Fiction Topic Week

By Mike Barretta

            First Lieutenant Gabrielle Cruz (USMC) is an unexceptional student. Unexceptional, however, is contextual. She is fluent in two languages, graduated with honors from LSU, earned a degree in petroleum engineering, and volunteered for military service during wartime. She is unexceptional because as I look around the squadron’s ready room much the same could be said about every other flight student.

            During the brief, she listened attentively and asked the same questions that I’ve fielded from previous students. In turn, she correctly answers my questions. It’s a good start to the flight. She is an attractive woman. Dark-skinned. Dark-haired. Closer in age to my daughter than she is to me. Usually the briefing space smells like fear-tinged sweat and dry erase markers, but with female students, it smells of soap and shampoo. It is a distinctly different military than the one I joined fifteen years ago.

Once, while I was with my wife, I saw her in the Cordova Mall enjoying a brief respite from training. As we passed, she said hello. With her hair down, made-up face, and civilian clothes, I didn’t recognize her. The Marines do a remarkable job of standardizing their officers. They will make you a man even if you are a woman, and the process was only half-finished with First Lieutenant Cruz. An aura of femininity stubbornly clung to her.  

I would have hoped that an attractive young woman approaching me in the mall would arouse some reaction from my wife.

“One of your students?” asked my wife

“Yes,” I replied.

“She’s pretty,” said my wife.

“I hadn’t noticed.” I said.

“You’re an idiot,” said my wife.

 “I’m not lying”

“Yes, you are.”

I was lying. There in the mall, I couldn’t help but notice her on her terms. She is sleek and menacing and confident. A backwards glance over her shoulder would stop a younger man’s heart mid-beat or make an older man, such as myself, tighten his stomach just a bit.

“Let it out,” says my wife.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re impossible.”

 

---

 

Seven hundred feet above Spencer field, she is neither sleek nor menacing, but just as fatal to me. Underneath a white helmet, visor down, she looks like a ferocious pixie bobble-head. All I can see of her face is a light dusting of freckles on her cheeks and a glistening bead of sweat hanging from the tip of her nose.

She is my On-wing, which means that I am responsible for teaching her the basics of helicopter flight. This is her last flight with me before her performance and, by insinuation, my own, will be evaluated by another instructor before she can solo the aircraft. For the past two weeks, I have taught her the fundamental attributes of a competent pilot: Situational awareness, knowing what is going on around the aircraft, and basic airmanship, the ability to make the aircraft perform as desired. She flies well, but not perfect. Perfection is the province of God and by definition unattainable. The best any pilot can do is to exist in a constant state of correction.

The flight is nearly over and I can tell from her relaxed posture that she knows she has passed. As far as she is concerned, all she needs to do is fly straight-and-level back to Whiting field. I almost feel bad about what I am going to do. In about fifteen seconds, the time it takes to hit the ground from 700 feet, we are both going to find out how good of an instructor I am.

She squeezes the radio trigger to announce her intention to depart Spencer and return to Whiting Field.

“Spencer, Eightball one eight eight…..”

            Before she gets the chance to finish the radio call, at the maximum point of distraction, when she must talk, fly, and think, at the same time, I roll the engine to idle to simulate a failure. The engine fades to a dull pointless drone. Gauges droop to their resting state. Rotor speed decays.

“Simulated,” I say.  

The worst possible outcome is that she exceeds my ability to correct her and we hit the ground with sufficient vertical velocity to bend metal and shatter bone. It is the wrong time and place for doubt. We fall out of the sky at over two thousand feet per minute and her initial response is to maintain the correct attitude. In aviation, attitude refers to the orientation of the aircraft to the ground. In life, attitude refers to the orientation of the person to the problem. At this moment, she needs both. She lowers the collective to maintain rotor speed and pushes the nose over to maintain airspeed. The cyclic slams against my right leg, and the aircraft rolls to a 45 degree angle of bank. It isn’t enough to reach the field, so she increases the roll to 60 degrees, the limits of the aircraft. From my vantage point, it is as if Spencer field is rotating around us. Dusty, mid-summer grass fills the windscreen as we fall. First Lieutenant Cruz is in a furious state of constant correction. She is observing her environment, making prioritized value decisions, and acting upon them as if her life depended upon it. It does. Over the intercom she repeats, “Attitude, N, R, Ball,” the mantra that describes the path her eyes take as she scans the instruments and outside world.

At 100 feet, I have an important decision to make. Should I let her continue and commit to the outcome, or take the controls?  Much beyond this point, the likelihood of me salvaging a bad maneuver diminishes towards zero. She is flying the aircraft and I am watching her flying the aircraft. By definition, my reaction is behind hers. My only advantage is experience.

