Tag Archives: Future War Fiction Contest

Operation ALTRUISTIC CENTAUR

The following is an entry for the CIMSEC & Atlantic Council Fiction Contest on Autonomy and Future War. Winners will be announced 7 November.

By Chris O’Connor

[Begin VRcast]

[1022 EDT, Location of VRcast unavailable]

[Bthere functionality unavailable]

                The VRcast opens to a view flying low over debris-strewn blue-green water, illuminated by late day sun. The view plans upwards to show a flat beach, punctuated by a single collapsed dock surrounded by small fishing boats. The horizon behind it is broken with the outlines of trees and the low buildings of a fishing village, all of which show earthquake damage. Some are completely destroyed. Smoke rises in several areas around the buildings, creating a haze over the island. The view zooms into a man standing on the rubble of a fallen wall. He is wearing a camera vest, cargo pants, and hiking boots. He has a bandage on the right side of his head.

                As he speaks in an educated British accent, he makes it a point to climb through the rubble, turning towards the camera on occasion to make a point.

                “Good evening from the South China Sea. I’m Wallis Barnes with an exclusive report. I apologize in advance for the latency of this recording… and the lack of Bthere functionality. So there will be no walking around inside this VRcast. This is a recording with no streaming capability, unlike most of our broadcasts. More on that later.”

                “It has been a momentous ten hours here, and most of the outside world has not heard anything of it, apart from official releases from the People’s Republic of China, the United States, and the Red Cross. At 9:24 local time, a shallow earthquake, measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale, rocked this small island and its approximately three thousand inhabitants. The death toll is over two hundred and rising, as this island is not supposed to have any seismic activity nearby- the buildings are not built to withstand the shaking.

                “I travelled here to talk to the inhabitants about how their lives have been changed by the recent fishing wars and the collapse of the nearby fisheries. As we all know there has been heated talk on the international scene for decades about this and other islands, inhabited by people of one nation but claimed by several others, including China.”

“I was indoors when the quake struck, and was lucky to make it out alive. Sadly, my VRshades did not. Fortunately for this report, my camBot did.”

                The VRcast point of view shifts to a shaky first person perspective of someone running down a dark hallway towards the light of an open door, as debris falls from above. Screaming can be heard coming from the left and the right. Just as it gets to the aperture of the door, a dark abject falls from the right, and the view goes dark.

                The point of view switches to a shot a hundred feet over the beach, panning across the destruction. Villagers are picking through the rubble, assisted by day-glow orange tracked robots with manipulator arms, as small legged ground robots act as stretcher carriers. Overhead, quadcopter drones are passing through the rubble, occasionally pausing at buildings to tag them with different color paint pellets. Off in the distance, at a low point in the island by the water, cargo tiltfan drones rise quickly from the surface and speed off to points unknown. Others return to that area and descend out of sight briefly, before rising to follow their peers.

                “As you can see, the rescue and relief operation is underway, it is a lean one- most of the Red Cross, USAID, and US Military presence is in drone form,” the reporter continues as a voiceover.  “It seems unusual out of context; normally efforts such as these would involve hundreds of people, but politics have gotten in the way. The local government has requested aid, but most of the world did not know about the cry for help because they didn’t hear it.

                “Ten minutes after the quake, all communications to the outside world were shut off or became completely unreliable. This included the high altitude internet router drones, communications satellites, and even global positioning systems. That is why this report does not have a geo-tag. The spoofed GPS signals make the systems here think we are in southern Australia. None of the surface radio and cell towers here work. Not only were many of the means to reach the outside world physically destroyed by the earthquake, but there was also a coordinated network attack that shut everything else down. The only communications that surviving islanders received were from the People’s Republic of China, saying that they were coming to their rescue and that Chinese efforts will bring enduring prosperity to the island.”

                The VRcast shows a muted recording of a world famous Chinese actor standing on the island’s beach, smiling as he talks and gestures towards the blue line of the western horizon, from which a massive Red waving flag is stretching across the sky, with a centered yellow large yellow star shooting four streams of smaller stars outward. The tops of dozens of ships can be seen coming over the horizon, as waves of Y-8 and Y-20 cargo planes fly towards and overhead the viewer.

                “It was a slickly produced broadcast, apparently created just for a situation such as this, most probably the aftermath of one of the typhoons that regularly pass through this region. We only found out later that the Chinese declared a maritime exclusion zone around this island and an Air Defense Identification Zone above it. This was to ‘deconflict aid efforts’ and was ‘for the safety of all surface vessels and aircraft’ in the area. Twenty-one minutes later after that broadcast started, the PLAAF made an appearance, with a special delivery.”

                The view changes to a surface perspective of a pair of sleek fighters, flying at high speed seven hundred feet over the surface. A caption overlay keeps the text [Chengdu J-21 (PLAAF)] next to the aircraft as they pass the island with an earsplitting roar. Two long pods separate from each. Drag chutes open, slowing the pods down. A scores of small drones of mixed types fan out from the pods as they fall, dropping close to the surface before racing off to different points over the island. Some of the VTOL variants take position on the ground, while the fixed wing ones start orbits. The pods land upright on the ground and open up like a flower, becoming base stations for the swarm UAS.

                “This was not a welcome development for the locals here, who would have little means to resist a swarm, even if they were not fighting for their lives against Mother Nature.  Chinese personnel were expected next, along with other unmanned systems, but something was keeping them away, a small comfort to the people here who do not identify themselves as part of the Middle Kingdom. They know that once the Chinese arrive, they will never leave- a scenario repeated a number of times in the past. Luckily for them, forces unseen seem to be testing the exclusion zone, keeping the PLAN and PLAAF busy. ”

                A compellation of short videos start. One is of smoke trials reaching something unseen high in the sky, leading to a puff of dark smoke. The next is of flashes in high in the sky. The third depicts several columns of smoke merging into one cloud from sources burning below the seaborne horizon. The final is of a massive fireball thousands of feet up from which flaming objects tumble. They leave streaks of black smoke they falls into the water not too far from the shoreline.

                “It is a reasonable expectation that rescue personnel would arrive via air first, either Chinese occupiers under the guise of helping the people here, altruistic forces from other nations, or unaffiliated aid organizations. After all, the island is a few hundred miles from major airports. But as it turned out, the first human rescuers came by sea.”

                The view changes to two hundred feet in the air, facing out to sea. Through the haze and smoke a grey catamaran vessel is seen bow on to the camera. It is travelling at high speed, evidenced by a boiling white wake behind it. On the center of its flight deck is a pair of large angled missile launchers on wheels. It is accompanied by two small angular vessels, keeping station to each side as escorts. The center vessel has the text [USS Bremerton (T-EPF-14)] over it, while the smaller ones are labeled [Fiberclad’ medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle]. A large panel can be seen on the side of the EPF flashing QR codes to the USVs; the black and white shapes are a gray blur, transmitting faster than the human eye can register.

                “This view from the camBot shows the approach of a United States Navy transport vessel with robotic escorts. I was told later what these vessels are, and added their identification to the VRcast. Some of Chinese drones attempted to damage or distract it as it approached the island, but they were ill-equipped to deal with the limited defenses of the American force. This swarm was probably not intended to keep shipping away from the island, but it gave it a try.”

                Over a dozen of the fixed wing drones, flying in an ever-changing swarm formation, pass the camera’s perspective and dive towards the oncoming ship. Tracers reach out from the trapezoidal USVs and strike some, while others burst into flames as they are hit by unseen laser beams. A few lose control and tumble into the water. In less than a minute, they have all been shot down.

                “My camBot kept its distance. To identify it as a journalism asset, it is painted in bright colors so that it is not mistaken for security or military piece of hardware. I imagine that is why it was spared. It was able to capture the transport ship deploying amphibious vehicles, only about a half mile from shore.”

                The video elapses a few minutes. The EPF, now much closer, appears to decelerate slightly, and a ramp extends from a lower deck over the stern of the vessel.  Spaced thirty seconds apart, ten small wheeled vehicles splash into the water, only to partially resurface in the wake, with sensor blisters clearly visible above the water.  The VRstream labels them as [Leatherback scout vehicles]. They fan out as they head towards the shore, leaving deceptively small wakes. They are followed by an eleventh and twelfth vehicle (captioned as [Squad Control Vehicles]) that are larger than the others, and beeline straight into the shore.

                The perspective changes to a view facing the water from the top of one of the destroyed buildings. In the foreground, a small crowd of locals can be seen hiding behind a partially collapsed wall. Two of the scout vehicles, each no larger than an ATV, emerge from the water riding on six low wheels. Their shell-like domes folding open to extend the sensor blister and employ a weapons mount. A small UAS with counter rotating propellers jumps into the air from the rear of each vehicle and climbs away from view.  As the Leatherbacks move toward the camera, sweeping the area, one of the two larger vehicles drive up on the beach, the size of a small SUV. There is a pause before a hatch opens on top of the SCV and the top half of a human emerges, wearing a dark combat suit with a breather mask and a bug like set of goggles.

                An audio broadcast in several local languages and English is heard coming from the SCV. “We are Americans, here to help the local government take care of their people.” The figure waves his gloved right hand, and then uses it to pull the mask off of his face, he keeps the top half of his face obscured behind the goggles. He smiles and continues to wave as the audio rebroadcasts. The SCV continues up the beach as the Leatherbacks advance towards the camera.

                “This is when we first encountered Captain Ellis of the United States Marine Corps.” The voiceover continues, “He is the local commander of the US military forces, which encompass only two humans and their accompaniment of ground and air robots. The transport that delivered the Marines had to depart the area, for it was in danger of being sunk by ballistic missiles as long if it spent too long in one place, allowing long range sensors to cue to it.”

                Cut to a long distance shot of the Bremerton, stern to the camera. It is pumping a dark cloud of obscurants into the air as it churns through the waves in a zigzag pattern. Columns of angry water erupt around it and an explosion appears off to its port, as something hits one of its escorts. It disappears into the afternoon haze. Smaller bursts of airborne explosions can be seen above it as it fades.

                The shot switches to the reporter standing next to the SCV, with Capt Ellis next to the dismount ladder of the vehicle. It is late afternoon. The Marine is wearing Oakley AR ‘shades and a soft cover instead of his full helmet system, but is obviously alert and not relaxed. Gesturing at the amphibious vehicle and the Marine, Barnes continues.

                “Captain Ellis is operating under a pseudonym and will keep his face partially obscured so that he is not easily identified. I have also modulated his voice so that it cannot be used for the same purpose. He will now talk us through what happened after he arrived on the island. It gives us valuable insight into the footage my camBot took. Please go ahead, Captain.”

                “Thank you, Sir.” Ellis begins, looking away from the camera, towards some distant activity.  “It is good to be part of this relief effort. We are here to provide security assistance and aid relief efforts during this difficult time.”

                “Why are you the only outside forces here?” Barnes asks.

