fuel, food, and ammunition, intent on making sure that there is always a ship on station in the strait. Constellation remains on the line for the war’s entire duration.
She also earns her sobriquet “Kill Something” Scott during the War after she loses her calm, speaking to COMNAVCENT on the radio. She shouts over an unencrypted channel, “Why don’t you, for the love of God, make yourself useful for once in your damned miserable life and go out and kill something!” CENTCOM is finally forced to dismiss the RDML after it is revealed he had been stealing painkillers “to keep his nerves steady,” in addition to his erratic behavior. Attempts to rehabilitate the officer will lead to the “Revolt of the Commanders,” sometimes called the “Tailhook Putsch,” in early 2027. After the mess in NAVCENT is cleared up, Scott is promoted to full captain and given command of the newly formed Escort Squadron Eight, with orders to protect civilian traffic.
The war also sees another future flag officer of the CTF gain their place amongst the legends of American history. Lieutenant Selina “Cat” Mitscher becomes the first US triple ace since Robin Olds during the “Miracle over the Zagros.” After losing her wingman in an ambush, the F/A-18E pilot single-handedly (literally, as she will lose her left arm and eye) defeats twelve Iranian flagged but Chinese piloted J-16s, including two gun kills and three maneuver kills (two she will admit were accidents not caused by her own hand; one of the sleep-deprived Chinese pilots crashed into his wingmen while trying to jump Mitscher).
The war ends after 62 days (April 13 to June 12). Once the clusterfuckery, the war devolves into CENTCOM stomping out fires with TLAMs and JDAMs. The oil glut that follows the armistice and the resumption of normal sea traffic (along with an SPR sell-off and US shale hitting max capacity after the lag time from the price spike at the start of the war) crashes global oil prices so severely that it very nearly bankrupts the Russian Federation and helps buoy Democrats into a surprise victory in the 2026 Midterms. The war itself ends with a return to status quo ante bellum. No one gains anything, but everyone learns something—with much bitterness
The failed hardliner putsch and the attempt to conceal the death of the Supreme Leader leads to a constitutional referendum that reshapes the Iranian political system, without fundamentally breaking from the Islamic Republic. The Supreme Leadership Authority is invested in the Supreme Council (the President, Chief Justice, and a member of the Secretary of the Guardian Council), which was finally established on a temporary basis after the announcement of the death of the Ayatollah. The IRGC is weakened after its poor performance and the failed putsch, but it remains a serious domestic political power. The Guardian Council also sees five reformist members installed after the deaths of their predecessors during the war: one killed by an Israeli airstrike (unintended, aiming for someone else), two killed by Saudi missile strikes (intended), one to an anti-clique putsch, and one to choking on a cup of tea at a war cabinet meeting. The newly invigorated reformists then make the decision to sprint for the bomb. Iran tests its first weapon at the start of 2027. With a deliverable bomb in hand, the Iranians move towards detente, signing an arms control agreement with the P5+1 Powers that also begins to rein in and roll back their proxy network across the region, known as the Second Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In Israel, the Civil War ends with the sword. Though the fighting in Israel’s cities is brief, the fighting in the West Bank is brutal. However, it is a foregone conclusion, the rebels are defeated. Smotrich eventually gets what he wants, his fire blazing against the dark, as the IDF-AF firebombs Kiryat Arba. Almost the entire settlement’s population is killed. However, the State Committee does not dissolve itself; instead, the rump Knesset rubber stamps several amendments to the Basic Law. Sa’ar remains Prime Minister with the Director of Shin Bet as Minister of General Affairs and the Director of Mossad as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Chief of the General Staff, Eyal Zamir, is elected President, while remaining on active duty. Elections are suspended “until such time that the state is secure.”
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempts to start a movement to return a civilian government (and his return to office). After a particularly provocative speech in early 2027, he is unceremoniously shot in his driveway by Shabak officers. His last words are “Don’t you know who I am? You can’t shoot me.” The standard of right-wing, secular resistance to the State Committee falls to former Minister Miri Regev; she is permitted to continue to speak out against the government as she is believed to be too incompetent to be a threat.
Perhaps the single most lasting implication of the war is Mohammad bin Salman’s interpretation of the course of events, and particular his belief that the United States had failed to (1) prevent the insurrection in the Royal Guards, (2) intentionally did not deconflict Iranian air space during the early days in the war, and (3) was more willing to bergrudingly accept an Iranian nuclear weapon than permit a Saudi one. Harris’ administration attempt to prevent further proliferation by denying the Saudis their “counter-bomb.” Pakistan, under US pressure, would slow-roll the long-understood promise to transfer nuclear materials, technology, or weapons to the KSA until it was confirmed that the Iranians had a deliverable nuclear weapon that could also reach Pakistan. Frustrated, the King would order the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency to procure American nuclear technology (primarily weapons designs, with the King particularly demanding the B83 gravity bomb) through a mix of bribery and blackmail, targeting vulnerable Department of Energy employees. The program would actually meet with some success until the would-be traitors got cold feet.
The GIP officer in charge of the operations would move onto a reasonable Plan B: kidnapping two nuclear physicists, direct employees of the DOE, on American Soil.
The idea was to seize the individuals and then force them to steal the desired nuclear designs. Fortunately, the plot had been on the radar of the FBI and NSA, and the GIP team would be arrested red-handed—in a panel van filled with incriminating material, including a rocket launcher—on their way to kidnap the first scientist. Regardless, a second team of Saudi intelligence officers would bribe the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Brett McGurk, via Jared Kushner to use McGurk’s connection to a retired Senior DOE employee (married to his cousin) for their atomic ends. Kushner would inadvertently scupper the operation at the last minute by reneging on his deal, demanding more money before he provided the rest of the files.
