Neptunus Lex

(Previously)

In the CATCC gallery, each of the senior squadron reps sat in the darkness, looking at the naked and anticipatory flight deck on the closed-circuit television, each avoiding eye contact, most of them secretly pleased not to be a part of this decision.

“I want to give him a shot,” the CO repeated.

“Roger that, skipper. I’ll take it to CAG.”

A very few minutes later, the CAG, or air wing commander, having been fully briefed by the squadron XO, rang off with the ship’s Captain on the bridge, concluding, “Concur, Skipper. We’ll catch him on the first look, and if we don’t, we’ll send him straight to the tanker on the bolter or wave-off. In fact, I’ll have the tanker drag him out towards Bahrain once he gets aboard, if it comes to it. That’ll give us some time to think about our next move.”

Up on the darkened bridge, the Captain rubbed his face wearily – God it had been a long day – the morning’s alongside refueling seemed to have happened months ago, even in a different life. He’d done that on less than four hours of frequently interrupted sleep, and had only managed to carve out two twenty minute naps during the course of the day. He shook his head wearily. Ten days until we hit Bahrain, he thought, and I can maybe get a full night’s sleep.

The CO shook his head and smiled wryly at the thought of how far he’d come from the old days, from being a headstrong junior officer in a fighter squadron: In those heady days, a pilot – required by official safety instructions to get eight hours of continuous rest – could brag about how much sleep he’d gotten during the course of a night. Popular pieces of wardroom pith, passed down from generation to generation, included, “if you can sleep 12 hours per night, it’s only a three month cruise,” and “I only need eight hours sleep a day. Whatever I get at night is gravy!”

On the other hand, when going ashore on liberty as a young man, the challenge used to be to cram as much living as possible into each and every day – a man who was lucky and had no duty to stand aboard ship might go five days in port on 15-20 hours sleep, catching up only when the ship got underway again.

Well, he thought: You’ve come a long way, baby. To command at sea is to win the prize, he reminded himself, counting his blessings. But in a secret part of himself that no one else could see into, that he would let no one see into, he had to admit that it could also be a dreadful burden. Every day there were ten thousand important decisions that had to be made aboard an aircraft carrier at sea, and of all those, only he could make five hundred to a thousand of them.

Decisions like this one. He was not entirely content with the plan to recover the lieutenant junior grade, circling aft of the ship some thirty miles away – or at least, the Captain corrected himself, he will be behind the ship once we turn into the wind. At the moment, the young man was actually off the ship’s bow as she raced more or less downwind, poaching 45 degrees to the west, towards the divert airfield at Shaikh Isa, in Bahrain. Closing the difference. Just in case.

The bridge watch was hushed, the atmosphere strained. The ship was making 30 knots on the darkest night of the month, and each watch stander had a vivid recollection of nearly running over that dhow, two hours ago. That nearly unlit dhow, of fragile, radar absorbing wood, that had emerged as if from nowhere and had run aboard them close like a nightmare looming out of the darkness – God, how close it had been. The dhow that had itself been running towards Bahrain, though at nothing like so fast as 30 knots. Somewhere in the darkness, each member of the bridge watch knew, their courses would again converge, then cross - the math was inescapable. The only question in their minds was whether the 100,000-ton carrier would still be on that course, or whether, through fortune more than design, she would have safely turned again back into the wind, to catch the evening’s final recovery.

The Captain flicked a penlight on to double-check the FA-18C divert fuel requirements, the “bingo” fuel states. Shaikh Isa was 140 miles away – in a “double bubble,” or two drop tank Hornet, that was a Bingo of 2.3 – twenty-three hundred pounds of fuel required. If the pilot turned right to the divert heading, accelerated rapidly to optimum climb airspeed, climbed smoothly on the target mach number to the correct altitude, started his idle power descent at the right range from the air field – if all these things were done perfectly by a struggling pilot, someone cursing himself for his incompetence while “killing snakes in the cockpit” – and if no outside interference came from the sometimes obdurate Bahraini air traffic control - then the Hornet would be on deck with nearly ten minutes of excess fuel. Not so very much.