            At 75 feet, she flares the aircraft, pulling the nose up, pitching to the sky. The ground blossoms beneath us. Airspeed bleeds towards zero and rotor speed builds under the influence of inflowing air. The aircraft drops and my hands rest lightly on the controls. At 5 feet, she pulls sharply on the collective to reverse the flow of air and cushion the landing. Rotor speed droops to 85 percent, the bare minimum to sustain flight. She adjusts the pedals to align the aircraft with the direction of travel and levels out. All at once, we have run out of altitude, airspeed, and options exactly as it is supposed to happen. The aircraft touches down with a slight bump and slides across the grass.

I look over at her and she is grinning from ear-to-ear. I know exactly how she feels because fifteen years previously some forgotten flight instructor taught me the same maneuver. She knows she has done well and I want to share the moment with as much elation as is boiling inside her. Instead, I say, “Good job, but……..” and I launch into a critical review of her performance.

 

---

 

Usually an On-wing and I will fly once or twice more before they get their wings, but I never flew with her again. About six months after we last flew, she knocked on my office door. Her face is a little leaner, her posture more square, some would say that there is a bit less of her and a little bit more Marine.

“Mr. Barretta, I’m getting winged this Friday.”

“Congratulations.”  In the back of mind, there was never really any doubt.

“What did you select?”

“Cobras, west coast, my first choice.”

“Cobras, that’s awesome.” All the Marines want Cobras. Bell helicopter, the manufacturer, says they made the Cobra beautiful because it is the last thing the bad guys will ever see. When she flies her Cobra over moonlit desert or triple-canopy jungle, she will be a predator. Cobras don’t rescue anybody.

“Anyway, the soft patch is this Thursday and my parents and grandparents are flying in. I was hoping you would be able to patch me.”

“I would be happy too,” I say.

The soft patch is an informal ceremony the night before the official winging. Parents and friends gather and a student is called up with his or her instructor. The velcro leather name tag the student wore while in training, emblazoned with service insignia, is ripped off and a new leather name tag with Naval Aviator wings is “tacked-on,” with a punch. Funny or fast stories about the students are told and the instructor is given a bottle of their favorite liquor.

“Thank you, sir.”  What do you like?”

“I am a little short of Grey Goose.”  She smiles. During a lighter moment she had told me how she got sick on Grey Goose at a party.

 

---

 

At the soft patch ceremony, I find her sitting at a table with her parents and grandparents. Her father is prior Army enlisted as was her grandfather. Her grandfather was at Hickam Army Air Force Base on December 7^th 1941. I shake both their hands. I give her mother a small framed poem called: The Fighter Pilot’s Prayer. It reads:  Dear Lord, Give me the eyes of an Eagle, the Heart of Lion, and the Courage of a U.S. Marine Corps Helicopter Pilot. It’s a small thing and I do it for all my soft-patchees.

Her mother smiles and thanks me and I tell them what they already know:  That their daughter did well. I excuse myself to grab a reinforcing beer. My stories are famous for being funny, but I’ve never really gotten comfortable telling them in front of 80 or 90 people. The beer helps. When it is our turn, we meet each other at the front of the room. She is nervous and excited.

 She hands me a bottle of Grey Goose and I set it aside. I tell a funny story. It is entertaining, embarrassing, and completely fictitious. I don’t owe anything to reality. She can’t do anything, but smile and take it like a Marine. Students attempting to defend themselves are booed down by the cadre of instructors lured in by free beer. The laughter ends and I find her new leather patch. Above her name are Naval Aviator wings embossed in gold.

When soft-patching female students, most male instructors fumble around like they were trying to pin a corsage to the strapless gown of their prom date. I’ve learned that the direct approach is the best. I grab the corner of the worn leather patch over her left breast and tear it off. It makes a ripping sound as it pulls from her flight suit. I put it in my pocket. I keep the patches of every student that I soft patch. I smooth the new patch on and then I haul back and punch her right in the patch. Anything else would be disrespectful, a signal that she was other than what she was, a colleague, and Marine Corp Naval Aviator.

When I was winged, metal wings with two pins were placed on the uniform and then punched on without the little frogs to cover up the points. The idea was to draw blood and “tack-on” the wings so they would never fall off. The more blood the better. Over time the tradition broke under more political sensibilities, but the spirit remains.

She winces. I check her parents and they are beaming with pride and seem not to have noticed that what I had just done to their daughter could in some circumstances be considered an assault. They are a military family and they understand what just happened and why it had to be that way. I’m a bit relieved.

            At the end, the ceremony devolves into small gatherings and her father works his way through the  crowd towards me and I wonder if maybe he has changed his mind about the whole punching his daughter thing.

