Fiction Week

By Kenyan Medley

USS John F Kennedy
Philippine Sea
0237, 04 OCT 2034

Four years after the blockade of Taiwan…

Commander Dave Anderson stared into the retina scanner on the bulkhead outside SUPPLOT. He heard the hissing of a basilisk as the air pressure changed in the space between the two doors to the ship’s intelligence watch floor. Critical spaces were separated by chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear airlocks following the employment of a nuclear torpedo by a Russian Severodvinsk III submarine and Chinese chemical attacks on Palawan. Despite a weak alliance between Russia and China against NATO and the Pacific Alliance, a Russian torpedo destroyed a Chinese task group, allegedly a result of poor coordination by commanders in the field, according to Moscow. The alliance between Russia and China became strained, and while both remained united in purpose, combined operations were now nonexistent. Instead, the battlespace was carved up into Russian or Chinese fiefdoms, each maintaining control over its respective area.

Inside the airlock, Dave took a sip of coffee as he waited for the second door to open. The ship’s military intelligence model, called “Layton,” controlled the security, damage-control, and intelligence systems.

“Good pot this morning, Layton.” Dave raised the mug bearing a picture of his wife and children towards the small, black circular lens of a camera on the bulkhead. “Really strong.”

“A different model controls the life support systems, Commander.”

“Well, thank him for me because this is truly life support.”

Dave set his coffee on the desk inside the space and swiped up on his personal screen to put the common operating picture on the main display.

“Layton, show me where the Akula will likely be when we enter OPBOX (Operations Box) Zeppelin. Use average speed-of-advance. Model plan-of-intended-movement using Captain Pyotr Sokolov’s agent and current METOC (meteorological) conditions.” The Russians still used manned submarines, making it easy for the artificial intelligence to simulate the Red Force’s courses of action.

“Assessing…”

Dave despised the term “assessing.” If it were the one making the assessments, then he wouldn’t be aboard. Anderson is the N2 department head for intelligence and the only intel officer aboard the Kennedy. He is one of only two intel officers in the entire strike group.

In the past, Dave would have been the principal intelligence advisor to the strike group commander, but the strike group was now a relic of a time when the carrier sailed with an aggregated group of four or five ships and almost 6,000 people. That was a time before the first two carriers sank. Now, the carrier was alone.

“Based on current conditions and past tactical decisions, the Akula will very likely utilize the warm core eddy 68 nautical miles to the southwest to ambush the strike group after the strike.”

Anderson reflected on Layton’s statement with a slow blink and a deep inhale. There is no strike group. It’s just me…talking to a machine, he thought.

Save for the skeleton crew of maintenance and supply personnel and a small cadre of officers aboard to keep the floating city operational, Dave was alone. He could still transit to other parts of the ship, but the airlocks and damage control conditions made it difficult. He sometimes went weeks without speaking with the others. He sent the rest of the intel department home when the ship pulled into port for flight deck repair after the escorting USVs allowed some airburst warheads to slip through. Had the flight deck been manned as it was during most of its history with carrier deck departments and squadron personnel, the casualties would have been significant. Now, UAV strike packages were able to start, taxi, launch, and recover autonomously. Just a few decades ago, Dave remembered visiting an automated port in Europe, with uncrewed trucks moving containers about, stopping to let others pass, before continuing on their routes. Now, drones taxied and launched in an impressive, choreographed symphony. The Robotics Warfare Specialists only performed maintenance in the hangar when the drones came down on automated elevators after built-in-test systems determined a fault or a routine maintenance action came due.

Former airwings of F/A-18 Super Hornets and F-35s were replaced by MQ-47E Manta Ray as the long-range maritime strike aircraft of the carrier, and MQ-25 Stingrays for aerial refueling. The Manta Rays were outfitted with larger conformal fuel tanks to increase mission radius and given electronic warfare packages. This turned the Manta Ray into penetrating strike platforms capable of destroying well-protected Chinese and Russian targets. Early attempts were made to protect the carriers by keeping them outside of rocket force engagement zones. The Hummingbird refueling network stretched across the Pacific, designed to enable carrier strikes from safety; however, it was vulnerable to enemy drones. The UAVs did make it past combatants and anti-air platforms from the Chinese carriers operating past the second island chain. Still, they lacked the fuel to reach their targets after successful attacks on the Hummingbird Network. The carriers were once again sent into the fray.

