Boyle realized that the commander in the flight suit must have been one of the helicopter squadron commanders. “Sir, we’ve made arrangements to pick up more personnel once we get near Hawaii. We’re in talks with HSM-37 to detach one or two of their birds to us as well. They’re out of Kanehoe Bay.”
The admiral nodded. “Good. Gentlemen, we all saw how deadly just one Chinese submarine can be if not detected. We need to be vigilant. Do not sleep on the submarine threat. If the Chinese are moving on us, the carriers will be their number one target.”
The officers at the central table nodded agreement. “Yes, sir.”
The admiral turned. “Commodore, let’s talk about your SAG now.”
The commodore grabbed the clicker and switched the screen to show the map of ships that his lieutenants had worked on. “Sir, based on the intelligence we received earlier today, we intend to put a surface action group in a position to locate and interdict the Chinese convoy. We would plan to search the area our intel expects them to cross. If we make an average speed of eighteen knots, I’m confident that we can intercept them in the vicinity of the Marshall Islands.”
“Who are you stealing from me, Commodore?”
The commodore did his best to look humble. “We had originally intended on taking four destroyers, three LCSs, and a supply ship.”
The admiral stared at the map. As an afterthought, he said, “Remind the group who’s with us now, Commodore. We have a lot of new faces with us.”
“Sir, ships in company include one Arleigh Burke — class destroyer, the USS Mason. We have the latest Zumwalt-class destroyer riding shotgun — the USS Michael Monsoor. Our supply ship is the USNS Henry J. Kaiser, and we have two littoral combat ships: the Detroit and the Fort Worth.”
“And the Farragut…”
“Yes, sir, the Farragut is steaming this way as we speak, and we actually have Commander Boyle, their new captain, with us here today.”
“Welcome, Commander Boyle.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The admiral said, “Commodore, when do we meet up with the others?”
“Sir, we have three more destroyers, two LCSs, and a second supply ship steaming from San Diego now. They should join us the day after tomorrow based on my conversation with Captain Stewart and the navigator.”
The navigator was in a flight suit, sitting against the wall. Boyle knew him to be a former P-3 squadron commanding officer, a mean poker player, and an overall good guy. He said, “That’s right, sir. Around twenty hundred local time the day after tomorrow.”
“And the strike group will pick up several more once we’re closer to Pearl.”
“How many?”
“Sir, we’re still working that out.”
“What’s the issue?”
“Third and Seventh Fleet are trading pieces. No one wants to be shorted.”
Admiral Manning frowned. “We can discuss that later. Tell me, are you planning on going with the destroyers when we break up?”
The room was uncomfortably quiet. This was probably not the best venue for the conversation. But Admiral Manning had a reputation for making his O-6s sweat it out during meetings like this. During one meeting Boyle had observed, when the information warfare commander had suggested that they take a conversation offline, Admiral Manning had replied, “What the hell was this meeting for, then? A show for all these junior officers to know that we’re doing our job? Give me your damn answer, Captain.” The O-6s had come prepared to discuss any and all agenda items after that.
The commodore cleared his throat. “I had planned to embark on the Farragut, sir…”
“And you’ll leave the Michael Monsoor here?” The admiral looked down the table at the Michael Monsoor’s captain, who had also flown over for the meeting.
“Yes, sir, of course. Captain Hoblet on the Monsoor is the air defense commander. I assumed you would want to keep them as shotgun…”
Both the commodore and the admiral turned now to Captain Hoblet, who sat a few seats down from them at the center table. The air defense commander was normally the ship captain of the shotgun cruiser. Since this strike group had been thrown together in haste, and with units that were not scheduled to go on deployment for months or years, there weren’t any cruisers to be given. The USS Michael Monsoor was a three-billion-dollar advancement in naval technology — or, depending on who you asked, a three-billion-dollar piece of junk.
Controversy had surrounded just about every new piece of military technology in recent years. Part of that was due to legitimate problems with the bureaucratic procurement machine that plagued the defense industry. Another part of it was the lobbyists of competitor defense firms, happy to run negative news campaigns if it might help their business. If one new military platform didn’t get funding, the money wasn’t saved by the taxpayers. It went to the competition, for a proven and ready piece of hardware that was battle-tested. Washington made Boyle sick, if he let himself think about it too much.
The Zumwalt-class destroyer was no exception to this. While much of the technology was state-of-the-art, it had several eye-popping problems — one of which was its air defense capability. The Zumwalt was unproven in this arena. Her systems were different than the AEGIS system that other Navy destroyers and cruisers used.
Admiral Manning said, “Should I be comfortable with a Zumwalt-class ship as my air defense commander?”
Captain Hoblet said, “Sir, the Michael Monsoor is fully capable of—”
“How much testing and training have you and your crew done? And how well integrated are you with the AEGIS destroyers?”
“Admiral, admittedly, the ship is brand-new. We haven’t yet finished—”
“Let’s be clinical in our decision making. The Michael Monsoor might be great at air defense. But I don’t want to find out that there’s some compatibility issue integrating with the other destroyers’ AEGIS systems in the middle of a missile attack. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“From what I’ve read in your reports, you have tested some of the other weapons systems aboard, and she’s more than adequate at the surface warfare mission.”
“That’s an accurate statement, sir.”
“Very well. Commodore, when we’re done here, let’s look at sending the Michael Monsoor out as the SAG commander. Captain Hoblet, you can delegate air defense duties to one of our escort destroyers that remains with Ford.”
“Yes, sir.” Hoblet’s face betrayed no emotion.
“Commodore, what’s the plan for the SAG?”
The commodore tried to maintain his composure while all eyes were on him after just getting shot down by his boss.
“Yes, sir, we’ll have at least four detachments of helicopters embarked on those SAG ships. My intent”—he clicked the button to switch to the next slide—“is to create a giant line abreast formation — about one hundred miles of separation between each of the seven warships. We’ll have the supply ship close to one of them. That gives us a seven-hundred-nautical-mile vertical line that we’re covering each day, plus about two hundred more miles on each side that the helicopters can surveil.”
“That’s still a hell of a lot of open ocean to have to cover outside of that.”
“Sir, there’s a marine expeditionary unit embarked on the USS America in the vicinity of northern Australia. With your permission, sir, I’d like to ask PACFLEET to see if they can help them get some of the V-22s and F-35s to conduct a little surveillance in the South Pacific. That would help us narrow down the search area.”