“Thank you for taking care of my daughter,” he says.

“She took care of herself,” I say.

“We know. We know,” he says, and he fades back to his family.

 

---

 

“Did you hear?”

“About what?” I ask.

“West coast Cobra crash.”

“No, who was it?”

“Cruz. You remember her?”

“Yea, she okay?

“No, her and the FRS instructor were killed.”  The FRS is the Fleet Replacement Squadron that transitions newly winged aviators to their fleet aircraft.

“How?”

“Bird strike took out the tail rotor on a goggle flight.”  Contrary to popular belief, birds do fly at night and with the reduced field of vision that comes with flying on night vision goggles there was no realistic chance of avoiding a collision.

“Thanks for telling me.”

“I thought you would want to know.”

Really, I could have gone the rest of my life not knowing, but in the long run there is no way to not know. Mishaps are ruthlessly examined and disseminated. Talking about the dead is a requirement of the job. Sooner or later, I would have found out.

 

---

 

At home, I open the bottle of Grey Goose hiding in the back of the freezer. The vodka has a sluggish oily look to it. I retreat to my study and the quiet of the house intensifies. I usually stay up late to sit and think when the kids have finally fallen to sleep. I sit in my chair and sip the freezing cold vodka and it is good. Ghosts recline in the chair opposite me. They are young and beautiful with pale eyes. John Brown killed in a T-34 Crash, Dave Pidgeon killed in an A-4, the guy I can only remember as Jasper, the two killed when their gyros failed on a dark night, many others, about twenty five in all, including a newly-promoted Captain Gabrielle Cruz. I wonder what bizarre combination of skill, luck, and grace conspired to let me survive a career that took so many away. Some lie buried beneath white crosses and manicured lawns, some in shaded family plots, some lost forever to the sea.

Some sit across from me.

I know exactly what went on in her cockpit. First, there is the sudden unexplained thump, a high frequency vibration in the pedals, and then the nose breaks free, spinning rapidly to the right. She pushes full left pedal to stop the yaw and it is useless. Her heart keeps rapid time and she is flushed with adrenaline heat. Maybe she does everything right. Maybe she doesn’t. Near the final moment, she realizes that whatever she is doing is not enough and she hopes that she is merely a witness to the experience rather than a participant. She falls into the dark, illuminated by urgent lights, and then it is over as if she never was.

“Who are you talking too?” asks my daughter.

“No one.” The ghosts shift away from reality. I look over at the doorway and she is standing there, young, long-limbed, and present. She looks like her mother when we first met. “I’m okay, just thinking.”

“You’re weird. Can you help me with algebra?”

“Can I help you tomorrow?”

“Yea, I guess. When am I ever going to use it?”

“All the time.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am.” 

“Well, maybe I’ll join the Navy and fly helicopters like you.”

“Maybe you will,” I say.

She enters the study and bends over to kiss me on the cheek. Her hair caresses the sides of my face like a ghost’s touch and I can smell the shampoo and it reminds me of someone I flew with once. “Goodnight,” she says as she leaves

Please God, I hope not, I add in silence. There is only so much luck and skill and grace in the world to go around and I have used far more than I had any right to and someone had to be shorted.

Maybe someone was.

With an overly generous measure of Grey Goose warming me, I know it to be true. As naval aviators, all of us will fly, some of us will fight, and few of us will die, and it seems that there is nothing more of it. I finish the Grey Goose. If I turn my head just so, I can see a ghost sitting at the edge of vision. I think ghosts are mirrors, reflecting only what is in front of them. This one is the pale color of grief. I turn my head a bit more and the ghost is gone.

Mike Barretta is a retired naval aviator who works for a major defense contractor. He holds a Masters degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in Strategic Planning and International Negotiations and a Masters degree in English (creative writing) from the University of West Florida. His stories have appeared in Apex, Redstone,  New Scientist, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and various anthologies including the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, War Stories, and The Year’s Best Military Sci-fi and Space Opera.

Featured Image: AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter by David Roterberg

Fiction Topic Week

By Walker D. Mills

            The admiral stood on the bridge of the first of Type 003 aircraft carrier, the Sichuan. She was the pride of the People’s Liberation Army Navy fleet, advertised as a domestic design, her plans were largely based on the Gerald R. Ford Class schematics and the aircraft that she tended were remarkably similar to the F-35. Beijing had staged an attack on some Chinese tourists on the islands and publicly clamored for a United Nations response to end the violence. Conveniently, the PLAN amphibious group had been exercising in the nearby Scarborough Shoal and was tasked by Beijing with ‘evacuating all Chinese nationals.’ Of course they would need to use the airport for this. And their evacuation aircraft would need security in the form of ground troops. He knew the Philippines wouldn’t resist. His intelligence officers said the Americans had sent one of their new Marine battalions but he wasn’t worried. He had missed the fleet action in the in the Great Pacific War. But on the way home from Sri Lanka his ship had caught the Marine Ospreys over the open ocean sortieing from Okinawa. He had given the order not to stop for survivors.