This would lead to Plan C: violence.
Kushner would be shot nine times as he left his New York penthouse on Christmas Day 2027, and would die on the way to Mount Sinai. The nuclear files on Kushner’s laptop would be ultimately deleted by his personal assistant, under the mistaken assumption that they were a stash of fetish porn.
Saudi-American relations hit their then-lowest point when things really kick off. Six masked gunmen launch a full-scale assault on former President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The operation, planned by a closed cell of US-trained GIP officers, was assessed by US intelligence as a fake-out plot to distract from the “real” operations to procure nuclear materials. It would later be ascertained that the GIP—under pressure from the King to find a culprit behind the Royal Guard Insurrection—had fingered Bandar Bush as the ring-master of a vast anti-MBS clique. This hitherto totally clandestine, but sprawling, clique was supposedly planning to finish the job and remove the new King. MBS would order Bandar killed as a warning without actually asking about the details. The former Ambassador to the United States just happened to be spending Christmas with the Bushes, a part of an extended vacation in the States with the intent of avoiding purges. The GIP officers handed the mission would decide it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission, seeing what had happened to the Royal Guards who had questioned the King.
Having been singing Christmas carols just moments prior, the Bush Family and their Secret Service detail are thrown headlong into a frenetic, hours-long gunfight against extremely heavily armed GIP assassins (having armed themselves by spending $2.75 million buying a massive personal collection from a gun collector). Eventually, some four hundred local law enforcement officers and C Company, 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group (TXNG) would rush to the scene. The Green Berets would be deployed on the orders of Governor Lina Hildago and arrive via Blackhawk to break the siege. By the time the Snake Eaters fast-rope onto the property, the assassins had already been dispatched by a Stryker troop from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment. The cav troopers had been held over Christmas for a live-fire field training exercise and had rushed to the scene after intercepting distress calls from Bush’s Secret Service detail over the radio. Despite the Saudi hit squad expending over 12,000 rounds of ammunition, they failed to kill any Americans (besides Kushner).
The Saudi Government maintained that the GIP officers had moved without their knowledge or blessing. This is in spite of a fancam edit (set to Stranger by Hilary Duff) of the officers involved meeting the King just hours before they departed for the United States. The GIP leaders were kept in the dark about the sheer number of concurrent, delicate, and volatile missions that were notionally being conducted on their authority and under their responsibility on American soil. Accordingly, MBS would have most of those leaders executed to appease the Harris Administration—but the damage had been done. The Saudis would eventually get nuclear components via Pakistan in 2029, testing a weapon shortly after Harris’ second inauguration.
Notably, Syria avoided basically all of the fighting, and while most ground warfare was on Iraqi soil, the mutual annihilation of paramilitarism and the moderately successful campaign by the Iraqi Army to repulse/deter raids by the Saudis and Iranians allowed the two Arab democracies to consolidate and rapidly develop over the coming decade. The frankly embarrassing mess caused and left by the Saudis and Israelis also sees the Harris Administration embark on a strategy of anchoring US strategy in the region upon the two Arab democracies (Syria would hold its first legislative elections in 2026).
2026 United States Midterms & The Osaka Treaty of 2027
Let The Good Times Roll
In 2026, the Democrats lose 22 House seats but still maintain a commanding majority (242D-199R), winning the national popular vote by about half a point. In the Senate, the Democrats pick up five seats (TX, NC, ME, AK, and OH), bringing their caucus up to 67—the largest majority since 1966 and the largest caucus since 1964.
Vivek Ramaswamy, having defeated appointee Matt Dolan in the primary, loses the special election to finish JD Vance’s term to LeBron James. Ramaswamy's otherwise adequate bid implodes after the candidate backs over incumbent Matt Dolan and a 96-year-old Republican volunteer after a campaign event in Dayton. Bethel Schlamng, the volunteer who had just moments before the accident proudly declared she had voted for every Republican in Ohio since Eisenhower in 1952, would die on the way to the hospital; Ramaswamy would be charged with manslaughter a week before the election.
Republicans in Texas face a stunning and overwhelming wipeout in the wake of new Governor Dan Patrick’s disastrous “Operation Freedom,” an attempt at a state-level mass deportation operation. Patrick had become Governor in January after the death of Greg Abbott in a tragic kazoo-induced waterslide accident. “OpFree” sees Texas Rangers black-bag a third-grade class field trip to Big Bend National Park, along with their teacher and six docents, and then attempt to deport the group to Guatemala on an unregistered flight in the middle of the night, despite the fact that they were all American citizens. At the same time, John Cornyn narrowly loses the Republican nomination for Senate to Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton is once more under indictment, this time for the kidnapping and false imprisonment of his mistress. Both go down in flames as Texas Democrats win a trifecta in the state for the first time since 1990. Paxton falls to former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, while Patrick loses to Lina Hidalgo.
Elsewhere, former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and Maine Representative Jared Golden win open seats in their respective states after Senators Tillis and Collins decline to run for re-election. State Representative Alyse Galvin wins the Alaska Senate race, defeating Dan Sullivan in an upset; polling had her down by five, but she would eventually win by one (five percent less than Rep. Mary Peltola).
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor retires two days after the election, following a car accident in October. She is replaced by Deputy Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar following a 59-42 vote in the Senate (Curtiss, Collins, and Tillis voting to confirm).
The Harris Administration, presiding over a massive economic boom and racking up domestic policy success after domestic policy success, would achieve what was long thought impossible—a unified, formalized security framework for the Pacific. The signing of the Osaka Treaty and Accord on Enhanced Cooperation, Mutual Defense, and Common Security in 2027 would be the crown jewel of Harris’s first term.
