Joint Task Force #3: France

by David E. Meadows

  Image was everything in the military. The image he projected when he hopped down from the captain’s chair was like a young child leaping petulantly off a highchair. On the other hand, he was the gawldamn skipper of this floating bucket of bolts, and the officers and crew could think what they pleased as long as they kept it to themselves—and no short jokes, by God.

  On the Naval Tactical Data System console, short generated lines ran from the half-moon icons overlaying the four Air Force F-16s, revealing to the viewer the direction the aircraft were flying. The length of the line told him or her the relative contact speeds to other objects.

  Operations Specialist Second Class Schultz sequence-hooked the radar returns into the computer, and, when he clicked the left button, the computer hopped from one contact to the other. New data, indicating type of aircraft, appeared in the boxes during sequencing, blinking. When the computer sequenced the first time to new data, it would blink until the user sequenced off.

  NTDS was a fleet icon—one of the few information legacies to survive and transform in the fast pace of the information age. A fleet sailor from three decades ago would never recognize what was NTDS then and what sailors today called NTDS. NTDS was the all-powerful home for a variety of data links—the all-seeing eye of Navy “Oz”— interconnected through the Joint Staff’s Global Information Grid, generating, delivering information instantaneously to the farthest reaches of the tactical battlefield, if the NTDS on the Churchill had been externally connected. As an Assistant Secretary for Defense (National Information Infrastructure) once termed it: Power to the edge. Today was an exercise, and you never sent exercise data over the real-world Global Information Grid. What if someone interpreted a war at sea training exercise as the real thing?

  Each NTDS upgrade brought more information and better interoperability with other new sophisticated and digitized information systems such as the Air Force’s RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft and the Navy’s venerable EP-3E Aries. The key to winning battles was sharing vital information so quickly that the commander could make combat decisions faster than the adversary could. The military term for doing that was ‘Information Superiority.’ Operation Iraqi Freedom continued to be the role model for future wars, with speed and information exponentially pushing the lethality of U.S. forces across every domain.

  “Where’s the tanker?” Troy asked, his Vermont accent drawing out the word tanker. Catching his reflection in a nearby turned-off CRT, Troy turned his head slightly. He needed a haircut. His hair was touching the top of his ears; time for another trip down to the ship’s servicemen and have the former lawn mower men ‘lower his ears.’ He twisted his head the other way. Yes, the right side was his better half. You couldn’t see the mole alongside his left ear nor the slight skin discoloration on the left cheek; a discoloration so slight that only he noticed it, but it was enough that he knew it was there. When he was a junior officer, he experimented with a mustache for a few months until he noticed that few Navy admirals had facial hair. Few had any hair. When he realized he knew no admirals with mustaches, he shaved his off so fast he nearly set his cheeks on fire from the razor speed. At least that’s what his stateroom mate at the time, a tall gangly boy from Georgia, said about him shaving it off.

  Lieutenant Albert Kincaid, the Tactical Action Officer for this exercise, interrupted Troy’s drifting attention. “Sir, the anchor is about fifteen miles from the aircraft.”

  For a moment, the vision of the secured anchors near the bullnose of the ship came to mind before Troy nodded, realizing that this ‘anchor’ identified the orbit area of the Air Force KC-135 four-engine jet tanker.

  Operations Specialist Second Class Schultz leaned left toward the center of the long console used by him and the Combat Information Center Watch Officer. Rolling the mouse, the cursor settled on another friendly aircraft icon. “Here it is, Skipper.”

  “Long trip for them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Kincaid glanced at the digital clock on the console. “Those Air Force jocks been airborne for over eight hours from Langley and this will be their third refueling evolution.”

  “Long time for an Air Force officer to be away from a golf course,” Troy said with a chuckle.

  “Yes, sir,” Kincaid agreed with a nod before continuing. “Once the fighters have finished their drink, they’ll reposition and we can begin phase three of the exercise.”

  “They’re turning, sir,” OS2 Shultz said. “Approaching tanker operating area. Estimate twenty minutes to rendezvous.”

