By Hal Wilson

Bodies are strewn across the rolling, sunlit fields — each one clad in the scarlet tunics and bearskins of British Guardsmen — each one “marking the line of their victorious advance.”¹ But their victory is a brief one. Hostile reinforcements are pouring in, quickly mounting a flank attack of their own. Chaos follows, and with it a desperate retreat. By morning, the corps commander is dead, the household cavalry is broken, and a battalion of 500 British soldiers is reduced to 180 men.²

But this military disaster is not in some far-flung corner of a foreign land; the British Army is retreating from the southern English town of Dorking, with the German Army hot on its heels. Having swept the Royal Navy aside with decisive new weaponry, the Germans have now also broken the back of Britain’s ill-prepared Army. Almost overnight, Britain loses its Empire and dignity alike.

At least, that is how Colonel Sir George Tomkyns Chesney thought events would occur.

Writing in 1871, Chesney serialized his thought experiments in Blackwood’s Magazine; the result was The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer. The story reflected Chesney’s abiding fear that “if serious military reform was not undertaken and the Germans ever got across the channel, England was doomed.”³ While overshadowed by a better-loved cousin — The War of the Worlds, for the writing of which H.G. Wells borrowed directly from Chesney’s earlier work^{4 —} Dorking defined an entire genre: future-war fiction.⁵

As for Blackwood’s? Chesney’s story “was the best business they had ever had.”⁶

And it is easy to understand why. “Humans connect over a story,”⁷ explain authors Peter Singer and August Cole, the writers of 2015’s Ghost Fleet: a Novel of the Next World War. Or, as explained by Max Brooks, author of the 2006 novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War: “The best way to educate is to entertain.”⁸ Fiction offers a direct line to the imagination and the interest of countless ordinary readers. Such was the scale of Chesney’s appeal that his work attracted the personal denunciation of then-Prime Minister William Gladstone, whose ministry was determined to avoid further defense spending.⁹ Now ask yourself, how many Prime Ministers have been compelled to denounce the House of Commons’ Defense Committee reports?

Singer and Cole’s Ghost Fleet — inspired partly by Brooks’ zombie epic¹⁰ — depicts Sino-U.S. warfare from the beaches of Hawaii to low-earth-orbit. Moreover, it illustrates the power of stories as a vehicle to educate and inspire. Ghost Fleet popularized a tidal-wave of what co-author Cole terms ‘FICINT,’ which is fiction writing grounded in reality.¹¹ Military organizations from the U.S. Naval Institute¹² to West Point’s Modern War Institute¹³ now host regular FICINT initiatives, while the French Defense Innovation Agency recently hired sci-fi authors to identify future threats.¹⁴ Ghost Fleet itself quickly landed on the reading lists of the Chief of the Air Staff of the Royal Air Force;¹⁵ the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations,¹⁶ and the U.S. Marine Corps War College.¹⁷ Not to be outdone, Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, recently made his own contribution to the genre.¹⁸

So much for the appeal — but what use is science fiction in an age of flat or declining defense budgets? History offers some pertinent clues.

Writing in 1925, a former MI5 agent called Hector Bywater released The Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931–33. Bywater not only predicted World War Two’s famous American island-hopping strategy, but directly shaped it by prompting a rewrite of War Plan ORANGE — the American inter-war plan for a possible Japanese conflict.¹⁹ Likewise, in 1978, General Sir John Hackett released The Third World War. Hackett, who jumped into Arnhem at the head of 4^th Parachute Brigade, wrote for reasons that echoed Chesney’s from over a century before: namely, to warn that if “we wish to avoid a nuclear war we must be prepared for a conventional one.”²⁰ And even if Tom Clancy’s later novel, Red Storm Rising, has since come to define the fictional vision of hard-bitten Cold War combat, it was The Third World War — with over three million copies sold — that helped to drive the substantial reforms for which Hackett had argued.²¹

The western militaries of yesteryear were no strangers to sweeping changes in technology, nor the daunting threat of war with advanced, capable opponents. And now that their successors grapple with mounting threats ranging from the Baltics²² to Taiwan,²³ they too are leveraging the power of fiction to educate and inspire — to reveal risks and opportunities. Not long ago, in the nineties and early millennium, the results were often fanciful. Whether in visions of U.S. armored divisions rolling across Siberia to crush Chinese troops wholesale,²⁴ or laser-armed B-52s picking off Russian nuclear bombers,²⁵ it is all too easy to find the hallmarks of that heady, hubristic era — back when Fukuyama called time on history and President Bush declared Mission Accomplished. And while some recent fiction on future warfare is overtly pompous and politicized — consider Omar El Akkad’s American War — a body of far greater work is growing — see, for example, Captain Dale Rielage’s award-winning How We Lost the Great Pacific War,²⁶ which captures a trend of material that is at once both engaging and often deeply sobering.