The Captain shook his head again, sadly now: The young pilot would be “on the ball” with no more than 2.5 useable gas, two thousand pounds stuck in the right drop tank, useless. The CAG’s plan, which he had reluctantly agreed to, would have the pilot circle to rendezvous with the overhead tanker before getting on the bingo profile. The rendezvous would burn time and gas – but how much? How quickly could a rattled pilot get aboard the tanker? How long would it take before he started transferring gas? What if the tanker went “sour” mid-cycle, and couldn’t pass gas?

The CO grimaced tautly, sighed. These are CAG’s concerns, he thought. Air wing stuff. I need to worry about the ship, let CAG worry about the jets. He picked up a sound-powered circuit on the console to the left of his chair, buzzed twice, waited for the landing signal officer to reply: “Paddles, this is the Captain. Your man in 311 has been struggling to get aboard – I think you know that. He’s going to be ‘trick or treat’ on the ball, with trapped gas and a long divert if he bolters. I want you guys to talk to him early if he needs it – step into the cockpit with him and give him a hand. Take control if you have to. I want him catch him on the first look if possible. But hear you this: Don’t you take any trash from him. If he’s out of parameters, or not responding, get rid of him. We’ll deal with what happens after, after. Got it?”

“Yes sir,” replied the young LSO before hanging up the handset, stressing more than he would like to have done, and privately fuming. Just drive your fricken boat, old man, he thought. You do your job, I’ll do mine. The phone circuit buzzed again, twice, imperiously – he grimaced, but the voice he used to answer up was mild, pleasant – never let them see you sweat: “Yes sir?”

“Just one more thing, paddles,” the Captain added, smiling slightly in spite of himself: “No pressure.”

“OK, skipper. No pressure.”

Down in CATCC, the XO gathered himself before speaking into the UHF radio handset, “Good news, Skipper – we’re taking you guys first – you need to head down to angels six to take a couple hundred pounds off the tanker – if that doesn’t unstick 311’s drop tank, have him stop transfer on the left. The trapped gas there will put him back in asymmetric limits for the landing. Worst comes to worst, he can use that gas after he bolters on the way to Shaikh Isa.”

“304, roger,” replied the squadron CO before switching to his aux radio. “Good news, pard – they’re taking us first.”

“311, roger,” answered the wingman, suddenly realizing that in the gloomy tension of his cockpit, his right hand had been “squeezing the black juice” out of the control stick while he had been waiting for the invisible and unknowable forces that governed his fate to come to a decision - any decision - about the next half hour of his life. Or maybe, he reflected, about the rest of it. “Good news.”

(To be continued…) 

I know that times have changed of late, but when I read of young midshipmen getting only four or five hours of sleep at night while engaged in a spirited competition with the other service academies over “honeypots,” I must confess that a smile of welcome recollection comes to mind. Ah, youth!

But then I read the article:

It might not have looked like it, but there was a war going on yesterday between midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy and the “Red Team” at the nearby National Security Agency at Fort Meade.

The Red Team — a group of NSA hackers tasked with breaking into U.S. government and military information systems to expose vulnerabilities — was “attacking” servers set up by computer science and information technology majors at the Annapolis military college. The midshipmen, in turn, were trying to defend their network.

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The Naval Academy won last year’s competition, and this year is joined in the exercise by cadets from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., and the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology in Ohio.

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Some did administrative work, monitoring all the e-mails sent and how the server was being used, properly or improperly.

Others monitored the attempts to access the system internally and externally, and one team of Mids was set up to monitor a group of “honeypot computers.” These computers, designed to be less secure, act as decoys so the Red Team will spend its time hacking into computers that won’t slow down the Mids’ overall system.

Feh.

Youth: It’s entirely squandered on the young.

In the spirit of “if you want a new idea, read an old book,” the same folks who brought you Swift boats and John Forbes Kerry’s Purple Hearts are now preparing to trot out a new riverine patrol capability:

At this time next year, about 200 sailors will fill up small boats, man .50-caliber machine guns and watch for trouble along the waterways of Baghdad.