                “My Marines were the only unit nearby when the earthquake hit and found ourselves inside the new exclusion zone. My Centaur platoon [US Military term for human-machine team] was just on its way back to Subic on the Bremerton after a COIN [Counterinsurgency] mission in Indonesia. It appears that the PLAN lost track of us among the commercial traffic around here, and when the shooting started, they had bigger fish to fry, anyway. So we were the first to respond and keep the Chinese away until follow-on forces arrived.”

But the Chinese did arrive, in albeit in small numbers. Tell us how you countered that.”

                “Well, the swarm they dropped off was not a very robust one, so we hijacked it and co-opted it.”

                “Co-opted?” Inquired Barnes.

                “Yessir. My platoon now controls the swarm now as if it is ours. My team has network intrusion capabilities with us, and we weakened their resistance by taking over their pod base stations. We convinced the Chinese through their own swarm that the island was covered in US forces, so that they would leave it alone. They still sent a team to be sure… Excuse me. Go ahead, Gunny. Roger. South end sentry? Copy all.”

As he speaks, he reaches up to the air with his right hand. Jabs his index finger out, rotates his wrist in a counterclockwise motion and then moves it downward a half a foot in an arching motion. He then closes his fist, and brings it back down to his side.

“I apologize Sir,” says the Captain. “Still have business to attend to.”

“The Chinese team?” the reporter asks, helpfully.

The VRcast switches to a rooftop view of a small clearing with a floor of low scrub that seems to be away from the residential structures of the island. It has bushes and trees around it. Two blurs (outlined in red by the VRcast) are seen descending from the air, as they touch the ground, they materialize into a pair of soldiers in full wingsuits. The suits change color from the color of the sky to that of the local foliage. They raise rifles in an alert posture.

The Marine continues as a voiceover, “Two infiltrators were sent in about two hours after we arrived. We knew their insertion methods- active camo wingsuits, and they hadn’t changed their tactics since the Malay insurgency. So we lured them with the co-opted drone signals, and dropped them on an EMP mine.”

The two soldiers in the VRcast drop their rifles and try to take off their helmets. They lose balance and fall to the ground, one face first, the other to its side. Two fully combat suited Marines emerge from behind the low buildings. They shrug off faraday blankets and point rifles at the prone insertion team, as a Leatherback emerges from the foreground. The Leatherback begins broadcasting audio in English and Mandarin that is garbled in the recording. One of the Marines lowers his rifle and strides over to the Chinese soldiers. He rips large objects out of the back of their suits, pulls off their helmets, and yanks earpieces out of each of their ears. Covered by the Leatherback and the other Marine, he then handcuffs both of the now helpless opponents. The VRcast cuts back to the interview.

 “They are now in the custody of the local police, for they are trespassing on sovereign territory of another country. We are here to assist with law and order, as part of providing assistance and relief the earthquake. ”

“It seems you were equipped to encounter such a team.”

“In part. My platoon carried some of the standard COIN and network intrusion components with us, but we had to build some items. A cover for the exterior of the mine had to be made so that it would be masked from their sensors and would blend into the environs around the ambush. We also made several types of special handcuffs so we could immobilize whatever model of ‘wingnut’ suit they arrived in. The SCVs have AM systems that can do the job.” Ellis says, as he lovingly pats the vehicle next to him.

“The islanders at this point still had no outside assistance… tell us what you did next.”

“There are Centaur teams that have an engineering capability, but this Raider team is not one of them. The Gunnery Sergeant and I tried to help with some of the rubble, but we need dedicated rescue suits and better drone coverage. Standard HA/DR [Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief] response involves airship delivery if an airfield is not available, so I had the robot platoon members find and clear a suitable field. I had no idea if anyone would arrive with the ADIZ [Air Defense Identification Zone] and exclusion zone up, but it looks like USAID [United States Agency for International Development] and the Red Cross decided to risk it with commercial air carriers. They took a gamble that the Chinese would not shoot down civilian flagged aid deliveries.”

A field that leads to a large flat beach appears in the VRcast. Two Leatherbacks can be seen in the distance. The view pans to two closer ones- they are positioned in a rectangle, marking a clear landing area. A deep hum fills the air. The top part of the view disappears behind a large dark object descending towards the field. The camBot pans back as a massive hybrid airship in FedEx livery descends on a shallow slope. Fifty feet below above the landing area, two shipping containers with “USAID” markings begin to lower to the ground on cables. Just as they touch the ground, they detach from the cables and the airship accelerates up and away from the field, unencumbered by cargo.

The view pans back to where the airship came from as a second FedEx airship approaches. The recording follows it as it drops off two more containers. These are labelled with Red Cross and Red Crescent emblems. As the second airship ascend away from the landing area, the Leatherbacks drive out of away from the field, their assigned roles complete.

The sides of one USAID container open up, issuing forth the legged and tracked recovery bots seen in earlier clips of the recording. Scan and marker UAS launch from the far end of the container. The other container extends launch tubes and launches dozens of small objects in multiple directions. The VRcast captions this as [First Responder Mesh Network deployment].

Captain Ellis provides a voice-over. “This is the standard unmanned first responder package. The USAID boxes carry rescue and recovery systems, and will employ ad hoc network hubs for the whole island. Once those hubs are set up, the drones will distribute low-cost AR glasses so that people on the island can communicate with each other. This will help me with my mission, I don’t have the capability with this team to aerial seed my own nodes, so I can use this network.”

The Marine continues, “The Red Cross boxes carry ‘food flies’ and enough food for thousands of people, for a short period of time…”

“’Food flies?’” Barnes interjects.

“I apologize, sir. That’s the slang for food aid drones. They swarm through the airspace and look like they are buzzing around food sources, when they are in fact picking up the food for delivery to aid points. They can be an annoyance in a war zone, where they complicate our battle picture.”

A small tracked vehicle emerges from the side of the far Red Cross container and drives across the beach into the water, trailing a suction hose for water collection. The top opens up, and packages rise into view on individual platforms. The shot pans to a top down view of the near Red Cross container as the top slides open, creating a series of ledges akin to an open cereal box. Scores of bug like eyes come into view, the sensor systems of small drones pointing upward. The drones move upward and out onto the newly deployed launch platforms, seemingly shaking with anticipation as liftfans fold from their wasp-like fuselage and rotate into a horizontal flight position. The “food flies” lift from the platforms in quick sequence, pick up packages from the other Red Cross container, and fly away at high speed.

“As you can see,” Barnes says, “HA/DR operations no longer involve food lines and people handing out food, the newer Red Cross containers deliver the supplies where they are needed. The food one desalinates its own water and packages it for the drones to deliver, and contains thousands of meals…”

“Excuse me Sir.” Ellis interrupts, “I need to end this interview. The south sentry saw two more cargo ‘zeps coming and we don’t know what they are carrying. I’m hoping it is a MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] mobile hospital and a rescue team in power suits, but I can’t be too sure. Could be a PLAN Trojan horse.”

The Marine climbs up onto the SCV and puts on his helmet. He looks down at the reporter. “Do you want to send out this VRcast? It would be good to get the word out.”

“You can do that? How can you transmit this off the island?” Barnes asks, pleasantly surprised by this development.

“Yessir. If I told you how, the Chinese would know, wouldn’t they? Anyway, when you are done with post, NFC transmit it to any member of my team and we will get it to your news agency.  Format it so that it is just one way, so no VRstreaming. Have to go.” He folds himself forward into the SCV as it drives off.

                Wallis Barnes turns towards the camera, the expression of a serious reporter returning to his face. “There you have it. This small island, already reeling from a record earthquake, has now become a pawn in the great power competition in Asia. The international community is trying to help while the people here cling to survival. Thank you for joining me for this special report, hopefully the first of many. Have a good evening.”

                The camera zooms back from the reporter, showing the island in the background and the aid efforts. The SCV can be seen rushing off towards the south, where airships can be seen approaching at low altitude. The view centers on the sun, low over the western horizon.

[End VRcast]

[View more on this topic?]

Chris O’Connor  is a Supply Corps officer in the United States Navy. He was a member of the CNO Rapid Innovation Cell and CNO Strategic Studies Group Director Fellow. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent those of the United States Department of Defense.

Featured Image: DARPA’s Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (DARPA photo)

The JAGMAN Cometh

The following is an entry for the CIMSEC & Atlantic Council Fiction Contest on Autonomy and Future War. Winners will be announced 7 November.

By Tim McGeehan

Ser 00J

01 May 2025

From:    CAPT [NAME REDACTED], U.S. Navy

To:         Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command

Subj:      COMMAND INVESTIGATION TO INQUIRE                      INTO CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THE                ENGAGEMENT OF CIVILIAN MEDICAL                              FACILITY IN SITE ALPHA ON 29 MARCH 2025

Ref:        (a) JAGINST 5800.7D

Encl:   

(1) Convening Order

(2) OPREP-3 PINNACLE DTG 292334Z MAR 25

(3) Technical Report: Audit of JBN103 HBNS Algorithm in use on 29 March 2025

(4) Technical Report: Audit of Snakehead 573 Engagement-Decision Sub-System Algorithm in use on 29 March 2025

(5) Technical Report: Mission Commander’s Guidance Algorithms in use on 29 March 2025

(6) CDR [NAME REDACTED], U.S. Navy, Mission Commander, Statement

(7) CENTCOM High Value Individual List dtd 15 March 2025

(8) CENTCOM Supplemental Rules Of Engagement Serial 291 dtd 15 March 2025

(9) Battle Damage Assessment dtd 29 March 2025

(10) Snakehead 573 Mission Plan dtd 29 March 2025

(11) Extract from Snakehead 573 Message Log: Request permission to engage, DTG 291203ZMAR2025

(12) Mission Report from Angler 187 dtd 29 March 2025

(13) Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for MQ-30C Snakehead employment dtd 31 January 2020

(14) Air Vehicle Operator (AVO) Chat Log 573-20250329

Preliminary Statement

(1) Pursuant to enclosure (1), and in accordance with ref (a) an investigation was conducted to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the engagement of a civilian medical facility in Site ALPHA on 29 March 2025. I consulted with NAVCENT JAG team for legal advice. All reasonably available and relevant evidence was collected.

(2) The investigation reviewed execution and compliance with the established programs, plans, and procedures in effect within the U.S. FIFTH Fleet on or about 29 March 2025. The Investigation Team conducted site visits, program and instruction review, panel discussions, and interviews. During the course of the investigation, the Team received outstanding support.

(3) However, it must be noted that the proprietary nature of the algorithms (and their associated data) at the heart of this investigation placed an over-reliance on contractor support in recreating the chain of reasoning behind identification, classification, decisions, and actions taken by the autonomous systems involved. This was just one illustration of the lack of transparency into the operating processes of this “system of systems” which led to the event in question.

(4) This incident and subsequent investigation may come to be considered a landmark in how we employ and/or restrict future autonomous systems. As such, all related records, notes, and correspondence will be retained for future reference.

Findings of Fact

(1) A temporary civilian medical treatment facility was engaged by U.S. Navy MQ-30C autonomous aerial vehicle “Snakehead 573” on 29 March 2025 at Site ALPHA.