And so it should be. Just as Wells’ anonymous narrator recounts of the Martian aftermath — that it robbed the world “of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence”²⁷ — it is not a moment too soon that we leave behind the comforting anachronisms of yesteryear.

But if Western defense communities accept this already, what about the rest of us? Whether British politicians defending ties to China,²⁸ Disney executives dismissing the Uyghur genocide,²⁹ or EU negotiators overlooking slave labor,³⁰ many elites need a hard dose of fiction to find their way back to reality. Closing the Battle of Dorking with a portrait of a desolate, occupied Britain, Chesney leaves his readers with the observation that “a nation too selfish to defend its liberty could not have been fit to retain it.”³¹ 150 years may have passed, but Chesney’s fictional warning remains as pertinent as ever.

Hal Wilson is a member of the Military Writers’ Guild who specializes in using fiction to explore future conflict. His published stories include finalist contest entries with the U.S. Naval Institute, War on the Rocks, and the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare Project. He lives in the United Kingdom, where he works in defense. He can be found on Twitter at @HalWilson_

References

[1] George Chesney, The Battle of Dorking, p.15. http://public-library.uk/ebooks/29/91.pdf

[2] Ibid. p. 17

[3] Richard J. Norton, ‘Through a Mirror Darkly: The Face of Future War, 1871-2005’, Naval War College Review, Vol. 62, No.1 (2009), pp. 123-140, p. 126.

[4] Denis Gailor, ‘”Well’s ’War of the Worlds,” the ‘Invasion Story’ and Victorian moralism’, Critical Survey, Vol. 8, No.3 (1996), pp. 270-276, p. 271.

[5] A. Michael Matin, ‘Scrutinising “The Battle of Dorking”: The Royal United Service Institution and the mid-Victorian Invasion Controversy,’ Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 39, No.2 (2011), pp. 385-407, p. 388.

[6] I.F. Clarke, ‘Before and After “The Battle of Dorking”, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 24, No.1 (1997), pp. 33-46, p. 33.

[7] August Cole & PW Singer, Thinking the Unthinkable with Useful Fiction, p. 4. https://www.socom.mil/JSOU/SpecialEventDocs/P.W.Singer_Useful%20Fiction.pdf

[8]Hadley Freeman, ‘Max Brooks; ‘Pandemics come in predictable cycles. If I’m the smartest guy in the room, we’re in big trouble’, The Guardian, (06.06.2020). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/06/max-brooks-pandemics-science-fiction-world-war-z-devolution

[9] Matin, ‘Scrutinising “The Battle of Dorking”’, p. 390.

[10] Sharon Weinberger, ‘Ghost Fleet: Welcome to the World of Post-Snowden Techno-Thrillers’ The Intercept, (04.07.2015). https://theintercept.com/2015/07/04/ghost-fleet-welcome-world-post-snowden-techno-thrillers/

[11] August Cole, ‘“FICINT”: ENVISIONING FUTURE WAR THROUGH FICTION & INTELLIGENCE (INDO-PACIFIC SERIES)’, War Room – U.S. Army War College, (22.05.19). https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/special-series/indo-pacific-region/ficint-envisioning-future-war-through-fiction-intelligence-indo-pacific-series/

[12] Hal Wilson, ‘Letter of Marque’, U.S. Naval Institute, (01.12.20). https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/december/letter-marque

[13] Hal Wilson, ‘Jonathan Roper: Travelling Consultant’, Modern War Institute at West Point, (21.05.19). https://mwi.usma.edu/jonathan-roper-traveling-consultant/

