by Tom Baugh
Internet Research
Find a recording of the "Soviet National Anthem", the slower and more dramatic the better. YouTube.com is a good source, but don't select "The Internationale" by mistake. CatoTheElder has a nice selection without skips. Play this music in the background on auto loop as you read this story of American midshipmen fighting from within Soviet ships. Play it until I tell you to stop.
As the contest began, our opponents spent the first round of battle preparing their stalk. Following established doctrine, they launched virtual helicopters which would only turns later be capable of providing useful intelligence without giving away their launch point.
But at this point we were already going hot. Top Gun furiously tapped away on the keys with his junior varsity football fingers as I whispered through checklist after checklist. These checklists held preplanned tactical settings for our two Soviet ships, the Kirov and the Sovremenny.
Oscar collected human intel as we executed the well-rehearsed plan. His mind was looking forward into the next rounds as his well-trained and doctrinally proficient team did the work of the present. The fourth member of our team was a tactically astute youngster who in later years would lead his own team. He kept the materials we would need organized and available, much as a surgical nurse places the scalpel into the hand of the surgeon.
We also issued a warning over our simulated tactical radios, broadcasting on all available channels in English, the international language of the air and sea.
"This is Admiral Oscar of the peaceful Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Deep Sea Fleet. We, protector of the freedom of the seas for all peoples, have taken it upon ourselves to ensure the safety of all shipping within these waters. By that authority, all peaceful commercial vessels within the range of this broadcast are ordered to identify yourself or else your safety can not be guaranteed."
You see, this game included innocent merchant ships, whose safety must be guaranteed, whether they cooperate in their safety or not. Striking a merchant ship, by intent or accident, would result in severe penalties for the guilty party, including having their terminals deactivated for the remainder of the contest. A boxing match is often decided by points rather than a knockout. But in our war game, striking a merchant ship would leave insufficient margin for victory as the offending boxer's hands would be tied while his opponent pummels him mercilessly.
But this restriction held a gap which Oscar's plan was about to exploit. That warning wasn't necessary, it was just part of the flourish to distract our opponents. They giggled when they heard it, thinking that we imagined, naively, that we could talk the moderator into revealing the merchants.
And this is exactly where we wanted their minds to be. When our work was completed and the round ended, the sluggish computers of that day ground through the product of that first furious session. During this break, Oscar briefed us on the excited whispers he had heard from our opponents diagonally across the largish computer-fanned room. They had heard our furious key-tapping. And they had discussed in amazed whispers that we could only have been taking the naive and suicidal step of activating tell-tale radars on both of our ships.
We listened further as they were at that moment congratulating themselves on a battle already won. Breaking the silence, Oscar had us walk through the next round's work, which began soon enough. The next turn, our opponents could hardly believe their fortune. Both our ships were embarrassingly revealed. Each weapon system and radar available to us was warmed up and ready for use. Each of our ships was the mother of all UFOs in that dark forest, looking for the prey still hiding in the shadows.
Giggling across the room, the Americans fired their slower weapons which would still take many turns to arrive. We would not see these launches either, the more sophisticated seeker heads in these wonders of technology remaining stealthy until their final search for their victims. But we didn't have to see the launch to identify the enemy. In fact, we didn't have to identify the enemy at all.
Instead, we saw, near the limits of our primitive surface radars, four ghostly hulls, two enemy, two neutral. We didn't care which, and the game director, to punish our impertinence and defiance of the rules, chose to not reveal the location of his two merchant ships, effectively choosing sides against us. His compliance with our demand was immaterial.
As Oscar repeated his broadcast warning, I plotted the positions and current courses of all four mystery ships on my maneuvering boards. And, then the nurse handed the surgeon the first set of deadly transparencies. Top Gun fired the first salvo of our fewer, heavier and faster missiles, allocating them from both ships towards the farthest targets from each as I whispered parameters to him.
In the third turn, our primitive surface sensors had more detailed position and track information available. We stayed on course and speed, not maneuvering against the coming onslaught of slower, more dainty, yet deadly precise and numerous American weapons. They fired their second salvo ahead of our lumbering, naive, un-maneuvering ships. And they marveled at how our team captain, soon to be a graduate of the Naval Academy and a nuclear submarine officer, could be so stupid and helpless. While they rejoiced I plotted the updated information of all four enemy ships, the merchants having by now ignored two warnings, and had thus explicitly chosen sides.
My transparencies and Hewlett Packard calculator emitted data beyond the reach of the actual Soviets at that time. The actual Soviets, of course, on a grand scale had limited themselves from the best of technology by their very suppression of the individual. With this data Top Gun fired the second of our two salvos, this time from our ships toward the nearer. He and the data effectively spread the launch of our limited firepower out in space and in time. And yet, these missiles paths converged on each enemy ship to best effect at a single point in time and space.
But, we still had time to self-destruct or otherwise disable or redirect our missiles in flight. So we issued the warning for a third time, with an addition. "This is your third, and final warning. Any commercial vessels who do not comply will be destroyed."
