24
22 Jun 2000, 1830LT (1130Z)
The sun was still well above the Western horizon when the lock-out started. The risk of discovery was necessary to allow the squad as much of the night as possible to get ashore. There was simply too much that had to be accomplished under the veil of darkness.
Once again, Chief Jones and his team performed the delicate balancing act that brought SAN FRANCISCO to a rock solid hover 80 feet below the surface. Again ten SEALs exited the submarine in three groups. As the sun dropped below the horizon, the last SEAL broke the surface.
SAN FRANCISCO came up to periscope depth and fired number one and number two torpedo tubes. Two torpedo shaped black objects bobbed to the surface a few yards from the waiting SEALs. They immediately swam toward the shapes. They popped open several spring releases on each shape. Inside was a small rigid hulled inflatable boat capable of carrying ten passengers. It included a powerful, specially silenced outboard motor to drive them to shore. The SEALs boarded the RHIBs and pulled them alongside a third torpedo shape that bobbed to the surface. Opening this shape, the squad loaded their weapons and equipment into the RHIBs. The three now empty shapes were scuttled into the deep water below.
The two low black boats swung around toward the shore and picked up speed. SAN FRANCISCO turned toward the open sea and dropped from view.
Aboard SAN FRANCISCO, the ship was humming with activity. In the torpedo room, the reload team rushed to drain the three empty torpedo tubes and reload them with TLAMs. The torpedo that was in tube 4, the normal self-defense torpedo, was back-hauled to allow a fourth TLAM to be loaded. There would be no self-defense weapon immediately ready if SAN FRANCISCO came under attack.
The wardroom was transformed into a tactical strike planning center. Warran Jacobs and Jeff Miller led their teams of quartermasters and fire control technicians in charting the over-water portion of the TLAM flights.
To maximize surprise, it was necessary for the TLAMs to all arrive at their targets at very nearly the same time and to be closely coordinated with LT Roland’s attack. They needed to arrive from different quadrants so that the enemy could not concentrate their defenses. Because the TLAMs required about ten minutes to launch, including gyro spin-up, targeting data download and stabilization, plus the time required to shift from launching one tube to the next, the over-water flight planning for each bird was a complicated balance of air speed, timing, and geographic constraints. At mach 0.8, over 600 miles per hour, the birds required a good deal of real estate to eat up the time differences and to get into position to attack their targets. The missiles were flying at wave top height, so this real estate could not include land. To minimize the chance of detection, the missiles could not fly near any air search radars.
Forms and charts littered the wardroom table, spilled over onto the deck and festooned the bulkheads. Several laptop computers were in feverish use.
The torpedomen and fire control technicians hurried to load the tubes and check the communications to the missiles. Two of the tubes were loaded with TLAM-D’s, a Tomahawk variant equipped with hundreds of small 2.2 pound bomblet sub-munitions, while two tubes were loaded with TLAM-C’s, containing a single 700 pound Bullpup warhead.
“Sonar, conn. New contact, designate Sierra two-four-seven. Best bearing three-four-two. High speed screws. Classify warship, possible FFG 7 class.” The announcement from sonar over the 27MC caught everyone off guard.
Sam Stuart was standing watch as OOD. He stepped over to the sonar display panel and glanced at the white track that was just starting to develop out of the snowy back ground clutter.
“Where did he come from? He’s not one of ours,” he questioned Bill Fagan who was standing beside him on the conn.
“We sold several FFG 7’s to the Indonesians back in the mid 90’s. It’s probably one of those. Weren’t you paying attention during the mission brief? We covered all the expected combatant platforms,” the XO replied. “We'd better tell the Skipper.”
Stuart called Hunter, who was in the wardroom observing the strike planning, on the MJ phone and informed him of the new development.
“He’s going to pose a problem with this strike package. Not likely he would sit by and idly let someone fly TLAMs over his head in his own territorial waters. He might even be coming in to give the terrorists some more cover. Do you have a rough range on him?” Hunter questioned Stuart.
“Not yet sir. Wanted to report him first. Range of the day is two-five-thousand yards for an FFG 7 broadband. Performing a ranging maneuver now,” Stuart replied.
The range of the day was an estimate of the range for a fifty- percent detection probability given the particular acoustic environment for that location that day. It gave a very rough starting point to begin the iterative process of refining the range.
Hunter turned to the assembled group in the wardroom and said, “Plot a point at 25,000 yards on bearing three-four-two. Put a fifty nautical mile circle around it. Are we currently planning on flying any birds into that circle?”
“Yes, sir,” Warren Jacobs immediately replied. “Our launch basket is just outside the edge of that circle. We had planned all four to fly inside it.”
“Well, like all good plans, it has to change,” Hunter responded. “That FFG isn’t worth anything for ASW, but it does have a good AAW suite. It’s not a threat to us, but it is to our birds. We can’t afford to have any