[14] Sebastian Sprenger, ‘French sci-fi writers set out to ‘scare’ the military establishment’, Defense News, (30.04.21). https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2021/04/30/french-sci-fi-writers-set-out-to-scare-the-military-establishment/

[15] ‘CAS’ Reading List 2016’, The Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies. https://www.raf.mod.uk/what-we-do/centre-for-air-and-space-power-studies/documents1/cas-reading-list-2016/

[16] CNO Professional Reading Program. https://www.navy.mil/CNO-Professional-Reading-Program/Readiness/

[17] U.S. Marine Corps War College Reading List. https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/AY%2021%20Reading%20List_%20ver%208%20Jan%202020.pdf

[18] 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, USN. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/635212/2034-by-elliot-ackerman-and-admiral-james-stavridis/

[19] Norton, ‘Through a Mirror Darkly’, p.131.

[20] General Sir John Hackett, The Third World War: The Untold Story (Sidgwick and Jackson Limited, London, 1982), p.431.

[21] Norton, ‘Through a Mirror Darkly,’ p.133.

[22] Sandor Fabian, ‘Are the Baltics Really Defensible?’, Royal United Services Institute. https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/20201009_fabian_web.pdf

[23] Valerie Insinna, ‘A US Air Force war game shows what the service needs to hold off – or win against – China in 2030’, (12.04.21). https://www.defensenews.com/training-sim/2021/04/12/a-us-air-force-war-game-shows-what-the-service-needs-to-hold-off-or-win-against-china-in-2030/

[24] Bruce Fretts, ‘Book Review: ‘The Bear and the Dragon’, Entertainment Weekly, (01.09.2000). https://ew.com/article/2000/09/01/book-review-bear-and-dragon/

[25] ‘Plan of Attack’, Publisher’s Weekly, (19.04.08). https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-009411-9

[26] Captain Dale Rielage, ‘How We Lost the Great Pacific War’, USNI, (05.2018). https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018/may/how-we-lost-great-pacific-war

[27] H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, (Penguin Books, London, 2005[1898]), p.179.

[28] Stefan Boscia, ‘George Osborne hits out at Tory ‘hotheads’ who want UK-China ‘Cold War’, CityAM, (17.03.21). https://www.cityam.com/george-osborne-hits-out-at-tory-hotheads-who-want-uk-china-cold-war/

[29] Rebecca Davis, ‘Disney CFO Admits Filming ‘Mulan’ in Xinjiang Has ‘Generated a Lot of Issues’ (10.11.2020). https://variety.com/2020/film/news/disney-cfo-filming-mulan-in-xinjiang-problematic-1234766342/

[30] Jacob Hanke Vela, Eleanor Mears and David M. Herszenhorn, ‘EU nears China trade deal despite slave labour fears’ (19.12.2020). https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-nears-china-trade-deal-despite-slave-labor-fears/

[31] Chesney, The Battle of Dorking, p.22. http://public-library.uk/ebooks/29/91.pdf

Featured Image: Original drawings by Henrique Alvim Corrêa for the 1906 edition of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

The following excerpt is from David Poyer’s latest novel,  Violent Peace: The War with China: Aftermath of Armageddon, and is republished with permission.

By David Poyer

In the event, he had to get another dose of vaccine, a shot this time, since the version Homeland had given him hadn’t been approved by DoD. Then he had to cool his heels for two hours before he got to see the CNO’s flag secretary.

She was new, and didn’t seem to have any idea who he was. And of course since he was in a rumpled, oil-stained uniform, and probably stank of exhaust and sweat and too many days sleeping rough, he had to explain. Looking skeptical, she’d gone in to notify her boss.

And come out smiling. “He’ll be with you shortly, Admiral. I’m so sorry. I should have recognized your name. Task Force 91, right? Operation Rupture Plus?”

“That’s me.”

“I wish I could have been there. But some of us had to hold the fort here in DC.”

“I understand completely.” Dan forced a smile and got up, but staggered as a wave of dizziness rushed over him. From the dual vaccinations, probably.

“Are you all right, sir? Should I call—”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just been . . . I’m fine.” He braced a finger against the bulkhead until the vertigo passed, then followed her into Niles’s office.