            Major Charles Elrod climbed out of the UTV II, an electric version of the Polaris MRZR with a mission module on the back. In this case a launcher for the new anti-ship missile. The company had about two-dozen launchers and laser batteries that could be fired from the UTVs or set up to fire dismounted.  They had left their heavier missiles, mounted on JLTVs behind. He looked out to sea – Good weather. Perfect for a landing. They’re more afraid of a typhoon than they are of us.  This matched the Defense Battalion’s S-2 estimate. He looked down at his tablet – all of his launchers glowed green. A good sign, they haven’t been able to find and disrupt our network yet. Regardless, his wiremen had already laid the cables that connected launchers to the G/ATOR radars in case the network failed. The missiles could be fired at any grid in a 200km range and search for their own targets with a combination of LIDAR and radar, but it helped if someone found the targets first. He could even see the minefield the Naval Detachment had laid. I’m not sure if you can call them mines if they can lay themselves and hunt for their own targets.

            He was anxious, this would be the first time one of the new Marine Defense Battalions saw combat. It would be the first time U.S. forces would fight the Chinese after the disaster that was the Great Pacific War in 2025. Everyone thought the new Chinese Islands would be the flashpoint – but it was the subsea cables. America’s military had been humiliated by the Chinese and ceded any pretense of control over the South China Sea in the Manila Accords. The Navy bore most of the fallout – and saw the largest culling of their senior officer corps since World War II. Hopefully it was enough. Those guys were still wide-eyed during the Congressional inquiries. The Marine Corps had largely sat on the sidelines after giving tactical control of its fighter aircraft to the sister service. All of 3^rd Marine Division just sitting there waiting. What a waste. Until the Marines made a hasty, 11^th hour heliborne assault from Okinawa. They retired their colors. Should have given the Colonel a posthumous court martial instead of a Medal of Honor. The Corps’ new Expeditionary Advanced Base Doctrine was air-centric, problematic for a force that built itself around squads and platoons of riflemen. They had all but abrogated their Title 10 mission to prepare for the “seizure or defense of advanced naval bases,” consistently prioritizing the small wars of the Middle East over the Pacific. We got lots of training on IEDs but none on cyber or EW.

The loss… not that anyone called it that…  had spurred a sweeping reorganization in the service. After scrapping the failed Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept they went back to their roots and reorganized eight infantry battalions into Marine Defense Battalions, an old concept from the first half of the 20^th Century. The goal of the Defense Battalion was to free up the fleet for action elsewhere – if it had to dedicate its resources to protecting bases it had less to dedicate to fleet action. Made up of Air, Sea and Land Defense Companies with Sensor & Network Company, they were a marriage of the best missile technology available, a remote and autonomous sensing capability, and interoperability with Naval and Air Force sensing and strike capability shepherded by a distributed anti-access, area denial doctrine. Similar concepts like ‘warbot companies’ had been discussed for years never adopted. After the war the generals picked a small group of junior officers and tasked them with reforming the Corps. Eschewing the tyranny of Quantico they worked out of an office in San Francisco. They drew on long forgotten letters by Pete Ellis about the defense of advanced bases and base denial and they visited engineering labs in Silicon Valley and Mountain View before sending fresh requirements to Raytheon and Boeing for a new generation of anti-air and anti-ship missiles. I’m still surprised those companies survived telling Congress that they couldn’t meet the missile orders. I guess they figured it out. 

            The new weapons had come just in time. Elrod’s men had been practicing in California with the old Stinger I missiles until a month ago when the new Stinger II missiles arrived. A transfer from the Marine Corps’ Low Altitude Air Defense community, Major Elrod had been skeptical of the new weapons. Man portable, but not man launched? Lasers? But the drills on San Clemente Island had him convinced. He needed half as many men as his old LAAD unit, and after setting up the launchers and networking them with the radars up he didn’t need any. They could track and fire on the Chinese autonomously. He cringed when he thought about the debates over autonomous weapons. We were debating the morality while our enemies were testing these weapons in Syria and Sri Lanka. We gave them a ten-year head start.

