AK 239: The Enemy Is Already Here

USS Alaska (SSBN 732) — Arctic Ocean

Tom Watson’s Diary

^{Four days ’til Christmas}

It was just another ordinary day.

Ordinary, if you consider waking up at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean aboard a ballistic missile submarine.

My name: Tom Watson. I’m chief communication’s officer, CCO, aboard the USS Alaska (SSBN 732) but this is my off time, for another hour anyway.

On Ballistic missile submarines working the All Systems Silent (Affectionately nicknamed: ASS duty) no one was doing anything right now.

In the old days, ASS duty was when a sonar officer heard something which sounded like a sub in the water and about the only thing everyone was allowed to do was sit on their ass until the sound was positively identified! Today, we basically watch computers. The computers “listen” for anomalies and we then have to determine if the anomaly is a potential threat or is something else.

Aside from ASS duty and a fool for a commander, I love my job.

Silence is a submarine’s best weapon. For if no one knows you’re there you can destroy the enemy before they even know what hit them!

And the Arctic is a great place to hide.

Under the ice of the North Pole it’s constantly noisy here. Ice creaks and groans as it calves and breaks. It’s almost impossible to hear anything.

Hence, computers do most of the listening.

We’ve programmed the computer systems to listen for specific submarine signatures so we can tell what’s around us.

However, if our computers have no record of that signature then all bets are off and it comes down to a competent sonar technician to recognize the anomaly (More about “competent” later).

The United States and Russian subs are becoming more and more aggressive in searching for and following each other around. So, silence aboard a sub is both our first line for both offense and defense.

Effective and secure communication is a close second. That’s my new job. My old job was a sonar technician but I really didn’t like the hours and hours of boredom.

Submarines have several ways to communicate. One way was ELF (Extremely Low Frequency). ELF is the only known wavelength that can penetrate deep into the earth and through sea ice. The drawbacks to ELF are:

1). It’s only one-way communication and

2). The antennas and equipment are massive, hence, very expensive.

Only the U.S., Russia and, now India, have built ELF systems.

The Russian antennas are actually thirty-seven miles long!

Technically, they are not antennas at all but only feed lines as the Earth itself is the antenna! Hence, only one-way communication: Navy ops centers can talk to us but we used to not be able to talk back to them.

However, we’ve been secretly testing a newer two-way system for some time now. The Navy laid cable and has near bottom, fixed locations under Arctic ice for hydro-acoustic communication that cannot be pinged even if you’re sitting next to it. You’d never know it’s there!

The beauty of this system is: So long as your boat is snug against the magnetic hub, and has the proper equipment, all sound is suppressed. This was critical as enemy subs are listening and, if they hear anything, they could pick up your location and potentially kill you.

ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) now requires all Arctic communications to travel through this new encrypted system to a HAARP Station in Gakona, Alaska. The U.S. Navy would re-encrypt and send communication to specialized HAARP satellites that would beam them down to ASWOC or any other military facility as needed.

Very few people were aware of the entire ‘Top Secret’ HAARP system. The primary reason for such exotic communications secrecy was to find out what the Russians were really doing in the Arctic without letting them know we we’re here and listening.

I’m one of the few who were briefed on how the entire HAARP system communicated. However, I haven’t been much use to anyone these days.

My last breakup was really difficult.

I swore I’d never date someone in the Navy again.

She was the Lieutenant commander of this very submarine, Jennifer Tavana and the love of my life.

At age thirty-two, she retired from the Navy!

She not only was the first woman to command a U.S. submarine but she also made it to that command in the shortest time of any peacetime commander.

Jennifer retired for me.

I told her not to.

But she’s a very strong-headed woman.

One of us had to leave the ship and even though the discharge finished her distinguished naval career, Commander Tavana did it for me.

I’m sorry Jen. I miss you so much.

I looked at her picture that I kept hiding on the bottom of the bunk above me.

The green light goes on.

Our ASSes are cleared to move around again.

I just sat there staring at her and listening to great breakup song: “So Very Hard to Go” by Tower of Power.[5]

So, I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself and staring at this gorgeous creature and wondering what she’s doing. I heard she joined the FBI and was stationed in Juneau, Alaska.

How ironic, I thought.

At least she’s still “in” Alaska!

I wonder what she’s doing right now?

Jen and I had a professional relationship aboard ship but off the ship things got really hot.

Wow!

I will never forget those shore leave nights.

Unfortunately, I got drunk one night and started bragging about my exploits.

When Navy brass found out about us, we were confronted.

She chose to leave the Navy rather than have me reassigned to another ship or forced out of the Navy.

In light of the way I feel about two idiots on board the Alaska, that might not have been such a bad idea.

The green all clear light had popped off for a couple of minutes now and so I finally drug my sorry “ASS” out of my Ohio class submarine bunk.

The USS Alaska is a SSBN Boomer equivalent to the Russian Typhoon TK-20.

As I made my way to the conn I finally stopped thinking about Jen and began thinking about our mission:

Monitor if Russia had gone ahead with their promise of building ten airfields in the Arctic. Russia’s Federal Agency for Special Construction (Spetsstroy) had promised some time ago to begin building military facilities on six islands. Then everything went dark. No subs, ships, planes, nothing for five years now.

Most people think the United States and Russia are on different sides of the world but most people are wrong.