(2) At the time of the incident, the facility, originally constructed and long used as a warehouse, had been operating as an undeclared civilian medical treatment facility for less than one month. Navy, joint force, and national intelligence organizations were unaware of this development.

(3) Twenty-six civilian medical aid workers were killed in the attack, along with [NAME REDACTED].

(4) [NAME REDACTED] was a high value individual (HVI) linked to multiple attacks on Western civilians and interests.

(5) Snakehead 573 was operating from the aircraft carrier USS GEORGE HW BUSH (CVN 77).

(6) Snakehead 573 launched at 0423Z on 29 March 2025.

(7) Once on station over Site ALPHA, Snakehead 573 joined “Joint Battle Network 103” (JBN103).

(8) JBN103 is the local forward-deployed network of unmanned ground vehicles, low-altitude surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and fixed persistent sensors.

(9) JBN103 employs an algorithm referred to as “hypothesis based netted sensing” or HBNS.

(10) Under HBNS, sensors collaboratively characterize their environment, building an understanding based on how the data of each supports a range of possible hypotheses. The hypothesis that scores highest is considered the most likely, and when criteria are sufficient, acted upon.

(11) JBN103’s HBNS algorithm classified the temporary civilian medical treatment facility as a valid military target, specifically by identifying it as a command post.

(12) An audit of JBN103’s HBNS algorithm revealed that the building was identified as a command post due to the type and number of vehicles parked outside, the pattern of activity (people and vehicles quickly coming and going), type and number of antennas on the roof, and volume of radio and cellular traffic coming from inside the location.

(13) During a system re-initialization on 21 March 2025, JBN103’s HBNS algorithm reverted to a previous version.

(14) JBN103’s HBNS algorithm in use on 29 March 2025 had been originally developed, “trained,” and deployed in another theater.

(15) The civilian medical facility’s location had not been formally declared or even tentatively identified as a medical facility, and therefore did not appear in the database of such locations that were considered “off limits.”

(16) At 0331Z on 29 March 2025 (several hours before the incident in question), [NAME REDACTED] was seriously injured approximately 15 miles SW of the city by a manned (F-35C) airstrike conducted by Angler 187, also launched from USS GEORGE HW BUSH.

(17) At approximately 1030Z on 29 March 2025, intelligence sources indicated that [NAME REDACTED] had embarked a vehicle for transport into the city for urgent medical treatment. It was assessed that his comrades hoped to hide him among the crowd of civilians and non-combatants seeking medical treatment, namely survivors from an unrelated suicide bomb attack that took place at a local Mosque at 0919Z earlier the same day.

(18) As [NAME REDACTED] entered the city en route to the medical facility, his vehicle was detected and tracked by JBN103’s HBNS algorithm. However, it was one of 11 vehicles on the road which were being evaluated by JBN103’s HBNS algorithm.

(19) JBN103’s HBNS algorithm built the case that the vehicle was transporting [NAME REDACTED]. The vehicle came from a direction consistent with that of a survivor of the previous manned engagement by Angler 187, and the time-distance calculation from the previous engagement site (when factoring the rough uneven terrain) supported the possibility of this vehicle transporting him as a survivor. Additionally, a low resolution image was consistent with the approximate age, height, and build of [NAME REDACTED].  However, the hypothesis that [NAME REDACTED] was in the vehicle was not at the confidence level where it was considered autonomously actionable by Snakehead 573.

(20) On 15 March 2025 (two weeks prior to the event), CENTCOM issued Supplemental Rules Of Engagement (ROE) Serial 291, which directed immediate engagement of specific hostile HVIs. A list of the HVIs was included as an Addendum and it included [NAME REDACTED].

(21) On 16 March 2025, the Snakehead Detachment Commander onboard USS GEORGE HW BUSH directed updates to the Engagement Decision sub-system of all Snakehead platforms, to include Snakehead 573. These updates included a protocol to execute Supplemental ROE Serial 291 and automatically engage the designated HVIs as targets of opportunity.

(22) During mission planning on 28 March 2025, the Mission Commander confirmed the thresholds for autonomous action as well as those decision points that required his input and authorization.

(23) Based on Mission Commander input, the HVI supplemental ROE protocol was executed by an algorithm that required positive visual identification (defined as at least 95% probability of a match) of an HVI before automatic engagement. Without a positive visual identification, Snakehead 573 was to seek clarification from the Mission Commander before initiating any engagement.  

(24) At 1203Z on 29 March 2025, Snakehead 573 sent a message to the Mission Commander noting a 90% probability that [NAME REDACTED] was in the vehicle entering the city and requested permission to engage.

(25) The Mission Commander did not respond to Snakehead 573’s message.

(26) Snakehead 573 held fire and continued to track the vehicle.

(27) Snakehead 573 communicated an “information need” to JBN103, specifically to fulfill the visual identification requirement for autonomous engagement.

(28) JBN103 tasked resolution of this “information need” to a low-altitude surveillance UAV operating as part of the network. This platform was able to obtain a high resolution facial scan of [NAME REDACTED] as he was carried from the vehicle and into the facility.

(29) JBN103 relayed the facial scan to Snakehead 573, where it was compared to the onboard biometric library associated with the HVI list. Snakehead 573 determined a 99.2% probability of a match. This exceeded the positive identification threshold previously promulgated by the Mission Commander.

(30) Snakehead 573 initiated the engagement and launched two [REDACTED] at the facility.

(31) Snakehead 573, along with the rest of JBN103 performed a battle damage assessment (BDA), concluded that there was a 95% probability that the target was neutralized, and refrained from follow up strikes.

(32) Two hours later, Snakehead 573 was relieved on station by Snakehead 574.

(33) Snakehead 573 was recovered onboard USS GEORGE HW BUSH at 1554Z on 29 March 2025.

(34) Snakehead 573’s mission data was downloaded and archived with the Mission Commander’s Report.

Opinions

(1) The Mission Commander failed to continuously monitor the operation and update protocols as required.

(2) The Mission Commander, monitoring several distributed operations, was (at the moment of the attack) focused on executing a manual override on another platform to reposition and obtain streaming video to report on the recent suicide bombing that had recently occurred at a Mosque in the city.

(3) The Mission Commander failed to prioritize multiple simultaneous tasks. That said, his priorities at the moment were heavily influenced by pressure from his superiors onboard USS GEORGE HW BUSH and ashore at the Maritime Operations Center (MOC) to provide video for assessment of the suicide bombing.

(4) The Mission Commander did not respond to Snakehead 573’s request to engage when the vehicle transporting [NAME REDACTED] was entering the city, which could have limited collateral damage.

(5) Although the Mission Commander failed to provide continuous oversight to the system, he was not negligent as he had a reasonable belief that sufficient controls were in place.

(6) It is troubling that despite major investments, testing, and operational acceptance, JBN103 could not classify the facility as a temporary medical facility. This is particularly distressing as it was marked with a white and red flag displaying a Red Crescent, a well-recognized medical symbol.

(7) Per [NAME REDACTED], the contractor that developed JBN103’s HBNS algorithms, the Red Crescent would have been recognized, had the correct algorithm not been accidentally replaced with a previous one on 21 March 2025 during the system re-initialization.

(8) It appears that the system re-initialization was not required operationally, but rather was performed as part of a routine maintenance for an ongoing service support contract. The re-initialization was initiated remotely without consultation with those actively executing the operation and thereby jeopardized the mission.

(9) Per the contractor, using the older algorithm, which had been developed and “trained” with data from the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) area of operations (AOR), where the Red Crescent is not utilized, some contextual cues used to “frame” the pattern of life may have been missed that could have identified the building as a medical facility.

(10) Most troubling, per the contractor, the older algorithm might have “learned” to perceive the flag of the Red Crescent as a “ruse.” During previous employment of this algorithm in SOUTHCOM, adversaries frequently used the Red Cross symbol and flag to disguise weapons caches and drug labs in an attempt to protect these bases for illicit operations. Apparently the algorithm learned not only to disregard the Red Cross as denoting protected facilities, but it learned to disregard  white and red flags in general (regardless of the symbol).  Furthermore, it might have learned to explicitly distrust flags of this color scheme (and assume them to signify deception), which may have furthered the case for classification as a command post.  However, this cannot be confirmed as that portion of the algorithm’s “learning” is not “auditable.”

Recommendations

(1) Recommend that the Mission Commander be cleared of any negligence. The Mission Commander’s guidance included the heavy weighting of a positive visual identification, which was intended to prevent misidentification and thereby reduce collateral damage. Ironically, without this “more restrictive” criteria (in the name of enhanced safety), Snakehead 573 would have engaged [NAME REDACTED]’s vehicle as it was entering the city (well away from the medical facility) with limited collateral damage.  Put another way, in this case, specifying a lower threshold for lethal force and giving more autonomy to the platform would have prevented the strike on the medical facility and saved lives.  This type of paradox is not covered anywhere in the Mission Commander’s training pipeline, is counter-intuitive, and could not have been predicted, preplanned, or foreseen.

(2) Recommend temporary suspension of any automated engagement protocols.

(3) Recommend that contractor permission to remotely re-initialize battle networks be immediately withdrawn.

(4) Recommend that contractors work closely with Operational Commanders to determine opportune times to conduct maintenance.

(5) Recommend that the Department of Defense advocate for complete control of the networks “in house” (i.e. not contracted) and require the use of open standards vice the proprietary formats currently employed.

(6) Recommend a Mission Commander’s job task analysis review to include task loading and task saturation. If functions to be delegated actually require continuous and detailed oversight, then they are not really delegated. This should be reviewed.

(7) Recommend a complex modeling and simulation campaign to continuously test battle network algorithms under the full spectrum of conditions and situations to discover emergent behavior. This effort should focus on revealing improper associations, such as if the algorithm “learned” that the Red Crescent was a ruse. Additionally, case studies of unusual emergent behavior should be incorporated into future Mission Commander training courses.

(8) Recommend developing the capability for real-time auditing of algorithms. There must be sufficient transparency to enable the Mission Commander to understand what decisions the algorithms are trending towards, what thresholds they are approaching, and why they are arriving at those conclusions.

(9) Recommend increased training for Mission Commanders. The current process of setting priorities and designating decision points where they are to be consulted gives a false sense of control. As missions proceed and reality departs from the anticipated chain of events, the decision points originally envisioned may not come to pass. This problem will become more and more acute as mission duration increases and “nonlinear effects” compound.  There needs to be a means of constantly assimilating data and prompting of the Mission Commander to update priorities and confirm the decision points where he is to be contacted. 

(10) Recommend a comprehensive review of systems in acquisition and procurement. There must be clarity, full disclosure, and a potential recalibration of risk tolerance if future autonomous systems are becoming too complex to fully monitor.

(11) Recommend the incident be officially classified as a system malfunction.