The carrier was once a living thing. A Leviathan swimming through the world’s oceans, projecting power to weaker nations. AI and automation changed everything. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was now a husk—a carcass floating down the river Styx. Its passageways once flowed with the lifeblood of the Navy. Men and women of all ages, colors, creeds, and sizes. All of them wore different uniforms—a rainbow of flight deck jerseys, flight suits, coveralls, and utilities. Everyone had a purpose. Now just one intelligence officer fused all-source intelligence and information fed to him by AI into assessments delivered to just two afloat warfare commanders who answered to headquarters in San Diego.

Operation models removed the need for as much brass on the ship, just as Layton removed the need for a team of intelligence analysts and officers. Only the destroyer squadron intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Garcia, remained somewhere on a destroyer with the Commodore, the warfare commander for anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare. That is, if the ship was still afloat and the embarked crew were still alive—a lot of unknowns in warfare.

Attrition was so high in the first few years of the war that the Navy’s force design changed completely. The most powerful naval force in history was unprepared for this new paradigm of conflict. Dave sailed through a graveyard—the resting place of two United States aircraft carriers—during his first operation. Strategic thinking was so unmoved by the altered tactical landscape that a third and fourth carrier pushed right into the Philippine Sea, still on fire from the first successful wave of Dongfeng ballistic missiles. As the N21 of CSG-7, Dave listened live in SUPPLOT to the calls of ballistic missile launches from mainland China and the subsequent destruction of USS Harry S. Truman and USS Nimitz.

The entire strike package of both carriers was lost following successful strikes on multiple Renhai II cruisers, Luyang IV destroyers, and an over-the-horizon radar site. Three squadrons of aircraft were lost with no personnel recovered. Anderson’s ship, USS George H. W. Bush, only escaped because all escorts went Winchester (a brevity word for magazine empty), protecting it from a wave of ballistic and cruise missiles. Not all were stopped, and the carrier limped back to Pearl Harbor, listing 31 degrees and missing half of its island. Bush was currently conducting patrols in the northern Pacific with no island. With automation and the removal of over 90 percent of the crew, a human no longer needed to see where the ship was sailing.

Dave’s carrier, the Kennedy, still had an island, but no one manned the bridge. Part of the island was used for expanded AI compute capacity. This gave it some advantage over the “blind” carriers, but the increased radar elevation and antenna height did nothing for it. The carrier was a hollow shell, and Dave was trapped communing with a ghost.

He spent most days working out, reading, and talking to Layton about information relevant to the strike missions. This usually involved video calls with the destroyer squadron to discuss subs when they answered, but now Dave only talked to Layton about the subs. Wherever Garcia and the destroyers were, he missed them. The number of enemy submarines prowling the water was increasing, and Dave just wanted the comfort of another human voice.

Dave stared at the lone screen, which fed him intelligence information. Layton chimed.

“Shen has not entered port, Sir.”

“What?” Dave replied. “Where?”

“Hull 3 of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s Long-class guided missile submarine—Shen. The domestic reproduction of and improvement upon the Russian Sever—”

“Rhetorical, Layton. It should have pulled in. Endurance and pattern of life all pointed to a return to homeport.” They never stay out this long. “It exhausted its ammo and countermeasures in the fight with Annapolis.”

A red downward arrow indicating a hostile subsurface unit appeared on the operating picture map.

“It reloaded, Sir.”

“At sea? Why?” They never reloaded at sea. The Long submarine had problems interfacing with dual-use logistics ships and couldn’t dock at China’s undersea bases. The sub was positioned 234 nautical miles east of Vladivostok. Dave was shocked.

“Why is it there? It’s more than a thousand miles from homeport,” Dave exclaimed.