None answered, all four vessels remained silently hiding in the dark illuminated by our radars. Our gigantically low-tech supersonic missiles closed the distance to each as the subsonic but far more sophisticated American weapons had barely cleared their own horizons.
The fourth turn dawned with all four targets at the centers of wagon wheels of deadly spokes aimed straight at their doomed hubs. This pattern was a refinement of the normal naval missile attack, which is beyond the scope of this book. Each midshipman knew this technique, unfortunately called "fingering the target", so named because the spokes looked like fingers of an outstretched hand.
Fingering is intended to assist in overwhelming an enemy's defenses. Some of the attacking missiles may approach on courses which lie outside the mechanical stops of the defender, depending on the orientation of the target ship. This geometric configuration is normally accomplished by firing the missiles with a degree or two spread for each, leading to a relatively narrow spread, as seen in a hand.
But the deadly enveloping configuration we now saw was not normally considered capable of being performed with this degree of precision and coordination in time and space. Especially from two Soviet ships at long range from even themselves. And by midshipmen using paper and pencil.
For us, however, this long distance between us opened the available spread. By coordinating the launches from both platforms in time and space with our software, these spreads were almost full circles. This particular spread looked more a wagon wheel, rather than the limited span of fingers. Had the merchant vessels complied with our demands, their spokes would have flown frighteningly overhead, splashing harmlessly beyond. But they didn't. No matter. These merchants had already served our purpose of making our foes think they could hide behind them. What happened to them now didn't matter to us at all.
Our opponents had thought we were still foolishly searching for targets, crashing through the forest with lights bla
zing. But they were shocked on that turn to find that each of their ships was doomed. Not only were our attacks indefensible, had they been prepared for them, they had not yet activated their own defenses as that would have revealed them to us. Their captain reassured them that although their ships would be destroyed, points would win them the game if they could inflict sufficient damage on us. Small comfort to the nineteen-year-old sailor who joined to see the world. Write that in a letter to his mother, "Johnny died serving his country, but we won on points."
By the rules of engagement, we were not yet deactivated. While our American foes attempted to launch one last desperate third salvo at our last known position, Oscar started a recording of the Soviet National Anthem. You should be listening to its martial swell as you read these words. Oscar played this anthem within the noise levels allowed by the rules. Even this masked our last preparations from foe and game director alike, before our controls would be deactivated as if by EMP from God Himself. Indeed, He would be the only hope left to the now helpless American team, those arrogant capitalists having placed too much faith in the power of their rules. Even now as they prepared to lick their wounds and count their points, they imagined us playing this music to dramatize our impending defeat. Which is what we expected they would imagine. And what we wanted them to imagine.
Behind that musical veil, the tactical nurse, Top Gun and I turned our ships toward the enemies closest to each, and then turned our ships a little more to overcome our previous drift. We increased our speed to flank, and placed all of our systems in autofire mode to engage any incoming missiles. This time, though, we used a different set of prepared transparencies and software to predict the track of the most likely incoming threats. Our little virtual electronic captains inside our little blips of ships then strapped themselves in, took a cup of coffee, and settled back to watch the fireworks.
Our faster missiles found their targets. All four of them. The fifth turn, our enemies had been swept from the seas, ours the only surviving vessels still afloat. Per the rules of the game, our controls had been deactivated, so we could only watch the action from this point on.
The earliest of the shots of our opponents, fired in the second turn, swept harmlessly over our rear quarters, their targeting so far in the past as to be meaningless. We could see their approaching second salvo. But this salvo was fired in the third turn against what was perceived to be an unthinking adversary. An unthinking adversary who was now no longer where he was supposed to be.
This missile wave, in the sixth turn, would also fall harmlessly in the seas behind us, victim to a strategy named "chasing the salvos". This strategy was known in naval warfare since the first gun was mounted under sail long ago, but was considered by some obsolete in the missile age. Only their third salvo posed a threat in the seventh turn. These weapons were fired at where our ships were only recently. But, they were fired under the duress of having underestimated an enemy thought less clever. Their aim, accordingly, was wildly inaccurate.
So, only a fraction of these miracles of technology would present a virtual threat, but our defensive weapons handled them easily. Our ships suffered only minor damage from the destroyed fragments of their last hitting our imaginary steel. Our nineteen-year-old electronic sailors would sleep soundly that night safely in their virtual bunks. That night, their captains or admirals wrote no letters to mothers.
Throughout the final three short turns, we stood at attention behind Oscar watching our forces sail to automated victory against empty seas. In our jet black United States Navy working uniforms blue alpha, we saluted our electronic fleet in Soviet naval fashion. Tip of the fingers to the brow, palms facing forward rather than down in the typical American style, we listened to the Soviet anthem playing in the background.
The game director, a Navy Lieutenant Commander, was disgusted by both our solemn behavior, our music and our barbarian tactics. But, by the rules, he was nonetheless compelled to award us the game, our unscathed ships and sunken opponents handily outweighing the loss of two merchant ships. These destroyed merchants, after all, did nothing to save themselves from our pre-announced wrath.
You may end the music now.