            His tablet pinged. One of the MUX drones had found a Chinese Coast Guard cutter. Probably a picket for the amphibs. Worth sinking? The MUX thought so. Elrod watched his tablet as the MUX sent orders to three of the new Fast Combat Vessels hiding out in a cove. It was able to use the new light-based LOS communication suite to transmit nearly instantaneously, and it was un-jammable. The egg-heads said it worked just like fiber optic cable – but without the cable. They sortied and quickly and raced to their separate launch points at over 90 knots. The boats were a hybrid American/Swedish design. The MUX had picked three different points for them to fire their missiles that were just beyond the radar range of the ship. The separate firing points would send the missiles in a way they would approach the Chinese ship from three different directions and overwhelm its close defense gun and leave the amphibs wondering where the missiles came from. Damn, those drones are smart. He looked up for a second before he realized all of the action would be well beyond the horizon. The most potent new weapon fielded by the Marines wasn’t organic to the Defense Battalion. It was the MUX drone flow by VMU-9 in support of the battalion. The MUX, without any weapons of its own, is the eyes and ears of the Defense Battalion. Sortieing hundreds of kilometers off the coast to identify and track targets for the battalion to prosecute with their own fires or fires from sister services.

            Elrod remembered when the Corps had reestablished up the small boat units that it used in Iraq. Oh how the Navy had fought to keep the Marines out of the boat business. The services had finally fought to a draw – it became a joint program with Sailors driving and Marines manning the guns. The boats, without the new missiles, had already proven themselves when the Marines deployed to help Indonesian security forces fight a resurgent Islamic State in South East Asia. Damn that was a nasty war, and still not over. But Elrod had watched that conflict from the sidelines – choosing to specialize in the larger anti-aircraft missiles over the smaller gun and directed energy air-defense platforms that the Corps deployed to counter the UAS threat. He was ready for his chance at combat after watching his buddies in the drone defense units deploy on back-to-back tours. The battalion’s focus was on destroying connectors – whether seaborne or airborne. Killing whatever has the soldiers on it. And the Navy focused on the capital vessels.

            The sun was beginning to set, and Elrod sat down and leaned against the UTV. His Chief Programmer, Chief Warrant Officer Two Alexa Abbas, a 22-year old MIT graduate, was still typing away, finishing the last inputs to the parameters for the missiles.  When she was done Major Elrod would set the system to be fully autonomous, otherwise the system would still need his permission to fire. She had volunteered for a direct accession into the Marines as a Warrant Officer under a new program that targeted people with critical skills, allowing them to move laterally into the force and skip some or all of the normal training pipeline. She was the senior programmer in the company, responsible for making sure all of the software worked as is was supposed to and that the Marines’ network was secure from the Chinese. The Great Pacific War had taught the Marines how vulnerable their networks were – on the first day only 10 percent of the F-35s in Japan were free from cyber intrusion. But many of the pilots decided to fly anyway. Most didn’t live to repeat that mistake. It was the civilian networks that suffered the worst. San Diego was without power for all 12 days of the war and the loss of cell phone service to military bases meant that their response to the crisis was in slow motion. All that talk about the ‘Ghost Fleet’ in Suisun Bay – there  was never time.

            The driver, Lance Corporal Alan Gomez, ran through his checks of the communications equipment again. He had been 14 when the last war started. He remembered getting out of school early and waiting for his mom to pick him up. It was late evening before she came because all of the traffic lights were out in LA. But mostly he remembered the riots that started the next day. He had enlisted with his parent’s permission at 17. He wanted to go into the infantry but he didn’t have the scores required for one of the new Assault Battalions. But he did qualify for the Defense Battalion. He was surprised to find out the training pipeline was 18 months long for the new infantry. He would attend training for driving, communications, and field medicine training before he would go to the six-month basic infantry skills course.

            It was around 4am when the island lit up. Major Elrod awoke with a start. Is this what it feels like to get bombed? But he quickly realized the ordnance was outgoing. He looked skyward, joining his driver and Chief Programmer. Hundreds of missiles streaked skyward, lighting up the dark night. There were more missiles firing from over the horizon. Must be from the Navy. He looked at his tablet. The MUX drones had identified the Chinese fleet earlier, but they waited until the Navy’s subsurface drones made sure they found all of the Chinese submarines before they fired. The Navy was still stinging from the losses they had suffered in the last war at the hands of cheap diesel electric submarines. They were just waiting for us. How did we not see? He watched the tablet, imagining the Chinese sailors react to the hundreds of missiles streaking toward them. Many would be shot down – first by other missiles and then by the close-in defense guns. More would be absorbed by the merchant and fishing vessels sailing with the fleet. But the Marine missiles carried countermeasures of their own. And they would fly together in formations, coordinating their flight paths to optimize their effects on target and confuse the Chinese defenses. Inevitably some would make it through, and then others would exploit the gaps in the fleet defenses to strike the ships at the center of the formation.