“We’ve got sailors lining up at the door,” Capt. Michael L. Jordan, commodore of the riverine force, said during an interview at his half-finished headquarters. “The problem is, we’ve got no experience to draw from.” The Navy has not seen this type of action since the Vietnam War, so it is calling river veterans, the Marine Corps and the special warfare community for advice. The chosen sailors will undergo eight months of training, including combat first aid and grunt infantry at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The riverine force is part of the Navy’s effort to become a bigger player in global efforts against terrorists and insurgents. Policing and protecting the shallow brown and green waters in hot spots now is the responsibility of the Marine Corps and special forces.

The riverine group will consist of three squadrons and roughly 900 sailors, including the 200 initially deployed, and support staff. Each unit will have 16 boats, most likely 30- to 40-foot crafts capable of cruising as fast as 40 knots. The craft will be similar to those used by Marines and special forces.

The Navy’s last widespread riverine force patrolled during the Vietnam War along the Mekong Delta and its rivers and canals. The hastily assembled riverine corps came together in 1965.

Well, at least no one’s talking about these guys becoming some kind of naval infantry. Because we’ve already got one of those. It’s ver nice.

And so long as they stay in the boat, they won’t get their boots all muddy and get mistaken for sojers.

Couldn’t have that.

So, remember guys: Stay in the boat.

I know, I know: It looks like fun ashore. Still.

Stay in the boat.

Usually I dread this sort of thing, even when I don’t resent it. Which is pretty much the rest of the time.

Still, the creative well has run dry for the nonce, and the request was made in the best fraternal customs of the service.

So.

The job I asked for the last time I talked to a detailer: Summat to do over at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. SPAWAR, as it’s known, here in Sandy Eggo. Thought it might look good on a resume, having opted off the major command (ashore) track. Having been essentially ineligible for major command at sea, and having a hard time imagining anything ashore worth commanding, that would justify ripping the family elements out of what they’d come to call “home,” for the first time ever.

The job I got the last time I talked to a detailer: Had the previous job in my pocket and decided to go and interview with the incumbent. Case the place, like. After he’d spent 45 minutes unable to tell me anything useful about what he was doing, and after the resident Heavy told me that, “Well, we can always use another O-6,” ran back to my digs as fast as my pins would take me and called the detailer up to tell him, “No thanks.” At which point I anticipated a new negotiation. Fruitlessly as it turned out. After a short but friendly competition between a couple of heavy staffs in the local area, one side “won” and I reported for duty. Doing that voodoo, that I do, so well.

Job I liked the most: Squadron command, hands down. It just duddn’t get any better than that. TOPGUN was hard work but tremendously rewarding. The adversary squadron down in Key West was The Best Job Ever, apart from those previous two.

Job I hated the most: Never really had a bad job. Bad days, certainly. But no bad jobs.

Three jobs I really would like (or would have liked) to have: Air Wing Commander, because you get to keep flying and leading strikes. And there’s nothing quite like being at the front of the strike package with the radar warning receiver buzzing in your ear and your wingmen at your side and the timeline clicking and the blood singing its joyous Valkerie songs in your veins and the target down there waiting for you to plant your flowers, your lovely flowers blossoming red, to black, to grey, and all of it yours from conception, to birth, to the dying part. And then the coming home, to do it all again. Wasn’t in the cards though. Which is a shame.

Destroyer command (I know, I’m a brown shoe, but still) because it’s yours and it’s tangible in a way that a squadron really isn’t, while it’s small enough (unlike cruiser command) to stay out of the way of the elephants, and all of those who groom them. Carrier command? I’m big enough to know that I’m not big enough for that. It’s good to know one’s limitations.

Naval Attache to Paris, because it’s cocktail parties and gentility and swimming with the sharks. Didn’t swing at that particular pitch since it would have played all Harry with the girl’s high school plans, and there’s no guarantee, is there? Could sign up for the Boule Mich, and find yourself in Sunni Pakistan instead, all by your lonesome. Islamabad being an unaccompanied tour.

There you have it. And the tagging stops with me, gomen.

The local crab-wrapper gets it right:

Navy petty officer third class (Nathanial Leoncio) was on patrol with Marines in southern Ramadi on Oct. 4 when they were struck by a series of roadside bombs. The explosives killed one Marine and seriously injured three other men, including Leoncio.