This same approach, with different ships and increasingly complex scenarios, served us well for many rounds in the tournament. And yet, as our defeated opponents discussed their experiences, our techniques began to proliferate. Our classmates and future fellow officers were as equally intelligent as us. They were also equally as capable as us of deriving their own versions from basic principles. They only needed the will to act.
But, though slow to change, the rules eventually caught up to Oscar's tactical leadership. A month or so later, updated rules inflicted immediate and unconditional forfeiture to any who sank a merchant vessel, and heavy penalties for damage inflicted. These rule changes rendered his superior tactics now unusable upon our virtual seas.
At last, in that year, only those who would follow the spirit of the rules as well as their letter would prevail. To follow those rules the commander must be willing to sacrifice their electronic ships and imaginary men to an unrealistic niceness. Do these rules of engagement sound familiar? And what might the inculcation of such rules do, years later, to a deck officer of an American warship as he watches a little boat drift toward him?
In addition to these political lessons, while at the academy I also learned a deep respect for the men in the Navy's nuclear fleet. The driving force behind this program was a combative admiral, Hyman G. Rickover. He retired shortly before I arrived at the Naval Academy, but his reputation still rang loud and clear there.
Not all American military heroes fight the enemy. Some fight internal battles against entrenched interests. Most of these are shuffled aside with damaged reputations and stained fitness reports. But Rickover was one of the very few who won enough of his battles to make a lasting impact on the ethic of the Navy nuclear fleet. And as a result the United States Navy has a record of operating shipboard reactors with zero mishaps.
Internet Research
Research Admiral Hyman G. Rickover and his role in the nuclear Navy. While reading about Admiral Rickover, note particularly his history of simultaneous bastardry and accomplishment. Wikipedia has an excellent article about him. Read every single word of it.
And so, in my four years at the academy, I learned lessons, both formal and informal, that would shape how I would view warfare and business. I would also learn about the rules by which these are fought or played, for the next two decades. Along the way, I managed, for sport, to systematically break every academy regulation, save one, which wasn't also an actual crime. Yet I didn't get caught for any of them. That last I saved unbroken until the end, marrying First Wife the day after graduation.
I also discovered that I was easily airsick, which popped all sorts of astronaut bubbles for me. The Challenger disaster shoved space exploration onto the back burner as the forces of niceness decided that heroism was not in our national ethic any more. These events pretty much made it clear to me that there would be no serious space missions for the rest of my lifetime.
And those Marine officers at the academy were so damn impressive. I had come within a few signatures of being qualified as a Navy Surface Warfare Officer on my senior cruise aboard the USS Ticonderoga, a common practice a hundred years ago. Despite this, I took the first Marine ground spot issued to my class, a future pilot a few spaces ahead of me in line being the first Marine.
I also had the honor to meet General Al Gray, the Commandant of the Marine Corps. He showed up at a social to get to know his new crop of academy officers.
Internet Research
Research General Al Gray and his Marine Corps service. General Gray was a former enlisted man who had meritoriously climbed his way up all the ranks, and had earned his reputation among Marines the old way. He had been recommended for this position to President Reagan by Jim Webb, another Naval Academy graduate, author and hero of the Marine Corps from the Vietnam war. Webb, th
e then-Secretary of the Navy was, surprisingly, the first Naval Academy graduate to serve as such. He is now a United States Senator from Virginia.
Internet Research
Research Senator Jim Webb, his positions on women in combatand his struggles against the forces of niceness. Out of Quantico I was assigned duty as an Air Support Control Officer at Cherry Point in North Carolina. Responsible for allocating air assets among various ground missions, this job is performed in the Marine Corps using a map, grease pencil, and clipboards. And a gigantic dose of what is known as situational awareness, or SA.
The Army and Air Force perform this same task using radars and computers and keyboards. But in the Marines, officers in my specialty keep a three dimensional model of the unseen airspace and the units on the ground below in their heads. They also rely on Marine pilots to keep their own mental SA models. And so, we could do that job from a truck, a jeep, a plane, or on foot if need be. The needs of the mission scale the profile of how you execute that task, and we were immune from computer viruses or other sorts of maintenance hassles. Get us a functioning radio and we were in business.
The lack of functioning radios for similar Marines from the west coast and Okinawa would propel me into an unexpected position when Desert Storm kicked off. That and my having gotten arrested almost a year earlier. Over the Memorial Day weekend of 1990 I offended a North Carolina state trooper who stopped me for a routine license check. The situation threatened to spiral out of control when I refused access to the trunk of my black 1977 Mercury Cougar XR-7.
A few years before this same car had been hauling assault rifles around Annapolis. But now that trunk held classified maps of the operating areas for the Navy and Marine Corps aviation for half of the eastern coastal United States. I steadfastly refused a search of my car until the military police from Cherry Point could arrive to take possession of those maps. The state trooper was also suffering from the stress of a nasty divorce and the resulting emasculation. So, he took my refusal as a personal insult. In the resulting fall-out, the state wished to teach me a lesson. The citizens of that state expressed this wish through the person of the county prosecutor.