The Osaka Treaty Organization would have its beginnings in the political agreement behind the Pacific Shipbuilding Corporation, a pseudo-conglomeration of the Pacific Rim’s shipyards and shipbuilding concerns formed after First Sino. It would also be known as the Pacific Charter, but that tagline name would never catch on. Instead, it would be known almost universally as OSATO or the OSATO Treaty—after the Osaka Treaty Organization.
OSATO would be a sister to the North Atlantic Treaty and its Treaty Organization, contextualized for the challenges of the Western Pacific. It would not be nearly as centralized as NATO, having multiple tiers of membership. There would be full membership—equivalent to a NATO member state. There would also be associated membership—states that agree to military standardization, political cooperation, and consultation in times of crisis; associated memberships would be obligated to provide assistance if a member was attacked, but not necessarily military force, and would have to opt into the joint command structure. Generally, most associated members would also have bilateral security or cooperation agreements with the United States.
The original signatories of the Osaka Treaty were the United States of America, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Australia (a Republic declared following the 2026 constitutional referendum), the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Canada, and Japan. Associated Members would include the Republic of Korea, the Republic of India, the Republic of Indonesia, the Republic of Singapore (following the start of the Malaysia Civil War), the French Republic, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Republic of Panama, and the Republic of Chile. Most Micronesian, Polynesian, and Melanesian states would join the alliance within a few years, though not all would seek full membership.
The Republic of China, Taiwan, is formally designated an “observer non-member” by the treaty and operates through the guise of a Taiwan Liaison Office.
The Many Turns of the Rolling ‘20s
The Tide Comes In, But It Always Goes Out
The Myanmar Civil War ends in the defeat of the Tatmadaw in the spring of 2026. Hopes for the newly formed People’s Federation of Burma to turn a new page are dashed when an ex-warlord aligned to the People’s Defense Force launches a putsch against the new government over unpaid wages, leading to what becomes known as the “twin walk federalism.” Those areas controlled by the central government become an Eritrean-like centralized police state existing between and within areas controlled by ethnic armed organizations, effectively out of control of the central government.
In September 2026, the Russo-Ukrainian War ends following the annihilation of the three Russian Combined Arms Armies trapped in the Makiivka Cauldron and the liberation of Mauripol after the surrender of the Commander-in-Chief of the Joint Group of Forces, the recently promoted Marshal of the Russian Federation Andrey Mordviche—along with his staff and the remaining units of the Stalingrad Military District—in fitting, curt ceremony in front of the Russians’ final positions in the ruins of the Azovstal Steel Works. The Russian Federation and the Republic of Ukraine sign the “Instrument for the Permanent Termination of Hostilities Between Belligerents” at Chaltyr, just 10 miles from Rostov, under the gun barrels of the leading tanks of the 1st Ukrainian Armored Corps. Dmitry Medvedev signs for the Russian Federation; Rustem Umerov signs for Ukraine. Ukraine finalizes its ascension to NATO mere hours after signing the Instrument, after all of its forces crossed back over the internationally recognized border between the two countries.
Ahead of the end of his term in January 2027, Governor Gavin Newsom is nominated to be US Ambassador to China in a controversial move by the Harris Administration. It was understood as a move to “dump him in a job that will kill odds of being an idiot and trying something in 2028—Joe Kennedy style.” While his nomination is held up in the Senate over his suitability, the selection process of the next UN Secretary-General meltdowns. The Russian Federation vetoes every single nominee except for their own nominee, Elvira Nabiullina (the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia), at straw poll after straw poll in pair of unprecedented moves; Nabiullina, in turn, had been vetoed by three P5 members (France, UK, and US), receiving only two votes in the affirmative (Russia and Bolivia) with seven nays and three abstentions (including the PRC) at each vote. In a bizarre move, Newsom would ask and get the US nomination for Secretary-General in a counter to the Russians’ attempt to force its nominee down everyone’s throat, but it was assumed that it to lead nowhere. It was thought to be a move to extricate himself from his souring ambassadorship nomination.
In the middle of the 13th Straw Poll in late November, the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, was recalled to Moscow with zero warning or any explanation. He would leave before completing his voting, subtly manhandled out of the Consultation Room by his security detail. Five minutes later, there was the first announcement that Secretary of the Russian Security Council Sergei Shoigu—along with Igor Girkin’s Union of Patriotic Forces (a rightist super-group), a furious Dimitri Medvedev, and thousands of demobilized soldiers waiting for a long-promised “final victory bonus” while still mustered along the Ukrainian border—had begun a Second March on Moscow. It was another open mutiny, this time over the termination of the war, unpaid wages, and an imminent government reshuffle. The botched coup comes to a stop after the Bonus Soldiers frag Girkin and his clique; Medvedev’s attempt to seize a nuclear weapon storage facility sees him electrocuted on a security fence before being arrested by the confused guards; and Shoigu’s 500-vehicle armored convoy is halted by nine border guards and a Lada Riva.
The deadlock in the UNSC would come to a sudden end as the votes of the straw poll were counted. Governor Gavin Newsom would be the sole nominee who the Russians had not vetoed (leaving the room with the ballot unfilled). There are gasps in the room when the final red (P5) slip—that of PRC—is revealed, and it is an abstention. Newsom becomes the Security Council’s nominee with only seven ayes—with four nays and four abstentions. He is the first Secretary-General nominee from a P5 member. Russia would attempt to recant its non-vote, but fearing more deadlock, the UNSC would send Newsom’s nomination to the floor UN General Assembly, where he would be confirmed 115-78—the first contested UNGA confirmation.
