This piece was originally published in 2016 as part of the Atlantic Council’s Art of the Future Project. It is no longer posted online by the Atlantic Council and is republished here with permission.

By Chris O’Connor

“RED DECK.” The 1MC speakers blared, redundantly. Ensign W.B. Ellis’s glasses continuously displayed the deck status at the lower edge of his vision.

They kept the old-school 1MC procedures for crewmembers who didn’t currently have their AR ‘shades on, which annoyed the night watch standers trying to sleep—an ancient Navy tradition.

He was standing in the hangar bay of the ship, waiting to go out to the flight deck, so he quickly threw open the quick-acting hatch and stepped out into the bright sunlight. The mid-day humidity in the South China Sea was tolerable thanks to the frigate’s speed, and Ellis’s glasses immediately adjusted to the light change. To his right, the large hangar bay door slowly opened as the warning horn blared and his glasses flashed a yellow warning arrow that indicated a safety hazard.

Tapping his left index finger into his palm, he opened up the aperture of his AR filters to Full SA (situational awareness) mode, grafting onto his visible world an overlay that showed all combat and navigation system inputs. This was one of the shortcut gestures that he and his personal AI had customized; he could give instructions verbally, through eye motions, or with his hands, which were continually tracked with a set of wristbands.

Centered in the middle of the flight deck was a newly delivered container of parts. The reticle on his ‘shades told him that the recently departed hopper drone was already 154 yards aft of the ship. The wasp-like drone sped off, its ducted fans transitioning to forward flight as it turned to the west. His overlay showed the light green line of the projected course of the hopper leading to LBJ, a destroyer over 50 miles distant.

The boiling white wake of his ship, USS Rochester (FF-35), faded off to the north, transcribed with a yellow line that was the ship’s track. A Foxtrot Corpen of 180 was needed in order to get a good envelope for the drone, but every aircraft had slightly different wind requirements. The wake curved a few degrees to the right as the autonav system set up for the next delivery

He walked over to the pallet and looked at it. His ‘shades read the tags of all of the items inside and showed him depictions of the contents. The large jewel case contained neatly stacked electronic parts, graphene components, and custom biopharms. All items that were just too complex for the Rochester’s VULCAN AI to build himself (as pronouns went, the ship was female, VULCAN was not). The AM systems onboard were just too small and not stabilized enough to build all parts. Hence the hopper additive forge run from the America. VULCAN inventoried the parts with Ellis’s glasses and logged receipts on the right hand side of his vision. In practice, it was unnecessary for him to see the inventory function working in real time, but he figured that as the Supply Officer, if anyone should be keeping track of that, it should be him.

Looking past the container, Ellis saw one of the three escort USVs that was accompanying his ship. It was a vicious-looking little vessel, trapezoidal and dark grey. Its angular outline was punctuated with small missile and decoy launchers, sensor arrays, and a snubby little 30mm cannon. Since it reminded people of Civil War Confederate Navy armored ships, people took to calling them “fiberclads.” In fact, you’d have to squint really hard to make the association with the famed Merrimack.

“Excuse me, Sir.” A non-accented generic male voice said behind him, “I need to stow that.” Ellis realized he was standing too close to the container and stepped aside. He turned towards the 6-foot humanoid robot standing behind him. “Sorry, Steve.”

The light grey-colored android had emerged from the hangar after the door was half open. It was shaped like a human for the most part, but its head looked like a shiny black egg—it was a 360 degree sensor array that was continuously scanning in IR, optical, and LIDAR. In effortless strides, it closed with the container, bent at the knees (robots have to protect their backs, too), reached around the sides of the 1,500-lb box and easily lifted it up into the air. As it turned and walked back into the dark maw of the hangar, Ellis noticed a round sticker, depicting a scorpion killing a submarine, firmly attached to the robot’s rear end. 

Damn visiting HSM pilots zapped Steve again, he thought, this is getting old.

“Steve,” he said, “the Scorpions got you again.”

“Yessir,” the robot replied, as it walked away, “at least they didn’t cover any sensors this time.”

“Get that off before the Skipper sees it. The only way aircrew could have got that on you is if you let them do it.”

Two blue ovals appeared in the head of Steve, facing backwards towards Ellis.

“Aye aye,” the robot said. With what sounded like a sigh.

He’s been programmed to imitate humans to fit in, Ellis thought, but the over-the-shoulder eye contact made him look like an owl.

“Owls” was a nickname that some crewmembers called the standard shipboard model of humanoid robots—there were several of them on the ship. “Wally” was blanket nickname, which was based off of an old movie. For the same reason, the Royal Navy liked “Marvin.” Onboard most ships, robots in specific roles were give individual nicknames; “Snipe” was in the engineering spaces, “Snoopy” (who had really good optics) was on the bridge, “Blitz” kept mostly to ordinance and unmanned systems. “Steve” (derived from “Stevedore,” a manual laborer that carried cargoes) spent most of its time moving supplies and loading payloads into launchers and onto air vehicles.

These nicknames were an improvement over the original designations for the robots when they were first assigned aboard ship. Apparently, some genius at OPNAV thought calling them Automated Shipmates was a good idea. Sailors immediately saw potential in the associated acronym, pronouncing it differently. Ellis heard that they would still respond to the title of “Ass” if you called them that.

He knew the XO was not a fan. Since Ellis hadn’t earned his SWSCO qual yet, he was going to avoid pissing her off. And he was careful not to abuse Steve anyway. It was a good worker, and seemed to have pride in its work. There were automated discbots that could have moved the container of forge run parts, but the logistics robot chose to do it itself.

As Steve stepped into the hangar, the ship’s course indicator at the bottom of the left field of view steadied at 198. The words Zebra Corpen appeared in his vision.

Hearing a loud droning in the air, he turned around. A massive shadow was approaching from the stern, following a fat blue dotted line that led to the aft edge of the ship’s the flight deck. He didn’t have to tilt his head very far back to see the approaching airship.