Russia and the United States are actually less than two and one half miles apart! That’s right, we may be worlds’ apart in culture and language but geographically, it’s less than three miles. When I tell this to people, who don’t know their geography, they laugh at me but a smart Russian or Alaskan will know about the Diomede Islands.

Little Diomede is part of Alaska and Big Diomede is in Russia.

And even though they’re only three miles apart Big Diomede is 21 hours ahead in time.

During some cold winters you can actually walk across the ice bridge that forms here.

Satellite images have shown that the Russians have been moving some of their mobile nukes to as close as possible to Alaska. This obviously is a very serious concern to us, especially when you see the Russians test a weapon like their new Satan-2, which is capable of destroying everything in an area the size of France!

Meanwhile on my sub, Tad Murphy, Seaman and Sonar Technician extraordinaire, was my “responsibility.” The reason primarily being: No one else wanted to work with or be anywhere near the guy. Usually sonar guys hang around together with other sonar guys.

Not Tad.

Even though three sonar technicians were required to be in the sonar room on each shift, people didn’t hang around with Tad even while on duty.

Tad was thought of by me and just about everyone else on board as:

The dumbest man on the ship.

Tad wanted to, someday, command his own ship.

This guy couldn’t command a rubber ducky in a bathtub!

“Anything out there? I asked.

“Nothin’ but a whale!”

Thinking he’s joking I say, “Whale?”

“Ya, it’s the same one I hear every so often,” Tad confidently says.

“On passive?”

“Ya, but I’d really like to go active and ping this big guy and see what he does!” says Tad enthusiastically.

There is so much wrong with that last statement I don’t know where to start. First, as a sub you must listen with your passive sonar so that enemy sonar can’t see you. Active sonar is that famous ping sound you’ve heard when you watch any submarine movie.

It’s actually a lot more complicated than that but that’s the basic idea.

Then I said, “Big guy? How big is this thing you’re seeing?”

“I dunno,” says Dumbo.

“You do realize there’s nothing but ice around us for hundreds and hundreds of miles, right?”

“Ya, so?”

“So a whale’s a mammal and needs to breathe.”

“So?”

So where can a whale come up for air? The ice up there is no less than five to ten feet thick in every direction!”

“I thought they could breathe under water.”

So then I stare at Tad wondering: Maybe aliens took his brain?

“Where’d you study submarine warfare?”

Tad didn’t answer. We all studied at the same naval school in Groton (AKA: “Rotten”) Connecticut. In submarine 101 you knew whales don’t travel very far under ice as their own sonar tells them there is no place to come up for air. The photos you see of whales breathing surrounded by ice clearly isn’t anywhere near here.

Tad then says, “The AOA didn’t recognize the signature so I discarded it.”

Idiot!

I thought that but didn’t say it. I should’ve said it out loud but I didn’t.

Every sound under water has a unique signature identifying itself. Several computer systems onboard then analyze and attempt to identify the object.

The “proper” acronym for one of our computer systems is: AOAIA. That stands for: Advanced Oceanography and Acoustic Intelligence Analysis. It’s capable of identifying almost anything from underwater mountains down to a particular fish.

“I wanna see it. Pull backup,” I say impatiently.

“James says there’s something wrong with our backup system and he’s been tryin’ ta fix it.”

“Where is James and where is Bob?” asks Tom.

Again, there are supposed to be three STs (Sonar Technicians) here on any one shift.

“I dunno. I was tellin’ them a story and they left.”

I’m not surprised.

I know where they are.

I head down two flights to the galley.

Sure enough! I find James and Bob laughing it up with several other guys while decorating our ship’s “Christmas tree.” This crazy thing was decorated with every piece of junk found on the ship. First, the tree was a faded green cheap piece of plastic Chinese crap. If there ever was a fire on board I wouldn’t be surprised if it started right here.

As soon as I’m seen, everyone stops talking, as James and Bob know they are supposed to be on duty and in the sonar room.

“What’s going on with Tad’s whales?”

Everyone laughs. Bob who is the senior ST enlisted man says,

“You heard the story too? We didn’t want to tell Tad.”

Now I’m angry, “You know protocol. Why didn’t you tell me?”

No answer from any of them.

“Was the processed signal flagged and sent to ASWOC?”

ASWOC is the Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Center in San Diego, California.

No answer. Finally, Bob feels confident, “They see the same things we see. I’m sure…”

He wasn’t able to finish when I interrupt,

“I want to see the fucking whale!”

Both of them look at me because I don’t think in my entire time on this sub they’ve ever hear me cuss before.

“I’m sorry,” I quickly say.

Bob hesitant, “Problem was in the AOAIA software. We don’t have it anymore but I’m sure ASWOC has it. I wouldn’t worry about…”

I’m a by the book kinda guy especially when it came to my “on the job” duties (Off the job? Please don’t go there!).

“Did you tell the commander?” I interrupt.

“It’s in our reports to him, ya.” Says Bob.

“You know he doesn’t read those things. Did you tell him?”

James and Bob just look at each other with blank stares.

So I, ignore these guys, and start to leave the galley.

On my way out I say, “Break time is over, fellas. Get back to work.”

I head back to the sonar room and sit at a station.

I fervently type an encrypted message to ASWOC.

Tad is, sitting nearby, still looking stupid.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve seen this over and over ever since we got here. I think it’s just an anomaly.”

I ignore him.

I hit send and look at Tad who is, only now, looking a tiny bit concerned.