In exchange for their ‘help’ in ending the deadlock, China had a single demand—a non-European citizen as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and a non-American as the President of the World Bank. Accordingly, the US supports Spanish Finance Minister, María Jesús Montero, as the next President of the World Bank and a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan, Uchida Shinichi, as the next Managing Director of the IMF. The move gave the Chinese precisely what they asked for—but not what they wanted.
In 2027, a renewed Malaysian Islamist Party—under the banner of a new young, charismatic leader styling himself as a mirror version of Donald Trump, Gert Wilders, and Marine Le Pen—comes just one seat shy of an absolute majority. Attempts to forestall the formation of their government lead to a putsch, and the nation descends into civil war. The conflict will eventually see three military interventions: one by Singapore to secure a buffer zone, one by the UN, and one by the PLA to protect ethnic Chinese. The war ends with a stable authoritarian military regime backed by a coalition of the remnants of anti-Islamist conservative factions and ethnic Chinese parties—all other sides of the war having exhausted themselves after years of fighting.
The United States and the People’s Republic of China come perilously close to war in 2027, in what would be termed the Anzio Incident. Thankfully, the liberal use of high-power jammers and good timing prevents further escalation out of the fallout of a rogue PLAN battlecruiser. The first Sino-American combat since 2025 would be covered up—with one the largest within-visual-range surface naval actions chalked up to collisions and mines left over from First Sino announced over a series of months.
In the wake of this very close call, it appears as if the promising careers of two officers who would eventually be flag officers in the Composite Testing Force had been cut short. Captain Kimberly Scott was dual-hatted as skipper of the Constellation and the Commander of Advance Naval Support Activity Subic Bay; as the officer in charge, she held overall responsibility for the events that had unfolded and for the loss of Constellation in particular. Captain Jeduthun MacGregor was in command of the recommissioned Anzio and was liable for the particular theatrics of the crisis and for stealing five Mark 56 RAPTOR heavyweight torpedoes for jury-rigged use aboard his aging cruiser. The end of the careers of these “rank traitors” was met with jubilation in some corners of the Fleet. Scott, in particular, had been the face of the reformist officer corps, and her testimony during the Revolt of Commanders would help end the careers of no less than half a dozen flag officers and lead to the implementation of the legendary Sailor’s Charter. Scott and MacGregor were not drummed out of the service despite calls for just that. Jed MacGregor was court-martialled but cleared of all charges after the unanimous intervention of his surviving crew and then assigned to command SBX off Adak for the next four straight years. Scott was assigned as the defense attaché to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, a posting that was sure to be a death sentence for an officer famed for her fighting spirit.
Other events in this period include the first PLA punitive expeditions, the so-called “friendship support operations.” These primarily occur in East Africa, though there are also operations in Central Asia. One particularly egregious action is the use of Chinese paratroopers and special operations forces against the Ugandan Parliament during the Uganda Sovereign Debt Crisis in 2028.
United States Presidential Election of 2028
Started as a Menace and Ended as a Farce
President Kamala Harris is re-nominated without major opposition, having become a paragon of the party. Cementing this fact, in 2027, Harris signs the American Health Care Act—dubbed KamalaCare—into law, giving the United States a public option modeled after the AmeriCare proposal and a system of federally owned and operated hospitals, the American Health Service. She also celebrates the return of US Astronauts to the Moon in August 2027.
In sharp contrast to the nothingburger 2028 Democratic Primary, the 2028 Republican Primary is downright Shakespearean. Despite assurance from his staff that he would not run again, former President Trump announces he will seek his Party’s nomination for an unprecedented fourth time. His bid is, ironically, buoyed by his listless period in the wilderness in 2025-2026. A series of images of a despondent, broken Trump looking at various objects while on furlough (while his prison is annex is being built) goes viral, namely one of a gaunt, confused Trump ordering a chili dog at a Vegas 7/11. The speech is pre-recorded in his office inside the purpose-built “Executive Administrative Annex” of Federal Correctional Institution Otisville, where Trump is serving his state and federal jail time after his conviction in the Mar-a-Lago Documents and January 6 cases—and in the election subversion cases in Arizona, Michigan, and eventually Georgia.
Trump successfully fights for a furlough to allow him to campaign. Having lost nearly 90 pounds, he appears to have his spark back and, despite the odds, claws his way to the front of a crowded primary field. This early primary is a fascinating case as the other candidates attempt to campaign around the fact that Donald Trump is (1) still alive and (2) running against them. The most egregious example of this phenomenon is Marco Rubio repeating the line “If President Trump were still here,” five times while being one podium away from Trump during the first debate of the primary.
The year’s Super Tuesday—pushed back to the second week of May—proves to be one of the most monument days in American politics. At midday, there is an assassination attempt against former Vice President Mike Pence at a rally in North Carolina. While Pence himself is unscathed, Karen Pence is killed. The image of Pence holding his wife’s shoes as Secret Service agents pull him away remains historic. As the polls close, it appears that Trump has secured an outright majority and thus his party’s nomination following a set of narrow victories across the board (the RNC having switched back to proportional delegate awards). However, that night, it becomes clear that Trump is actually 72 delegates shy of an outright majority. As Trump is giving his victory speech to a 10,000 person rally in Waco, Texas—he abruptly stops speaking. Another famous photo of that day shows the lines on the teleprompter announcing that Trump had secured the support of the three candidates (Rubio, Youngkin, and Cox) and their combined 74 delegates, just enough to clinch the nomination. He grips his chest, releasing the podium, stumbling back a few steps before keeling over backward. He has suffered a massive heart attack. He is rushed to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center. Reports of his death run wild as the world waits with bated breath. His campaign refuses to make any public update on his condition for 43 hours until a stilted statement announces the former President is alive but in a coma. Trump’s 1193 delegates are left up in the air as Youngkin, Rubio, and Cox do not actually release their delegates.