His old mentor, then enemy, then reluctant rabbi again, had lost a shocking amount of weight. Barry “Nick” Niles’s service dress blouse sagged loosely on a once-massive frame. His shirt collar gaped around his neck. His color seemed less that of a healthy African American than the hue and texture of gray wax. And he’d apparently gone to the shaved-head look. But his first words, from behind his desk, were robust. “Where the hell have you been, Lenson?” he boomed, just like the old Niles.

Dan came to an awkward attention. “I had leave, Admiral.”

“That doesn’t mean you drop off the face of the planet. Where were you?” Niles squinted. Sniffed the air. “Do you smell gasoline?”

“I bought a motorcycle. My daughter was kidnapped. So I . . . I was trying to pick up her trail across country.” The CNO nodded. “And did you?”

Dan swallowed, fighting a tickle in his throat and a sudden desire to weep. The dizziness peaked, then receded again, like a tide. He blinked rapidly, looking toward the shatterproof windows. “No. No, sir. I lost track of her in Wyoming. No telling where they went after that, or . . . what they did with her. There’s a body in Nebraska that . . . is . . . that may be her. I couldn’t make a positive identification.”

The CNO nodded heavily. Grunted. Muttered, after a moment, “Sorry to hear. I know it doesn’t help to hear it, but a lot of other people are missing relatives, friends, kids . . . two of my nephews, working oil out west, not a word since the laydown.”

“Things are confused out there, sir. They could just be in one of the camps.”

Niles waved his hope away and picked up a piece of paper. Seemed to remember Dan was standing, and pointed to a chair. No offer of an Atomic Fireball, as in the old days. The bowl was empty. Maybe they’d stopped making them during the war.

He sagged gratefully into the armchair. Cleared his throat, and tried to focus as Niles set the paper aside.

“You been home? Seen Blair yet?”

“No sir. Came straight here.”

“Uh-huh . . . uh-huh. Well, good work out there with Rupture, Dan. If I haven’t made that clear. If you hadn’t stopped the clock to build up your ammo and fuel reserves, then kept shoving when the going got rough, we’d have gotten kicked back into the China Sea.”

“Yes sir. Resistance was a lot heavier than I expected.”

“Than anyone expected. Including our intel and our AI. That took a lot of moxie, to keep driving ahead when you were looking at casualty reports of twenty, thirty percent.” Niles tented his fingers. “Of course, if that’d been the wrong decision, we would have hung you by the balls.”

Dan figured that for a rhetorical statement, so simply nodded. And waited for the other boot to drop.

Niles searched through what was apparently Dan’s personnel file, though it seemed odd that it was printed out. He rumbled to himself, as if musing, then said a bit louder, “Your stars may be permanent.”

“Oh. Is that right, sir?” It didn’t seem that important, but he tried to look gratified.

“At least you’re on the postwar list for Senate confirmation. Nothing’s guaranteed these days.” He sighed, sat back, glanced out the window. “We’re having to fight for every flag billet. There’s a lot of pushback about anything to do with the Pacific. We need to pull two carriers back for core replacement and overhaul. That’s going to be a major fight in the next budget. There are already calls to scrap them, rather than refuel.”

“Then, thank you, sir. For the nomination, at least.”

Niles shrugged and rolled his eyes, and Dan added, “I saw something new on the way in here. Something called a Homeland Battalion.”

“Uh-huh. In black uniforms?”

“Yes sir.”

“Uh-huh.” Niles tilted a massive head. “Homeland Security’s amalgamating loyal Guard units and militias into Blackies. Also known as Special Action Forces. And they want new general billets for them. They’re not DoD formations, they’re DHS, but they count against our general and flag authorized strengths.”

“That doesn’t sound exactly . . . fair, Admiral.”

Niles’s eyelids flickered. “There’s worse coming over the horizon. Posse Comitatus may be suspended. To fight the unrest in the cities, and out west. And the closer we get to the elections . . . the slogan’s ‘Forward as one,’ but the reality may be that we’re headed for one-party rule.”

Niles looked away. “Some of us are determined not to let that happen. At least, not if we can prevent it.”

Dan weighed that last sentence. Then, despite himself, glanced around the office.