The bright white Zephyr-type hybrid airship took up a huge section of the sky astern the frigate. It was approaching at 80 feet above the water to clear the Rochester’s mast, and was over 100 feet longer than the ship, with much more beam. As it lined up with the centerline Ellis’s shades said, Airship replenishment in 60 seconds. A large bay door then opened up on the underside of the “zep,” just aft of the nose.

It wasn’t really a zeppelin, despite the nickname. Nobody in the fleet seemed to be happy with the term “airship replenishment,” “enhanced VERTREP,” or “aerial alongside,” so over the few years that it had been employed, it changed to “ZEPREP,” which fit in well with the older “VERTREP” (vertical replenishment) and “CONREP” (connected replenishment) terms. And then the signal flag Zebra was associated with it, because the Surface Warfare Officers would be upset if there wasn’t a flag to fly for every distinct evolution.

Guided by its own AI, the Zephyr’s nose smoothly took position over the flight deck, leaving 90 percent of the airship flying over the wake of the frigate. It was quite a sight from the perspective of other ships on the water.

CLEAR THE FLIGHT DECK the autonomous airship told him through his glasses. A little embarrassed for staring at the ‘zep, Ellis quickly walked back into the hangar through the open bay doors. He didn’t want to run and look unprofessional. Plus, it hurt to trip and fall onto rusty nonskid. Unlike a VERTREP or aircraft launch and recovery, the hangar doors stayed open. There was no downdraft to this evolution, no rotorwash to send debris flying.

His glasses readjusted to the darker hangar bay. Originally designed to hold H-60 helicopters, it now was an unmanned systems launch bay. Lining the bulkheads on the port and starboard sides were ready racks of drones. There were ten distinct models waiting to be launched, from the smaller VTAV Hummingbirds, to the Cormorant and Flying Fish cross-domain vehicles, to the large Sea Eagle UCAVs.

Blitz was testing mission packages in a rack towards the fore end of the space. Two second class  petty officers, an AA2 (Additive Artisan) and an US2 (Unmanned Systems Technician) were also in the bay, doing physical systems checks on clusters of drone launchers. They could check each of the vehicles with their glasses and AI assistants, but they were being extra thorough on their checks today.

“Ready to receive” the CO said over the voice net. It was for the crew’s awareness and the Zephyr’s permission. Old habits die hard. The airship still needed verbal approval from the Skipper to begin, even though it was more than smart enough to tell that the frigate was ready for it.

BEGIN REPLENISHMENT appeared on every set of ‘shades on the ship. A counter to the right of Ellis’s vison read 0/24. Almost immediately, two pallets of frozen food appeared, two feet apart. The clamps holding onto the bottom of the pallets opened outward and smoothly darted upward on cables.

Thirty seconds later, two more pallets appeared (eggs and one of FF&V), two feet behind the first two, exactly in line. More food. Always in the same order. Frozen first, then fresh, then dry food, parts, AM build material, and even the occasional mail.

Ellis couldn’t see it, but he knew the airship was drifting backward as it lowered the supplies from over 60 feet above. The positional accuracy was not really needed for the FF’s large flight deck, but the aircraft was given the capability for replenishing smaller ships. It could be used to swap modules out of underway vessels, LCACs, and USVs.

The VULCAN system told him through his ‘shades that this run was mostly going to be food and AM feed stock; the standard ZEPREP. It also told him that the Skipper’s valuable Diet Coke was on the last food pallet, the cases of cans stacked on top of the soda concentrate pouches. Ellis would have prioritized that as the first pallet if he had a say in the matter. But he didn’t. The VULCAN supply, maintenance, and repair AI set the priorities, Ensign brownnosing notwithstanding.

It was humbling as a Supply Officer not to have control over such things, but he was still needed as a watch stander onboard, and AIs were still not very good at doing in-port receptions for dignitaries. Supply Corps Officers, such as Ellis, were put on smaller ships only for certain deployments.

The airship’s pallet counter ticked up rapidly.

14/24. Flour and spices (the lone cook onboard still made scratch biscuits) and the (vital) Diet Coke.

The flattened cylinder-shaped discbots emerged from their bays straddling the bay doors, seeming to hum with excitement, waiting for the ZEPREP to end so they could get to work. Recovering containers from the flight deck and clearing FOD was their bread and butter. They were designed to operate on nonskid, unlike their smaller cousins that cleaned the decks inside the ship.

16/24. Extra power cells for drone directed energy systems.

As he looked up at the underside of the cargo airship through the roof of the hangar bay, his AR filter showed him the pallets flowing forward and being fed into the replenishment gear. It was so smooth it looked like a biological process. Looking down the length of the ‘zep, he could see that it was largely empty; it looked like the Rochester was the last ship on this run. Ellis noticed the normally svelte outline of this Zephyr was marred with additional blisters and antennae. It looked like it had some modifications that were normally installed on the larger MARPAT and ISR Cumulous-type airships. There were plenty of potentially hostile forces in the area to keep track of. Every collection asset counted.

Just after the counter hit 24/24, Ellis’s shades went dead. The entire overlay and heads-up display—the message stream, the combat systems overlay, all of it—disappeared. He was just wearing expensive glass lenses. He quickly clenched his fists behind his back—the reboot command for his personal system—and nothing happened.

Klaxons blared as the ship was called to General Quarters on the 1MC. The Captain came up on the old-fashioned speakers. “JANUS has detected an intrusion into our systems. We are scrubbing it, but we have reason to believe this is a precursor to a larger attack. OCEANUS, Empty quiver.”

The hangar bay door automatically started to close as the launchers on each side of the ship sequentially kicked out the ready drones in a cacophonous roar. Some needed more help than others. The Sea Eagles used rocket boosters to get airborne while the Flying Fish just needed compressed air to make it into the water. Some malfunctioned, stuck in their tubes.