  “Very well,” Troy said. The F-16s were to top off their fuel. The huge KC-135 could refuel two at a time. He shuddered slightly and regretted the involuntary response as soon as it happened. He had self-analyzed this habit years ago and attributed it to a superior intellect that placed his emotional self within the context of his thoughts. The idea of flying along at three, or was it four, hundred knots tethered with only tens of feet separating you from a bigger aircraft in front, above, and flying at the same speed and course was too much for him. What if you sneezed at the wrong time? Three aircraft would be heading toward the deep sea because of a pilot’s cold. Like most non-aviators, Troy had a mixed concept of the rigors and safety of flight. To him, aviators were the cowboys of the sky and the playboys of the beach. Work was a four-letter word for aviators as far as he was concerned, whether they were Navy, Air Force, Marines, or even Army. Show him an aviator and he’d show you someone who sometime in the past had done something he or she needed prosecuting.

  A new air contact appeared on the radar repeater along the bottom right side. The NTDS system automatically hooked the new contact, slapping a top-half of a box icon over the radar return, identifying it as an unknown air contact. A similar line highlighting the course and relative speed of the contact emerged a second later.

  Just what I need. Why can’t they stay away while I’m out here? he asked himself. Troy watched as Shultz spoke into his microphone, reporting the contact to the Tactical Action Officer standing to Troy’s left and to the Electronic Warfare operator sitting at the AN/SLQ-32(V)6 on the other side of the Combat Information Center.

  “Looks as if our visitor has returned, Skipper,” Kincaid said in his dry, monotone voice. The TAO pointed to the new contact. “Why do you think the French keep sending their reconnaissance aircraft out to keep track of us, Skipper? It isn’t as if we keep our Blue-Force locations secret to them.”

  “They’re a nosy lot,” Troy said, scratching his chin. This irked him. Captain Bennett, the senior officer of the Expeditionary Strike Group of which he had the misfortune of being a member, ought to do something about it. Then again, Bennett was an amphibious sailor, and, commanding the USS Mesa Verde—Amphibious Transport Dock, hull number 19—had probably lost any at-sea war-fighting edge by being in the amphibious Navy. It’s people like me who command cruisers and destroyers. We’re the ones with whom the burden of maintaining the keen edge needed to win a war at sea rests, he thought.

  Ought to be something he could do to make the French go away and stay away. As Harrison watched the NTDS icons close the Air Force tankers northwest of them to ‘top-off’ their fuel tanks, an idea burst into his thoughts. He smiled to himself. Great ideas such as this are always epiphanies to the person who thought them. It is only later in retrospect they realize not all epiphanies are great ideas— some stupid ones have bubbled to the top more times than history likes to reveal.

  The USS Winston S. Churchill was located in the center of the screen. Northwest were the Air Force fighter aircraft preparing for the exercise with the ship, and to the southeast of the screen was the French reconnaissance aircraft boring holes in the sky, loafing around in a figure-eight pattern as it watched the Americans.

  The grin grew, and a slight sparkle came to his eyes as he imagined the turmoil and fright aboard the French aircraft as it dove for wave height. The Frenchies would skedaddle back to the Ivory Coast with their tails between their legs.

  He opened his mouth t
o tell the TAO what he wanted, but thought better about it. This wasn’t something to share with everyone. He’d do it, but it had to be done in such a way so it seemed to be an accident. It wasn’t as if he was going to kill anyone. The Washington Post test, he thought. The Washington Post test was a euphemism that grew in popularity in the early 2000s. Anything being done, any actions contemplated, and anything being said were bounced against how you’d feel if you read about it in the headlines of the Washington Post. Troy attributed his early selection to Lieutenant Commander and then to Commander to such skills as avoiding things which failed the Washington Post test. Rising to top ranks was a lot like sailing a ship at flank speed through shoal waters littered with sunken vessels. It wasn’t the smartest way to reach the other side of the waters, but the prize went to those who navigated it the best. The good part about the Navy was that the majority of the time you were out to sea and the chance of failing the Washington Post test was minimal. You had to really screw up.