            The enemy ship indicators on the tablet started to disappear. Elrod could now see the dim glow over the horizon of the burning fleet. This is for the John C. Stennis and the John F. Kennedy. After two decades of fait accompli aggression the president outlined a new policy of preemption and escalation in a speech at Annapolis, new weapons alone could not effectively counter aggression. The Chinese fleet ostensibly sailing to evacuate Chinese citizens was the first victim. The president had decided that 15,000 Chinese soldiers weren’t needed to protect a few dozen tourists and he wouldn’t wait until after it was a clear act of aggression. So he sent in the Marines.

1stLt Walker D. Mills is a Marine Corps infantry officer. He is currently a student at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

Featured Image: “Ready for War” by FranzowaR.

Fiction Topic Week

By Duncan Kellogg

The soft blue glow of the sonar terminal washed over Lieutenant Ahmadi’s tired face. He rubbed his eyes, trying in vain to stave off the waves of fatigue washing over him as he entered his thirteenth hour on watch.

“How has it come to this?” Ahmadi asked himself.

Truthfully, it didn’t matter. No one knew who had fired first and, at this point, no one cared. The Iranian government claimed that it was the Saudi Navy, the Saudis claimed that it had been an Iranian patrol boat. However, as soon as the bow of the Saudi Badr-class corvette slipped beneath the waves of the Persian Gulf, discussion of which side did what and when they did it became irrelevant.

The Saudis had been quick to engage, firing a salvo of American-supplied cruise missiles into the Iranian naval facilities at Hushehr and Larak, decimating a major portion of the IRGC swarm boat fleet which was in port following a major exercise. Simultaneously, Saudi air assets quickly sunk a pair of Iranian patrol vessels that were forward deployed in the Red Sea. Iran responded to the attacks in kind, launching anti-ship missiles against Saudi surface assets and saturating the Saudi city of Dammam with low-grade unguided rockets. Since then, the Persian Gulf had devolved into a churn of maritime rocket fire, missile launches, and air strikes. It had only been two days since the first attacks, and already Ahmadi hoped for an end.

“Lieutenant,” Ahmadi’s commanding officer said from behind him, “any new contacts?”

Ahmadi regained his focus and snapped his eyes back to the screen. The captain was a strict and harsh man, any daydreaming on the job would get him relieved of duty.

“Negative, Captain.” He responded, “Nothing on the scopes, but the American Ticonderoga-class moving away from us and a few merchant vessels.”

“Any indication that the American detected us?” The Captain asked.

“No, sir. He remains on bearing 337 at 18 knots.”

“Likely headed to Bahrain to meet up with their comrades. Cowards.”

Lieutenant Ahmadi tried not to show his concern at his superior’s attitude. Regardless of the Captains opinions of them, the Americans had not yet fired a shot. The new U.S. President had run on a platform of disengaging from the Middle East and, as such, seemed far more interested in resuming regular trade practices in the region rather than fighting a hot war over the Persian Gulf. American naval assets had been consolidated in Bahrain after the strikes began and a public announcement was made by the U.S. Navy that no U.S. vessel would fire unless fired upon. Ahmadi had even heard a rumor through one of the intelligence officer’s back on shore that the American president was planning on announcing that they would cancel all arms shipments to Saudi Arabia and sanction both the Kingdom and Iran until they ceased hostilities. Granted, that was just a rumor.

“Hopefully the order will come soon,” the Captain said, returning to his post on the other side of the cramped Fateh-class submarine, “inshallah.”

Ahmadi cringed at the Captain’s attitude. He knew that the Captain’s family was from the town of Chogadak near one of the naval bases the Saudis had destroyed. Saudi rocket attacks had been imprecise at best, and a handful of Iranian civilians were killed by the strikes. The Captain’s family, according to the shoreside rumors, had been among them. Ahmadi knew the Captain to be a stoic man, but he had become increasingly agitated in the days since the attacks. 

The days, if one can call them that, since the sinking of the Saudi corvette had been grueling. Ahmadi had been called to his post at the Bandar Abbas Navy Base early on a Wednesday morning. By that evening, his submarine was already at sea with orders to quietly patrol the littoral areas off the coast of Iran and track, analyze, and categorize American and Saudi vessels as they rounded the Strait of Hormuz. The deployment of the Fateh had been rushed following the Saudi strikes on Hushehr, so the dockhands had only managed to pack enough supplies on board to last the submarine a week and a half. It likely wouldn’t matter though, Ahmadi thought, as the widely publicized five week submerged endurance of the new Fateh-class was simply propaganda from the IRGC. Ahmadi himself had never been submerged on the boat for more than two weeks, and even that was pushing the boat’s limits.

