Offshore
Chapter 2
IKO
Juan was only five when the “maritime event”, as it is now known, changed the world. The memory of the incident itself is long gone, even though the images from the net broadcasts were graphic enough to burn themselves into even the most jaded news-junky. Juan's parents paid close attention to the clips, expert opinions and commentator’s reactions as the events unfolded. The number of confirmed dead, missing, wounded zipped across the display area in their small central living space, like some sort of stock market ticker-tape. Juan was forced away from the projections and told to focus on his learning station, but he couldn't help catching glipsese of the images as they streamed past through his peripheral view.
Twenty years later, Lieutenant Commander Jaun Alberto Francisco reclined in his passenger seat while on route to his next duty station off the West Coast of Panama aboard one of the Navies latest high speed transport ships. Calling the craft a ship, in the 20th century sense of ship, was a bit of a misnomer. It seamed to hardly touch the water as the intra-theater lift trimiran raced across the ocean surface at 45 knots, carrying the replacement crew for one of the regions Sea-Strike Electro-Magnetic gun floating emplacements. Real “ships” didn’t exist any more in the ocean navy. Smaller specialized high speed vessels, unmanned vehicles and modular ships capable of carrying a wide range of mission payload modules were the work-horses of the day’s Navy.
This was the last leg of long trip from his
Juan had just completed a series of “games” fed to him through the heads-up display on the computer tucked behind his left ear. The Navy tried to trick sailors into eagerly completing their continuous training requirements by making games out of everything. The idea was simple, kids love video games so much that they will do anything if they think it is one. Everything from reactor maintenance to guiding a flock of autonomous strike vehicles was presented in that format. Although they tried, the parts of the Navy that still existed under antiquated hierarchical control just couldn’t produce the creative stuff of the real virtual world.
Before joining the Navy Juan was actually pretty good at hacker games, the Net’s raw equivalent of the Navies toned-down training videos. That’s actually how he ended up in the Navies Integrated Knowledge Operations Force, IKO for short. One of the popular on-line games of for the more sophisticated hackers was called EAT, short for evolving agent combat. They called it EAT because EAC didn’t make any sense. Players interactively create rules of rules that their computational agents must obey. As their virtual soldiers (blips) bump into other players blips, they swarm, move, change behavior, consume virtual resources, and kill. It was a lot like driving a car with a trailer backwards at 60 miles an hour, except instead of being at the wheel yourself, you had to make a blind monkey do the work. Juan was so good at the game that he caught the eye of one of the Navies recruiters. He was put through the best computer science school in the country and then given a nice clean uniform.
SUSTAINER
“Are you going to eat that?”
Juan didn’t move. He just sat there, eyes closed, head back against the rest, pretending not to hear.
“Are you?” Ben repeated, staring at the side of Juan’s face.
“Do you want it?” Juan finally replied without moving.
“For an IKO you’re not very smart. Of course I want it. Are you going to eat it?”
“Go ahead you can have it.”
Ben grabbed the cream filled chocolate cake-like mass from the fold down table in front of Juan and ripped off the plastic wrap. After carefully inspecting it and planning its consumption he started to eat.
“Are you trying to eat your way out of the Navy?”
“Are you kidding?” Ben replied crumbs tumbling down onto his green coveralls. “I’m a career man, I’ve got 40 years before I’m out-a-here.”
The two sat quietly among the sea of seats and heads. There was a subtle change in activity sweeping through the passenger level. Most everyone was awake and people started stuffing things into bags in anticipation of the end of the long trip.
“Did you see the new fabricator we loaded for the sea-base?” Ben tried to start the conversation back up on a more productive topic. “It’s pretty cool. Air and water go in, new parts come out. Once it’s hooked up to the CBaS, parts should just pop out and I’ll plug em in where I’m supposed to.”
“Sounds pretty SCI-FI”
“We’re livin it baby!”
CBaS is the Condition Based Sustainment system implemented on most modern equipment in the Navy (and every other major industry in the world for that matter). Nanofabricated sensors of every imaginable size and shape are sprayed on equipment like sprinkles on a doughnut. Number of cycles, temperatures, vibration levels, stress and who-knows what else are monitored and fed into the network where the information is digested by maintenance planning algorithms. When the time is right, a maintenance order is coughed up, parts fabricated on- site or ordered for delivery, and “Ben the Sustainer” is given his orders for the day.
