The Captain
set the message down after reading it to the officers assembled in the wardroom. Setting aside all the navalese language, it
directed him and his Burke class destroyer to divert from their current
assignment, take aboard some observers, which they had already done, and
transit to the Navy’s new live fire training area located well off the west
coast of the United States and engage with live weapons – he had read that part
to his officers with an incredulous voice - any valid target detected. The Captain and his ship were about to be
subjected to the Navy’s newest training exercise. His would be only the second ship to undergo
the training and he knew nothing about it;
scuttlebutt was non-existent.
Still, one Navy training exercise was like the next, he was sure. He assumed he would be given detailed
instructions – Navy training exercises were nothing if not highly
scripted. Oddly, though, he had been
directed to choose his own course, time and speed to enter the training area and
been told only to enter the area by a certain date/time and remain in the area
until specifically notified that training was over. He had no idea how long the training would
last. He assumed that it would be a few
hours based on previous exercises.
“All right,
gentlemen, here’s what we’re going to do.
We’ll be entering the training area in about one hour. I want to complete this exercise in a timely
fashion and set the standard for the ships that follow. We’ll go to General Quarters when we enter
the area. I expect we’ll receive
detailed instructions at that point.
Let’s make sure all our systems are ready and let’s have our best people
in place. Questions?”
“Captain, that’s
not a lot of time to run system checks,” the XO pointed out.
“I know it,
XO. Make it happen anyway!”
Acknowledging
the Captain, the XO grimaced inwardly.
No amount of desire or enthusiasm was going to get some of those Aegis
computer system spare parts installed that the ship didn’t have on board and
had been on order for almost six months.
Similarly, the CIWS which had been spontaneously resetting on occasion
during checks wasn’t going to be miraculously fixed in the next hour. Still, he’d do everything he could.
Unnoticed, or
rather ignored, the observer in the back of the room made a quick note on his
clipboard of documents. The Captain
thought the training exercise wouldn’t begin for another hour but it had
actually begun the moment he had received the notification message and, so far,
the Captain wasn’t doing well.
An hour
later, the ship entered the training area.
The ship was at GQ and the best sailors were in place at each critical
post. The Captain waited impatiently in
CIC for his instructions. The observer
simply stood quietly in the background, making an occasional note. As time passed with no additional
instructions forthcoming, the Captain’s impatience grew. After an hour, the Captain radioed for
instructions. The reply was short and
succinct – “continue training”. What
training, the Captain wondered sarcastically?
All right,
the Captain thought, someone is trying to screw with the normal training
procedures. Well, he wasn’t about to be
caught flatfooted.
“Listen up,
people. We’re going to stay at GQ until
whoever’s running this exercise gets their act together. We’re not going to relax and get caught by
surprise. Let’s stay on top of things.”
Nine hours
later, the Captain and crew were exhausted and frustrated by the complete lack
of activity. Nothing had happened. True, sonar had generated their usual litany
of non-specific contacts that had been aggressively pursued only to vanish –
biologics, probably. The ship’s helo was
now down for maintenance after spending the last several hours chasing spurious
contact reports. Utterly disgusted at
the wasted time, the Captain finally decided to call it quits for the day. Whoever was running this exercise had
obviously screwed up badly and he’d attempt to sort things out tomorrow. With that, the ship secured from General
Quarters.
“XO”, the
Captain called out, “get that CIWS torn down tonight and figure out what’s
wrong before we try this exercise again tomorrow.”
Again, unseen,
the observer’s mouth twitched in what might have been a small grin.
Three hours
later, with most of the crew having just settled in for some much needed rest
and with the ‘third string’ manning the watch stations, the ship was ripped
awake by the sound of the General Quarters call. Staggering to his feet, the Captain ran to
CIC.
“Report,” he
yelled as he entered.
“We’ve got an
unidentified contact inbound bearing 265 relative, 20 miles out, speed Mach
1.3. It’s right down on the waves. Collision course. Impact in just over 1 minute.”
“ESM
indicates it’s a Russian SS-N-22 Sunburn.”