At least two of the bombs detonated under the 6-ton Humvee that carried Leoncio, flipping it upside down and on top of him, severing his right leg just below the knee.

Although his right thighbone was shattered and he was bleeding internally, Leoncio refused to be evacuated. He ignored his wounds and cared for a severely injured Marine, likely saving the man’s life.

BZ, Corpsman.

Place this in the category of: “Probably too good to be true, but worth sharing nevertheless”

The correspondent who sent it my way said that it represents what it appears to: A HUD camera freeze from of an FA-18 of some flavor in a “position of advantage” over a USAF F-22 Raptor.

Little things. Like gunning an Air Force guy in his high tech gear. They just mean so much.

You have to understand this about fighter combat: Killing someone with a missile? Just business. Killing him with a gun? Now that’s personal. How can that be, you ask? Dead is dead, right?

Wrong. If you get shot with a missile, you got beat. You get gunned, you’ve been owned. A missile has a guidance loop, a processor, a logic board - it can be defeated. A 20mm round is brutally insensate, a mere bludgeon, with high explosive incendiary effects to go along with its kinetics. You cannot argue with it, you cannot decoy it, you cannot, once fairly beaten down, get out of its way.

Which somehow puts me in mind of as story from when I was stationed over in Japan. The USAF had a F-15 Eagle squadron in Kadena working “with” another USAF F-16 squadron in Korea. Now, much as there existed a good-natured rivalry between the FA-18 community in the US Navy, and their F-14 counterparts, so also did a rivalry exist between F-15 pilots and F-16 jocks. Except you could probably leave out the “good natured” part. Because in the Navy, anyway, after a moment or two’s reflection, one brand of pilot would actually cross the street to piss on the other, if in fact he was on fire.

Because of the service.

Less so in the USAF, was my strong impression. It all came from the hauteur with which the Eagle drivers, accustomed to raining long-range death from way high above viewed the mud-moving Viper pilots, no use at all in a stand-up fight, but given to pretensions. The F-16 guys on the other hand, were all too accustomed to seeing beat-down F-15s in the HUD cameras with the gun pipper on them to give much more than the back of their hand to the self-regard demonstrated by “Ego” pilots. They went at each other hammer and tongs. And that was just in the O’Club.

But anyway, the aforementioned Korea-based F-16 squadron maintained what we in the Navy refer to as a “Hit Log.” It’s basically a notebook used to record any illustration of buffoonery or mischance committed by any of the squadron’s pilots - a way of recording their misfortune for posterity. So that later generations could laugh at them too. The JO’s of that particular squadron were wonderfully descriptive - one could almost say inventive - and loved nothing more, when not gunning Eagles, than roasting their own comrades in tiny, crabbed pen.

And the Japan-based F-15 squadron, out of Kadena, happened to have one of the USAF’s first female fighter pilots - a real novelty at the time, and a source, for reasons I will not go into here, for much added fuel to the intermural fire between the two fighter communities.

Briefly: You should know that in a missile duel between Eagles and Vipers - at least in the old days, before AMRAAMs, when it was Sparrows and Sidewinders only (and only the F-15 carried the longer range Sparrow) - there was no contest: The Eagle is a wonderfully designed air superiority fighter, capable of going high and fast and carrying a lot of heat. But if an F-16 were to survive somehow to the merge with an Eagle, and if, at that merge the Eagle guys didn’t bug the hell out as fast as they could go, well: Foxes in the henhouse. For a hard turning, “I see you, you see me” fight, a stripped-down F-16 is hard to beat.

For an Air Force guy, anyway.

Which I know was all a long walk to this small house: In the debrief of a “many vs. many” F-15/F-16 engagement, one of the Viper jocks somehow managed to find himself in a position of disadvantage with respect to an Eagle flown by the previously mentioned female fighter pilot. In short, he got gunned.

By a girl.

There was HUD tape to provide the graphic evidence which proved to all those ears that had, in the midst of the fray, been unable to process her dulcet tones calling the hapless Viper jock dead, and out of the fight. Run along now.