The admiral caught his reaction, and waved a large hand. “You can speak freely. This room’s a SCIF. Noise suppressors on the walls, and we sweep it every morning. One island we keep as sane as we can. The Joint Chiefs, I mean. Just don’t face the windows if you’re discussing anything you don’t want overheard.”

“Yes sir.” He wanted to know more, but decided he’d better digest what had just been intimated first. Because Niles’s words could be construed, in the wrong hands, into something close to treason.

Niles reached for the empty candy container, but halted his hand halfway. He rumbled, “I’m going to be stepping down pretty soon, Dan. We won, if you can call losing ten million lives a win. And I’m tired.”

“Ten million,” Dan repeated blankly, horrified. This was the first he’d heard of any round figure. Most of the deaths must have taken place within the areas he’d routed around in his trek east. Plus fallout effects, carried by the wind. Radiation, looting, revolt, disease . . . so the dying wasn’t over yet. He straightened his shoulders. “You’re punching out, sir? Retiring?”

Niles rubbed a palm over his bare scalp. His smile resembled a sardonic jack’o lantern’s. “I have pancreatic cancer, Dan. They’re treating it, but as you can see, it’s a losing battle. I’d rather not die walled up in this fucking office. Scenic as the view is.”

“No sir. Of course not. I don’t—I’m very sorry to hear that.”

A tap at the door, and the aide stuck her head in. “Five minutes, Admiral.”

Niles sighed. He stood from behind the desk. Dan, rising too, saw anew how shrunken his old senior’s body was beneath the now nearly tent-like blues. Niles shrugged again. “That’s the cookie . . . Anyway, you’ll want to know what’s next for you. It’s still up in the air. Jung Min Jun called. He wants you as ambassador to reunited Korea. I told him that was a nonstarter. No way the administration would go for it, and you weren’t a fucking diplomat anyway.”

Dan nodded, not chagrined. Dealing with Jung could be stressful, and he wasn’t eager to leave home again. “Yes sir. So what were you thinking?”

The CNO waved the question away. “Let’s talk about that next time you come in. For now, go home. Take a shower. See Blair. Get some sleep. We all need a rest. Still got that boat of yours? Go sail it. Come back in when you feel up to it. Three, four days or so. Tell Marla to give you a District pass and a ration card.”

Niles looked at the papers again, a contemplative, lingering glance. Then shoved the chair back and came around the desk. He didn’t move like a lumbering bear anymore. His steps seemed tentative, cautious. His grip, though, was still strong as he pincered Dan’s shoulder. “We go back a long ways, Lenson. All the way to Crystal City and the JCMPO. I’ve been hard on you at times, I guess.”

Dan forced a smile. “No more than I deserved, sir.”

“But I fought for you too, when you needed it. The way I hear you do for your own people.”

“Your example, Admiral.”

“An officer who knows when to take a risk, even dares to disobey, for the good of the service—that’s a rare thing. We were headed for a zero-risk Navy for a long time, before this war. I tried to fight that, whenever I could.” Niles held out his hand. “I guess after all these years you’d better make it Nick. In private, at least.”

Dan’s eyes stung. At the Academy, spooning—a senior’s giving a junior permission to use a first name—was a time-honored tradition. One never given lightly. He cleared his throat and took the proffered hand. “Yes sir. I mean, Nick.”

“Sir?” said the aide, from the door. “Before you leave. Legal wants a word.”

“Legal? Hell. Well, make it short,” Niles said, turning away, letting go Dan’s hand, clearly annoyed.

A tall woman in blues introduced herself. She carried a red striped folder. “I heard Admiral Lenson was in the building.”

“Get to it,” Niles growled.

She turned to Dan. “The notification by the ICJ. Admiral, has anyone discussed this with you?”

The International Court of Justice. “Uh, my wife mentioned it.”

“Blair Titus,” Niles clarified. “Undersecretary of defense.”

The legal officer nodded. “Yes sir. I thought as long as he was here, we could go over the administration’s stand. That no US citizen will be judged.”

Dan said, “But doesn’t that mean the Chinese won’t attend either?”

Niles shook his head. “They’re trying to take that position. But they signed the treaty. Giving up war criminals was one of the stipulations.”

“That’s actually a political question, Admiral.” The attorney clasped her hands primly in front of her, elbows out. “It goes to war guilt, if we still want to align ourselves with that concept. But if we do, the ICJ may indict Americans as well. As they may with Mr. Lenson, here.”