A target
drone, the Captain assumed. “Put the
CIWS on it,” he shouted.
“CIWS is down
for repairs per your orders, sir.”
“Well, get it
back up”, the Captain yelled, frantically!
Unfortunately,
there was no time. The missile was
approaching at over 16 miles per minute and impact was now less than 30
seconds.
“What’s going
on?”, the Captain yelled to no one in particular. “This is supposed to be training but that
thing is going to hit us!”
At that
moment, 1 mile out, the drone missile pulled up, angled just over the top of
the destroyer, and passed overhead with a shattering boom. The CIC watchstanders were shaken while cups,
papers, tools, and other items were knocked onto the deck.
“What the
hell was that?”, the Captain again asked of no one. “That wasn’t training. That was a reckless safety violation! Someone’s going to pay for that.”
The Captain
immediately sent out an urgent message demanding to know who had screwed up a
simple training exercise. The instant
reply was, “Continue training.”
The Captain
had no time to wonder before his thoughts were again rudely interrupted.
“Multiple airborne
contacts bearing 135 relative, 78 miles, speed 480 kts. They’ll pass about 10 miles off our starboard
side if they continue on course. No
emissions but they’re squawking civilian.”
“Let ‘em
come”, the Captain replied. “This is a
test and I’m not going to Vincennes
them.”
The Captain
was all too aware of the Vincennes
incident where an Aegis cruiser had badly misinterpreted its sensor data and
shot down a civilian airliner in the belief that it was an attacking
aircraft. That incident had become part
of Navy institutional memory and it was ingrained in every Captain never to
repeat that event.
In the
background, the observer frowned slightly and made more notes.
Minutes passed
as the aircraft got closer and then came the half-expected announcement.
“Surface
contact, bearing 334 relative, 21 miles, speed 24 kts. Contact is coming straight at us.”
“There”, the
Captain said, a note of triumph in his voice, “That’s the real target. They were hoping we’d focus on the aircraft
and miss the real threat coming from the surface.”
“Weapons, put
a couple SM-6 missiles on that surface ship.”
Lacking
Harpoons or the recently canceled LRASM, Standard missiles were the only
anti-ship weapon available.
“Captain, we
don’t have a positive ID on the target, yet.
There are no emissions and we don’t have a visual.”
“It’s the
real threat”, the Captain answered. “They tried to fool us. Designate and launch.”
Unprepared
for the command, inexperienced, and inadequately trained, the ‘third string’
operators took over two minutes to designate the target, prep the launch cycle,
and execute the launch. Moments after
the two missiles launched, the EO sensor operator announced that he had a
visual on the target.
“Sir, it
appears to be a civilian yacht of some sort!”
The Captain
blanched. Had he just executed a
Vincennes on a civilian yacht that had wandered into the training area?
“Direct
hit. The target is gone.”
“Stand down”,
the Captain frantically yelled. “Secure
all weapons.”
The observer
shook his head minutely and made another note.
Suddenly, the
Captain heard another announcement.
“New targets
inbound. Bearing 110 degrees relative,
speed Mach 0.8, altitude 20 meters. They
appear to be missiles launched from the civilian aircraft.”
The Captain
was dumbfounded and froze. He had been
certain the aircraft were civilian, trying to fool him into doing a
Vincennes. Instead, it appeared that
they were the real threat and had been from the start. All the ship’s weapons were in standby and
there was nothing available to defend.
Even more
stunning, the incoming missiles (target drones, he assumed) did not turn
away. Instead, at the last moment, each
elevated slightly, separated a small, inert, frangible ‘warhead’, and passed
closely directly over the ship. As they
did, he felt several thuds as the inert ‘warheads’ impacted the ship.
“What was
that?”, he called frantically. “Did we
just get hit by a target drone?”
Before he
could get an answer, another contact report came.