  Out of the corner of his eye Troy watched the TAO. He had eighteen officers in his wardroom—sixteen men, including his executive officer, and two women. The gangly TAO running this exercise for him was also his Combat Systems division officer—Lieutenant Albert Kincaid. Al was a Navy aristocrat. The other three services had their legacy lineages. Kincaid was the son, grandson, great-grandson, and great-great-grandson of a Navy family that boasted a couple of admirals in its lineage—all of whom had graduated from Boat-U in Annapolis. Kincaid never mentioned this, but Troy knew.

  He prided himself on finding out everything he could about the men and women who served under him. A good Navy officer knew the men and women who served under and with him. Besides, you never knew who could help you in your career or what little dirt you could discover to encourage loyalty. His eyebrows bunched into a sharp V. Kincaid could have become one of Troy’s “golden boys.” The Lieutenant had contacts. Troy wasn’t sure just who and where those contacts were, but he knew the young officer had them even if Kincaid never discussed some of the facts Troy had personally researched and added to the Lieutenant’s file. Naval Academy bachelor degree in engineering; picked for a prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology education grant directly out of the Naval Academy, only to discover a month before he received a Master’s degree in advanced engineering that he was going to be a surface warfare officer. According to the inside scoop Troy learned from one of Kincaid’s classmates, his Combat Systems officer bounced off ceilings, screaming over the idea of a Kincaid being a surface warfare officer. The last three generations of Kincaids had been aviators— brown shoes and all that. Even the best of a new generation can’t be a pilot if his eyesight doesn’t pass the grade. Kincaid refused to fly as a naval flight officer. NFOs were back-enders who never saw the controls of an aircraft unless they tripped and fell onto them. The young Academy ensign, in a petulant fit, applied for the SEALs, only to discover that he had to pass a strenuous physical test. On the same day the Navy special forces turned him down, he applied to everything from Intelligence to Meteorology to Cryptology before “Big Navy,” tired of his whining, hoisted its beltline and informed the young upstart that Academy graduates’ first choices had to be one of the three warfighting designators: Aviation, Submarines, or Surface Warfare. Kincaid apparently started writing everyone he knew, and his father joined in. His grandfather told him to “quit this shit” and do what he was trained to do: go to sea. Before Kincaid’s letter-writing campaign bore fruit, the Bureau of Naval Personnel sent a nice letter congratulating the ensign on his assignment to the Surface Warfare Navy, where “work” was the mantra of every day. The aviation community’s loss was Troy’s gain, if only he could break through that mask of indifference. If only he could gently knock that huge chip off the Lieutenant’s shoulder. It wasn’t as if Kincaid had done badly as an SWO. The man was a tenacious professional. He qualified as a surface warfare officer during his first two years on his first ship, the . . . Troy couldn’t recall its name. Kincaid was an expert ship handler and one of Troy’s three qualified officers-of-the-deck for battle group steaming. By God, the man had everything going for him, except an attitude that seemed to throw a fence around him when dealing with superiors. Overly proper, aloof, but professionally competent.

  “Let’s review the exercise plan,” Troy said to Kincaid.

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Kincaid said, reaching forward and grabbing a clipboard off the top of the main console. “Simple air warfare exercise, Skipper, from the Fleet Exercise Manual. The F-16s will complete refueling.” Kincaid nodded toward the other side of the long console to another sailor manning a radar repeater. Then he continued, “Petty Officer Schultz has contact with the F-16s and is monitoring their refueling communications. Once they finish with the tanker, they’ll check in with us and we’ll commence the exercise, Captain. First phase will satisfy our basic fleet hostile-air exercise requirement. The fighters will fly straight and level. It will give our fire control operators training on illuminating them with our radars and tracking them with the narrow radar beams of the fire control radars as they close our position. Twenty miles out, one of the F-16s will act as a simulated air-to-surface missile, dropping rapidly in altitude and going full bore toward us with afterburners blazing. Five miles out, the Falcon will do a classic anti-ship missile pop-up maneuver before leveling off and passing overhead. The last five miles will allow us to test our close-in weapons systems—the Vulcan Phalanx.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Troy knew all of this, of course. He was the captain. Even so, the key to perfection was never taking something for granted. A Navy heuristic is that ten percent of everyone involved in an evolution never seem to get the word—they never seem to understand what is going on around them. If repeated often enough, that ten percent who never seemed to know what in the hell was happening sometimes had their own epiphany of the world around them.