His ‘shades finally came to life as he ran towards the ladder of Helicopter Control Officer Station, his GQ post. It was just a place for him to get safely out of the way, after all, no-one stood watch up there anymore. With ‘shades that could see through the ship and autoland systems, you didn’t need someone physically up there as helos landed anymore. Below him, the two launch bay petty officers strapped themselves into shock chairs facing the launchers and set to work, talking to their AIs while making rapid hand gestures. Blitz was slapping new components into a couple of the laggard drones, hung in their launchers.

As he strapped himself into his perch above the flight deck, the Full SA feed from OCEANUS came back up. And it was a mess. The horizon was covered in hostile icons. There was broad spectrum jamming going on. It appeared that all comms and navigation feeds were down. Hopefully the UAS they just put into the air would help rectify that. Past his view of the abandoned pallets on the flight deck, he could see the Zephyr dropping in altitude and falling back behind the ship, now command tethered to the frigate as a decoy.

Someone in a project office had to dig deep into Greek mythology to come up with the OCEANUS AI system name. AEGIS had been around since Ellis’s grandfather’s day, but a new mission set was added to manage drone swarm behaviors and over-the-horizon weapons, so a rename was in order. The Titan god of the sea was really the only option left. Poseidon, Neptune, and Triton were taken several times over. JANUS, the god of doorways and gates, was the cleverly named cyber defense and comms AI. ATHENA was the task force combat AI that integrated hundreds of assets, from the OCEANUS systems on various surface ships and scores of unmanned systems and swarm command nodes. ZEUS was definitely taken; it was the STRATCOM space and missile AI.

At the upper edge left hand corner of his vision, he saw two angry red triangle icons appear. He looked up (and through the structure of the ship) and focused his eyes towards them, over 40,000 feet up and 32 miles away to the northwest. His ‘shades took the cue to zoom in to the task force’s Cumulus-type ISR robotic airship being attacked a pair of small air-to-air missiles. The leading missile in the pair wobbled and disappeared in a spray of debris, followed in oblivion by the second, a mile short of their target. Both were swatted by unseen directed energy beams.

A Cumulonimbus upgrade, Ellis thought. They operate too high up to have a defensive air swarm, but have other ways of protecting themselves.

A larger triangle appeared and faded as a stealth aircraft unleashed two more missiles. The first raced toward the airship only to be stopped 200 yards away. The second missile wasn’t stopped far enough away for the Cumulonimbus to escape harm—when it exploded, fragments of the missile perforated the broad side of the aircraft. It immediately started to bleed altitude, but the info overlay superimposed over the airship showed that the outer bag was sealing up.

The airship’s sensors finally got a fix on the hostile stealth aircraft shortly before the resurgent hostile triangle graphic merged with the friendly blue goldfish icon. Undaunted in its mission, an enemy flying wing UCAV had collided with the surveillance ship, emerging from the other side wreathed in flame and tumbling to the water below. The Cumulonimbus plummeted from the firmament, leaving a black cloud of smoke in the sky in its former station.

He looked back out at the stern of the ship. The frigate’s waterjets, operating at max throttle, made the wake a sheet of white, angry water. Two hundred yards distant was the imposing nose of the Zephyr, now keeping station directly behind the Rochester as a seduction asset. It was now at wave-top height (his AR reticle read 8 FT AGL) and had no issue keeping up with the warship, even at low-level.

To enhance its attractiveness to incoming missiles, the top half of the Zephyr gradually changed color to match the hazy blue sky, and the bottom half became the same color as the Rochester. Ellis knew that it would mimic the outline of a US Navy warship in order to confuse further any optical sensors looking its way.

As he was looking aft, two fiberclad escorts from the port side crossed through the wake at full speed. They looked more like alien spacecraft when they were going full tilt—their angular black superstructures had risen completely above the water, with their single thin ventral keels extending into the water. Unseen at the end of their keels were their propulsion pods, now propelling much less displacement, as the underside of their lightweight hulls were acting as aerodynamic lifting bodies.

Another fiberclad, still in hull down mode, dropped back from its starboard station to take its place between the lumbering Zephyr and the Rochester. Its angular 30mm cannon slewed to starboard, aiming futilely towards the enemy to the west. Turning to look that direction, Ellis noticed that the dozens of “suspected hostile” icons on the horizon had been winnowed down to ten red diamonds on the surface, and two POSSUB inverted triangles below the surface. The nearest ones were missile craft 40 miles distant, the farthest a surface action group of five vessels almost due west but over 150 miles away (thanks to the curvature of the earth, their icons looked like they were below the water).

Ellis tapped the palm of his right hand with his right index finger, bringing up the comms network menu in his left lens. He selected the combat net by selecting it with his vision cursor.

“Captain,” the CSO said from combat, “the ISR zep gave us a good targeting solution to enemy surface and contacts before she bit it. SHF and EHF are still degraded. Constellation coms and swarmnet is up with ATHENA actual.”

The CO might already have known all this, thought Ellis, but the CSO’s job was to distill it a bit; the Skipper was a millennial after all. He still used a tablet on occasion and just couldn’t take all the inputs to his visor that most of the crew had. He was probably sitting behind the CSO in combat, looking at the largely redundant video screens. Most of the watchstanders in there were in full VR sets and control gloves, oblivious to the physical environment around them.

As he listened to this exchange, Ellis could see that OCEANUS was identifying some of the enemy to the west, with the help of the swarm that was continuously changing shape and size. Four of the contacts were identified as high value targets. LPDs and a command ship. They were quickly assigned antiship missile missions from OCEANUS.

“Weapons free,” the Skipper said, calmly.

To the left and right of Ellis’s seat in the HCO tower, vertical launch hatches opened and unleashed the ship’s entire complement of eight antiship missiles in quick succession. They dropped their boosters and roared away on tongues of flame, supersonic before they crossed the horizion.

OCEANUS AUTO, the battle management AI reported in the ‘shade message stream.

