Commander Hillman Busby glanced around the CVIC briefing room, mentally taking muster. All his key players were there. The junior officers and the chief petty officers had snagged the few chairs still left out from the morning brief. The rest of the enlisted men and women packed into the room leaned against walls or perched on plotting tables.
“Okay, people. Time to do some magic. We need some answers — or at least some informed intelligence estimates,” Busby said.
The Carrier Intelligence Center, or CVIC as it was commonly known, was the information fusion center for Carrier Battle Group 14. Pronounced “civic,” it was home to the battle group intelligence officers, enlisted Data Systems Specialists (DS) and Intelligence Specialists (IS) ratings that kept track of the world. CVIC tapped into the most advanced message and information processing computers in the U.S. Navy’s vast array, and was capable of monitoring circuits so highly classified that even admitting they existed was a federal felony. For all its resources, CVIC couldn’t create probabilities, estimates, or analysis without data. It was completely dependent on information fed to it by other sources: national assets, satellites, debriefing reports from the CIA, and tactical sensors such as the SLQ-32(V4) ESM sensors installed on the ships in the battle group.
The dependence on outside information was at the heart of Commander Busby’s dilemma. Admiral Magruder wanted intelligence’s best estimate of the cause of the explosion earlier that morning, and there was simply no data. Even with all his electronic wizardry, Busby knew no more now than he had when he was standing his watch in supp plot.
At thirty-five, Busby had been in the Navy long enough to know that admirals were not the most patient bosses. While Admiral Magruder had a good reputation for fairness, it wasn’t likely that he was going to appreciate what Busby had to tell him.
Which was absolutely nothing.
Busby sighed and ran his hands over his head. His hair was trimmed Marine-close to his head, his skull clearly visible through the pale blond fringe. For a moment, he considered shaving his head completely. Blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin detracted from his personal idea of how an intelligence officer should look as a steely-eyed professional in daily contact with secret spies and highly classified information. And his nickname, given to him at his first squadron as an ensign and boot air intelligence officer, didn’t help either.
Who wanted to get a prelaunch briefing from an officer nicknamed “Lab Rat”?
Well, after he talked to Admiral Magruder, he might not have to worry about his haircut. The Admiral was likely to rip off his head, along with several other sensitive body parts. He sighed again and stared at the yellow legal pad. The information he could give the Admiral was remarkable only in its lack of usefulness.
Item: The Chinese, along with five other nations, claimed ownership of the Spratly Islands. The Spratly Islands were barely worthy of the title “island,” since most of them were almost completely submerged, bare tips of rocks poking mere feet above the surface of the South China Sea.
Item: The ocean bed surrounding the Spratly Islands was one of the richest remaining oil fields in the world.
Item: Yesterday, one of the islands disappeared, along with the tank that had been perched precariously on it. Tomcat 205 and other battle group sensors had detected a massive explosion in the area.
Item: All of the Chinese submarines were accounted for, at least according to the satellites.
Item: The Chinese, although world-famous for the dangerous Silkworm sea-skimmer, were not known to possess a long-range cruise missile similar to the U.S. Tomahawk.
Busby studied the list for a moment and then doodled a question mark next to the last two items. He was long on questions, short on answers. For an intelligence officer, it was damned irritating.
“So Tombstone’s on the front line again,” Vice Admiral Thomas Magruder said. As Commander Seventh Fleet, he had operational command of every Navy asset west of the international date line. Right now, that included his nephew’s battle group. “I should have known getting promoted to Rear Admiral wouldn’t change his luck. When did this happen?”
“Thirty minutes ago, sir. The battle group sent the on-scene Tomcat back to take a look at the area, and then launched some S-3B’s to get a closer look. The helos followed them in after the Tomcats tanked,” the watch officer replied.
“And you mean to tell me that we don’t know what caused it? With a full battle group in the area, as well as satellite coverage? What about nuclear data? Any indication that it was something besides a conventional war shot?” the admiral asked.
“KH-11 was down, sir, but other sensors indicate that there was no nuclear involvement. It seemed like a good time for routine maintenance, according to the SpaceCom watch officer I spoke with. With a battle group in the area, and no hostilities imminent …” the watch officer let his voice trail off.
Space Command in Colorado controlled all “national assets,” the highly classified network of satellites, sensors, and other sources of information that were deemed too important to national security to be under the jurisdiction of any single service. While they were generally responsive to requests for information and observation scheduling, it was not unusual for them to take satellites down for maintenance without warning. Absent a request for special coverage, the electronic security whizzes in the secret “black” programs there felt it was better to avoid the risk of letting anyone know when the satellites weren’t looking. That had been decided in coordination with the Air Force in a series of budget battles.
The Air Force, the most junior of all the military services, coveted all the satellite programs. Senior Air Force staffers continually pointed out that the outer reaches of the earth’s atmosphere were still within their area of expertise. Space-based sensors, weapons — indeed, anything that flew — ought to belong to them. In one series of white papers, they’d argued that satellites could be used as forcefully in a “presence mission” as any carrier battle group.
Satellites in presence missions. Vice Admiral Magruder snorted in disgust. According to the officers that wore light blue suits, the mere rumor that a satellite was focused on a particular region would give a two-bit dictator reason to worry. They’d immediately stop slaughtering their own populations in the name of ethnic cleansing and become peaceful members of the world community.
For some strange reason, the rest of the military community failed to agree that a satellite could be as visible a symbol of U.S. intentions as a carrier battle group or amphibious task force sitting within view of the coast. While all services agreed that air superiority was a necessary precondition for a successful land campaign, no service except the Air Force believed that air power could eliminate the need for ground combat.
What would the “Air Farce” want next? Satellites flying in formation like F-14’s? A satellite equivalent of “Top Gun” school? Vice Admiral Magruder smiled at the thought and wondered if he could hornswoggle some junior Air Force officer into seriously proposing the concepts. The resulting flame war and embarrassment would be worth watching. Now that he was safely out of the Pentagon and back in an operational command, the political machinations and aspirations of others were a good source of flag-level jokes.
No, despite the invaluable information that satellites provided, they were far too vulnerable and weather- dependent to replace the Navy in presence missions. Besides, assuming that satellites would serve as a deterrence to hostilities depended on one assumption of doubtful validity — that the country supposedly being deterred knew that satellite was there. And for the third-world countries that currently teetered on the edge of violence, that was a mistake.
On the other hand, China was hardly a technological backwater. While its society was rigidly stratified, with millions of people living in unimaginable poverty, the most populated country in the world had devoted a large percentage of her GNP to military advancements. Along with her purchases from Russia, Japan, and Korea, she was quickly developing a high-tech military-industrial complex of her own. Analysts at highly classified briefings had speculated that China’s international intelligence network was becoming a significant concern, particularly in light of the United States’ relatively lenient policy of granting political asylum to almost any Chinese national who claimed it. Undoubtedly, China had the means for determining when U.S. satellites were providing surveillance on the area, and Vice Admiral Magruder wouldn’t rule out the possibility that they were also tapped into the satellites’ maintenance schedule. Maybe satellites could deter the burgeoning regional — and soon, international — power.