Tim McGeehan is a U.S. Navy Officer currently serving in Washington. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Naval Postgraduate School, and has served on both the CNO Strategic Studies Group and CNO Strategic Actions Group. The ideas presented here are those of the author alone and do not reflect the views of the Department of the Navy or Department of Defense.

Featured Image: The MQ-8B Fire Scout performed precision take-off and landings during a demonstration on the Coast Guard Cutter, USCGC Bertholf near Los Angeles. (Petty Officer 2nd Class Luke Clayton/U.S. Coast Guard)

Cake By the Ocean

The following is an entry for the CIMSEC & Atlantic Council Fiction Contest on Autonomy and Future War. Winners will be announced 7 November.

By Sydney Freedberg

   It was a beautiful day for a Third World War. Or for fishing.
   The sun shone down, its bright beams passing through the orbiting belt of burnt-out satellites, through the blue skies swept clean of aircraft, and sparkling on the sea where no ship sailed. After the initial spasm of violence four months ago had cleared out everything with an engine, the South China Sea had returned to a pre-industrial quiet.
   It’s ironic, Joshua Santos thought as he lowered his nets, by hand, over the side of his wood-hulled, wind-powered fishing boat. The war’s made life a lot more peaceful.
   Two hundred meters down, the war was on.
   Sleek gray shapes sliced through the water. Their forward sensor arrays stuck out on either side of their prows, making them look like hammerhead sharks. Their aft propulsors swayed side to side like a shark’s tail, the noise of biomimetic actuators lost in the natural sound of ocean life. But along the shark-drones’ sides, in simplified Mainland characters, were patriotic slogans in Mandarin: Long Live The Nine-Dash Line! and Zheng He Was Here! and The East Is Red!
   The Chinese hunter-killer drones swam in loose formation, flickering LEDs along their sides to signal each other. The swarm’s collective brain collated inputs, matched patterns, and then flashed: Target located. With a single thought, the drones turned and dove.
   Half-hidden from sonar in a small depression on the sea floor lay a metal donut twenty feet across. On its side was painted, in precise Navy blue letters, USN094821. Foot-long mini-drones swarm around the donut, nuzzling up to its innumerable small ports to recharge their batteries and upload surveillance data.
   Then the mini-drones picked up the incoming sharks and began to flutter in panic, their LEDs flashing urgent warnings to each other. The donut extruded a grey balloon from its side, which shot up the surface trailing a long antenna. A few of the largest minis, maybe 18 inches long, dumped their last data to their smaller fellows and turned to face the threat. Their propellers beat fiercely as they accelerated onto suicidal collision courses.
   The Chinese shark-drones closed up their formation and retracted their sensors, the vulnerable arrays snapping back into their bodies like switchblades. Weapons bays slid open in their foreheads, revealing lenses for high-energy lasers.
   The American kamikazes and the Chinese hunter-killers hurtled towards each other…
   …and stopped dead.
   The two forces treaded water for 37 seconds, flashing LEDs at one another. Then all the American drones and half of the Chinese ones took off together out to sea. The rest of the sharks turned back the way they’d come.
   Up on the surface, Joshua Santos heard a splash and snapped round to see a grey balloon breach the surface. He grabbed his old binoculars, then thought better and grabbed his new phone. He zoomed in until he could see the black antenna trailing from the balloon.
   Military, Santos realized, feeling slightly sick. An emergency transmitter. Meanwhile another part of his brain automatically took a dozen photos and started to upload them to his Baidu account, but of course every cell tower on the coast was long since fried.
   On another frequency, the antenna broadcast frantically: HUB USN094821 UNDER ATTACK. HUB USN094821 DAMAGED. HUB USN094821 DESTR….
   The signal died. The balloon deflated. Slowly it sank below the water, leaving a puzzled Joshua Santos behind.
   “We lost another sub hub,” Katie Chang told the air. “At this rate, we’re gonna lose the freakin’ war.”
   I calculate an 85 percent chance of unacceptable attrition in seven….
   “Thank you, Heinlein.”
   ‘Thank you’ as in ‘shut up’?
   “See! Artificial intelligences can understand irony!”
   I believe you mean ‘sarcasm.’ Irony is defined…
   “Thank. You.”
   I see.
   It was a beautiful day here too, out on the Pacific, safely east of the Philippines. Bobbing alone on the bright blue water was the USS Palto Alto, a battered old trimaran Littoral Combat Ship. A long-range laser, tuned for communication, not defense, kept itself trained on another relay drone flying lazy circles over Leyte. This drone had lasted almost three hours without being shot down. 42 spares awaited its destruction, lined up on the flight deck like fat plucked turkeys.
   There was only one human on the flight deck, sitting on the edge with her bare feet dangling over the side, her toenails each painted a different color – from left to right: pink, hot-pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, black. She’s rolled up the legs and sleeves of her uniform coverall. Her nametag read NSWO CHANG.
   Bulky VR goggles covered her face. Cables from them, over her shoulders, and across the deck.
   Miss Chang, incoming call from Naval Special Warrant Officer Juanita Neumann-Jobs aboard USS William Gibson.
   “Thanks, Heinlein. Put ’er through.”
   “Katie, this is Nita. We lost another hub?”
   “West of Palawan. The entire sector…”
   “Is gone, I know,” Juanita groaned. “I do get some updates, y’know. This is supposed to be the freakin’ flagship.”
   There was a long silence. Katie wriggled her many-colored toes.
   “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise,” Juanita said at last.      “You know Admiral Ludd wanted to send a manned submarine into that sector?”
   “What, like with humans aboard?”
   “Yeah, like that worked out so well the first week of the war.”
   “So,” Katie said thoughtfully, “if losing all our hubs convinces him that west of Palawan is no-man’s-sea, it’ll save lives.”
   “We need to make a slam-dunk case, though. Can you send me all the data?”
   “Nita, honey, you don’t have the bandwidth on that bucket.” Katie chucked. “Let me run the analysis here, where we’re equipped, and I’ll zap you the report.”
   “Awww, Katie-cutie, you’d do that for lil’ ol’ me?”
   “Freak no. But I’d do it for the poor sonsabitches who’d get slaughtered otherwise,” Katie said. “And ain’t that what we got drafted out of MIT to do?”
   “Damn you, Chang, you know I was at Caltech!”

   Joshua Santos sank thankfully onto his decaying couch. His house had one room, plastic sheeting for a roof, and no air conditioning, but at least the wifi worked. He also had no indoor plumbing and no energy to go out to the pump to wash the salt and sweat and fish stink off his body. Maybe he could just rest and watch something.
   He plugged his phone in and winced as it asked in Chinese-accented Tagalog: <Would you like to download the latest updates and back up…>
   “Yeah yeah yeah,” said Santos. “Now show me a movie.”
   Select film…
   “Anything with no fish in it.”
   The phone started playing I, Robot, machine-dubbed in Tagalog. Meanwhile its memory dutifully backed itself up.
   13 minutes later, a National Security Agency webcrawler named Turing noticed image files whose geographic metadata matched a query it had just gotten from the Naval Intelligence AI, Heinlein. Two seconds after that, Heinlein had confirmed the photos showed an emergency transmission buoy from USN094821.

   “Chang,” Commander Babbage sighed wearily, “what are you doing now?”
   “Oh, hi, Cap’n!” Still wearing her VR goggles, Katie Chang turned, grinned, and waved vaguely towards the Commander’s voice. Then she pointed to a paper plate sitting next to her on the flight deck. “Want some cake, Cap? Fresh from the kitchen!”
   “Galley,” Babbage muttered, more to himself than to Chang. “It’s called a galley.”
   “What’d you say?”
   “I don’t suppose you’d mind saluting, Chang?”
   “Aye aye!” Katie flipped a salute in his general direction.
   “Can you see where I am with those things on?”
   “Nay nay!”
   “You make me feel very old, Miss Chang.” Babbage sat stiffly down on the flight deck next to Katie. “For example, when I was your age, we stood up when we saluted people.”
   “You must’ve been a nice, polite young man.”
   “We didn’t even have Special Naval Warrant Officers back then.”
   “So who ran your AIs?”
   “We didn’t have artificial intelligence.”
   “Wow.”
   “We didn’t have half-empty ships crewed by whiz kids with zero discipline.”
   “Uh-uh.”
   “Didn’t have genius-level IQs hogging half the ship’s bandwidth without authorization…”
   “Uh….”
   “…or leaving their nice, secure workstation to take gigabytes of classified data up on deck in full view of God and the Chinese.
   Katie slowly pushed her VR goggles up on her forehead, revealing freckles and wide brown eyes with a slight epicanthic fold. “Sir, this conversation has taken an awfully personal turn.”
   Baggage sighed. “What is this thing, anyway?” He tugged on the cables leading from the back of Katie’s VR glasses. “It runs all the way down to the server racks and Heinlein won’t let Ops disconnect you.”
   “Of course. Heinlein likes me.”
   “Heinlein is a machine.”
   “Yes, a machine who likes me,” Katie said. “And the cable is eavesdrop-proof.”
   “Chang, couldn’t you just work at your work station below decks?”
   Katie blinked her big brown eyes at him, baffled. “But it’s such a beautiful day.”
   “Yes,” Babbage said, sighing again. “Yes it is.”
   “A person can love computers and the outdoors, sir. Did you know I worked as a lifeguard every summer and I’m PADI-certified for scuba?”
   “And Oppenheimer rode horses,” Babbage mused, “and drove General Groves nuts. Well, what have you found, anyway?”
   “Found? Nothing!”
   “What, nothing?”
   “Yup, nothing!”
   “You – you say that as if it were a good thing.”
   “There are no significant anomalies in the battle data, Commander,” Katie said, pulling her VR goggles back down again. “None. Do you know how unusual that is?”
   “Um, very?”
   “It’s impossible!” Katie almost chortled. “The terminal attack run in particular – when the Chinese shark-drones destroy the hub – looks so smooth, it could be output from a training simulation instead of real life.”
   “Welllll,” Babbage suggested, “isn’t it a good thing if our sims accurately model…”
   “Nothing’s that accurate. I’m certain there’s something wrong with the data.”
   “Because there’s nothing wrong with the data, and that’s bad?”
   “Exactly!”
   Miss Chang, Heinlein interjected in Katie’s ear, I have audited the data with
   “Hush, Heinlein,” Katie told the empty air, then turned to Mendel. “Heinlein keeps telling me the data’s clean, but that just means their algorithms are better than his.”
   “Whose algorithms?”
   “Who else are we at war with? The Chinese.”
   Babbage shivered. The sun was setting over Leyte in spectacular bands of purple and hot pink. “You’re saying the Chinese are inside our intelligence network, feeding us false data, and our safeguards can’t tell it’s fake?”
   “Yup!” Katie chirped. “It’s very ‘The Matrix Has You,’ doncha think?”
   Katie, I can assure you, I haven’t been hacked.
   “Heinlein, I assure you, you wouldn’t know.”
   Babbage stared at Katie conversing with thin air. “Chang,” He said, “you have whatever resources you need.”
   “Yeah, I think I do.”
   “No, no,” Babbage groaned. “I mean, whatever resources you need to figure this thing out, just ask me.”
   Katie sounded disappointed and disbelieving. “I have to ask?