“Torpedoes
inbound. Range one mile. Speed 55 kts.”
“What?! How did torpedoes get so close without being
detected?”, he yelled.
The third
string sonar operator, who was still trying to get qualified, was unable to
answer before more reports started flooding in.
“Damage
Control reports several fires. Smoke
spreading throughout the ship.”
The various
observers scattered throughout the ship had designated areas as hit and on fire
and, in addition, had ignited multiple smoke bombs. They couldn’t start actual fires but they
could replicate the smoke that would be filling the ship if this had been real.
“Aircraft are
turning and re-engaging.”
“Turn to
unmask the CIWS”, the Captain yelled, forgetting that the CIWS was down and coughing
as smoke from an adjoining compartment began filling the space.
The ship
began to turn to bring the single CIWS to bear on the aircraft’s threat vector
but part way through the turn the Captain corrected himself.
“No,
wait. We need to run from the
torpedoes. They’re the bigger
threat! Put us on the same course as the
torpedoes.”
Part way
through the turn, the Captain again corrected himself. “Wait, it’s too late. We can’t outrun the torpedoes. They’re already too close. Unmask the CIWS!”, he yelled, his voice
rising in pitch. It was too much. He was being overwhelmed with information and
threats.
Moments later
he felt the impact as four inert torpedoes slammed into the hull.
“Radar is
down.” An observer had directed the
operator to shut down the radar to simulate damage.
“Damage
Control reports at least four underwater impacts and one leak from a cracked
hull plate.”
The leak was
substantial and real. The torpedo
warheads were inert but the lightly built Burkes could not absorb even an inert
warhead impacting at 55 kts. The damage
control reports were confused, panicked, inaccurate, and real.
With that,
the power flickered and cut out. One
emergency light came on and two others did not.
An observer had disabled them prior to the exercise to see if anyone
could repair them. As it turned out, no
one even tried.
And so the
exercise continued with the ship’s condition and the crew’s performance rapidly
deteriorating. The scheduled debrief was
going to be brutal. The Admiral in
charge of this training program had directed the observers to be unfailingly
objective and to spare no feelings. No
one had expected the exercise to go well but this was poor even by that
standard. Still, considering that the
Navy had not conducted realistic training for decades, it wasn’t surprising.
The ship now had
several dents from the various inert ‘warhead’ impacts and a handful of minor
damage to repair but that was an acceptable part of achieving combat readiness
and the forced drydocking would be used to accomplish various equipment undates
and long deferred maintenance.
Painful as it
might be, this was the first step in returning the Navy to an actual
warfighting organization.
Forty eight
hours later, after a continuing series of very realistic events and with an
exhausted crew staggering through actual damage control efforts, the exercise
concluded and the lead observer completed his final on-board paperwork; a full report would come later. The last two questions on his checklist were
the most important. The first concerned
the ship’s combat readiness, which the observer unhesitatingly checked as ‘Not
Ready’. The second asked for his recommendation
on the Captain’s fitness for continued command.
The observer sadly shook his head slightly and checked ‘Unfit’. The current Captain would take the ship into
drydock but someone else would be taking it back out. As much as this exercise had been a training
and readiness test, it had also been a combat mentality assessment of the Captain
and he had failed, badly.
Discussion Points
-We need to
allow a mild degree of risk and physical damage In our training through the use
of inert or frangible warheads. Military
service does not come with a guarantee of safety. As a point of historical interest, pre-WWII
training saw the use of bags of flour dropped on ships as surrogates for
bombs. Once upon a time, Infantry
training used live machine gun fire as an incentive to keep one’s head down.
-Training
needs to be unscripted.
-Training
needs to be continuous and prolonged.
-Training
needs to be realistic.
-There needs
to be negative consequences for poor performance in training while recognizing
that training is the time to make mistakes and must be consequence free. In other words, we need to distinguish
between correctable mistakes and uncorrectable poor performance (lack of combat
mentality).