The next ten weeks are a blur of madness and political bloodshed. The next three weeks are flush with primary elections as the back-loaded calendar (an attempt to capture the advantages of Kamala Harris’ “late start” 2024 bid) unleashes even more chaos. Trump ends the primary season with 1428 of 2431 delegates. The RNC begins to host new debates, as it’s unclear if Trump will ever wake up.
The debates instantly become memorable because of one thing: Mike Pence.
Mike Pence's manic performance—with nickel-sized pupils—in the first of these debates captures global attention and rejuvenates his otherwise lackluster bid (having only won Indiana with 28% of the vote). At one point, he appears to be holding an entire conversation with himself as Glen Youngkin looks in utter horror. There is an attempt to stop the debate to check if he is all right, but he waves them off, saying, “They are telling you more lies, we know. We know.” Of the various insane lines said by Pence that night, “Do you speak for the eagles? NO! I speak for the eagles!” is the most remembered. Pence gains more small donors in the next 24 hours than in his entire prior career—combined.
A year later, a tell-all book by Pence’s campaign manager will elaborate on what was wrong with the ex-Veep—he was tripping balls. Pence was suffering from exposure to hallucinogenic fungi—ergotism—from a loaf of improperly stored bread, the last loaf that Karen had baked. He would continue to nibble on the loaf throughout the rest of the campaign despite warnings and pleas from friends, family, and six doctors.
Pence’s novelty fades after he begins to convulse violently during the second of the restarted debates. Then, it is former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s time to shine. Her moment at the top of the pack is mostly just an extended mutual murder-suicide between her and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, both seeing each other as their only real competitor. Kemp and Haley are then also ganged up on by all the other candidates—including the six candidates who join after Trump’s heart attack. At each debate, the center podium is empty, with Trump’s name and photo emblazoned on it.
The debates—a so-called shotgun primary—fail to reach a consensus or to achieve anything but nuking the prospects of their two best prospects before the Republican National Convention opens in Dallas. It is the first brokered convention since 1952. And it is an unsurprising catastrophe. The backroom dealings will lead to at least nine indictments in the succeeding two years. The details are hazy, even to the ticket that is eventually nominated. Don Junior—the early favorite—sees his bid implode after he is videotaped doing coke off a baby changing station in a convention center ladies’ room. Marco Rubio is booed off the stage. Haley remains stuck at a ceiling of roughly 450 delegates, and most of her effort is directed at ensuring that Kemp stays stuck at a ceiling of roughly 500 delegates. The first dozen ballots push the convention in an odd direction, winnowing down to two Arkansans: Senator Tom Cotton and Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The party elites prefer Huckabee Sanders’ focus on families and pocket-book issues. Conservative activists prefer Cotton’s monomaniacal focus on fighting a war against the cartels. The Trump Family is split, with Ivanka and Melania supporting Huckabee Sanders (from a distance) while Eric, Don, and Barron support Cotton from the floor. It is Cotton’s stilted-but-fiery keynote promising to use drone strikes against fentanyl traffickers that breaks the dam. On the 19th ballot, Tom Cotton wins the Republican Party’s nomination for President despite not winning a single state in the primaries (he came in third in Arkansas). He picks Montana Governor Greg Gianforte as his running mate.
Harris once more runs as the happy warrior—the woman who won wars, saved the global economy, and brought a new economic renaissance to America. Cotton runs a fire and brimstone campaign arguing for Trumpism without Trump—arguing that domestic drone strikes would not necessarily violate the Posse Comitatus Act and implying that “someone” had given Trump the heart attack. Shortly after the latter comment, Trump wakes from his coma. He delivers a single speech from his office in the Executive Administrative Annex, congratulating Cotton and endorsing the GOP ticket. He appears exhausted and barely aware of his surroundings. That night, before he goes to bed, he suffers a massive stroke that leaves him paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak. Two weeks later, Gianforte is charged with six separate felonies after he suffers a nervous breakdown and attacks several reporters, including throwing and striking a fleeing cameraman in the head with a brick. He snaps after being followed around by a large press pool asking pointed questions about alleged financial impropriety during his tenure in the House. He asks to be removed from the ticket after he is charged, mainly to avoid being dropped from the ticket by Cotton. Representative Elise Steffanik of New York is chosen to replace the governor.
There is one last catastrophe before E-Day that stabs into the back of the Republican ticket like a dagger in Caesar’s back: the Moonies. In mid-September, with Gianforte fresh off the ticket, the Department of Justice announces charges for 147 current and former Republican staffers and electeds, all related to an unregistered foreign agent and illegal influence-buying operation run by the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. The Moonies, driven out of Japanese politics after the assassination of Shinto Abe and the Great Realignment of Japanese politics during the 2025 General Election, had come to America—and the GOP in particular—to continue their grift cult. The DOJ also levels charges against 80 members of the Unification Church for running various scams targeting elderly conservatives. In short order, it is revealed that operatives for the Church had also embezzled some $500 million from the RNC and associated campaigns, creating a massive financing crisis in the GOP in the home stretch of the election.
The Cotton/Steffanik ticket goes down in flames. “Are we Dukakising?” The Senator is purportedly to have said to his campaign team as results begin to drop and it is apparent that they have lost by at least double-digit. The final result is 55.1% Harris/Walz to 43.2% Cotton/Steffanik. Democrats win a 275-seat supermajority in the House and pick up five more seats in the Senate. Jason Kander defeats Eric Schmitt in Missouri; Mary Peltola succeeds Murkowski in Alaska; Jeff Jackson defeats Ted Budd in North Carolina; Sharice Davids defeats Mike Pompeo to succeed Jerry Moran in Kansas; and independent Josh Romney defeats Mike Lee in Utah (Romney enters the race after a bizarre rant by Lee wherein the Senator graphically accuses Ann Romney of “ethno-cuckolding”). However, the true upset of the cycle is Harris’ victory in Mississippi—after three recounts. She is the first Democrat to do so since 1976 (though this was signaled by Brandon Presley's narrow gubernatorial victory in 2027). This sudden shift in America’s most polarized state is only possible thanks to First Sino and the (First) Naval Infrastructure Act, bringing a massive influx of workers and their families to the Gulfport-Biloxi metro.