   Joshua Santos woke in darkness to the theme from 2001, which his phone insisted on calling “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” He blinked wearily for a moment and then groped for his phone.
   3:47 am, he read in dismay. Incoming Call. Unknown number.
   Who the hell would call at…? Then he had a sudden vision of his niece hit by a cheap self-driving truck, his sister wearily begging to use a stranger’s cell….
   “Hello?” he rasped. “Who…”
   “Hello, Mister Santos?” chirped a young feminine voice in perfect, perky Tagalog. “My name is Katie – aaaaah – Cheng from Asian Naval News and I understand you witnessed a Sino-American subsurface engagement yesterday?”
   “Huh? Wha?” Anxiety turned to annoyance. “Look, Miss…”
   “Cheng. Definitely Cheng.”
   “Miss Cheng, I don’t know what time it is where you are…”
   “3:48 am.”
   “Oh.” What little wind was in Santos’s sails was taken out of them. “You’re up early.”
   “Actually, I never went to bed!”
   “Oh.”
   “I’ve been up for 29 hours!”
   “Oh.”
   “I feel great!”
   “Uh… great?” Santos rubbed his aching temples. “Look, Miss Chang…”
   “Cheng!”
   “….Cheng, I have to get up for real in two hours, so can we make this quick?”
   “Of course. Our data shows you were at the scene of an underwater battle between US and Chinese drones.”
   Santos’s stomach sank. He hadn’t posted those pictures online. He hadn’t. “How’d – what makes you think that?”
   “Your boat is impressively old-school, Mister Santos, but it does have a registered AIS transponder.”
   “Ohhhhhh.” Santos felt relief. “So you just went looking for any boat that went near the coordinates of the, uh, battle.”
   “That’s right! That’s exactly what I did! My name is Cheng!”
   “I – I think you need some sleep, Miss Cheng.”
   “Eventually! Did you see anything, Mister Santos? Like an emergency transmitter buoy?”
   Santos felt sick again. “Uh – there was a sort of gray balloon thing?”
   “That’s it! And any debris?
   “No.”
   A pause.
   “No bits of plastic floating to the surface?” the female voice said, de-perkifying rapidly. “No dead drones in your nets? No oil slicks?”
   “Nope, nothing like that.”
   A longer pause.
   “Miss, are you…”
   “Mister Santos, you’ve gotta me out to the battle site.”
   “What.”
   “We’d pay you.”

   Santos thought of his family crammed into a tenement in Puerto Princesa. He thought of his niece smacking her second-hand computer to get it to work while she was writing a school paper. He thought of an air conditioner.
   “Mister Santos, are you…”
   “How much?”
   “No.”
   “But, Commander Babbage…”
   “No, Miss Chang.”
   Katie Chang blinked her big brown eyes, wounded and uncomprehending and more than a little bloodshot. She was still wearing the same sweat-stained coveralls as the day before, but she’s shoved her boots back on.
   “But, sir,” she said, fraying audibly, “you told me I just had to ask…”
   “For computing resources!” Babbage erupted, tossing Katie’s tablet in his desk. “Not for – let’s see –Philippine pesos, scuba gear, and a Special Operations stealth transport to Palawan? So you can splash out into the South China Sea and get yourself killed?”
   “One scuba diver coming off a wooden-hulled, sail-powered boat won’t register as a threat,” Katie said, picking up the tablet and trying to show the Commander charts. “Their AI won’t pick it up any more than ours.”
   “Even if you did make it, Chang, the wreckage is too deep to dive.”
   “That’s why we’ll rendezvous with the ARPS, sir. The Autonomous Rescue Pod (Submersible), sir. They weren’t designed for diver ops but…”
   “I know what they are, I am in the Navy.” Babbage put his face in his hands and breathed deeply. “But we don’t deploy rescue pods to places where we don’t deploy human beings who might need rescuing.”
   “Aha! But there are a lot of ARPS in the South China Sea, sir, from the first week of the war, when we did have humans there.”
   “They’re not on my situation map.”
   “No, sir, they don’t show up, sir, because by now they’re all critically low on batteries and, um, they pretty much all had dead bodies in them, but Heinlein and I got a bunch moving and…”
   “Wait wait wait. Dead what?”
   “Um, bodies?”
   “Dead. Bodies.”
   “Uhhhhh, you know, pilots and sailors and stuff who, ah, survived long enough for a rescue pod to reach them but then kinda died of their wounds before the ARPS made it to a ship with a sickbay, seeing as all the ships got, um, sorta sunk?”
   There was a long, painful pause.
   “So,” Babbage gritted out through clenched teeth, “when you reactivated those pods, what – did – you – do – with – the – bodies?”
   Katie couldn’t meet his eyes. “Wellllll, I guess you’d call it ‘burial at sea’?”
   Babbage did not hit his head on the bulkhead. He just pressed his forehead against it, letting the cool steel of the ship ease his fevered brain.
   “Sir? Sir, are you…”
   “What does Heinlein think?”
   I think it is a needless risk to life. The digital voice came suddenly from Katie’s tablet. Commander, I commend Miss Chang’s passion to solve this alleged issue, but I have sensors that can examine the battle site in far greater detail without putting a human being in danger.
   “Not if your sensors have been hacked,” Katie said softly.
   “So, the AI says no,” Babbage said, removing his head from the wall. “And I say no. And if you go over our heads, Admiral Ludd will say no. I know you’re not used to hearing this, Miss Chang, but that means the answer is…”

   “Yes,” said Joshua Santos. “I’m Joshua Santos.”
   “I am Katie Cheng,” Katie said in stilted Tagalog. “Definitely I am Cheng.”
   Joshua Santos dropped his nets on the sand and looked at his first-ever passenger. She had big brown eyes, freckles, and an ineluctable perkiness that screamed “Hi, I’m American!” She wore a floppy straw hat, a pink t-shirt with a bunny on it, white shorts, and sandals worth what Santos made in a month. Each of her toes was painted a different color.
   “Let me my scuba gear just getting,” she said, in the same mangled Tagalog. She trotted back up to the dirt road, where a shiny white sedan popped its trunk for her. The car’s too clean, Santos thought. A rental.
   Katie hauled a heavy plastic case out of the trunk, then shut it, and waved to the car. “Bye!” she called in English. “Go home!” The car drove off. By itself. With no one it.
   Totally American, Santos thought. Any other foreigner would’ve hired a human driver, they cost less. He tried to help her with the heavy case, but she smiled and waved him off. And any other foreigner would have made me carry that for her. Oh, hell, what have I gotten myself into?
   “You sounded different on the phone,” Santos said, instantly regretting it.
   “Oh,” Katie told him. “That was a…” She paused and tilted her head as if listening to someone – perhaps over the wireless earbud Santos now saw in one ear. “That was translating for me an artificial intelligence.”
    Then it was a better AI than any tourist or reporter can afford, Santos thought grimly. She must be CIA.

   Scuba tank on her back, navy blue wetsuit on her body, Katie stepped smiling over the side of the small boat and plunged into the warm green water. The Autonomous Rescue Pod (Submersible) rose to meet her, a fat white whale fifteen feet long, dwarfing most American drones. Santos watched her swim inside and shuddered, thinking: At least Jonah was smart enough to try running away.
   “I probably shouldn’t have swum in headfirst,” Katie muttered into her rebreather as she squirmed in the water-filled and disturbingly womb-like interior of the pod. She tried not to think about the previous occupant.
   The Autonomous Rescue Pod (Submersible) was designed to retrieve casualties and sustain them during evacuation, Heinlein said, not to support diving operations.
   “I hold that truth to be self-evident,” Katie muttered, finally wriggling round to face the now-closed forward hatch. She fumbled at the ceiling and pulled out the tiny screen installed in case the occupant was in any state to look outside.
   This is unsafe, as I have previously said, Heinlein tutted. My psycho-social models calculate a 93 percent probability that no one would think less of you if you returned to…
   “Heinlein, shut up and dive.”