The Skipper had given the weapon systems over to OCEANUS, with defense of the ship set to a higher priority than offense, for now. Every unmanned system, from the fiberclads, to the aerial swam, to the tethered Zephyr, were given commands to follow and protocols to continue if they were cut off from the OCEANUS command AI.

The distant contacts then revealed their hostility by unleashing 43 antiship missiles in the direction of Rochester and the task force beyond her.

Dozens of the swarm UAVs dropped to sea level to create a defensive barrier in front of the hostile missiles. Within seconds, some of them were already on the horizon heading their way. Mount 761 on the bow began spitting out hypervelocity dart rounds like a jackhammer. Chaff bloomed from the frigate’s launcher, and the fiberclad in the wake contributed some foil to the effort. The picture clutter was getting very hard for human eyes to process as the icons closed on each other, and a series of explosions flashed on the horizon.

Some of the enemy missiles were too smart and too fast for the swarm to get to. It also looked like a section of the swarm just died, possibly due to a defensive EMP countermeasure burst from one of the incoming missiles. A handful of them made it through. Mount 761 kept shooting, and the SeaCUDA launcher above Ellis joined in, spitting out four missiles.

It was over in seconds, and only afterward did Ellis understand what happened.

Two missiles went towards the Zephyr. One passed through the nose of the aircraft before detonating, the energy of the warhead and the inertia of the missile emptying into open air. The second one did a dive at the artificial waterline of the airship, exploding as it hit the water, and sending debris into the bottom of the aerial behemoth.

One passed between the Rochester and the fiberclad behind her and was shot down moments later by a Flying Fish drone that leapt out of the water and took it out so it couldn’t wander into the other ships in the strike group. The unfortunate companion fiberclad was then hit by a supersonic sprint vehicle, which lifted the 35-foot vessel into the air, disintegrating it into a tumbling mass of carbon fiber and machinery.

Two missiles made it close enough to the Rochester to damage her. The close-in high power microwave system must have got to them, for one collided into the water 50 yards away and sent warhead fragments into the amidships. The other zigged with it but should have zagged, and was killed by OCEANUS with the starboard 30mm. It was a shot that only an AI could make. The cannon’s rate of fire didn’t allow for a second shot at a Mach 3.5 target. The last missile detonated in midair and sprayed the flight deck and the mission bay below with metal shards. Some of the containers of supplies were knocked off of the flight deck, while others were heavily perforated, leaving few unmolested.

Ellis’s vision rimmed with yellow as FIRE and FLOODING scrolled across it. Black smoke poured from the starboard side below the flight deck. He received notification that Snipe and the damage control flying squad were en route to the aft mission bay. It was the worst hit space on the ship.

Donning his mask, he jumped down from the HCO ladder. The acrid smell of a shipboard fire filled the hangar bay, but there wasn’t any damage to the systems within. Small robotic arms were working away at loading more drones into the launchers. The two petty officers were wearing masks now, gesturing away at the launch racks, undeterred by the smoke.

“SUPPO,” the Skipper said over the net, “get the flight deck clear. We’re now the helo and hopper ready deck.”

“Aye aye, Sir,” Ellis said, stepping out under the opening hangar doors. Steve and discbots were already on the flight deck, in full FOD clearance mode, gathering some salvageable items, pitching the rest into the water. The deck angled as the ship turned sharply to the east. The damaged Zephyr struggled to keep up, still at wave top height astern. Still tethered to the Rochester, she would follow for as long as OCEANUS required.

Far off to the west, the icons of hypersonic missiles from the LBJ and LAKE ERIE were arcing downward at the hostile targets below the western horizon, accompanied by a rain of rail gun projectiles. Closer in, a Cormorant UAS found something to kill. It dove into the water 80 yards to the port beam of the ship and hit something big, kicking up a column of water that drenched the flight deck and everything on it.

Damn. I hope some Diet Coke survived, the USS Rochester’s SUPPO thought, as he got to work.

Chris O’Connor is a Supply Corps Officer in the U.S. Navy. He currently serves as Logistics Warfare Chair and Futures Group Coordinator, Naval Warfare Studies Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School. He has written a number of fiction and non-fiction pieces on the future of warfare.

Featured Image: Art created with Midjourney AI.

By Chris O’Connor

Ma’am, your presence is requested in Combat. OS2 Van-Manama’s message appeared in the right lens of LCDR Sara Fernandez’s glasses. A top-down overlay of an unknown surface contact appeared in her left lens.

On my way, OS2. She subvocalized back. She still wasn’t used to the formality in the Navy. Or the food. The only thing she ate for breakfast in this hot weather was buttered toast. She got up from her seat in the tiny mess space, dropped her plate in the washer, and went down the ladder.

“What do you have for me?” She asked OS2 V-M as she entered the Combat Information Center. She could talk plainly here. No need to message through LiFi to communicate, as she did in the rest of the ship. Combat was not an impressive space; two terminals, an observation chair, and display wall. At least it was air conditioned. OS2 was seated at the right terminal.

“It’s that Contact of Interest we’ve been waiting for; 350 at 23 miles. Going 13 knots on a course of 170. It’ll pass right by the seafarm.”

She squeezed past OS2 to sit at the left terminal and pulled up the COI’s track info. It was classified on AIS as a fishing fleet factory ship. The Chinese had this type harvesting seafood in every ocean now that most fisheries in their EEZ had collapsed.

V-M continued. “Its signature is certainly correct, the right number of diesels at the right harmonics, ELINT shows commercial SATCOMs and surface search. And the satellite images we pulled down show a wake profile that fits for a ship of the type. It has one commercial VTOL security drone up. I’m sure it’s aware of our tender.”

“Copy. I’ll go let the Captain know.” She said, leaving Combat.

The Master, Captain Aquino, was on the port bridge wing, observing crane ops. The heat and humidity was mitigated by a slight breeze. The Polillo 2 was working on one of the seafarm perimeter buoys.

“Morning, Captain.”

“Morning.” He mumbled back, eyes remaining on the crane. “I see the large contact on the Furuno. Is that why you’re here?”