There is one last insult to Republicans in 2028—a Supreme Court vacancy occurs on election day. Justice Alito, conscious of his age, started to seclude himself. He would avoid anything that might lead to premature death ahead of Cotton’s assumed victory. The main thrust of this strategy, of course, was regular, all-expenses-paid vacations to the homes of various conservative mega-donors. While fishing on the Ohio River on a $65 million river barge, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Samuel Anthony Alito Junior is struck in the head by an abnormally large 103.7-pound Silver Carp and killed instantly. He would be replaced by Meredith Vacca, a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 68-32 vote on December 8. Justice Vacca’s confirmation would create the first majority on the Supreme Court to be nominated by Democratic Presidents since 1969 and, for the first time in its history, would have more women than men (Kagan, Coney Barrett, Brown Jackson, Prelogar, and Vacca).
The Office of Critical Procurement & USN Factionalism
Cold Warrior Require Cold Steel, Cold Wars Demand Bickering About Paint
Jennifer Granholm continues to serve as Secretary of Energy. Not only does she lead America’s clean energy transition, but as the cabinet officer in charge of much of the federal government’s research budget, she indelibly shapes the United States’ defense mobilization. In this latter role, she is aided by her plucky defense attaché, Kimberly Scott. The two quickly strike up an indelible friendship and frightening partnership. Instead of a career death sentence, Scott starts to amass significant influence due to her abilities as a talented project manager and deft political operator. She will out-maneuver her opponents and elegantly position herself into a career jumpstart.
Her proposal for consolidating the DOD’s various specialist procurement offices into a single “super office” under the Defense Production Board would be met with much resistance. Scott would win the fight. This legislative battle was particularly notable as it was then that Scott purportedly killed former Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz, serving as a lobbyist attempting to sink Scott’s proposal, would fall down a flight of stairs to his death—Scott allegedly pushed him. Congress would pass Scott’s measure, and the Office of Critical Procurement would be created under the DPB—she was the natural choice for its first director. However, her age and many enemies would see that she would not receive the commodore’s star that was supposed to go with the new job. Regardless, she would happily accept her post as a Latter-Day Rickover. She did not care about the rank; she had just become the chief procurement officer of the United States’ defense mobilization agency, and she intended to leverage every ounce of power that posting gave her.
From this posting, under the protection of “Papa Bear” LaPlante, she would wage war against her enemies in the name of reform and sharpening the edge of the spear. Her focus on personnel reforms—particularly housing—was known to drive her enemies mad, as they were notionally supposed to be out of her remit. However, Scott’s OCP would build housing if it wanted and where it was needed—come hell or high water.
The fleet factionalism would finally crystallize into formal groups in 2030, with the battle lines drawn around the proposals that would become known as FAX2040, “Fleet Architecture 2040,” and the subsequent Naval Act of 2030. FAX 2040’s focus on SAGs and creating a low-end 5,000-ton light surface combatant class to increase hulls and access to early commands were particularly polarizing. It was also the fact that those pushing FAX2040 were mostly those who had forced the Sailor’s Charter reforms into action over the objections of what Kill Something Scott would dub the “Everything is Fine Admiralty.” But one point above all else threw down the gauntlet: proposals for the adoption of a new standard ship paint. Slate Haze Gray—a darker, long-duration high anti-corrosion and mild radar absorbing pain—would drive men mad. It is said that at least one senior field grade officer threatened to kill himself over its adoption.
The paint would become the sobriquet for those who supported FAX2040—the Slate Navy. Those who opposed FAX2040 would organize a new forum to discuss their schemes—the Professional Naval Officers’ Society and would be dubbed “Corporate,” usually shortened to Corpo Navy. Eventually, the reformists would form their own “book club,” merely calling it the Fleet Institute.
The two factions are roughly divided by generation. Corpo Navy is primarily more senior officers and their proteges, whose careers were not defined by First Sino; they are also, broadly, the Scions of the Fat Leonard Generation. Driven by resentment by “losing out” on the wartime fast-track promotions and generally losing influence to “upstarts.” They are Old Money, a Good Ole Boys’ Club who bristle at those who want to rock the boat—especially regarding symbolic or unspoken privileges they maintain. Slate Navy officers were usually junior and lower mid-grade officers during First Sino; those were doing most of the doing alongside enlisted sailors—fostering a profound sense of camaraderie with those sailors entrusted to them. This would lead to the Sailor’s Charter movement—for improving the living and working conditions of sailors. Many Slate Navy partisans are also Mustangs, having previously served as enlisted sailors. They have lived with the failures of the status quo, seen the damage that it wrought, and wish to fix the service they love.
Other key advances pushed forward under Fleet Architecture 2040 include the adoption of high-velocity electrothermal chemical guns, standardized mixes of peripheral and centerline vertical launch cells, and a wholesale embrace of ships designed with contemporary industrial practices—such as the large-scale direct laser deposition, the printer-fabricator, and new material science breakthroughs. It would also push forward a new generation of advanced nuclear propulsion into practice, converting CVN-82 into a new class based on the Enhanced Carrier Baseline studies.