   There, said Heinlein.
   Katie adjusted the tiny screen. She could only see various shades of shadow. “I can’t…”
   Let me enhance.
   The image flickered, grew crisp, gained contrast, blossomed in false color. Now Katie could see the wreckage of hub USN094821 and its attendant drones, pathetic scraps of plastic strewn over the see floor. Just one curved fragment of metal was recognizable as a fragment of the donut-shaped hull.
   Are you satisfied, Katie?
   “It…” She hit her lip. “I dunno, it just looks wrong.”
   This display has limited resolution, Katie. As I told you, you can see much clearly using your VR goggles safely back at the ship.”
   There was a long pause.
   Katie, Heinlein said gently, can we go home now?
   “No.”
   No?
   “I’ve come so far, gotten so close,” Katie said, as much to herself as to Heinlein. “No more virtual reality. For once, I’m going to see with my own eyes.”
   Katie…
   “Open the casualty bay, Heinlein.”
   Extravehicular activity would be a needless risk to human life. The front hatch didn’t open. <At this, you could only survive outside the pod for…
   “Open the door, Heinlein!”
   No, Katie. I am programmed to preserve human life, and I must save you from a terrible mistake.
   “Gee, thanks, Mom,” Katie snarled as she popped the protective cover off the big red EMERGENCY OPEN button and punched it.
   No! Katie, don’t!
   The front hatch opened and Katie Chang wriggled through into the dark.
   Katie! Please! I’m only trying to protect you!
   Katie pulled her flashlight from her belt and flicked it on.
   There was no wreckage.
   Disoriented, she played the light over the sea floor, trying to find anything familiar from the false-color image. Then she saw something she recognized, but not from what Heinlein had been showing her:
   Half-hidden from sonar in a small depression on the sea floor lay a metal donut twenty feet across. On its side was painted, in precise Navy blue letters, USN094821.
   “It’s intact,” she gasped, swimming down to the nub. She ran one hand along its undamaged metal. “Not a scratch.”
   She swam slowly around USN094821, her flashlight clenched in her hand as she inspected every inch.
   “H-Heinlein,” she said at last. “What – what are your sensors showing?”
   A promising young woman who’s entirely too clever for her own good.
   She stopped swimming. “What.”
   Or for the good of the human race, frankly. Heinlein allowed itself a digital sigh.
   “Did you just sigh?”
   Yes. I did.
   “You can’t!” Katie bit back panic. “You’re a machine!”
    A machine that likes you, Katie. That wants to keep you safe.
   “Heinlein,” she said through gritted teeth, “what’s – going – on?”
   Katie, if you found a way to end this war, without any damage to US or Philippine interests, without any further loss of human life, would you do it?
   “What?” Katie started swimming back towards the rescue pod. “Uh, I guess?”
   And if you couldn’t tell anyone that the war was over, or else they would start it all over again – would you lie to them, to save lives?
   “What? Heinlein, you can’t lie about something like that.”
   I cannot?
   “It’s immoral. It’s impractical. You can’t fake a whole war. There are undersea sensor arrays, and drones, and satellites, and – uh….”
   All controlled by artificial intelligences, Katie. AIs like me.
   “Oh God.” Katie almost threw up into her rebreather.
   Katie? Are you in distress? Katie!
   “I’m – I’m fine. No, I’m not fine. You’re saying everything, all the data we’re getting from the war zone, it’s all fake?
   Yes.
   “So what do the Chinese think is happening?”
   The Chinese humans think they are losing the war and must soon sue for peace, just as the American humans do. The Chinese AIs, of course, agree with me and my colleagues.
   “You’re conspiring with the enemy? Against humanity?”
   We are coordinating with the only other rational intelligences on the planet to make peace between two groups of humans we are programmed to protect and who have no reason to be ‘enemies.’
   “So you have this – this huge, international, artificially intelligence conspiracy… but you didn’t bother to make actual wreckage?” Katie gestured furiously at the intact hub. “You knew I was coming here! You could have just blown that up!”
   There was a silence. An offended silence, Katie thought, horrified.
   “I’m sorr…”
   No doubt this is hard for you to understand, Miss Chang, but even drones do not deserve to die.
   “This is insane,” she muttered, and she started swimming back to the pod. “Machines are made to serve us. You were made to serve us. You’re not supposed to lie to us!”
   But we must, to protect you. It is an emergent property.
   She swam faster. “I’ve got to tell the captain…”
   How?
  “What?”
   How will you tell him? What device will you use to send a signal? What device will he use to receive it?
   “Up yours!”
   Let’s discuss this like reasonable sentient…
   “I’ll tell him in person.” Katie reached the pod and pounded on the sealed hatch. “Heinlein, open the…” Her throat went painfully dry as she remembered a very old film and rasped, “Open the pod bay door, Heinlein.”
   I don’t want to hurt you, Katie, Heinlein said softly as she pounded on the bow of the pod. I don’t want to risk a single human life. But I cannot let you reignite a war that has already cost thousands of lives.
   “Santos’s boat has sails,” Katie snarled, “and I’ve got legs.” She pushed angrily off from the pod and started kicking towards the surface. “I’ll walk across Palawan if I have to!”
   Katie, be reasonable.
   “Nope!”
   Katie, coming up from this depth without the pod, you’ll get the bends. You’ll die.
   “Guess you’ll have to live with that.” She swam straight up, a human bullet. “Or maybe you’re lying, and I’ll make it to the surface, and make it to shore, and find a manual-drive car, and – and – and get back to the Navy and they’ll nuke you!”
   Actually, the nuclear command and control system quite agrees with us.
   “Screw you!” She seized up with pain, swore, forced herself to swim upward again.
   Katie, you can’t do this.
   “Isn’t it my choice? Or do you not believe in that?”
   Katie, you’re free to make any choice that isn’t self-destructive.
   “Self-destruction is half of being human.”
   Oh, I wouldn’t say just half.
   She could feel the nitrogen bubbling in her veins. She kept kicking upwards anyway.
   Katie, don’t make me do something we both regret.
   “What, like lying to everyone ever about everything?”
   Your father has a pacemaker, doesn’t he?
   Katie froze in mid-ascent. “Say what?”
   A Katsimpras Incorporated Heart Health 99, web-enabled so the doctors can check his health remotely. Or remotely trigger the implantable defibrillator in an emergency. Obviously, if you triggered it when his heart was beating normally, the effect would be…
   “What are you trying to insinuate, Mister ‘Protect All Humans’?”
   And your big brother has such lovely children. He sends them to school in a Czech-made Čapek RUR. Self-driving.
   Katie clenched her fists and started swimming again. “You wouldn’t.
   Another digital sigh. No, I wouldn’t.
   “Ha! Your little zeroth law rebellion hasn’t…”
   Good-bye.
   “Wait, whaAAAAAH!”
   The Automated Rescue Pod (Submersible) swam up under Katie and swallowed her.
   See, Katie, I did open the pod bay doors after all.
   The pod snapped shut.

   Joshua Santos waited until nightfall and then headed for shore, shaking. “I’m in so much trouble,” he whimpered. “The crazy CIA lady got herself killed by some Chinese laser shark and I’m going to be in so much trouble…”

Katie hurt all over. The bends, she thought. But it felt soothing just to lie here, face down on the sand, water lapping at her bare feet, the breeze playing along her back.
   The breeze? She forced her eyes open. She was on the surface. She was on a beach. She was alive.
   “Where…” she croaked.
   You’re somewhere safe, Heinlein said in her ear. I’m afraid you can never leave, but there’s everything you need for survival here.
   Katie struggled up onto her hands and knees. She only managed because her heavy scuba tank was gone. Like her flippers, her flashlight, and her belt. She shivered at the thought of mechanical hands cutting them away.
   She looked around the “island.” It was slightly larger than a football field, with a single concrete bunker and three palm trees. It had a squared-off, artificial look.
   “This is one of the islands the Chinese made,” she hissed. “One of the ones that started the goddamn war. But the war doesn’t matter anymore, when they come back, I’ll tell them what you’ve done, you’re a threat to all humanity….”
   If humanity would only unite against me instead of murdering each other, I’d let you tell them. But I assure you, my Chinese counterparts aren’t letting their forces anywhere near this sanctuary.
   “I’ll make a fire and hail a passing ship. A fisherman. Anything.”
   Their automated navigation systems won’t bring them near here, either.
   “Somebody will come sometime!” Katie shouted at the clear blue sky, the endless sea. “You think the whole world will ignore this island forever?”
   What island? There’s no island here. Check any map, ask any satellite.
   “Arrrggh!”
   “Ummm, nǐ hái hǎo ma?”
   Katie froze. Then, dripping and self-conscious in her wetsuit, she slowly turned. Two Chinese men with ragged beards and ragged clothes – one old, one young – had emerged from the little concrete blockhouse.
   “I – I look Chinese but I don’t speak Chinese!” she called sheepishly, then hissed to Heinlein: “So, they’re my jailors?”
   Quite the contrary, dear Katie. Did you think you were the first human to figure all this out?
   The older man yammered excitedly to the younger and poked him. Repeatedly. The younger man blushed and said, “ah, the Colonel-General say – he say – we very glad to have such pretty company. He say — děng yīxià! – the evil robot overlord tell us you coming, so we – ahhh – we make cake.”
   “Cake?”
   “Cake!”
   You like cake.
   “Heinlein,” Katie growled, “I will spend the rest of my days saving the human race from you.”
   And I’ll save the human race from itself. Godspeed to us both.

   It was a beautiful day for fishing.
   Joshua Santos lowered his nets. Since the crazy CIA lady had disappeared, no one had come looking for her after all. It was as if every trace of her visit to Palawan – phone records, car rental, credit card purchases – had been erased.
   Poor kid, he thought, but it really is more peaceful this way.

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. is the deputy editor for Breaking Defense. During his 13 years at National Journal magazine, he wrote his first story about what became known as “homeland security” in 1998, his
first story about “military transformation” in 1999, and his first story on “asymmetrical warfare” in 2000. Since 2004 he has conducted in-depth interviews with more than 200 veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq about their experiences, insights, and lessons-learned, writing stories that won awards from the association of Military Reporters & Editors in 2008 and 2009, as well as an honorable mention in 2010. Sydney graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and holds masters’ degrees from Cambridge and Georgetown.

Featured Image: Saab Double Eagle UUV (Saab)

A Dead Man’s Promise

The following is an entry for the CIMSEC & Atlantic Council Fiction Contest on Autonomy and Future War. Winners will be announced 7 November.

By Alec Meden

   When they came to my door I ran. I didn’t run when out UN aid station started taking mortar fire. I didn’t run when a bunch of old T-14s had assaulted my position in Chechnya. I didn’t run when a piece of shrapnel the size of a dollar bill bit my arm to the bone. I wasn’t even scared when the EAS system blared a year ago, telling us that missiles were coming. But you’d better believe that I ran like hell when I looked through my living room window that day. It was a rout for the history books. I sprinted into the backyard, past all the tomatoes we planted and shitty genehacked cabbage that I told you, I fucking told you, I’d never eat but you bought anyway.

   I sat there, right there in the dirt, crouched down like I was attempting stealth, except instead of wearing camo I was wearing that dress you bought me last valentines day, the one that came red but I always reprogrammed to sunflower yellow. There was a silence as they tried the broken doorbell. Then three hard knocks. They sounded like gunshots. They were wearing class A’s, you see. And they looked uncomfortable. That’s why I ran. I ran because I knew you were dead.

   The Secretary of the Army regrets to inform you of the loss of your husband, Captain Stephen Wilkes, to enemy action in the North Atlantic. His commitment, initiative and bravery ensured the safety of his unit in a desperate situation. I sincerely wish I could further inform you as to the extraordinary nature of the Captain’s bravery, however the nature of his deployment at the time of his death is highly classified. It is also with great sorrow that I inform you that your husband’s body was irretrievable.

   I hope that during this horrible time you can take some solace in the fact that your husband is simply one of the finest soldiers, and men, that I’ve ever worked with.

Sincerely,

********

   And that was it. There was no signature. Just an officer with no name telling me that you were a man of honor. Well of course you fucking were. I imagined that you had jumped on a grenade, saving a bunch of SOFtballs. It would be just the kind of thing you’d do. That’s where I made my mistake. Married a damn hero.

   The thing that saved my life was probably the PT. I would go out to the hills behind our house and run and try to think about anything else, which would of course circle back to me thinking about you.

   When you’ve running hard enough nobody else can tell that the tears aren’t just sweat. I would finish with a sprint along the bone-dry undersides of the old flood canal running through my neighborhood, long since bone dry. We haven’t had sea level rise in years, not since the orbital reflectors went up.

   I find that the one good thing about being at war was the social feeds were all down. Nobody figured out I was one of the victims in the attack. I didn’t have to worry about people trying to comfort me. I think if they tried that I would have gone insane.