  Troy looked at the huge Navy analog clock mounted on the bulkhead over the top of the consoles. A few minutes before ten. Even in the throes of the information and digital age, this inexpensive Navy supply clock with its two black hands and red second hand continued to decorate nearly every Navy compartment.

  “And the other F-16s?”

  “Sir?”

  “The remaining three Falcons; what will they be doing while this one is simulating a cruise missile?”

  “Sorry, sir. They will maintain altitude, course, and speed as they pass overhead while the fighter simulating the cruise missile flies a profile directly at us.”

  “I know we’ve told everyone the exercise plan, Lieutenant Kincaid. I’m satisfied you have a handle of it. Let’s remind everyone then once again the order of events.” Troy glanced over his shoulder, saw the lieutenant standing in the shadows of the blue-lighted combat information center, and motioned him forward. “The Mesa Verde has graciously provided an observer to grade us on this exercise.” The observer stepped forward and Troy shook the young man’s hand. “I hope you’re ship’s company and not part of the Seabee battalion embarked.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” the lieutenant stuttered out. “I’m a qualified surface warfare officer, Skipper,” the man said, pulling the edge of his blue jacket aside to reveal the gold SWO insignia over the left pocket of his khakis.

  “Sir,” Kincaid interrupted. “I finished reminding everyone of—”

  Troy turned to him, his hands clasped behind his back. “Then do it again. Humor me, Lieutenant. It makes me feel as if I’m in charge.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Troy waited while Lieutenant Kincaid passed around, via the internal communications systems of the ship, a recap of the exercise order of events. Surface ships—and their commanding officers—readiness was measured on how well they performed mandatory exercises. This would be the first of three progressively harder anti-air warfare exercises the Winston Churchill would do in the next three hours with the Air Force fighters. Troy reached forward and shoved a couple of printouts off the top of a Navy
publication he recognized—FXP-3.

  The Navy had an entire set of instructions called the Fleet Exercise Publication series—referred to as FXPs— that showed exactly how an exercise was to be performed, when it was to be performed, what sensors and equipment on a ship were to participate, and finally why it was important to do the exercise well. Navy exercises were like programmed texts starting at the basic levels, building on each level of experience until the operator, the team, and the ship could respond quickly and effectively in a combat situation. The difference between combat and exercises was the adrenaline and pucker factor. When engaged in combat, the sphincter tightens, the heartbeat soars, and adrenaline races through your body, everything screaming to the normal human being to flee. You fight like you train, and if you train enough then fighting the ship in combat increases the chance of survival, and the side with more survivals when the battle ends usually wins the game.

  The intermediate exercise would pit the four fighters in an air attack against the two ships. This intermediate exercise would test each ship’s team in its ability to fight the ship. The final advanced exercise tested the two ships’ ability to fight as one. FXPs were a lot like doing routine maintenance on a car. Every 3,000 miles it needed an oil change. For a ship, every so many months, certain scheduled exercises were needed to maintain its readiness.

  All the AAW exercises today would be non-live-fire designed to test and train the ship’s crew in detecting and tracking the F-16 that would be simulating a cruise missile. When the F-16 reached fire control radar range, the ship would illuminate it and simulate engagement. It was this engagement phase where Troy knew he could scare the bejesus out of the Atlantique and rid the Expeditionary Strike Group—hauling Seabees instead of Marines to Liberia— of the daily French reconnaissance missions. The good thing about being at sea was that what occurs is seldom what’s reported.