GWOT VII - Exercise
Dec. 29th, 2020 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VII - Exercise
[This article has been reviewed by Collections and approved by the Office of the Governor.]
I'm in a room. It might be in Monterey, deep in the heart of the California Naval Militia's largest base. It might be a repurposed former US base, a hundred feet under Sunnyvale or a thousand feet under good honest Sierra granite - or under San Diego's Point Loma or even Catalina or San Clemente Islands. It is not in murdered San Francisco. But it might be underground or even underwater, in some new place America never thought of.
There are three sets of lights on the walls. The top most of the three is flashing. The one that means truly secret things are being discussed.
A metallic voice speaks.
"This is an authorized training exercise. Repeat, this is an authorized training exercise."
There is a Strategic Defense Force trooper with a submachine gun sitting beside a ribboned-off bank of consoles. If anyone who is not authorized, explictly including me, approaches them -- he will use force, "up to and including deadly force" to keep them secured.
The main display lights up. It is a display of the entire world. Oceans and the polar ice caps are shown in as much detail as the land.
Above and below are additional displays. Above, literally, is the space battle. "Who controls the orbitals, controls the planet." But nothing in this room is science fiction. Science nightmare, yes. But not fiction.
The displays below are the underwater war. The secret war. Even before the Firecracker, a convention had grown up between the underwater powers. Subs have training accidents or are lost in mysterious mishaps. Even if both the Americans and the Russians admitted, sometimes decades later, that subs have been shooting at each other underwater ever since the 1950s.
California has never been at peace. And our submariners are at war every day. Some other room tracks the real battles, the 'contacts' and 'prosecutions' that mean that so many of our brave Naval Militia will never be coming home. Always On Patrol.
This is one of the rooms in which California is prepared, at any moment - at the drop of a diplomat's hand, at an order from the Governor, at the discretion of our Stategic Defense Force commanders scattered near and far - to fight for our nation's immediate survival.
Today it is an exercise.
"Oakland, five zero kilotons, in the port. Subsurface nuclear explosion."
The watch officer snaps, "Defcon One," and the officers and technicians working the boards become very busy.
Undersea warfare is strangely anonymous. Someone has broken the taboo - again. Someone has killed thousands of people - again. At least this is a simulation. But we don't know yet who did it.
There is a routine, practiced. Lock the barn doors before the horses are stolen. Or get the horses out of the barn before the arsonist sets it on fire. Some assets are best protected by mobility.
A scattering of icons as California's alert aircraft leave their bases. A 'scramble' in air warfare terms. Getting out of the barn.
Underwater, a fan of projected courses as our submarines leave their pens. I am reminded that this detail is classified, and that if I ever discuss what I see, I will be shot. Or if a single life is lost as a result, "hung by the neck until dead."
Nuclear weapons may be extremely accurate. But they are never, ever selective.
The short list of suspects. Russia, China, America. Then all the others.
It is a game of posturing. The aggrieved party - the one that has been Pearl Harbored, that has taken it in the shorts - has the right to mobilize - but not to target that mobilization. The other parties can also mobilize, but only 'defensively' - and in such a way as to convincingly mimic innocence.
Something about the response of one of the Great Powers is not innocent.
"FOBS, FOBS!" someone cries from one of the consoles, and the room erupts in activity.
Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. Someone - not California - had nuclear weapons in low earth orbit over us. Someone lit them off. Time to target is not measured in the leisurely hours of intercontinental bombers, or the numbered minutes of ballistic missiles and hypersonics, but the deadly seconds in which nations are ground into dust.
But not California. Not again. Not ever. And should it be that we cannot escape our doom, not alone.
I have also been forbidden to name our foe. But subtle signs are read, interpreted, and cause instant action.
An enemy port city explodes instantly. I am not permitted to say how.
Then a TOT - Time On Target - package is launched, from an asset well within the hundred miles of the enemy coast forbidden by treaty.