“You guessed it. After this buoy, could you secure from crane ops for a while? We should be prepared to maneuver.” Fernandez said.

“I know the drill.” Aquino said, annoyance creeping into his voice. “I’ll go to thrusters soon and be ready to seem really interested in working deep in the buoy field.” He said, gesturing out to the farm, large yellow solar floats extending south as far as the eye could see. “I’ll act casual, ‘cuz I don’t want to be killed.”

“Yes, Sir.” She said, heading for the ladder.

“Don’t call me Sir!” He shouted after her. “I was a Senior Chief in the Navy. And I STILL work for a living!”

_______________________________________

A disembodied voice greeted Sara. “Thanks for coming today. The purpose of this interview is to collect information for our historical archives.” All that she could see was the emblem for Naval History and Heritage Command floating six feet in front of her in an empty, white-paneled cube. It was the default setting for a VRcast waiting room.

“Coming today? I’m in my office at home,” she pointed out.

“We will set the default interview template.” The view faded and was replaced by a mid-twentieth century history professor’s study, complete with walls of bookshelves and leather chairs. Fernandez could almost smell books, old wood, and leather. But without a multisensory neural link, it was all in her imagination.

Across from her was a desk covered in papers. Seated behind it was a middle-aged man, hair thinning on top of his head and in a blazer with leather patches at the elbows. A notepad was ready in front of him, fountain pen in hand.

“Does this put you at ease? We can set this to any template you prefer.” The interviewer AI asked, now enrobed in a professor avatar.

“This works for me. It is kinda funny, though. I was never in an office like this because I am not 100 years old.”

“Alright, then. Let us get started. The purpose of this interview is to collect information from veterans of the war so that we can make VR historical simulations. It is intended as a free-flowing discussion. I detect that you have a brain interface implant. Can we access it for biofeedback during our talk?”

“No, it’s just an augment for my right eye.” Sara felt an itching sensation where flesh and bone met metal and plastic in her ocular cavity. Maybe it was time for a firmware update.

“Joined the Navy at 36, after a leaving a successful career in autonomous systems. You were being paid more than two times a Lieutenant Commander in your civilian job. There were many people in your comfortable position that did not join up when the nation needed them. Why did you?”

_______________________________________

“The seafarm surveillance drone that US1 reconfigured is making an ID pass.” OS2 said looking at the drone feed. “Something’s not right.”

LCDR Fernandez was sitting in the chair next to him and monitoring the sensor feeds, while watching the AI run the object detector module. They had to use laser to communicate with the drone to keep their comms signature down. Signal strength was not very good in the humid and salty conditions.

The video feed from the drone showed the COI. It was painted blue and white, with perfectly placed rust streaks, and the superstructure was not quite right to Sara. The detector results came back as possibilities: 95% factory fishing ship, 72% car ferry, 5% generic amphibious warfare vessel. On the visual feed, panels on the side of the COI were changing colors, sometimes flashing patterns.

“It looks like it is covered in active adversarial network patches. I’ve never seen so many,” V-M said. “Our module is only seeing a fishing vessel and somehow ignoring the other qualities of the ship. It is being played like a fiddle.”

“Do you think they know the standard detector module inside and out and trained their AN systems to counter it?” Sara said sarcastically. “OCEANUS,” she said to the Combat AI. “Run it again with that algorithm trained with US1’s input set. A new module that the Chinese did not plan to encounter might see something else.”

After a few seconds, the module came up with a new result. 94% modified Type 071 (NATO reporting name: Yuzhao) LPD.

It was a Yuzhao altered to have the external appearance of a fishing vessel. It could have been damaged in the opening of the war and rebuilt in the yards to look that way. Maybe it was a mod of one of the export variants that never made it to Thailand.

Either way, it was a major violation of the Seven Powers agreement. Warships of that size should not be in the South China Sea.

_______________________________________

“I was a domestic delivery drone network supervisor. Studied robotics at Carnegie Mellon and got hired right after graduation by a small logistics UAV startup in San Diego. After working there for a few years, the company was bought out by one of the tech companies, which was inevitable. Absorbed into the workforce of a FANG, I was responsible for all UGV and UAV delivery operations in Pennsylvania when the war started. Looking back, the strangest part of the whole thing was we still haven’t figured out who started what we now call the ‘Seven Powers War.’”

“What do you mean?” The interviewer said, now going through the motion of jotting down notes.

“We always blamed China for starting the war, and China blames us. But neither of us were ready at the kickoff. The CCP was hit by that massive ransomware attack at the same time as Congress and the White House. And it was a well-executed hit job. Almost everyone’s official and personal email accounts and phones were taken offline, with no way to pay it off, like the NotPetya attack back in the day.” 

“NotPetya?” The AI stopped writing.

“You don’t know what that is? You do real-time research while we are talking. I’m sure you know precisely what happened.”

“Of course, I will develop VRcast content with embedded branches to references. But for the sake of archiving the interviews for public consumption, I would like to do this as a conversation.” 

“I am impressed how well you can talk to me. Can’t even tell that you are a bot.” Fernandez said.

“Ever since GPT5, the Turing test is invalid. If it would make you feel better, I can take on his persona for this interview.”

“Would you look like a young Cumberbatch or the real guy?”

“I can look like anyone you want if it makes this interview productive, but please do not call me a ‘bot.’ I find that outdated slang derogatory,” the AI said coldly.

“Right. Sorry.” She conceded. “I’ll get back on track. That attack’s intent was to cripple the leadership in both countries. Russia and the other powers either reacted quick enough to prevent it or they were not targeted. Of course, deepfakes of everyone taking credit were out there. I even saw one of Uruguay’s Prime Minister claiming responsibility to bring the ‘Great Powers to their knees.’”

“How did this lead to you signing on the dotted line?” the AI said, with a pipe now placed in the corner of his mouth, face simulating deep interest in the conversation.

Sara leaned back in her chair. “It’s a funny phrase, by the way. I completed my contract with a biometric finger scan.”