As he sat in silence, Ahmadi felt the faint vibration of the submarines diesel-electric engines increase. He watched his console readout as the Fateh ascended two meters and began crawling north along a series of rocky outcroppings, hugging the sandy seafloor. While the Captain was an aggressive man, he was not without caution. The Fateh had been slowly moving from point to point off the Iranian coast in order to remain undetected while it scanned American and Saudi vessels. To Ahmadi’s surprise, he had not yet seen any indication that the Americans had even the faintest idea that they were there. Just as this thought left his mind, Ahmadi saw a new contact appear on his passive sonar display.

            “Captain, new contact directly ahead.” Ahmadi called across the central control room of the submarine, “Loose transient, sounds like a submerged vessel.”

            “Finally,” The captain responded with a smirk, “engines, all stop.”

            Ahmadi verified that the sound signature of the new contact matched that of an American nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, likely one of the converted guided-missile variants that the Americans referred to as SSGNs.

            “It’s the Georgia,” The weapons operator sitting next to Ahmadi stated “I tracked it once before. Sounds exactly the same as it did then.”

            Ahmadi raised an eyebrow, hesitating to protect his jurisdiction in case the weapons officer was right. As he did so, a loud metallic ping reverberated around the Fateh’s interior.

            “Captain, active sonar ping from the submarine, likely American.”

            A second ping.

            “Scratch that,” Ahmadi said, “definitely American.”

            The weapons operator chuckled. The Yankees loved to toss their weight around.

            “Understood, Lieutenant.” The captain responded stoically from across the cramped control room and looked towards the weapons officer. “Ready the weapon.”

            The entire crew inhaled sharply and Ahmed’s head snapped up as silence cocooned the vessel. The Captain was referring to one of the only operational models of Iran’s new Hoot supercavitating torpedo. Rather than using propellers to drive the torpedo through the water, the Hoot used rocket engines to propel a warhead towards its target. Small valves in the nose of the torpedo created a small pocket of air for the weapon to travel through, greatly increasing its speed. The Hoot had been publicly tested a few years earlier, much to the chagrin of American intelligence analysts, but had been shrouded in secrecy ever since. In truth, the weapon was one of Iran’s most valuable assets should conflict erupt with the United States. The weapon was simply too fast for American countermeasures, and both sides knew it.

            “Sir?” The weapons officer said, his voice trembling in surprise and apprehension.

            “You heard me.”

            A brief moment of hesitation in the control room told the Captain all he needed to know. He cleared his throat and loudly addressed his crew.

            “Men, you are sailors of the Artesh Navy. Your job is to protect the Islamic Republic and you will do so.” The Captain looked towards the weapons officer. “Ready the weapon.”

            The weapons officer picked up a small headset which had been fastened to the bulkhead to his left. He spoke into it, instructing the sailors in the torpedo room to remove the rocket plugs and valve protectors for the Hoot torpedo. As he spoke into the headset, a third sonar ping echoed around the Fateh’s interior.

            “Captain,” Ahmadi said, “the American is likely signaling for us to leave the area. I suspect he is clearing a path for a surface vessel.”

“That is exactly what he is doing, Ahmadi.” The Captain responded, “Likely one of their aircraft carriers.”

“Should we comply, sir?” Ahmadi asked, hoping the Captain would see what Ahmadi was trying to say. “We do not want to provoke the Americans, sir. We are too valu-”

“Do not instruct me on how to command my vessel, Lieutenant.” The Captain cut Ahmadi off as he spoke, his dark brown eyes boring a hole into Ahmadi’s.

“Of course, sir.” Ahmadi said apologetically.
            Ahmadi turned back towards his console, hoping the entire situation would deescalate and the captain would see reason. It was clear to Ahmadi that the American submarine knew exactly where the Fateh was and it was suggesting that Iranian vacate the area. Ahmadi didn’t want to know what would happen if the American felt threatened. The Captain, however, appeared more interested in defying the Americans than maintaining their vessel’s survivability should fighting break out.

“The weapon is ready, sir.” The weapons officer reported.

“Good.” The Captain responded, “We may have to use it soon.”

Ahmadi held his tongue. He felt the need to object, as the American had not proven himself to be a threat, but he knew he would be berated for insolence. A fourth ping reverberated throughout the vessel. As it did so, Ahmadi felt the tension on board the Fateh increase again. The submarine’s executive officer spoke up.

“Sir,” the XO said, “it would perhaps be wise to move to a more favorable location, the Americans have not yet crossed into our waters.”

After a few seconds of tense silence, the Captain responded.