OCP would not only force reform in the Navy, it would also assist the other services’ flagship modernization programs: the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2045, the Army’s Structure 2050, and the Aerospace Force’s Sky Warden. It would draft the Naval Act of 2030 and assist in drafting the Aerospace Act of 2031, remerging the Air Force and Space Force. OCP would also aid the passage of the Guard-Reserve Act of 2030, the back-door federalization of the National Guard Bureau, following an attempt by Texas Lieutenant Governor Charles Schwertner to coup Governor Lina Hildago.
Another seminal breakthrough shepherded into the field by OCP—aided by DARPA and ARPA-Industrial—is the piezoelectrothermal chemical primer (PTC). It is the greatest development in firearms technology since Poudre B in 1884, allowing for the use of electrothermal chemical principles (using a plasma spark to ignite stable, high-energy propellants) without an independent power source by generating the power for a small (and inefficient) plasma spark piezoelectrically. While not as capable as true ETC systems, PTC allows for velocities equivalent to 100 kpsi chamber pressures to be generated at roughly 90 kpsi, because of the even and efficient expansion of the plasma-ignited propellant gases. The US military would leap at the opportunity, the PLA would be slow to adopt PTC—because of cost concerns and attempts to leverage their investments in electromagnetic projectile weapons into a functional small arm.
The Coronado Crisis, 2030 United States Midterms,
& The Sakishima Missile Crisis of 2031
Sour Grapes Trampled Violently in The Twilight of the Gods
Kamala Harris’s second term would not begin or end easily.
In June 2029, they would face a tragic mutiny that would end with the termination of Naval Special Warfare Command. In an attempt to serve a litany of warrants against active-duty members of the West Coast SEAL Teams for trafficking drugs and guns for the hypermilitarized successor of Jalisco New Generation Cartel—El Otro. “The Other” was using SEALs to move illicit goods via SDVs during exercises and also had nearly a dozen former SEALs among their leadership. The arrest of the “True Pirates” at a Naval Special Warfare Group One cook-out ends catastrophically, with scores of hostages and dozens of dead, including two NSW flag officers.
After the smoke clears after the forced entry of the Turner Field Rec Center by a combined Delta Force, FBI Hostage Rescue Team, and MARSOC response force, NAVSPECWAR will be unmade by order of the President. Not even the SEAL lobby can undo the move with their allies in Congress.
The immediate aftermath of the Coronado Crisis sees a massive expansion of Marine Special Operations Command. The Marine Raider is effectively divided in twain, with most officers and men being used as a cadre for a new 1st Marine Raider Regiment, an amphibious, airborne light infantry to complement the 75th Ranger Regiment, and the rest used to seed the creation of nine “Detachments” of two newly created Marine Special Operations Groups. The Navy does maintain two special operations forces, a handful of Underwater Demolition Teams (pure sapper/frogman/combat diver units), and an expanded number of Special Boat Teams (both classic SWCC units and new replacements for delivery teams) under a Naval Special Operations Command. The two are fused together under the watchful eye of a Fleet Special Warfare Command, one of the first of a new series of joint Navy-Marine commands. Much of this work will be headed by Captain Scott’s husband—a SWCC—Jember “Jem” Dissmie.
With a political defeat on the wind, Associate Justice Elena Kagan announces her retirement. She is replaced by Under Secretary of State for Populations, Displaced Persons, Refugees, and Migration, Ana Reyes, a former judge on the DC Circuit and DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Following a contentious nomination hearing over Reyes’ foreign birth and current positions, she is confirmed by a 64-42 vote, with several red-state and purple Democrats voting against her.
Democrats finally face electoral defeat after an unbroken trifecta for almost six years—an occurrence not seen since the 1960s. Democrats lose the House, with Republicans winning 82 seats and the national popular vote by 5 points for a 248R-193D majority. Democrats retain the Senate despite losing 16 seats (losing 7 of 10 open races) while gaining one seat. That sole bright spot is one Taylor Alison Swift defeating incumbent Martha Blackburn in Tennessee against all odds and the political environment—her 41-point Wins Above Replacement remains unbroken.
In spite of the defeat suffered at the polls, the 121st Congress has one last trick up its sleeve. Just a day before the new Republican Congress is sworn in, it passes the New Reapportionment Act. The House of Representatives is set to be increased from 441 seats (with six added after the admission of DC, Puerto Rico, and the Marianas) to 540. Republicans attempt to repeal the move but fail despite their majority. In the wake of the election, Speaker Jeffries steps down as Leader of the Democratic Caucus and is replaced by Joe Neguse; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is elected Democratic Whip (Pete Aguilar having been elected Lieutenant Governor of California and Katherine Clark having been elected Governor of Massachusetts in the midterms).
In 2031, the world faces a Second Coming of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Beijing’s coven of American researchers extrapolates—using machine learning and questionable judgment—that recent budgetary moves signal an unwillingness to defend Taiwan and Japan. The main evidence? A slowing of defense spending increases—merely matching inflation—after a compromise budget is eventually passed by Congress to pay for a funding boost to the American Health Service (the federal government’s network of publically owned and operated hospitals). The Director-General of the Institute for the Study of the Western Threat will be disappeared shortly after the crisis passes.
The Central Military Commission tests the waters by deploying two batteries of its latest CJ-200 Satyr missiles to the occupied Sakishima Islands. Satyr is a particularly nasty weapon: a scramjet-powered, low RCS sea-skimming cruise missile with a high-hypersonic terminal sprint. The weapon’s range is limited because its final sprint is at such a high speed that its structure will melt and collapse if timed incorrectly—even with the PLARF’s comparative advantage in ablative-stealth material science.