“I have to keep in character with my persona.” The AI commented, waving his pipe at his paper-covered desk. “I cannot be anachronistic.”

“Well, it was China’s first shots that made it personal for me,” Sara said. “They had been getting increasingly paranoid and thought we were intentionally crippling their leadership with the cyberattack. Maybe they thought we were overacting to that election-year PLAN carrier strike group FONOPS in the Gulf of Mexico. A lot of Americans were pissed off when the Chinese did that.

“Predicting a U.S. play in the Western Pacific, the Chinese leadership reacted with a what I see as a ‘flexible response option’— or at least that’s how my joint training would describe it. Instead of attacking our bases and combatants directly, they went for our fleet replenishment ships.

“Our oilers were easy to find and track with pretty basic AI, thanks to the hundreds of commercial imagery CubeSats in orbit. All the oilers underway in the Western Pacific had two antiship ballistic missiles fired at them. Not even the new missiles, but the older models, since our replenishment ships were easy pickings with no countermeasures or defenses. The PLA saved the new ‘DFs’ for the potential higher-end targets.

“Out of ASBM reach was USNS Genesee, two days west of Pearl. First in a new class of fast replenishment oilers, ‘Genny’ was the fastest and largest ship since the old AOEs were in service, with expanded hangar space for the new VTOL ‘Hopper’ logistics drones.

“Like its counterparts, it was sailing solo with no escorts. While its counterparts were being wiped out by ballistic missiles, the ‘Genny’ lost power. From what the survivors told us, immediately after a logistics database update, a worm was triggered in its power systems that shut everything down, to include backup batteries and generators. There was no recovering with the personnel onboard. None of their servers worked, so it was impossible to use the smart ship system to even find where the issues were.

“My Uncle Juan was one of the unfortunate engineers furtively trying to get the controllers on the diesels working when the main spaces and Hold 3 were both hit with sprint vehicles. Only nine from the crew of eighty-seven were plucked from the water hours later, after the UUV that launched the YJ-18s was found and neutralized.

“There were now no replenishment ships west of Pearl Harbor. They could have been crippled with worm attacks alone, but China put them on the bottom of the ocean. It meant that our warships throughout the Pacific had limited legs and were constrained to ports that were now at threatened by more long-range weapons.”

“So you joined because your uncle was killed?” The professor asked.

“It was a major part of it. We were not a military family. I had a great uncle that was an officer in the Navy during what he called the ‘Tanker Wars’ and my mom’s cousin served in the Space Force, but I really liked Uncle Juan and wanted to do something in his honor. The nature of how the war changed also made me a good officer candidate.”

_______________________________________

“Pass this info to the Hughes through the seafarm’s network.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am.” OS2 said. “US1 is putting up another drone to act as a laser comms relay for the exploit ops.”

“Ready for that?” Fernandez said to CTR2 Cruz. She was sitting in the left console seat now. Fernandez had moved back to the observation chair.

“Yes Ma’am. We have a common system target set fed into our JANUS AI. We’ll be looking for networks common to Yuzhaos, fishing vessels, or anything commercial commonly installed at the shipyard of origin.”

Sara reached behind her and grabbled the IC phone off the hook. “Captain, OIC. We’re about to annoy the contact,” she said.

“Copy,” Aquino gruffly said. “I’m turning off all my external comms and navigation systems except for the Furuno. It’s the only thing we have that is airgapped. Moving into the field now.”

The diesel vibrations through the hull stopped, and Fernandez felt the ship move on thrusters into the field.

“Sweep is negative for EM leakage. COI is doing a good job with signal discipline, save the nav radar.” OS2 reported.

“Let the Hughes know that we are going for network intrusion. We’ll probably get a response.”

“Will do Ma’am,” V-M replied.

“Let’s see if they left any of their antennas to receive only.” CTR2 said.

Probing low power signal antenna. JANUS began.

Detected: Autonomous trawling net system.

“It looks like they were serious enough about their cover that they put a commercial fishing system onboard, and someone didn’t think to disable the antenna.” Cruz observed.

Trawling systems connected to ship’s common servers.

Uploading worm.

Intrusion Detection AI on PLAN network countering.

Lost comms. JANUS was in the LPD’s network for mere seconds.

“Drone down.” OS2 said. “It looks like COI hit it with a laser.”

“Was the worm fully uploaded?” Fernandez asked.

Cruz was looking at multiple feeds at once, using hand gestures to make selections. “Looks like it, Ma’am,” she said. “It depends on which one JANUS decided to use.”

“They detected the intrusion, so it doesn’t have a lot of time to work,” Sara said. “What worm did JANUS deploy?”

Unmask Rev 11, JANUS responded, before Cruz could.

CTR2 continued. “The results from ‘Unmask’ will depend on how the shipboard networks are configu—crap!”

“Multiple military comms and radars radiating on COI. Classify contact as hostile!” OS2 shouted. “They just lit up like a Christmas tree.”

The true nature of the contact was now broadcast for the world to see. 27 miles away, on the west edge of the buoy field, the Hughes and its flotilla of Lake-class corvettes leapt to all ahead full, as their smaller Fiberclad USV escorts struggled to keep up.

_______________________________________

“The Navy needed people of your expertise with the new drone systems after the ceasefire,” the AI stated, leaning back in its chair, as if it was a human realizing this for the first time.

“Exactly. I’m sure you are collecting interviews from many vets, but as you know, the first two weeks of shooting was a free-for-all. It escalated so quickly that I am amazed to this day we didn’t go nuclear. I think it’s because we didn’t attack targets on the Chinese mainland, even though they laid waste to our Guam bases. China could have put some cruise missiles into Pearl or San Diego but chose not to. And both sides only used hypersonic weapons against each other’s warships. But that still meant that we lost a lot of ships. This wasn’t a one-sided exchange. With the help of the Air Force, we took out most of the larger platforms in the PLAN South- and East- Seas Fleets.