Cos’ you don’t have to go home, but you can’t. Stay. Here.

Well, unfortunately there were several other things to debrief in the mission, while all of the Viper jocks but one squirmed in their seats like schoolboys held late on Friday afternoon. And the one who wasn’t squirming looked like he was pondering the best way to die, if he couldn’t manage to become invisible. Finally the debrief ended and there was a mad rush to the exit, with two or three getting stuck in the door, each trying to be the first one to memorialize this never-before envisioned feat in their hit log: One of their own, an F-16 jock, gunned by a chick (their words). In an Eagle.

Ohhh. Good.

Well, with all these goings on about the imminent retirement of the aluminum overcast (not to mention the UK Sea Harrier) you’d think that the current generation of fighter pilots had invented this whole “farewell to all that” meme.

But it’s not just flog-em-into-the-21^st century fighter jocks moaning in their beer, what with their beetled brows, low cunning, be-draggled knuckles, imperviously robust self-regard and criminally austere social skills: The S-3 guys are saying good-bye to their bird, as in the not-too-distant past, the flying drumstick and sewer pipe drivers did as well.

But back before the lot of ‘em, the phearless Phantom phlyers said pharewell to their phormer phighter. And they did it in right good style too.

Read on:

(more…)

(Previously)

External tanks were rather alarmingly expensive – there were only so many spares in the carrier’s hangar bay - and hurling them into the sea regardless was considered very bad form. Keep that sort of thing up and pretty soon the FA-18Cs were out of the fight. Like most of his breed, the squadron CO was not a “path of least resistance” kind of guy.

“OK, I’m on step 4 now, checklist page E51: Bleed air knob – Cycle through ‘Off’ to ‘Norm.’”

“Two.”

The next step, the CO knew, was to apply positive and negative “g” forces in an attempt to jar loose a potentially stuck float valve in the drop tank’s internal plumbing. He started to key the UHF mic to tell his nugget wingman to horse her around a bit, but paused, a vivid recollection playing in front of his eyes in the darkened cockpit like a flickering cinematic production:

It had been six years ago, on a very similar night – a sister squadron’s pilot had been faced with the same kind of emergency. That lead and his wingman had “gotten off the checklist,” working from memory and getting two of the steps out of order. His lead had dragged the lame duck to the recovery tanker overhead the carrier at angels six, to see if taking on some external gas might free up the system. When it hadn’t done so, they’d eased off to starboard and, without thinking it entirely through, the lead had told his wingman to attempt the cycling of positive and negative g’s. With his airspeed still quite slow from the tanker rendezvous, and with 14,000 foot-pounds of asymmetry on the wing, the wingman put a hard push-pull on the stick, and immediately stalled the airplane, departing from controlled flight – the asymmetry, combined with his slow speed, had drastically reduced the aircraft’s stall and control margins.

All on the tanker were left to watch speechlessly as the young man – already below his mandatory out of control ejection envelope, even if it had been day time - gyrated downwards towards the waiting carrier deck immediately below, external lights making crazy arcs through the darkened sky. There was nothing to say – tell the youngster to eject, and the jet would quite possibly crash aboard the unsuspecting carrier, killing dozens of people and wreaking untold millions of dollar damages. Tell him to stay with the jet, wrestling for control in a suddenly lunatic environment that nothing in his training had prepared him for, and suffer the risk of such a crash with one more life to throw in the fire.

Somehow the young pilot had managed to recover the jet: Full forward stick and max afterburner. Having recovered from the stall and gained airspeed, he milked it gently out of the consequent dive – it wouldn’t do to exceed angle of attack limits and stall out again - to recover to level flight a mere five hundred feet above the carrier’s flight deck. There, raised faces and slack jaws gave mute testimony to one of the strangest things any of the flight deck crewmen had ever seen: A fighter fluttering vertically down out of the night sky towards the deck, before suddenly zooming over their heads in full grunt, tailpipe fires lighting up the night sky.

“All right, our next step is to apply positive and negative “g.” Before you do so though, I want to make sure you’ve got a good bundle of knots on the jet. Heat her up to 350 or so.”

“Two.”

