In theory, the tankers could support our squadron from Hawaii, or even some other Asian nation. In practice, however, the long flight time, crew fatigue, and the ever-changing tactical picture would often render it difficult for a KC-135 to be present in-theater. Besides that, if they did get in trouble, they had to have somewhere to bingo. It wasn't like I could take him on my deck, not even with the barricade nets strung across the flight deck.
There were more people on deck than aircraft. Yellow-shirted handlers directed the flow of traffic. The brown shirts were plane captains, each either standing next to their aircraft and preflighting with the aircrew or carefully watching the fuselage for signs of problems as engines spooled up. Most of the purple shirts ― aviation fuel technicians ― and red shirts ― weapons ― were already well clear, having worked at a breakneck pace during the last one hour and fifty-five minutes to arm and feed the hungry beasts already growling on the deck.
Six decks directly below me, in the Handler's Office, there was one lieutenant commander who was responsible for all the movement of aircraft across the deck. He had a scale mock-up of the ship, along with accompanying wooden overhead silhouettes of each aircraft. I had no idea how he'd managed to get so many aircraft packed so tightly on the deck. I'd never seen that full complement readying for launch, but somehow he had.
Finally, the last helo bobbled unsteadily into the air and veered away from the ship. Seconds later, the Air Boss called a green deck for fixed-wing aircraft. Just as he'd finished giving the order, the first set of fighters were shot off the forward and waist cats simultaneously.
From the tower, I could see the waist-cat aircraft launch sagging a bit as it lifted off, but still always in view.
Once all the aircraft were off the deck, there was no point in remaining in Pri-Fly. It stayed fully manned, of course, as it did whenever we had aircraft up. The vagaries of combat are too unpredictable ― hell, of carrier aviation in general. If an aircraft suffered a serious equipment failure or mechanical problem of some sort, they needed a green deck ― now. There wasn't time for them to wait around while we manned up.
But you couldn't fight a war from Pri-Fly. The aircraft I just had launched were now black smudges on the horizon, then not even that. I needed real-time information, the big picture, and I wouldn't get it here. And not just over radio circuits.
Six decks back down, then forward to CVIC. The sailor at the security door buzzed me in as soon as he saw me. I stopped long enough at the large coffeepot just inside the hatch to grab a quick mug, then ambled on back to SCIF. "You've got connectivity?" I asked Lab Rat as I slumped into the chair next to his.
He pointed up at the monitors, a slight smile on his face. "As good as we've ever had it, Admiral. The next best thing to being there."
Some of the technological advances in war-fighting are almost out of Star Trek. This was one of them.
For years, we've had the ability to mount a photo-reconnaissance pod underneath an aircraft and use it to obtain real-time BDA ― Battle Damage Assessment. The big drawback was always that we couldn't put weapons on the TARPS bird, and we had to wait for it to come back to the carrier, download the film, and then have it developed. It was still light-years better than anything else we had. We've never been able to rely solely on pilot reports of their own performance on bombing runs.
Not that they lie. It's just that they tend to be a little overly optimistic about the damage they've inflicted during a bombing run.
TARPS gave us the capability to conduct real BDA, albeit after the fact. Still, it was invaluable in deciding whether or not we needed to go back and bomb a target again or whether we'd taken it out the first time.
J-TARPS took the whole thing one step further. The J stood for joint, which meant that the system was capable of being deployed on aircraft in all the services, not just the Navy. Another part of the modern trend, developing technology that's not uniquely service-bred, that can be exported and used by your sister services.
There was one other thing about J-TARPS ― it was realtime. In addition to the photographic capabilities of the pod mounted on the beast's underbelly, there was one little section that contained a high-data-rate transmitter. Now, instead of waiting for the film, we saw what the pod saw ― real-time as it happened. The pilot could switch between a regular video display, a low-light one, and infrared. While the pilot couldn't monitor the data in the cockpit, he could respond to requests from the carrier to change displays. I had no doubt that in the next generation of J-TARPS technology, that limitation would be overcome as well.
SCIF ― Specially Compartmented Information ― was the most highly classified space on the ship. Into it was fed the most esoteric and high-tech data we had, in addition to the normal slew of incredibly sensitive message traffic. Reports from informants, human sources on the ground, and stuff so highly classified that they'll barely tell me where it comes from. But it's like any intel ― it can be wrong or incomplete at times. That's why we'll never take the man out of the loop. Somebody's got to decide what's nonsense and what's ground truth.
This room had been configured as a new experiment, one that would allow me to monitor and direct the battle from here. It sounded like a good idea, but there was a danger too, the tendency to micromanage. It had already gotten us in trouble when the same technology allowed the pundits in D.C. direct control of an arsenal ship's weapons, and I was determined not to make the same mistakes they'd made. The same mistakes that had been made in Vietnam the first time ― micromanagement of targeting choices by politicians.
"Who's who?" I asked.
Lab Rat pointed to the monitor on the far left of the room. "That's the lead ― from there, I have 'em up in order of egress."
"All Tomcats?"
Lab Rat nodded. "Strike wanted all the hard points on the Hornets devoted to weapons. I don't think it'll make a difference."
I grunted, not sure I liked that. Since when did Hornets have priority over Tomcats in an air battle.
Since MiGs turned out to be the target, one part of my mind suggested. Don't go getting parochial about this ― you know they're right.
"The satellite imagery is over on that wall," Lab Rat continued, pointing off to the right. A large-screen display dominated that wall, an overhead view of the area from a geosynchronous satellite. It was currently in photo mode, but it also could toggle into infrared if needed.
On the far-left screen, from the TARPS camera on the lead Strike aircraft, the coast of Vietnam was materializing out of the haze. Dark, jagged along the coast, a few dreary brown areas of civilization carved out of the lush terrain. It was like being there, like flying over it myself, except that my view was not obstructed by my own aircraft. A stunning picture, one only occasionally shot through with static.
The screens to the right of it, the two others, still displayed just ocean. Just at the edge of the horizon, I could see the coastline starting to come into view.
"Wow." It was all I could manage.
Lab Rat looked smug. "We're pretty pleased with it," he said off-handedly, as though he alone were responsible for the entire project. I let him enjoy his triumph, as a partial mitigation of the terrible embarrassment he felt over the SAM sites.
The lead was feet dry now, the radio call coming over one speaker as the camera showed the aircraft transitioning to over land. The other cameras were now showing the coastline, only minutes away from going feet dry themselves.