“I didn’t see the fabricator but I bumped into your new manager. She looks pretty smart. Kind of boxy build though.”
“She comes cheep too. I’d guess a couple bucks per decision.”
OPERATOR
From Susan’s seat in the quad-prop joint vertical lift heliplane at 10,000 feet, the wake of the “delivery-boy” was easy to spot, but she knew exactly where it was long before it came into view. Information on its speed, heading, cargo, fuel status, weapons, crew, down to the age of the 12mm hex head screw holding Juan’s chair to the passenger deck was accessible through her net-link.
As she descended and approached the trimaran from astern the delivery-boy was passing through the outer layer of sentinel buoys. What appeared to be a flock of birds from a distance, scattered by the passage of small boat were actually autonomous amphibious helos with dipping sonars, small but impressively capable machines. They would normally just bob around on the surface of the ocean but occasionally they would power-up and skim across the wave-tops, plunking down in a better location to hear what was going on beneath the surface. Occasionally they would swarm an area like a flock of seagulls feeding behind a fishing boat, listening more closely at a fleeting signal. More than once during this campaign, supercavitating shells were lobbed into the area at what appeared to be unmanned undersea vehicles testing the sea-base security.
This kind of casual maneuver was allowed now, the adaptive command organizational control was minimal meaning that as long as the day’s operational governing principles were obeyed, pretty much anything goes. Although this type of freedom has been enjoyed by Navy airmen for decades, there was now an acknowledgement that the self-organizing behavior displayed by squadrons of air-craft being launched and recovered from carriers was something extraordinary. The behaviors and decisions that enabled pilots to find the right moment to drop their 25 tons of craft onto the deck of a ship were studied and emulated. If it wasn’t for the size, it would be difficult to tell if craft landing on a modular sea frame ship were autonomous or piloted.
Susan’s V-42 Osprey was definitely piloted. She was completing a mission that took here 1500 nautical miles inland where she delivered nearly 200 tons of humanitarian aid to the red-cross operating in a refugee camp. Even at 400 knots it made for a long day.
OPERATIONAL WARRIOR
As delivery-boy neared the #4 EM gun station, the V42 made its final approach to the main aircraft deck. Commander Mark Hamilton watched the activity through the bridge windows of his modular combat ship.
IKO
Juan was only five when the “maritime event”, as it is now known, changed the world. The memory of the incident itself is long gone, even though the images from the net broadcasts were graphic enough to burn themselves into even the most jaded news-junky. Juan's parents paid close attention to the clips, expert opinions and commentator’s reactions as the events unfolded. The number of confirmed dead, missing, wounded zipped across the display area in their small central living space, like some sort of stock market ticker-tape. Juan was forced away from the projections and told to focus on his learning station, but he couldn't help catching glipsese of the images as they streamed past through his peripheral view.
Twenty years later, Lieutenant Commander Jaun Alberto Francisco reclined in his passenger seat while on route to his next duty station off the West Coast of Panama aboard one of the Navies latest high speed transport ships. Calling the craft a ship, in the 20th century sense of ship, was a bit of a misnomer. It seamed to hardly touch the water as the intra-theater lift trimiran raced across the ocean surface at 45 knots, carrying the replacement crew for one of the regions Sea-Strike Electro-Magnetic gun floating emplacements. Real “ships” didn’t exist any more in the ocean navy. Smaller specialized high speed vessels, unmanned vehicles and modular ships capable of carrying a wide range of mission payload modules were the work-horses of the day’s Navy.
This was the last leg of long trip from his
Juan had just completed a series of “games” fed to him through the heads-up display on the computer tucked behind his left ear. The Navy tried to trick sailors into eagerly completing their continuous training requirements by making games out of everything. The idea was simple, kids love video games so much that they will do anything if they think it is one. Everything from reactor maintenance to guiding a flock of autonomous strike vehicles was presented in that format. Although they tried, the parts of the Navy that still existed under antiquated hierarchical control just couldn’t produce the creative stuff of the real virtual world.
Before joining the Navy Juan was actually pretty good at hacker games, the Net’s raw equivalent of the Navies toned-down training videos. That’s actually how he ended up in the Navies Integrated Knowledge Operations Force, IKO for short. One of the popular on-line games of for the more sophisticated hackers was called EAT, short for evolving agent combat. They called it EAT because EAC didn’t make any sense. Players interactively create rules of rules that their computational agents must obey. As their virtual soldiers (blips) bump into other players blips, they swarm, move, change behavior, consume virtual resources, and kill. It was a lot like driving a car with a trailer backwards at 60 miles an hour, except instead of being at the wheel yourself, you had to make a blind monkey do the work. Juan was so good at the game that he caught the eye of one of the Navies recruiters. He was put through the best computer science school in the country and then given a nice clean uniform.