The wingman felt a growing certainty that the fuel would simply not transfer, no matter what he did. He’d broken the checklist out and was already racing ahead to the probable conclusion: He would either jettison the bad external tank – far and away his preferred option – before going to the tanker to make good the lost gas. After that, he’d still have to face the “terror machine” again. He’d still have to land at night on his first try. Jettisoned fuel tanks won you no sympathy votes – not from the LSO’s, not from the squadron leadership. They could divert him ashore, but the ship and air wing leadership took a very dim view of plunking war fighting assets ashore, and having them cooling their brake pads at some civilian field in the UAE, out of the fight. The only other option would be to try to land him on the carrier out of symmetry – he shook his head, thinking about it: No. That would reduce his useable fuel to something like… he quickly did the mental math – 2500 pounds? No way, that was three thousand pounds of gas less than his usual approach minimums, excess gas to give him a couple of shots at the deck if it was foul. Or if, he thought grimly, I can’t get aboard.

But 2.5 meant a one-look approach and then straight back up to the tanker with no time to screw around rendezvousing or getting in the basket. If he couldn’t get right aboard, and right in the basket, it’d be a one-look pass, flail and flounder and then set up for a barricade arrestment back on the ship. A class-A mishap in his permanent record. Because he couldn’t get aboard. The sound of his breathing through the O² mask sounded suddenly hoarse, ragged. The cockpit seemed to close in around him, smothering him with darkness.

There was his CO on the aux radio, “What luck?”

The JG darted his eyes to his fuel page on the left digital data display – the starboard drop tank sat there, stubbornly, sullenly full. “No joy.”

“Rog. Look, I’ll be off freq on prime for a few. You have the lead on the right, head for the overhead tanker at angels six.”

“Two, lead right.”

The CO was as fully aware of the diminishing alternatives available, and well ahead of his junior wingman on consequences. As much as he might like to make a command decision on his own, he would need to clear his plan with the ship’s Captain and Air Wing Commander - the kid had been struggling, and bringing him aboard lame duck would have more than the ordinary amount of risk attached. He switched his prime radio from Tanker Control to the alternate Carrier Air Traffic Control Center frequency: “CATCC, 401 up for a rep.”

“Stand by 401,” followed by his XO’s voice, “401, rep, loud and clear.”

“Roger that, rep. We need to talk about the options here. Is CAG in the space?”

“That’s affirmative, skipper. CAG’s right here.”

“Rog. Look, I’m assuming that we don’t want to divert him. And I don’t want to jettison a repairable tank into the sea. I’d like to take him to the tanker, see what we can do there, and then try to bring him aboard.”

“Ohhh-kayyy.” From the tone of his voice, the XO clearly wasn’t enthusiastic about the plan. The CO felt a brief flash of irritation before pushing it aside with an effort. There was a reason why you asked peoples’ opinions - theoretically it was because you wanted to hear what they actually thought. The XO was just doing his job.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, XO.”

“It’s your call skipper, obviously,” the XO said, craning around to try to read the body language of the sphinx-like air wing commander sitting at the top of the CATCC gallery. “Your man’s been struggling a bit behind the ship, obviously. Does he sound like he’s up for it?”

“We haven’t actually gotten that far in our discussion yet,” the CO replied, “but I’m thinking it’s pretty much fish or cut bait time.” Christ, the CO thought with a wince after unkeying the mic. That’d read like unadulterated hell if the JG pranged the jet on his approach. The CO could read the mishap report even now: “Accepted Causal Factor: Who - Squadron Commanding Officer, What - Undue Command Influence, Why - Performance Failure, Error in Judgement.”

In the CATCC gallery, each of the senior squadron reps sat in the darkness, looking at the naked and anticipatory flight deck on the closed-circuit television, each avoiding eye contact, most of them secretly pleased not to be a part of this decision.

“I want to give him a shot,” the CO repeated.

“Roger that, skipper. I’ll take it to CAG.”

(To be continued…)

Try taking the advancement test in this classroom:

 ”Did anybody remember to bring a #2 pencil?”

Still, you have to admit: The scenery is pretty compelling.

And the story? Well, from the accompanying email: