SSN Virginia photonics mast: USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

“Incredible,” Garrett said, whispering to himself.

“Just like the ****ing Enterprise,” Jorgensen said softly at Garrett’s elbow.

“I assume you don’t mean the carrier, Number One.” Aircraft carrier bridges were known for their sheer spaciousness.

“I meant the starship,” Jorgensen replied with a chuckle. “You look like Captain Kirk there, center seat and all.”

“I wonder if Roddenberry’s estate is getting royalties for this thing.”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Back in the sixties, when Star Trek was first on TV, the U.S. Navy actually contacted Gene Roddenberry— the show’s creator—and told him they were looking at his design for the bridge on his fictional starship as a model for the bridge on real-life Navy ships. Someone in the Navy’s design bureau thought it made a lot of sense, putting the captain or the OOD in a chair smack in the middle of things where he could turn back and forth and see all of the consoles and screens around him without having to move. At least, that’s the story. So . . . it took us, what? Forty-some years, but we’ve finally caught up with the USS Enterprise.”

“Yup,” Jorgensen agreed. “Though I’m not sure what the stores people ashore would make of a request for photon torpedoes.”

Garrett turned to face forward once more, glancing up at the main screen—another adaptation from Roddenberry’s science fictional world. The Photonics mast view wasn’t particularly informative at the moment. The scene showed an almost impenetrable murk, a deep, dark pea green shading to midnight black at the bottom. Myriad flecks of debris caught in the sail lights streamed past the camera like clouds of stars. Garrett could make out just a hint of the “ceiling,” the underside of the polar ice cap stretched overhead like a dark gray, inverted landscape thirty feet overhead.

Submarines had always relied very little on the sense of sight. Except for those rare occasions when they might be tracking targets through their periscopes, submerged boats ran blind, relying instead on their sonar ears to tell them about what might be in the sea around them. Virginia’s forward view screen threatened to change that ...and not for the better, so far as Garrett was concerned. Even with the high-tech sensors of the Photonics mast, visual input carried very little useful information. Even with the lights on, visibility was at best a hundred yards. Virginia’s sonar ears—honed by decades of the U.S. Navy’s high-tech prowess in the field—were infinitely more sensitive and informative.

Here, too, the technology had transformed the nature of the submarine beast. Virginia’s main sonar was the BQQ-10 Acoustic Rapid COTS Insertion system, or ARCI, an upgrade to the spherical bow-mounted BQQ-6 active/passive array, which was already acknowledged as the best sonar system in the world. The COTS acronym stood for Commercial Off-The-Shelf, a measure designed to keep the Virginia class’s per-unit cost down, but also to allow for easy upgrades as technology progressed. Besides her TB-16 towed and TB-29 thin-line towed sonars, she also mounted the new BQG-5A Wide-Aperture Array. The WAA had been designed as the premier sensor for tracking what the Navy anticipated Virginia’s number-one prey would be: diesel-electric submarines operating in shallow littoral waters.

At the touch of a screen, data from any of those sonar systems could be displayed on the main screen, or on the small console screen mounted on Garrett’s armrest.

Some things did not change with the technology, however. The sonar was still operated by enlisted men trained to use their ears as well as the computers, visual sonar displays, and computerized sound libraries. The men at the various control-room stations remained calm and alert, focused on their jobs. Commands were, as ever, repeated back word for word in formal litanies designed to make certain that the order was heard, that it was fully understood, and that it was being properly carried out. Stress or overeagerness could make a man anticipate an order and get it wrong. Repeating a command back assured understanding and helped disarm what could become crippling stress.

The key word was professional; the boat’s crew were consummate professionals, very, very good at what they’d volunteered to do.

Which, at the moment, was probing the underbelly of the Arctic ice cap. Virginia’s operational orders included an under-the-ice passage from Baffin Bay, west of Greenland, to the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia. While under the ice cap, they would thoroughly test Virginia’s under-ice sonar and navigational capabilities. An add-on to those orders required them to take periodic soundings of the ice along the way for NOAA, the quasi-naval National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Information gleaned from this run would be added to the database now being compiled on the worldwide effects of global warming.

“Conn, Sonar,” a voice said in Garrett’s headset.

“Sonar, this is the Conn. Go ahead.”

“Sir, the ice is thinning. Looks like we have an open lead coming up.”

“Very well.”

On the view screen, the water appeared to be lightening substantially. A touch of his armrest controls angled the Photonics mast camera upward. Murkgray-green gave way suddenly to an explosion of white radiance. Shafts of sunlight sliced through the water overhead, dwindling rapidly as they descended.

The ice was a lot thinner than normal for this latitude at this time of the year. The first time Garrett had crossed under the ice, as a junior officer on board a Los Angeles boat almost two decades ago, the ice here a thousand miles from the North Pole had measured around two or three meters thick. Now, the ice was only rarely thicker than half a meter, and there were frequent leads of open water.



From The Silent Service: Virginia Class - H. Jay Riker