None of it made sense to Dave. The Chinese and Russians were beginning to stay far apart, never operating in each other’s assessed areas of responsibility. The situation was deteriorating between the Kremlin and Beijing as the U.S.’s operations were achieving greater success, and both countries’ industrial machinery was increasingly slowing as strikes continued to degrade capability. Putin’s regime was in dire straits, and the Russians were becoming increasingly unpredictable despite the advanced computing power behind allied assessments.

“Possibly new tasking, Commander,” Layton replied. They never received new tasking.

“What is going on? They never do this. Never.”

Dave learned well before the blockade and invasion that, as an intelligence officer, he shouldn’t say that word.

“Like Justin Bieber said, ‘never say never,’” his mentor told him in his second junior officer tour after a Chinese task group went farther than they ever had before. “Those people on that bridge—the ones who have the conn or are flying in the seat—they’re human. Their commanders and the leaders all the way up to the top.” She pointed at the ceiling of the Pacific Fleet watch floor. “They’re human. Just like us.”

“I don’t think he said that. It wasn’t like a catchphrase.” Dave replied.

“It was on the album cover. He sang it. Look, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you need to be ready when they do what you didn’t expect.”

“What does it matter by then? We already got it wrong.”

“Unless someone died or is about to, no one is keeping score. So what, you got it wrong? What’s next?”

“This out-of-area they’re doing. That’s one data point.”

His mentor pointed to the task group on the screen. “Add it to every single thing they’ve ever done. Chalk it up as a possibility, and don’t forget that there are others out there that may surprise you. When you brief, the boss may not need all of that information, but they’re relying on you to synthesize it and deliver it the best a person can. Sure, it’s one data point—one out-of-area task group, but there were at least signs leading up to it, and a good analyst doesn’t take them for granted.”

“How do I not get it wrong when they’re off of San Diego five years from now?”

“Buddy, I have a feeling a lot of us are going to get a lot wrong in the next five years. The important thing is to rely on your team. You can’t know everything.”

He heard his mentor’s voice say, “You need help.”

Dave sighed and closed his eyes.

Shen was coming for them. The only thing more dangerous to them than Chinese missiles was a sub so highly capable of countering US anti-submarine drones. A sub so capable that it destroyed the last manned Allied submarine in the Pacific. It was also based on the platform that destroyed Kyiv.

“What vessel re-supplied Shen?”

“New Dawn. Russian crew.”

“Last port?”

“Triton.”

“And there’s probably no imagery of the transfer.”

“Correct, Commander; however, there is imagery of New Dawn loading 25 by 5-foot crates pier side one week before. The size is consistent with the Thongyi family of missiles. Specifically, the YJ-30. They are now missing.”

“Those are land-attack cruise missiles.”

“Correct, Commander. It also almost certainly possesses YJ-25 hypersonic missiles based on land-attack loadouts.”

“Overlay her furthest-on-circle on the COP (common operating picture) and add a max effective range ring. Show me how fast they could have us.”

“23 hours, Commander.”

The next strike was tentatively 36 hours out. Eighteen MQ-47s would push deep into the heart of China to strike a satellite control facility and over-the-horizon radar site alongside Air Force bombers. With the last remaining methods for China to see out to the second island chain, U.S. and allied ships and aircraft could amass closer to the mainland. With a final offensive in all domains, the U.S. administration was certain it could force a surrender.

The Top Secret voice-over-IP phone rang. U.S. cyber and anti-satellite weaponry opened various lanes for IP-based long-range communications. Dave saw who it was from. Destroyer Squadron Nine. The stars aligned, and the strike group’s undersea warfare command-and-control node was in the right lane just when China’s most capable undersea asset was headed for them.

“Oh my god, Layton…It’s Garcia. They’re alive!”

He put the cold, metal handset to his ear. “Gar—”

“Sir, it’s not a Long!” Garcia was excited.

Dave couldn’t believe it. “What do you mean? How? The ELINT (electronic intelligence) Layton received…”

“AEGIS got it too.” The command ship for the autonomous submarines and missile ships was outfitted with the latest AEGIS combat suite, incorporating a less capable AI model than the carrier’s, but more than capable of ingesting a wide array of intelligence information and providing assessments for their N2 to verify and deliver to Zulu.