“You are correct, move us to grid reference 34 by 13.” The Captain pointed to a chart on the bulkhead of the submarine and the submarine’s helmsman replied, turning the ship towards his intended destination.

Ahmadi caught a flash of motion on his passive sonar readout, a new contact had just arrived within the submarines sensor range. It was a massive surface vessel, escorted by two smaller vessels. Ahmadi had seen this moment coming, but he had hoped that the Fateh would have complied with the American submarine’s suggestion before his friends arrived.

“Captain,” Ahmadi called out apprehensively, “we have a new contact. American surface group bearing 210, likely an aircraft carrier and escorts.”

The Captain acknowledged Ahmadi and turned towards the navigator. He held a up chart and pointed to a small rocky shoal just north of their current position.

“You are to make your speed eleven knots and traverse toward this location.” The Captain instructed, “Upon arrival, turn and face the American invaders bearing 210.”

The XO winced at the Captain referring to the Americans as invaders.

“Sir,” the XO said calmly, “is your intent to set a trap for the Americans? Even if it is not, they will see it as such.”

“How the American’s interpret our action is their business,” the Captain said sharply, “we will act as gatekeepers, remaining within Iranian claimed waters and allowing their fleet to pass into the Persian Gulf on our terms.”

“Your tactics are wise, Captain,” the XO responded, “though I fear the American submarine will see our loitering as a threat.”

The Captain gave a small grunt of understanding, though he did not issue further orders.

Ahmadi lost contact with the Americans as the Fateh turned, the baffles of the diesel electric obscuring any clear sensor image. He watched the Captain’s reflection in his sonar panel as he paced around the control room.

For the next twenty minutes, the Fateh remained on steady course toward its destination. Hardly a word was said as the crew aimed to avoid the ire of an increasingly agitated Captain. Ahmadi could hear the Captain mumbling Qur’an verses under his breath. As they approached their next patrol point, the navigator called out.

“Navigation point reached, sir” he said, “coming about.”

The submarine turned back towards the Americans and Ahmadi regained contact with the American submarine.”

“The Americans followed in suit, sir.” Ahmadi reported, “They are now 2,000 meters off the port bow. Currently tracking four vessels, one submerged, three surface. The surface contacts appear to match the signatures of a Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier and two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.”

“Understood.” the Captain responded, “engage active sonar towards the Americans.”

Ahmadi begrudgingly complied, firing loud acoustic pings toward the American submarine. The Americans responded in kind, pounding the Fateh with active sonar. As they did so, the American submarine adjusted course, coming about to directly face the Fateh and holding still 1500 meters off the bow. Ahmadi reported this development to the Captain.

“Maintain position, disengage active sonar.” The Captain ordered, “The American knows we are here. We will now let them pass into the Gulf.”

The American waited momentarily, and then advanced a quarter mile. It again engaged active sonar in a screening operation for the carrier and a clear request for the Iranian to leave the area.

“Sir,” the XO said, “this could be seen as threatening. The American carrier is approaching.”

“We are in Iranian waters.” The Captain responded coldly.

The Americans continued their advance, making their way toward the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

“How far is the carrier?” The Captain asked Ahmadi.

“Three kilometers, Captain.” Ahmadi responded, “It remains behind the submerged contact.”

The American submarine inched closer, maintaining its sonar harassment of the Fateh.

“Sir-” the XO tried to speak but the Captain quickly cut him off.

“Quiet, Mohammed.”

Ahmadi’s mouth dropped open as he watched his sensor display.

“Sir, the American is opening his torpedo tube doors.” He told the Captain.

“We will do the same. We are in Iranian waters, we will not move.”

The XO tried again to interject, “Sir, we must vacate. We are not at war with the America-”
            “You are relieved, Mohammed.” The Captain said coldly.

As he spoke, the Fateh opened its torpedo tubes.

“Plot a targeting solution for the Hoot,” the Captain instructed, “target the carrier.”
            The weapons officer complied, quickly entering the correct settings into the supercavitating torpedo.

“Solution plotted.” He reported.

Ahmadi reported that the American submarine was moving closer again, increasing its sonar harassment. As the Fateh failed to vacate, Ahmadi feared what came next.

“Sir! The American has released a torpedo!”

“FIRE THE HOOT!” The Captain yelled, slamming his hand onto the table in front of him.

The submarine was soon washed with the sound of rocket engines as the supercavitating torpedo rocketed out of its tube and toward the American carrier. Ahmadi held his head in his hands, knowing what came next.

Duncan Kellogg is a developing naval analyst studying nuclear defense posture and maritime security at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Duncan has been writing about the intersection of deterrence theory and maritime security since 2015. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his fish Maverick.

Featured Image: “Submarine” by INS Kim