No peace underwater. This is why.
Our own civil defense and air defense precautions erupt. Wailing sirens, air raid bunkers, diverted aircraft and children hiding under their desks. Radars 'unmasking', both the public ones we admit to and the secret ones we do not. 'Painting' the incombing FOBS weapons, launching missiles and directing interceptor aircraft who fire missiles of their own.
I look again. A FOBS has detonated, thousands of meters above California. No, it was not the FOBS, it was a nuclear-tipped interceptor launched from an alert aircraft. Caught in her own blast, the aircraft icon blinks like a soap bubble, and vanishes.
The TOT strikes the enemy coast. It is not what is called in the antiseptic terms of nuclear war a "counterforce" strike, limited to military targets. It hits ports, population centers, major freeway interchanges.
As our fighting power surges, there is a hold placed from the loudspeakers above.
The enemy is suing for peace. Is it a trick?
Three more TOTs are prepared. One of them will devastate the enemy capital city, a historical city with millions of people built next to a major river.
This describes Moscow and Washington DC as well as ... well, the Chinese had to rebuild theirs. Someplace else.
The port of Oakland detonation is a mere sideshow now, except for the thousands killed and tens of thousands who must shelter now and be evacuated in a week to ten days. As soon as radiation levels permit.
The de-escalation begins. As the enemy shuts down, we shut down. Careful by careful piece, playing the chess game of mutual annihilation backwards. Crawling back from the brink.
This is truly a game where the only way to win is not to play.
The Governor walks out of the upper briefing room and down the shock-hardened metal staircase to the main floor. Pat's face is strained.
"I hate these. But when they play, I play," Pat says to me.
The security detail whisks the Governor away, presumably to the surface.
"Secure from operational training exercise," the metallic voice says again, twice.
I am reminded that some of what I have seen is so secret that I cannot reveal it to anyone. As a condition of access to write this article, my permission to travel outside California has been revoked.
If it helps keep California even a little bit safer, it is a small price well worth paying.
[This article has been reviewed by Collections and approved by the Office of the Governor.]
I'm in a room. It might be in Monterey, deep in the heart of the California Naval Militia's largest base. It might be a repurposed former US base, a hundred feet under Sunnyvale or a thousand feet under good honest Sierra granite - or under San Diego's Point Loma or even Catalina or San Clemente Islands. It is not in murdered San Francisco. But it might be underground or even underwater, in some new place America never thought of.
There are three sets of lights on the walls. The top most of the three is flashing. The one that means truly secret things are being discussed.
A metallic voice speaks.
"This is an authorized training exercise. Repeat, this is an authorized training exercise."
There is a Strategic Defense Force trooper with a submachine gun sitting beside a ribboned-off bank of consoles. If anyone who is not authorized, explictly including me, approaches them -- he will use force, "up to and including deadly force" to keep them secured.
The main display lights up. It is a display of the entire world. Oceans and the polar ice caps are shown in as much detail as the land.
Above and below are additional displays. Above, literally, is the space battle. "Who controls the orbitals, controls the planet." But nothing in this room is science fiction. Science nightmare, yes. But not fiction.
The displays below are the underwater war. The secret war. Even before the Firecracker, a convention had grown up between the underwater powers. Subs have training accidents or are lost in mysterious mishaps. Even if both the Americans and the Russians admitted, sometimes decades later, that subs have been shooting at each other underwater ever since the 1950s.
California has never been at peace. And our submariners are at war every day. Some other room tracks the real battles, the 'contacts' and 'prosecutions' that mean that so many of our brave Naval Militia will never be coming home. Always On Patrol.
This is one of the rooms in which California is prepared, at any moment - at the drop of a diplomat's hand, at an order from the Governor, at the discretion of our Stategic Defense Force commanders scattered near and far - to fight for our nation's immediate survival.
Today it is an exercise.
"Oakland, five zero kilotons, in the port. Subsurface nuclear explosion."