Niles said irritably, “Forget it. He’s not responding.”

“What happens if I don’t?” Dan said, accepting that he probably wasn’t going to, but also curious as to what would happen if he didn’t.

“You wouldn’t be able to travel to Europe, probably,” the advisor said. “At least to Europe, the UK, the other standing members of the court. If you did, you’d be subject to arrest, extradition, and trial.”

Niles patted his arm. “Don’t lose any sleep over this, Dan. This’ll all get settled way above our pay grades.”

He nodded to the aide, who stepped aside to let them both pass.

_______________________________________

DAN stopped by Blair’s office, but her people said she was overseas, in Singapore. “Oh, yeah,” he muttered. “The peace conference.” He stopped in at the cafeteria and put a lunch on his new ration card.

Next stop: home, in Arlington. And just about time; the bike was down to a top speed of forty, and its smoke trail was like a burning bomber’s.

He shut the engine down and rolled the last few feet down the driveway.

The house looked . . . deserted. Desiccated pine needles carpeted the roof, with patches of green moss. One of the gutters had come loose and hung down like a torn hem. The shingles needed attention. The lawn had grown two feet high, and Virginia creeper and the red hairy cables of poison ivy twisted through the undergrowth and up the trunks of the pines, clinging and strangling. He’d have to take a machete to them.

Around back, he found the spare key under a brick in the patio. Let himself in to first quiet, then alarmed mewing. He scooped Blair’s cat up and cradled it, ruffling its fur. “Hey, Jimbo.” Remembering suddenly how he’d cradled his daughter the same way, so many years ago.

The house smelled musty. No wonder; the windows were taped over, as if for a hurricane, and duct-taped shut, no doubt as a preparation against fallout, though it hadn’t reached this far east. He fed the cat, then let himself down the narrow steps to the basement. Here, in his study, it smelled even worse, as if the books were moldering. He went back up and checked the air-conditioning. But a crimson sticker sealed the breaker in the off position: Save Energy for Victory.

So he went around untaping and opening the windows and sliding down the screens. Not much of a breeze, but it might cool the house a bit. He checked the refrigerator: empty. The panty was bare too, except for a few staples: olive oil, beans, rice, canned stuff, bottles of wine. Blair must have been getting her meals at work.

He stood at the window, watching squirrels squabble and play in the pines. Feeling suddenly . . . aimless. Apprehensive.

Fuck that! He should feel relieved, right? The war was over.

And the US had “won.”

Yet he’d lost too much to feel relieved, or happy, or even curious about what came next. An indictment? He couldn’t muster concern for that, either. Like the legal beagle had suggested, maybe the whole concept of “war guilt” was a thing of the past. Quaint, like honor, or virtue, or truth, or the idea noncombatants weren’t legitimate targets.

He just felt . . . empty. Peculiar, out of place, as if this were some uncanny, alternate world he’d never expected to inhabit. And guilty, too, as if by surviving he’d betrayed those who had not.

The wine, in the pantry. He could uncork it. Forget all this. Blot it out, if only for a few hours.

No. He’d been sober for too many years. The craving faded. It wouldn’t help. When he woke up tomorrow, his daughter would still be dead.

He’d have to learn to live with that. Somehow. Like millions of others, all across the US. Across China. Pakistan. India. Indonesia. Iran. Vietnam. In all the countries this war had wrecked, trampled, and poisoned. Remember that, he told himself. You’re not the only one. He looked at the coffeemaker, but decided Niles was right. He needed a shower, a good long sleep more.

Upstairs, to a rumpled bed. The comforter was pulled up haphazardly, as if his wife had left in a hurry. Stooping to the pillow, he could smell her. Her lotions and emollients stood lined up in the bathroom. He peed, got a quick shower, then lay down. Blinked at the ceiling.

He didn’t bother to set the alarm.

David Poyer’s sea career included service in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, and Pacific. He’s the author of nearly fifty novels and works of nonfiction, including the Dan Lenson War with China series: Tipping Point, Onslaught, Hunter Killer, Deep War, and Overthrow. His next book, Violent Peace, will be published this December. Poyer’s work has been required reading in the Literature of the Sea course at the U.S. Naval Academy, along with that of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (March 26, 2008) An unarmed Trident II D5 missile launches from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Nebraska (SSBN 739) off the coast of California. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ronald Gutridge/Released)

By Ryan Hilger

            Excerpted from the forthcoming Unexpected Victory: The U.S. Navy in the Sino-American War, 2034-2036 by Fred Goures, to be published by Random House in December 2039.

            …Several Chinese admirals agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity on the following question, among others: “What surprised you most about the war?” Their answers were remarkably similar: the Yukon-class corvettes. Named after American rivers, the Navy built and deployed more than 60 Yukons in three years from 2033-2036. One Chinese admiral’s remarks are typical:

Admiral [redacted]: The Yukons caught me and the PLA leadership completely by surprise. When we started the war in October 2034, we thought we would have the American Navy sunk in a few weeks. We knew the submarine threat would take time, but we did not consider their surface forces much of a threat.

Goures: Why was that?

Admiral [redacted]: It was clear from decades of industrial espionage and intelligence collection that the American Navy had not managed to introduce much in the way of new technologies in decades, despite the focus on innovation. Thus, the introduction of the Yukons did not draw much attention from us.

Goures: Why not?

Admiral [redacted]: They were much smaller and seemed simpler than the American mainstay, the Arleigh Burke-class. We did not see how they could have posed much of a threat to us. We were very wrong on this.

Goures: How so? What made the Yukons different?

Admiral [redacted]: In retrospect, their simplicity was pure elegance. The Americans seemed to be able to upgrade and repair them so rapidly, even while at sea. We never seemed to fight the same ship twice. It may have been the same hull, but each encounter demonstrated new capabilities that we did not anticipate, usually without the ship ever pulling into a port. We could not keep up…

______________________________________

                       Admiral Peter Malone, the Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Ships in 2031, recalled sitting in a meeting with senior Navy leadership when the idea of what would become the Yukon class was born:

Things were not going well at all. The Large Surface Combatant program had not panned out in the 2020s like we thought. Apparently, we did not learn the lessons of the Zumwalt or Littoral Combat Ship programs sufficiently, because we repeated many of the same mistakes. After the fourth year of Congressional cuts to the program and reductions in planned numbers of hulls, the Secretary of the Navy called for a meeting to discuss options.

I had only been in the PEO Ships job for a few months, but I did not see how we could recover. My mind drifted from the conversation to the problems the Navy overcame to deliver both a ballistic missile submarine and a submarine-launched ballistic missile in less than five years in the 1950s – and with an immense amount of new technology to boot. I wondered how we had managed to drift so far from such incredible origins.

I snapped back from my daydream and saw the Chief of Naval Operations glaring at me. “Do you have any ideas, Pete?” I nodded and thought for a moment, but I already knew what I needed to say.

“Kill the program.” There were a lot of shocked expressions.

“Clearly what we have done in the past has not been working. Let’s throw out the playbook and try something completely new. I’ve got some ideas on ship construction, digital engineering, and how to develop products differently. Give me six months and I will come back to you with a proposal for a new ship class and how we will deliver them to the fleet.”

After a few moments of incredulous silence, he looked at Admiral Higgs, the Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, “Dan, what do you think?”

“Well, I don’t see anything to lose from this. Most of my requested capabilities were dropped in last year’s budget cuts anyway. This at least may get me more ships sooner, which is really what I need to balance against China.”

The CNO let the tension hang in the air before replying. “We have everything to lose if we fail this time. Let’s get it right.” Off we went.

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                     The Yukon-class had a very interesting beginning. It was the first government-designed and built ship in decades. Many questioned the government’s sanity in taking on the challenge of designing a ship after contractors had done it for so many years, but the government was left with little choice. Captain Lucius Walker, the Program Manager of the LSC program, recalls the day their hand was forced. On May 25, 2031, Captain Walker and his team held an Industry Day to discuss the radical new ideas they had.

We thought we had a really awesome set of ideas for industry. My team had spent a lot of time doing futuring exercises, talking with operators, looking at the case studies of Fitzgerald and John McCain from a damage control perspective, reviewing the failures of the Littoral Combat Ship program, and culling the new technologies to see what could meet the mission needs in the threat environment of the 2030s and beyond. The environment was very missile-centric, which amounted to a huge departure from traditional gun damage-tolerant designs. Those had not changed much since World War II.