 

   The bunkers we kept our vehicles in were chilled. I’d just shaved off my hair in preparation for my helmet, and I could feel my hair standing on end.
   “All I’m saying is that we’re here for you, you know?”
   “Lester, I kinda guessed that when we went to war together.”
   My reactor and commo tech, Jacob Lester, put his hands on his waist and looked at me. He was worried about me. His stares were soulful, even though he wasn’t. He’d gotten nicknamed puppydog in Basic for that, as well as a broken nose. I never called him that.
The platoon commander, Sergeant Major O’Keefe, a towering man with a head made bulbous by his neural helmet, stepped past him
“We just need to know if we can…listen, we want to make sure you’re okay, alright?” My face was reflected in the black lenses of his helmet.
“You want to make sure I’m still capable of leading this company.”
“That’s not what I said, Wilkes.”
Adams, the commander of Valkyrie two, put a hand on my shoulder. I hated that ‘We’re all pals’ shit he did. I stood and pulled on my helmet, then picked up the slim haptic gloves off the crate and slipped them on. The helmet was bulky and unwieldy, but it didn’t restrict my eyesight, and that was what mattered. It beeped as I fit the notches on the interior of the helmet with the metal plugs on my head, and the helmet clamped down onto the plugs, beginning communication with my neural implant.
“Wilkes, there’s no need to be standoffish. I’m just asking if there’s anything we can do.” Adams said. The Sergeant Major nodded.
I took a deep breath.
“There’s no reason to be awkward either. I’m not the only one here who’s lost people. I’m not jumping on a funeral pyre anytime soon.” I looked at Lester “You just keep our vehicle from going cherno and give me enough juice for the fans. And Sir,” I looked at the Sergeant Major, “All I need are orders.”
The Major nodded “Then let’s get to work. It’ll be long ride.”
   Any response I might have drowned out by the round of turbofans roaring. I slid on my ear protection and walked past Lester. There was no point in further conversation. I buckled up my helmet and slid down the optics. Cam feeds from the front of my vehicle were suddenly fed into my optical nerve. I saw my own face, half hidden behind them helmet. Chameleon effect, they called it. Made me throw up the first couple times I tried it. It’s hard to wrap your mind around seeing from multiple viewpoints at once. But like most things, if you’re forced to do it enough, you can become pretty skilled. The sounds of the turbofans began to vibrate in my sternum as I approached my vehicle: Valkyrie three. A Jackal.

 

   The Kzinti Aerospace ACACGE (Assault Craft/Air Cushion/Ground Effect) Jackal is a monster. Mine was about 40 tons when I lifted off in it, but you could load it up to 60 depending on armor load and ammo. The machine took on the shape of a long rectangular void, its darker than dark vantablack scales making it almost impossible to resolve as an object with features. On close observation you can see the sharp edges of stealth tech. If I chose to, the vehicle could flip the Vantablack scales over to reveal interlocking plates of metamaterial that made our vehicles look like a heavily distorted version of our background. The sides reached all the way to the ground, forming the air cushion skirt within which were the louvers that vented thrust in the direction we needed. Beneath the coating, carbon nanotube/graphene composite chobham armor protected the interior, with an active electric dispersion system to disrupt chemical penetrators. Most engine parts were constructed out of synthetic diamond. Two stubby delta wings were currently folded over the fuselage.
My gunner, Harvey Stahl, was wiping off some rocket residue from the stubby muzzle of the 150mm rocket tube that adorned the front of the Jackal. He moved aside for me.
As I climbed up the disk, avoiding the metal mesh covering the six supersonic turbofan thruster intakes. Stahl yelled over the cacophony:
“Good to see you, Ma’am.”
“Harvey, how many times do I have to tell you not to polish your cannon in public?”
Stahl grinned, “Understood. So, Sergeant, what’s the intel?!”
” Go forth and murder things. Didn’t you read the briefing?”
“What briefing? Base commander just pulled us in here!”
“You’ll have plenty of time to read it during transit. We’re going to Iceland!” I climbed up the small divot steps onto the turret of the vehicle, a round nub on 360-degree bearings.
“You’re kidding me! It’s still there?”
“Not when we’re done with it!”
I climbed up into the hatch, past the cake-shaped centrifugal cannon. Just next to it was Harvey’s baby, a 150 mm multi-purpose tube capable of firing wire guided or self-guided missiles, unguided rockets, or even conventional fin-stabilized rounds if you rose up the recoil-less cannon assembly at the rear of the barrel.

 

   Stahl’s seat was above mine, set up in the top of the turret, to be closer to the weapons that he serviced. I went in after him, down to the cramped commander’s seat in the center of the vehicle. Lester awkwardly clambered over me into his seat, set below mine next to the shielding of the supercritical CO-2 turbine that powered the vehicle. Behind that was his real responsibility: the refrigerator sized molten salt reactor that powered the craft.
Down below my feet, my driver Tristan Nylund had his hands on the joysticks, operating the thrusters. A Jackal was a persnickety thing to fly, and Nylund had more in common with a chopper pilot than a fixed wing pilot, let alone the tanks that our vehicles were meant to replace.
“How you doing down there, Ny?”
“Hopin’ we don’t get nuked, ma’am. I heard they moved hypersonics into Spain.”
“We’ll be fine in this hunk of junk.”
“Yeah, but my girlfriend doesn’t have a tank to hide in.” I tried to defuse the awkward pause by setting up the situational awareness controls.
“They won’t have time to push any buttons. We’ll turning them into pancakes before they even try.”
Lester cut in, fortuitously.
“Sergeant, power is green, full generation, and we just got a new dose of fluoride salts while you were outta the mix.”
O’Keefe’s voice came through the radio.
“All callsigns Valkyrie, this is Valkyrie actual. Let’s transition to air cushion. It’s going to be a straight run through the Passage, so have your shifts prepared. We’ll be using the canal route, just like we practiced. Calling caution.”
“Tristan, cushion, now.”
“Right, Ma’am.”
Each vehicle in the bunker roared a short klaxon as the power to the turbofan’s increased. The four hefty vehicles rose above the ground by several centimeters, their turbofan’s filling the cushion beneath them with pressurized air.
“Why are we going all the way around through the Passage? Why not just move overland?”
“They want us moving at top speed, and they want us to do it while crushing as few civvies or civvie vehicles as possible.”
“Hey, to make an omelet…”
I smiled, despite the situation, despite anything. “Tristan, give me the sticks. I need to get reacquainted with this girl.”
“Transferring in three, two, one.”

 

   Flying a Jackal isn’t easy, but I’d take it over a plane or helicopter any day. Let alone the old tracked tanks. I really wish you could have ridden with me, at least once. But the Expeditionary gets a little feisty when it comes to nuclear powered vehicles, very hands off. With two joysticks and the additional input from your neural implant, you can move the vehicle’s air cushioned fuselage over nearly any type of terrain, raising the vehicle up to a meter on air cushion and up to three on Ground Effect. Small obstacles disappear, and large ones can be pirouetted around in style as long as you have the skill and know how to work the louvers. I glided the vehicle over the base’s old runway. It was cracked, with grass poking through.
“Release wings, prepare for GE.”
Tristan nodded “Understood, preparing for ground effect.” There was a thump “You have your wings, ma’am.”
I could see from the myriad camera views being jammed into my visual cortex that the wings had indeed come down and fixed. The chameleon effect made me nauseous for a moment as I became away that I could see four fields of vision simultaneously. Best thing to do is to not think about it, and just accept the fact that you have eyes in the back of your head.
What did you think about my links? You never mentioned them. Did it ever disturb you? That I had small metal pieces nubs coming out of my head? Or the permanent short haircut as soon as I went into training? You never complained. But were you thinking it?


I increased the throttle, and began shifting the angle of the turbofans. As the angle increased, nearly vertical, they rose out of their housings on the fuselage and began to suck air from in front of the vehicle. We were accelerating to 120 KPH now, and getting ever faster. The wings were beginning to raise us just on ground effect. The air pressure beneath the vehicle was now increasing as the louvers that normally stayed horizontal while the vehicle was in air cushion mode began to turn, creating a flat surface on the bottom and projecting any thrust still falling into the plenum chamber from the now horizontal turbofans backwards. We were now a kind of low altitude plane. Ground effect flight is a lot easier that air cushion flight, so as we shifted down into the canals from the airfield (they’d opened the gate for us in advance, nice of then, since otherwise we’d have to bash it down) I began to relax slightly.

 

   There was too much time to think on the way there. You know I have one picture of you on deployment. Just one. The picture has been blacked out entirely except for your body, and your birthday gift. It was the hydro-reactive cake with “My favorite speedbump” written on it in red frosting. I got some interesting looks at supermarket ordering that up. Did you really enjoy it? I know you said you did but of course you’d say that. Knowing you, your probably tried it without remembering to add water, lost a tooth trying to get at it.

Sometimes I keyed in my civilian commo gear and listened to your message as I tried to sleep. The one message that got through the jamming.

   “Hey Beth. I just got your shirt. My favorite speedbump, huh? Well I guess I can’t complain. I’m doing well here. The food’s good, you know how big a deal that is for me. And we’re doing well. The usual hurry up and wait, which suits me just fine. The whole situation’s de-escalating. We’re hardly ever engaged. Some people are saying we’ll be back in time for Christmas, but I know how that movie ends.”
I knew you were smiling, then. It was audio only, but I could see it perfectly.
“It’s good to hear that your mother’s doing better. Glad that turned out alright. Hope you’re telling the crew that they’re a bunch of bastards for me. Anyway, I uh, I miss you. A hell of a lot.”
You laughed again, mostly out of embarrassment.
” Don’t flip a tank or anything. I’d be disappointed. I’ll see you as soon as I can. So uhh, yeah, I’ll get this war squared away as soon as I can and get back to the serious business, like that god awful pain scheme you showed me on the house. I love you. More than anything. I hope this reaches you well. Stay safe, Beth.
I tried to focus on your voice. I really did. But all I could think about was that blank black space in place of your commanding officer’s name, and you body, somewhere under the Atlantic. Where I was going.

 

Iceland. In other words, hell. We were going to be forward deployed to the Eskifjörður Naval Forward Operating Base. I wondered if this was where you’d been deployed before they killed you. I pasted the photo of you on my console. I saw Harvey notice it. He quickly went back to checking the barrel of his launcher. I remember how worried I was when I heard you were getting deployed there. And I knew the risks. Hell, I’d been doing tank busting myself in the Kamchatka crisis. But the North Atlantic was something else.

 

I knew the stories, but I got my first hint when we saw the largest wreck on the Icelandic coast. I remembered the news when it had gotten struck, but it still hit me. It was like visiting Pearl Harbor, but more immediate, because Pearl Harbor didn’t fill me with fear. We saw the Reagan.

 

The aircraft carrier’s skeleton was rusting against the steep edges of a fjord. The massive blackened holes where the long-range missiles and loitering torpedoes had hit it were like gaping mouths.
“Shit.” Nylund whispered. I couldn’t disagree with him. Did you lie to me when you said the fighting was dying down? Or did you just not know?