The watch officer snaps, "Defcon One," and the officers and technicians working the boards become very busy.
Undersea warfare is strangely anonymous. Someone has broken the taboo - again. Someone has killed thousands of people - again. At least this is a simulation. But we don't know yet who did it.
There is a routine, practiced. Lock the barn doors before the horses are stolen. Or get the horses out of the barn before the arsonist sets it on fire. Some assets are best protected by mobility.
A scattering of icons as California's alert aircraft leave their bases. A 'scramble' in air warfare terms. Getting out of the barn.
Underwater, a fan of projected courses as our submarines leave their pens. I am reminded that this detail is classified, and that if I ever discuss what I see, I will be shot. Or if a single life is lost as a result, "hung by the neck until dead."
Nuclear weapons may be extremely accurate. But they are never, ever selective.
The short list of suspects. Russia, China, America. Then all the others.
It is a game of posturing. The aggrieved party - the one that has been Pearl Harbored, that has taken it in the shorts - has the right to mobilize - but not to target that mobilization. The other parties can also mobilize, but only 'defensively' - and in such a way as to convincingly mimic innocence.
Something about the response of one of the Great Powers is not innocent.
"FOBS, FOBS!" someone cries from one of the consoles, and the room erupts in activity.
Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. Someone - not California - had nuclear weapons in low earth orbit over us. Someone lit them off. Time to target is not measured in the leisurely hours of intercontinental bombers, or the numbered minutes of ballistic missiles and hypersonics, but the deadly seconds in which nations are ground into dust.
But not California. Not again. Not ever. And should it be that we cannot escape our doom, not alone.
I have also been forbidden to name our foe. But subtle signs are read, interpreted, and cause instant action.
An enemy port city explodes instantly. I am not permitted to say how.
Then a TOT - Time On Target - package is launched, from an asset well within the hundred miles of the enemy coast forbidden by treaty.
No peace underwater. This is why.
Our own civil defense and air defense precautions erupt. Wailing sirens, air raid bunkers, diverted aircraft and children hiding under their desks. Radars 'unmasking', both the public ones we admit to and the secret ones we do not. 'Painting' the incombing FOBS weapons, launching missiles and directing interceptor aircraft who fire missiles of their own.
I look again. A FOBS has detonated, thousands of meters above California. No, it was not the FOBS, it was a nuclear-tipped interceptor launched from an alert aircraft. Caught in her own blast, the aircraft icon blinks like a soap bubble, and vanishes.
The TOT strikes the enemy coast. It is not what is called in the antiseptic terms of nuclear war a "counterforce" strike, limited to military targets. It hits ports, population centers, major freeway interchanges.
As our fighting power surges, there is a hold placed from the loudspeakers above.
The enemy is suing for peace. Is it a trick?
Three more TOTs are prepared. One of them will devastate the enemy capital city, a historical city with millions of people built next to a major river.
This describes Moscow and Washington DC as well as ... well, the Chinese had to rebuild theirs. Someplace else.
The port of Oakland detonation is a mere sideshow now, except for the thousands killed and tens of thousands who must shelter now and be evacuated in a week to ten days. As soon as radiation levels permit.
The de-escalation begins. As the enemy shuts down, we shut down. Careful by careful piece, playing the chess game of mutual annihilation backwards. Crawling back from the brink.
This is truly a game where the only way to win is not to play.
The Governor walks out of the upper briefing room and down the shock-hardened metal staircase to the main floor. Pat's face is strained.
"I hate these. But when they play, I play," Pat says to me.
The security detail whisks the Governor away, presumably to the surface.
"Secure from operational training exercise," the metallic voice says again, twice.
I am reminded that some of what I have seen is so secret that I cannot reveal it to anyone. As a condition of access to write this article, my permission to travel outside California has been revoked.
If it helps keep California even a little bit safer, it is a small price well worth paying.