SUSTAINER
“Are you going to eat that?”
Juan didn’t move. He just sat there, eyes closed, head back against the rest, pretending not to hear.
“Are you?” Ben repeated, staring at the side of Juan’s face.
“Do you want it?” Juan finally replied without moving.
“For an IKO you’re not very smart. Of course I want it. Are you going to eat it?”
“Go ahead you can have it.”
Ben grabbed the cream filled chocolate cake-like mass from the fold down table in front of Juan and ripped off the plastic wrap. After carefully inspecting it and planning its consumption he started to eat.
“Are you trying to eat your way out of the Navy?”
“Are you kidding?” Ben replied crumbs tumbling down onto his green coveralls. “I’m a career man, I’ve got 40 years before I’m out-a-here.”
The two sat quietly among the sea of seats and heads. There was a subtle change in activity sweeping through the passenger level. Most everyone was awake and people started stuffing things into bags in anticipation of the end of the long trip.
“Did you see the new fabricator we loaded for the sea-base?” Ben tried to start the conversation back up on a more productive topic. “It’s pretty cool. Air and water go in, new parts come out. Once it’s hooked up to the CBaS, parts should just pop out and I’ll plug em in where I’m supposed to.”
“Sounds pretty SCI-FI”
“We’re livin it baby!”
CBaS is the Condition Based Sustainment system implemented on most modern equipment in the Navy (and every other major industry in the world for that matter). Nanofabricated sensors of every imaginable size and shape are sprayed on equipment like sprinkles on a doughnut. Number of cycles, temperatures, vibration levels, stress and who-knows what else are monitored and fed into the network where the information is digested by maintenance planning algorithms. When the time is right, a maintenance order is coughed up, parts fabricated on- site or ordered for delivery, and “Ben the Sustainer” is given his orders for the day.
“I didn’t see the fabricator but I bumped into your new manager. She looks pretty smart. Kind of boxy build though.”
“She comes cheep too. I’d guess a couple bucks per decision.”
OPERATOR
From Susan’s seat in the quad-prop joint vertical lift heliplane at 10,000 feet, the wake of the “delivery-boy” was easy to spot, but she knew exactly where it was long before it came into view. Information on its speed, heading, cargo, fuel status, weapons, crew, down to the age of the 12mm hex head screw holding Juan’s chair to the passenger deck was accessible through her net-link.
As she descended and approached the trimaran from astern the delivery-boy was passing through the outer layer of sentinel buoys. What appeared to be a flock of birds from a distance, scattered by the passage of small boat were actually autonomous amphibious helos with dipping sonars, small but impressively capable machines. They would normally just bob around on the surface of the ocean but occasionally they would power-up and skim across the wave-tops, plunking down in a better location to hear what was going on beneath the surface. Occasionally they would swarm an area like a flock of seagulls feeding behind a fishing boat, listening more closely at a fleeting signal. More than once during this campaign, supercavitating shells were lobbed into the area at what appeared to be unmanned undersea vehicles testing the sea-base security.
This kind of casual maneuver was allowed now, the adaptive command organizational control was minimal meaning that as long as the day’s operational governing principles were obeyed, pretty much anything goes. Although this type of freedom has been enjoyed by Navy airmen for decades, there was now an acknowledgement that the self-organizing behavior displayed by squadrons of air-craft being launched and recovered from carriers was something extraordinary. The behaviors and decisions that enabled pilots to find the right moment to drop their 25 tons of craft onto the deck of a ship were studied and emulated. If it wasn’t for the size, it would be difficult to tell if craft landing on a modular sea frame ship were autonomous or piloted.
Susan’s V-42 Osprey was definitely piloted. She was completing a mission that took here 1500 nautical miles inland where she delivered nearly 200 tons of humanitarian aid to the red-cross operating in a refugee camp. Even at 400 knots it made for a long day.
OPERATIONAL WARRIOR
As delivery-boy neared the #4 EM gun station, the V42 made its final approach to the main aircraft deck. Commander Mark Hamilton watched the activity through the bridge windows of his modular combat ship.
posted by tom | 5:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home