“We learned quickly that nothing on the surface of the ocean could hide anymore. On day one of the shooting, for example, they fired about thirty older ASBMs at the strike group that was east of the Philippines, purposely encircling it with impact points, demonstrating to us that they knew where it was.”

“Undeterred, our response to the sinking of the oilers was that same CSG launching a strike on Chinese artificial islands in the SCS. Before those strike aircraft recovered to the CVN, the CSG was hammered with ASBMs and long-range cruise missiles, and only the McCain got away without major damage. She escorted the survivors of the CSG into Tacloban; one barely afloat DDG and the CVN, which was missing sections of her island and had massive holes in her flight deck. The other strike group in WESTPAC had to fight its way back to Pearl through a PLAN UUV wolfpack, with a pod of our own ORCAs and LIVYATANs running interference.”

The AI was tearing through his notepad now; Sara wondered what exactly he was writing. The professor noted, “After this continued for two weeks, both sides ran out of chess pieces in the Pacific. And the Seven Powers ceasefire agreement limited the size of assets we could send over there.”

“The USN had to reconstitute fast,” she said. “It went on a crash course in platform procurement, and acquired small vessels built in yacht and fishing boat yards throughout the U.S. Most of these were modified to become unmanned surface vehicles. The USVs ranged from high-end combat ones, like the stealthy Fiberclads, to low-end logistics, surveillance, and lily pads for the short-range aerial systems. They were designed to need smaller logistical footprints so they could operate without a replenishment fleet of larger ships.”

“And new sailors were needed to crew this Navy,” the AI pointed out.

“Yep. It took about a year to get out to the fleet with my accelerated commission. Familiarization didn’t take too long. After all, I was experienced with a lot of the commercial platforms the Navy had bought. I joined up with the command in San Diego. Had sims and tactics training and was then assigned to a SCS-centric detachment that was to go underway on clandestine collection platforms. I thought the Navy was going to put me in charge of a sexy drone warfare unit. I ended up doing something quite different.”

_______________________________________

“Seneca just got hit.” V-M said calmly. “Most likely a UUV.”

“At least hiding in the farm will protect us from that.” Fernandez said, matter-of-factly. It would be hard to weave a weapon through the underwater maze of interconnected buoys to hit Polillo 2.

Now that the game was up, the Yuzhao was in survival mode. The radiating triggered by ‘Unmask’ abruptly ceased, and she increased speed and turned to the north, trying to bug out.

“Swarm deployment on hostile.” OS2 reported. Concealed launchers on the Chinese ship began to disgorge a heterogenous cloud of drones into the air around it.

The U.S. flotilla was not going to let that LPD live to sneak around another day. The surviving corvettes each launched a pair of Super-LRASMs at the contact while kicking out their own much smaller swarms, which included Cormorant UAVs to counter the hostiles in the water below.

None of the LRASMs reached their target. They met a brick wall of drones, directed energy, and good old fashioned 30mm CIWS rounds. But the Hughes drove on with the flotilla, firing the rest of their missiles and going ‘Empty Quiver.’ The flotilla put every available drone into the fight, emptying their launchers. The LPD was more than a match. The PLAN equipped it with a superior combat systems AI and scores of drone tubes.

OS2 unleashed creative stream of multilingual invectives. Fernandez was impressed how her comms AI tried to keep up with the translation, labelling it as Mix of Vietnamese and Kiro. One insult, for example, had something to do with a whale and a bowl of petunias.

“I don’t know what you are saying, but it doesn’t seem professional,” she said.

“Sorry Ma’am. The contact just went Death Blossom on us,” V-M muttered.

The classic movie reference would have been funny in any other context, but the video feed of the LPD putting up an ever-thickening cloud of UAVs like an angry beehive was no laughing matter. To make matters worse, drone variants were launched that were new to OCEANUS’ threat database.

CTR2 barely croaked, “Network sweep. They suspect us. JANUS is countering multiple intrusion attempts from the Yuzhao through the seafarm net.”

Then Sara saw on the OCEANUS feed a tendril of the enemy swarm break off and head toward Polillo 2.

_______________________________________

“We were assigned to a 32-meter buoy tender, based out of a small fishing port in the western Philippines.” Fernandez continued. “There were many commercial vessels like it, contracted out to maintain farms of aquaculture such as kelp and mussels. We bounced around geographic locations in the SCS based on collection requirements. The Det consisted of seven ununiformed sailors of a mix of rates: Operations Specialists, Unmanned Systems Techs, Cryptologic Techs, Additive Artisans. I was the Officer in Charge, but the tender’s Master was a Merchant Mariner.

“These tenders were set up for autonomous systems control and maintenance. Seafarms are run on a daily basis by a workforce of aerial, surface, and subsurface drones that check the buoys’ status, scan the crops, and test the water column for pollutants and security intrusions. It wasn’t unusual for a tender such as ours to be launching and recovering drones and related systems, which made it the perfect cover. Limited to slight modifications for our mission, we had bolted on a few extra comms antennas, mostly laser and other LPI comms, and we sure as hell couldn’t launch any Cormorants or Sea Eagles.

“The forces agreement meant that the only USN and PLAN ships allowed in the SCS were small combatants, while other nations patrolled with larger vessels as part of the enforcement mission. A four-ship flotilla of Lake-class missile corvettes was positioned near us, trying its best to keep a low signature, but sticking out like a sore thumb among commercial traffic. We kept them up to date on our ops, and they were ready in case things got hairy. The USS Wayne P. Hughes was the manned command ship; the remaining three were unmanned versions of the same class.”

The AI shifted is pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. “You were operating in an area that could combust at any time, and you were on an unarmed vessel.”

“And it got messy quickly.”

“One of the purposes of this project is to capture vignettes of important phase changes of the war. And we think your part was a big one, because it was when a new facet of Chinese operations was discovered.” The professor said, tapping his pipe in an ashtray. “I hear it was a close call for you, and I would like to record accurately what happened at that seafarm.”