That alone makes Satyr dangerous—but what creates an international crisis is that it is a nuclear-capable weapons system being deployed to a series of interconnected, hardened sites on internationally recognized Japanese territory, territory that puts the blink-and-miss missiles in range of Okinawa and Taipei. Their deployment is treated as a five-alarm fire in Osaka, Tokyo, Taipei, and Washington.
The US moves decisively toward a quarantine (blockade) of the islands and readies military options to neutralize the launchers and recapture the islands after NSA intercepts confirm that the PLA is going to deploy warheads to Iriomote-Jima. The move to deploy warheads only comes after the US deploys its quarantine force from Japan. The world inches towards nuclear war and comes within minutes of a strategic exchange as NRO surveillance satellites detect abnormal movement of PLARF mobile ICBMs. Harris, at a NATO conference in Amsterdam, returns to DC aboard an E-4C Nightwatch as US forces are placed at DEFCON Two.
The crisis ends with a quiet agreement in Prague reached between Premier Li Qiang and Secretary of State Bill Burns. The quarantine ends. The CMC announces that they will not deploy nuclear weapons outside of “sovereign Chinese territory,” a set that excludes the Satyr sites on the Sakishima; however, most of the missiles stay in place. An agreement reached is where the Chinese agree to not deploy any nuclear weapons to the islands as long as Japan does not procure nuclear weapons—wording that was specified by the Americans. However, PLARF will retain the warheads in a complex located on the mainland coast with a dedicated airlift unit to deploy them rapidly, if necessary.
In reaction to the crisis, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea all independently signal they feel obligated to respond to the nuclear escalation on their own terms (read: develop their own weapons). The Harris Administration makes a series of secretive “Devil’s Deals” with three states to prevent the proliferation of further independent nuclear arsenals.
The US deploys a small number of nuclear weapons to Misawa AB under a de facto nuclear sharing agreement with Japan (this will not be revealed until 2065 and will bring down the incumbent Japanese ministry). The US agrees to a deal with South Korea to provide nuclear weapons under a formal nuclear sharing agreement; it will be the first nuclear sharing program based around the AGM-190A SRAM-III nuclear-tipped missiles (derived from the AGM-188 SiAW).
The US provides Taiwan with two batteries of MGM-200D Pershing III medium-range ballistic missiles, the ballistic missile derivative of the MGM-200 Long Range Hypersonic Weapon. One battery is road-mobile and constantly shuffling between a shell game of concealed launch vehicles, and the other battery is installed in a shell game of hardened silos in the Central Mountain Range. These missiles are armed with the M452 Heavy Advanced Re-entry Vehicle (Bunker Defeat Penetrator) warheads. They allow Taipei to credibly threaten the PRC with strikes against hardened C2 complexes—especially the Politburo’s own warren; notionally, they could also be employed against dams along the Yangtze. However, Taipei would reject any such suggestion of targeting dams publicly, and its target list would only include political or military targets.
Intelligence failures throughout the Missile Crisis leads Congress to pass the National Intelligence Community Reform Act of 2032, a comprehensive overhaul of the United States’ intelligence apparatus. The bill would begin in committee as the much more mundane Classified and Controlled Government Information Management Reform Act, which was intended as a “housekeeping bill,” but it would end up a fundamental restructuring of the USIC. NICRA reshapes the USIC into an ‘orbital’ model with five type-organized ‘orbits’ around a central core with a major expansion of blue badging. At the core of this new system is the Office of National Intelligence (ex-ODNI) and its four horsemen: the National Advisory Executive (PDB office), the National Operations Executive (direct action office), the National Integration Executive (dedicated cross-USIC integration), and the National Education Executive (dedicated red team office). The five orbits are defense intelligence (DIA), diplomatic intelligence (CIA), domestic intelligence (FIA, ex-National Security Branch of the FBI), space intelligence (NRO, having absorbed NGA), and signals/cryptographic intelligence (NSA). The crisis will also see the 12th Special Forces Group stood up to provide a dedicated global force for NOX Jedburgh teams and Critical Threat Advisory Companies; JSOC’s UDT-13 (prior only an EOD enabler unit) will gain its famed Boomer Buster mission.
There is one last event in 2031, two days before the New Year—the death of Donald J. Trump. Trump has spent the prior three years trapped in his own body, barely able to communicate and unable to move. An agreement between the Trump Family and the DOJ in 2029, stopping a Supreme Court case, would see the former President moved to Mar-a-Lago in exchange for the family shouldering Trump’s medical expenses and paying for a retrofit of the property (along with closing Mar-a-Lago Club), effectively turning the President’s former residence into a pseudo-federal prison.
At around 1 a.m. on December 29, a fire breaks out in the residence’s kitchen and rapidly spreads. As it began to consume the main structure, the Trump Organization staff flees. Bureau of Prison staff make three attempts to reach the former President, but are blocked by walls of flames. CCTV footage of the room will reveal that Donald John Trump’s first words in three years are also his last: “Is anyone there? Please, God, help me. Help me. Somebody.” He will burn alive, kept from dying of smoke inhalation from his room’s high ceilings and oxygen mask.
While conspiracy theories abound about his death, a comprehensive report will find fault in the Trump Organization. The report will ascertain that the Organization had defrauded no less than 26 different contractors over a period of six years, leading to abysmal work quality—particularly wiring—during the two major remodels of the property. Particularly damning records from COO Matthew Calamari revealed the extraordinary measures used to hide the condition of MAL from the BOP during the final inspections before the transfer of the former President from FCI Otisville.
The Trump Era ends as it started—with horror and farce in equal measures.
This series will continue next week and cover the Fifth Persian Gulf War of 2034 and the Second Sino-American War of 2037-2040.
"the rebirth of a small number of Underwater Demolition Teams"
LOL.
we go BACK TO THE BEGINNING Vizzini!
What inspired the changes to First SINO in the new version?