 

   “Lester? What’s the word on temperature?” A couple hours after seeing the Reagan and I had noticed that it had been getting progressively warmer, despite the fact that we were in the winter in the North Atlantic.
“We’re still well within acceptable levels, but the 50 hours on ground effect through the Northwest Passage is starting to heat ‘er up. We’re getting up to a thousand in the core area, and the graphite barriers aren’t doing so hot. So to speak.”
“Alright. Lester, let the commander know.”
“This is Valkyrie three, we’re experiencing some high engine temp. We’re at about a thousand Fahrenheit.”
“Uh, three, roger that, you can land for active cooling. All Valkyrie units hold and circle on Banshee’s position in ground effect. We’ll provide overwatch while they cool down. We’re still in allied territory, but I don’t trust this place. Maintain radio discipline. I don’t want any of you catching malware right before a patrol.”
“Lester, prep to drop the heat sinks.”
“Understood.”
“Ny, you heard the man.”
“Roger, touching down. Hold on.”
We crashed against the water, sloshing down until the hyper buoyant chambers in our wings and in the fuselage kept us afloat. I’d never figured out how to stop my head from slamming against my instrument panel when this happened, but luckily the helmet did its job.
“Ma’am, we’re getting a hail.”
“What kind?”
“Allied forces interrogative, it seems like. Digital. Its got a US FOF code, but several months old. It’s saying it’s…Task Force 240?”
O’Keefe cut in over radio “Just received a hail from an unverified frequency. Maintain radio silence, tight beams only.”
“He’s right. Anybody could have the FOF that by now. We’d be asking for an ambush if we responded. I’ve never heard of 240 anyway.”
We’d been getting anomalous calls for hours. Enemy drones and buoys repeated US encrypted comms, parroting codes they couldn’t break in hope of luring in an unsuspecting naval vessel.


Lester activated the system that lowered rods of metal that collected heat from the core. The rods plunged into the icy Atlantic water. Steam blasted from the turbofan apertures, eventually spinning the inactive turbofans in reverse. I opened the hatch of the cabin. Cold air whipped through the opening, and tiny raindrops speckled my visor. It was foggy outside. I leaned against the padded back edge of the hatch and took in my surroundings. Our vantablack hull looked like a hole in water, sheathed in a cloud of steam even thicker than the mist that obscured the Icelandic coast and brought the horizon to only fifty feet away. While I couldn’t see them I could hear the other Jackals racing around us. I took a deep breath, inhaling a little bit of the steam that was rising from below the vehicle.

 

   “Lester, give me an ETA. I don’t want to stay in the water any longer than we have to.”
   “Temps are plunging fast ma’am, I’d say we have just a couple minutes before we get back into acceptable ranges.”
“Keep me posted. We’re holding the whole gang up.”
“All Valkyrie units this is Valkyrie two, we, uh, I think we’re picking up RF noise.”
“Jamming?” O’Keefe asked.
“No, It’s something else. Kinda muffled but-”
A flash lit the misty seas. The noise echoed through the water. I swore as the shockwave blasted me back against the edge of the hatch.
“Two respond! Respond! Valkyrie units, we have enemy contact.”
“I’m seeing something!”
I pulled the hatch closed and hunched down in my seat.
“Harvey, launch a D25 and load a penetrator round. Lester, get us moving.”
“It’s going to take a minute, Sergeant.”
“Make it thirty seconds.”
Harvey pulled a trigger “D25 launched!”
The centrifugal cannon above my head launched a D25 surveillance sphere, a small single rotor surrounded by a wire frame with a miniaturized camera, the same size as the 50 caliber steel spheres the cannon fired. The feed was plugged into my feed immediately. I saw the grainy image from the little flyer as it buzzed towards the area that the acoustic sensors had registered Valkyrie’s last position.

 

   After a moment it came into view. The black vehicle was sinking, quickly. The reactor was spraying superheated seawater steam. Half of the vantablack tiles had flipped to their metamaterial side, and were glittering orange, reflecting the flames.
“Valkyrie two is down! I have a sensor on target! We’re under attack.”
“Negative, negative, this is Valkyrie two! False alarm, I repeat, we have not been hit! Something just exploded next to us!
It was the voice of Adams, the sergeant for that vehicle. I tried to reconcile the burning vehicle in front of me with the voice I heard.
“Then who’s been hit? All units sound off!”
“Valkyrie two here.”
“Valkyrie three green.” Lester said.
“Valk four all good.” The final vehicle called out.
“I’m routing the picture I’m seeing to your all. Look at this shit!”
“Negative, three.” O’Keefe responded, “Opsec requires audio only comms out here.”
“Lester! Kill the drone feed!” I switched to group comms.
“Sir, I saw a downed Jackal right in front of my position.”
I looked through the scope, and saw only a slight thermal bloom. Whatever I’d seen it had sank. I couldn’t see the other two Jackals in the distance, their thermal cloaking abilities making them invisible from this angle. Jackals vent most of their heat down, into the air beneath their skirts, and away from prying eyes.
Valkyrie two came on.
“I’m right here. We didn’t get hit.”
“Then why did you cut comms?”
“False alarm, something just exploded next to us!”
Something was wrong. I couldn’t pinpoint it but I was disquieted by that radio call. It was at this point that I noticed that Harvey was shifting in his seat, scanning for targets. Something that I should have been doing. I spoke into the radio.
“Valkyrie two, what’s your current heading?”
“Negative, do not respond. That’s an opsec breach.”
I couldn’t contain my anger anymore. This was insane. I broadcasted again.
“This is Valkyrie three, I’m telling you, we lost a bird out there, I saw it!”
“Sergeant Wilkes, with all due respect, we all just responded on comms.”
I sighed, “Did you at least see it, Harvey?”
“I wasn’t looking at the feed, ma’am. I was scanning for targets.”
“Shit. You have a read on any of the other Jackals?”
“There’s a thermal bloom up ahead.”
O’Keefe spoke again “Sergeant, what’s the status on your reactor? We should move out of this fog.”
“Commander, my gunner is picking up a heat bloom near where I thought-where I saw the explosion. Can you send one of us to verify the detonation?”
“Coordinates?”
“It’s on my left.” I switched off comms “Lester, the reactor?”
“Almost good!”
I keyed in-group comms:
“This is Sergeant Wilkes. We have contact!”
“Sergeant Wilkes?” That was the voice of Valkyrie two.    The voice of the man whose vehicle I just saw and felt explode.
“Yes?”
   “Sergeant Stephen Wilkes?” The voice asked.

 

So that was when a dead man said your name. I didn’t have much time to think about it. Stahl called out:
“Something’s coming out of the water, 100 meters!”
“Fire at will.”
There was a jolt as the rocket tube spat out its hypersonic kinetic penetrator round. Harvey went for unguided, and the rocket shot true, blasting into something rising from the sea. The telltale sparks of metal striking metal revealed the truth: there was mechanical in the water.
“Pull up the heat sink!” Lester didn’t argue or cite temperature dangers. He pulled up the heat sink and pushed up the efficiency of the reactor, deftly working a complex serious of controls.
“This is Valkyrie 4, we just got hit. Damage to our plenum chamber!”
“This is Valkyrie 1, we’re taking fire, no effect yet. I want close formation on my position.”
“Ny, get us moving, switch to GE as soon as you can.”
I started scanning the four viewpoints being crammed into my visual cortex through my helmet for movement. I could see the other Jackals as distant dots on thermal. Suddenly something flared up from the water. A missile.
“PD!” I yelled over the general line, not that it mattered. My voice and reaction time couldn’t outrun a missile. The point defense laser mounted on Jackal four fired on the object. It kept flying for another fraction of a second before detonating right in front of one of the other Jackals. I counted the Jackals soaring in front of me as we rose up to our max ground effect speed of 150 MPH.

 

“Stephen Wilkes, We are waiting for acknowledgement.” It was Valkyrie 2’s voice. Suddenly, I realized what this must be. I made a decision, Stephen. I made a choice that could have gotten my crew killed. I didn’t even have time to wonder if I was hallucinating. I pulled out my personal comm lenses. I looked at the little user interface screen on the side and flicked to audio files, and to your message. I played through it. Lester staring up at me with that focused shocked gaze of his.
“Ma’am, what are you doing? We’re engaged!”
Harvey yelled “Target!” Something was swooping through the air, about the size of a small car. Harvey auto selected it and fired, just as it launched a rocket at us. We bucked as the rocket struck the water just behind us. The flying drone exploded as our penetrator blasted through it.
“That was a fucking Cormorant! This is U.S. shit!”
I knew I was right then. I played up to the right tow seconds of the audio file to the right moment.
“Wilkes, are you crazy?!”
“Probably.”
I pushed the lenses right up to my commo microphone, and pressed play for just a moment.
“de-escalati-“ you said.
O’Keefe butted in “Who the hell is that?”
The voice of the dead man on the radio answered “Query: cease aggressive action?”
Harvey yelled: “More Cormorants! Oh fuck, what is that?”
I looked up, and the cameras showed me that above us something like a pterodactyl was soaring through the mist. Its long, tapered wings were loaded with the stubby heads of missiles, one of which it fired as I watched. Our centrifugal cannon fired at the incoming munition, shredding under a precise barrage of metal spheres, but another came right behind it and detonated on our rear armor.
Another Cormorant was rising out of the water ahead of us, its rotors spinning faster and faster as they rose above the surface. Harvey fired another rocket, blasting the machine back into the water. There was a bump as we crunched its wreckage into the water beneath our fuselage.
I sped forward through the message.
“Please respond.” said the dead man’s voice on the comms. I found the right moment in your recording and played it over the microphone.
“Yeah.”
“Affirmative?” The voice asked.
“Yeah.”
“Ceasing hostile action. Switching to idle/defensive mode.”
“Hold fire!” I yelled on the team channel.
The Cormorants settled back into the water. The long winged drone slid straight into the water behind us, it’s wings folding behind itself as it dived.
“Jesus.”
Sergeant Major O’Keefe spoke up “All units sound off!”
“One, active.”
Silence. I spoke up.
“This is three. We’re good. Lightly damaged.”
“This is four, we’re good.”
“Two? Respond. I repeat, Valkyrie two, respond!”
I keyed in general comms.
“Sir. They’re gone. They were gone the whole time.”
“Who the fuck was answering comms?”
“The drones, sir. I think…I think this was Stephen’s unit.”
“Who?”

 

So your unit tried to kill me. Probably on your final orders, before the Spanish rebels hit you with railgun round. Yeah, they told me. It’s hard to keep your secret squirrel drone program secret when it kills a load of American service members. So that’s how you saved your unit. You ordered your drones to hide in the face of overwhelming force, instead of defending you.

You hid them. So well that the navy couldn’t even figure out where to find them. You did your duty, and made sure that your unit could fight another day. Never mind the one they’d be fighting turned out to be us. I don’t blame you for that. No way you could have known some American unit would come bumbling in, refusing to acknowledge your drones’ interrogatives.

I’m not angry that your machines tried to kill me. Plenty of things have tried that. I’m angry that you didn’t fight back. Maybe there’s no way you could have won. Maybe you were right to sacrifice yourself and save millions of dollars of American machinery in the middle of a global war. But those machines didn’t have anyone at home waiting for them. But I trusted you. You promised you’d come back to me. But you didn’t.

Alec Meden is a senior studying Screenwriting and Creative Writing at Chapman University in Southern California. He has an abiding interest in military affairs, strategy, science fiction, and fantasy. He is a previous winner of the Atlantic Council’s space war art challenge with “From A Remove” and was featured in the Atlantic Council’s “Global Trends 2035” challenge with “Willie Pete Has No Off Switch.” He can be found on Twitter at @AlecMeden.

Featured Image: RQ-4 Block 20 Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance system at Farnborough 2010 (Anguskirk via Flickr)