“Are you interviewing the Skipper of the Hughes?” Fernandez asked.

“CDR Zhu? Of course. One of my personas talked to her last week.”

“I’m sure she chose John Paul Jones as her interviewer.”

“Actually,” the AI said, without looking up from his notes, “she went with Admiral Nelson. It took us a few seconds to render the HMS Victory under full sail, but it was an informative discussion.”

“Good. I bought her beers after she got out of rehab. That woman is a straight-up badass. She lost an arm during that exchange.”

_______________________________________

The OCEANUS feed was looking grim. The Yuzhao had blunted the corvettes’ attacks and was now turning its efforts to neutralizing the flotilla, which was just buying time until the inevitable. The unmanned vessels and Fiberclads used their aggregated swarm to protect the Hughes. One by one the Lakes were being sacrificed as their HPM pulses and CIWS flechette shells were not enough to save them alone.

The smaller Fiberclads died first. Then Tahoe absorbed over a dozen hits before succumbing. Okeechobee was staggered by repeated impacts until a UUV was able to catch up to it. ‘Okee’ broke in half like the Seneca, keel snapped by an underwater explosion. Then the friendly swarm broke away and headed to deflect the attack on the tender.

V-M said what they all realized. “The Hughes is sending the flotilla’s swarm to protect us.”

The friendly UAVs intercepted their Chinese counterparts just as they were reaching the outskirts of the seafarm. The Sea Eagles were able to shoot down drones without sacrificing themselves, while others, such as the Petrels, had to ram the opposition to make an effect. The Polillo 2 was spared.

The Hughes paid the price. Opening broadside to the section of the swarm bearing down on it, it could only rely on its self-defense mounts and was beset by the autonomous adversaries. It fared a little better than the rest of the corvettes, but was still hit numerous times. Dead in the water, the Hughes’ weapons went silent.

“The swarm has been significantly thinned out. It looks like it is pulling back to reconstitute on the Yuzhao,” OS2 breathed out.

“Still trying to get to us over the networks,” CTR2 reported, reading the JANUS feeds. “We don’t have enough resources for our instance of JANUS to out-cycle whatever they are using. It’s only a matter of time before our they are in our network.”

MJOLNIR inbound, OCEANUS reported.

“Never mind.” Cruz whispered.

Fernandez looked at the large display in above terminals. The Yuzhao was 17 miles distant and headed away, wake boiling behind, an anemic swarm of drones in company. Then the enemy ship shook as if a giant finger flicked it. An upper part of the superstructure spiraled away as a gaping hole was punched starboard amidships at the weatherdecks, and the hypersonic projectile exited the port side, spraying a shotgun pattern of debris in the water far beyond.

“Wow. Never seen one of those….” Sara let slip.

“Me neither.” OS2 added. “Higher ups must have really wanted it dead.”

The critically damaged LPD began to slow, fires and smoke pouring from amidships. That hit alone was enough to sink it, even though it was above the waterline. But then the ship went up. A huge fireball began deep in in its hold, followed by a shockwave through the water that could be felt miles away on the Polillo 2. When the blast subsided, what was left of the bow and stern of the broken ship was settling into the water.

V-M began on his multicultural curses again, seemingly happy this time.

“What was that thing carrying?” Cruz asked.

“Probably missile batteries to reinforce an atoll somewhere around here.” Fernandez said. “OS2, what’s the status of the Chinese swarm?”

“OCEANUS shows eleven drones still active of various types.” V-M replied, now done with the swearing. “The blast took out the rest, and there is no local swarm controller now. But we can’t do anything if they are still out there, they’ll self-organize and still be hostile.”

“CTR2, work with US1 to get another pair of drones up. I want JANUS to take control of those drones and splash them.”

“Will do Ma’am.” Cruz replied.

Sara picked up the IC phone again. “Captain, we can go to assist the Hughes now.”

“Looks like it is barely afloat,” Aquino observed. “And what’s left of the Chinese ship is almost under. We’ll see if there are any very lucky Chinese survivors from that blast after we go to the Hughes. Continue acting all civilian and innocent?”

“That’s right.” Fernandez said. “We’re not onboard, remember?” Which was a pity. She wanted to shake the hand of every sailor on that corvette. Instead, her Det will have to hide until they transferred the survivors to a larger Indian or Japanese warship, which was probably now on its way after detecting the clash.

“Let’s hope those Cormorants took all of the Chinese UUVs. By the way, that was one of the craziest f’ing things that I have ever seen,” he added.

“You and me both.” The Det OIC laughed.

_______________________________________

“The covert USN and PLAN vessels rarely came to blows. The engagement between your seafarm tender and the Chinese LPD showed two different means of gray zone warfare with different platforms. One, a concealed warship, the other a fishing vessel with military capabilities.”

“Which, ironically, was a Chinese tactic decades before we did it.” Sara added.

Underlining something in his notes, the AI observed, “Your actions uncovered a PLA operation to establish a bastion in Micronesia.”

She shrugged. “I guess a good cover was a fleet of large vessels supposedly netting tuna.”

“There was an island outpost that was not going to be a threat until the hypersonic batteries arrived. The Det on Polillo 2 revealed that shipment and protected Guam from those missiles. You blocked their next ‘Go’ move.”

Sara paused before saying, “I’ve told very few people over the past twenty years about what happened that day.”

“Well, now you have approval to get it on the record.” The interviewer AI said, making a show of turning over a fresh leaf of paper in his notebook.

“Where shall I start?” CDR Sara Fernandez (ret.) began. “We were only a few days out on an op out of Palawan when my CIC watch messaged me at breakfast…”

Chris O’Connor is a Supply Corps Officer in the U.S. Navy. He has had tours at CNO Strategic Studies Group and CNO Rapid Innovation Cell, and is Vice President of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC). He has written a number of fiction and non-fiction pieces on the future of warfare.

Featured Image: “Grand Imperial Navy” by Rhys Bevan (via Artstation)