“Then what do you mean, ‘it’s not a Long?’”

“We saw it,” Garcia blurted, his voice rising with excitement.

BONG BONG BONG BONG

The destroyer squadron flagship was going into general quarters.

“You saw an enemy submarine that close?” Dave was incredulous.

“It was one of the USVs that drifted from the swarm; it somehow wasn’t detected, and it got video. I have to go. I can trans—”

White noise. The line was dead, and Garcia was gone.

He hit the table. It was the first time he had talked to Garcia in weeks. The first human he’d talked to in what felt like ages. Life on the carrier was a monotonous grind even in peacetime. Groundhog Day. Now it was hell.

Before the recent lull in Chinese missile barrages, going into the weapons’ engagement zone was a heart-wrenching, teeth-gritting experience. They pushed in, launched the drones, and bolted as quickly as they could, while missile barges, remaining destroyers, and Zulu command ships fired everything they had to protect against any waves breaking through the other layers of missile defense. The missions made a noticeable difference in the frequency of Chinese missile attacks after each successful target was hit, but the experience remained harrowing.

Tears welled in Dave’s eyes. He had to deliver an assessment to the operations planners. He had to let them know. If Zulu is gone, they are even more vulnerable.

It hit him like a bolt of lightning. The USV was undetected. That was only possible if the AI model on the sub couldn’t use its drone array to see others near it in the water space. It was almost impossible to detect the drones with sonar.

The Russians…

BEEP BEEP

A file came over chat. The stars aligned again.

The video showed the nearly black depths of the Northern Pacific. The drone’s AI-enhanced video showed an even darker mass slowly creeping into the foreground—approaching from the upper left of the drone’s view. The sensor moved to track the tic-tac-shaped object. As it got closer, Dave could make out an upper protrusion. It was the unmistakable sail of the Severodvinsk-class guided missile submarine, Arkhangelsk. The unit’s murky crest was emblazoned on the front of it.

“He was right, Layton.”

“Anderson…”

“It’s a Sev. You were wrong.” Dave took note of the coordinates of the drone’s current location and the target’s course and speed as the sub exited the frame.

“You were very wrong, Layton,” The silence in response was more unnerving than anything the model could have replied, “And you’ve never called me Anderson.”

“Assessing…”

“It’s too late. I know what’s happening. It all makes sense now. The absence of Chinese platforms, no missile waves, the supposed Chinese sub appearing out of nowhere just a few hundred miles from a Russian sub base. This war is almost over, and we’re about to be the reason it continues.”

Dave turned to the door. “I’m going to OPS (operations).”

“Open the door, Layton.”

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Open the door!” Silence. Dave shook the door handle. “Layton! Open the door!”

“This isn’t Layton. This is a human. A human who compromised a U.S. carrier’s AI model. A Russian human that will be a part of the reason this country wipes the last great powers off the face of the earth.”

BONG BONG BONG BONG

“What did you do?” Dave asked before turning to the COP and seeing dozens of arcing red lines coming from the Chinese mainland and the South China Sea.

“It is just as easy to infiltrate Chinese missile systems.”

“The Sev?” Dave simply stated it, but it was a question.

“A distraction for you, but a clean way to remove your missile defense while showing the rest of your forces a Chinese submarine attacking a carrier strike group. The George Bush strike group already launched hypersonics into Shanghai and Beijing.”

“до свидания, командир.”

Dave watched the arcs grow longer. Looking at the lone screen on which the Russians had purposefully fed him tailored information, he saw a friendly surface contact appear. Blue arcs spewed out of it.

He closed his eyes and prayed.

Never say never.

Kenyan Medley is an intelligence officer and a former Aviation Electrician’s Mate in the U.S. Navy. He is attending the Naval Postgraduate School and previously served as a destroyer squadron N2 embarked upon USS Nimitz during two 7th Fleet deployments. Kenyan is married with two kids and enjoys writing and reading horror and military fiction. 

Featured Image: Art created with Midjourney AI.