The shock came right away. Both Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics said that we could not do what our Industry Day proposal requested. Too much of it relied on proprietary information and lead integrator efforts and products. We had a heated discussion in the Gooding Center on the [Washington Navy] Yard, but they weren’t going to budge. I could understand their position. They had spent decades cultivating an integrated set of systems; you simply could not break them apart the way we were talking about. It was then that I knew we had to bring the design in-house.

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            After the collapse of the Industry Day in May 2031, Captain Walker’s Ship Design Manager, Austin Corleone, spoke with Captain Walker outside the Gooding Center:

I decided to go for it. “Do you have a few minutes, Captain?”

“Sure, why not? I don’t really want to go back in there at the moment.”

“Ever since we finalized the Industry Day proposal, I’ve been thinking about different ways to bring the ideas into a ship.”

“Shoot.”

“I think we can design a simple ship in-house.”

“Come again?”

“Bear with me. It doesn’t have to be complex. We can design the hull and space allocations for all the major systems: radars, combat systems, weapons, etc. We work with other program offices to deliver those subsystems to the strict interfaces that we provide. Remember in 2002 when Amazon forced their internal programs to communicate only through certain interfaces or be fired? We don’t need to design the entire ship, just require programs to provide models to fit into the spaces and interfaces we give them. We make the mechanical and electrical systems very simple and easy to replace—no more rats’ nests of cables everywhere. In that way, we can use the digital models to see how all the parts fit together into a coherent whole. Software standards in industry have moved to the extreme in terms of modularity with service mesh architectures, and I see no reason why we can’t do the same with ship designs.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely. I’ve got a few friends who think along the same lines in other program offices that think it would be feasible. What do you think?”

“Can you get your friends together at our office tomorrow to map out what this might look like? I’m curious.”

“I’ll get it set up.”

            The Yukon program office exploited the fast, inexpensive, restrained, and elegant criteria to the letter in designing the ships. The use of model-based engineering techniques stemming from the Digital Engineering Strategy combined with a confederation of program offices allowed the Yukon program to design a ship in record time. They approached allowed individual program offices to be the experts in their area, freeing the Yukon team to design an overmatch of hull, mechanical, and electrical services for the programs to use. The result was a simple, elegant ship that was easy to build, upgrade, repair, and operate.

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            The Yukon program embraced its new role as a lead systems integrator. Once the hull design and its associated services had been finalized, they contracted to start hull construction, without any of the major subsystems ready. Captain Walker made the key decision to revert to a historical norm: outfitting at the pier. The Navy had gotten away from it as ship designs increased in complexity, but it briefly resurfaced with the Zumwalt-class, though more by accident than planning. Designing the ship for ease of access allowed the pier-side outfitting to be conducted rapidly by both sailors and contractor teams. Ships were commissioned at an unheard of rate with the latest gear that the confederation of program offices could deliver.

            As the ships deployed, the various program offices continued to support the ships by providing for over-the-air delivery of software to give the ships the maximum capability possible against the adversaries. The independence of hardware and software allowed designers to consider sensors in fundamentally new ways, and the surface fleet saw radically new capabilities from the same hardware as a result. The independent, digitally-engineered design allowed for rapid upgrades to the ships while deployed, in some cases with new hardware even being delivered via small drones in the South China Sea. The seamless integration that digital engineering and DevSecOps created allowed the programs supporting Yukons to achieve update and repair speeds that were orders of magnitude faster than the Navy had ever thought possible. As a result of these design decisions, the ships performed remarkably well in combat, earning rave reviews from the sailors operating them to the adversaries fighting against them.

Lieutenant Commander Ryan Hilger is a Navy Engineering Duty Officer stationed in Washington D.C. He has served onboard USS Maine (SSBN 741), as Chief Engineer of USS Springfield (SSN 761), and ashore at the CNO Strategic Studies Group XXXIII and OPNAV N97. He holds a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. His views are his own and do not represent the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Navy.

Featured Image: “Dreadnought 2050” by Rob McPherson (via Artstation)