Modern Warfare

U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM)

Amedee Army Airfield, Herlong, California

The C-17 came to a stop, exactly on its mark, and the rear ramp started to deploy even before the engines had completely wound down.  A Marine corps colonel was the first Marine off the plane.  Looking up the ramp, he could see about a hundred more Marines, fully kitted out in desert camouflage uniforms, waiting to debark.  Kumar walked over to the colonel and extended a hand.  “Welcome to Sierra Army Depot, Colonel.”

“Fawkes.  Glad to meet you.  Have you been briefed?”  The tall Marine officer waved a hand at a gunnery sergeant hovering at the foot of the ramp who immediately started the process of debarkation. 

“Yes, NORCOM actual called me personally.”

Colonel Fawkes stopped for a moment, surprised, then shook his head.  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  I got a call at six AM from the commandant of the Marine Corps.”

Kumar smiled.  “Not every day you get a call from him?”

Fawkes laughed.  “No.  First time for me.”

“Same.”

“So, can you do it?”

“What, get one hundred and fifty tanks ready to go in just two days?”

“Yes, that minor matter.”

“You forget where you are, Fawkes.”  With a broad expansive gesture at the desert all around him, he smiled.  “This is what we do.  It’s all we do.”  He gestured to the Humvee waiting a few yards away.  “Would you care to inspect your new command, Colonel?”

As the Humvee left the airport and turned left onto Magazine Road, Kumar asked the question that had been driving him crazy since his orders had arrived.  “I thought that the Marines didn’t have any tankers left?  Where did you all come from?”

Fawks laughed.  “You don’t work with Marines much, do you?”  Kumar just shook his head.  “We don’t worry about what your MOS is or anything like that.  All Marines are riflemen first, everything else is secondary.  We’re taught that in basic.  Even pilots should be able to pick up a gun and defend themselves if needed.  In this case, the commandant called II MEF and asked for volunteers who had previously served in tanks.”  II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF) was the largest Marine Corps command on the East Coast.

“And I assume you got enough volunteers?”

Fawks laughed again.  “I only took about twelve hundred.  I had at least three thousand volunteer.  There are some pissed off Marines out at Lejeune who didn’t get the call up.”  He gestured vaguely east.  “There are eleven more C-17s coming in with the rest of the Marines.”

“What about maintainers?  Mechanics?  Logistics train?”

“That, not so much.  We will pick up what we can at Twentynine Palms.”

Kumar shook his head.  “My orders are explicit.  You are to be provided with my full support.  There is no way you are leaving here without a full logistics train.”

“I’m not?”

“No, you’re not.”

As they pulled onto the main post at SAID, the driver turned left, past a massive storage yard and entered another gated, fenced area.  The fence was topped with barbed wire and armed US Army soldiers stood guard at the gate, backed up by two armored JLTVs.  After showing their IDs the vehicle was allowed inside.  Fawks had assumed that there would just be a row of tanks in the yard, hopefully fueled.  What he saw instead stunned him.  There were over two hundred Heavy Equipment Transporter System (HETS) trucks lined up in neat rows.  Each one loaded with either an M1 tank or various bits of supporting equipment from basic shipping containers to fully kitted out M88A2 HERCULES tank recovery vehicles.  “Jesus Christ.”

Kumar patted Fawkes on the shoulder.  “Compliments of US Northern Command.”

Task Force Anvil

US-395, Lee Vining, CA

Over two hundred military transports moving along US-395 made an impressive sight.  Spread out over two miles, the convoy also included two dozen JLTVs for security traffic duty.  The JLTVs sped ahead of the large transports, blocking side roads and other highway entrances to ensure that the convoy could make a steady fifty miles an hour.  Two dozen tankers had been sent ahead to provide fuel for the trucks.  Fawkes would never admit it, but working with the Army certainly had its perks. As a Marine officer, he was used to making do with less.  They normally had the full support of the US Navy, but the Marines were the “junior service” in that relationship, often flying cast off Navy jets and getting second choice when it came to weapons systems and other support.  The US Army on the other hand was a logistics machine as he had just experienced.

As the transports parked at the FARP, refueling trucks moved from transporter to transporter.  At the same time, tank crews released the chains holding down the turrets and fired up their M1s for the first time.  Despite his bravado to Colonel Kumar, Fawkes was a little concerned about his ability to carry out operation “Doolittle.”  He hadn’t even been aboard a tank in almost two years and these tanks were the relatively modern M1A2 SEPv3 version.   The Sierra Depot had taken charge of these refreshed tanks because part of their mission was to deploy material to deployed units.  If an Army unit in the Pacific theater suddenly needed ten replacement tanks, it was the Sierra Depot that would put them on a C5 or a ship so that the unit could get back up to full combat effectiveness as soon as possible.

The upgraded tanks were both good news and bad news for the Marines.  The good news was that the SEPv3 upgrade had included the trophy self-protection system which would literally be a life saver in combat.  The bad news was that none of his crew had ever operated a SEPv3 Abrams before.  They had literally been handed refresher courseware as they boarded their planes.  All they knew was what was in the training manuals they had each read.   For this reason, the decision had been made that each tank crew would spend as much time as possible inside their new rides, even taking advantage of refueling stops like this one.

Getting into his own tank, Fawkes was once again impressed with the new displays and enhanced optics.  The SEPv3 was better in every way than his old M1.  He started trying out systems that he had read about but hadn’t actually used.  The basics were familiar, the M1 was still the same basic machine as before, just with updated controls and some enhanced functionality.  He started flipping switches, activating all the major systems.  The new consoles were amazing.  Full color displays showing things like friendly units, known enemy positions, tons of information.  He zoomed out the map to show all of California.  All known friendly positions were clearly identified.  He could see Army units engaged on I-10.  Wait. 

“This thing is showing live data!”

“What was that, sir?”  The sergeant who led the refueling crew popped his head into the open hatch.

“We have full link 16 with every unit in California!  Hell, I can see the entire West.  Navy also!” 

“How the hell can we do that?”

“No idea.”

“SIR!”  Another head appeared.   “When I was in country we got BACN support, and the Army boys showed me their tactical.  We got all kinds of shit from all over.”

“That must be it.”  He started really looking closely at the display.  It looked like the troops down south were in big trouble.  According to the system, enemy strength was about double what the defenders had.  Of course, these were just estimates.  If anything, it was safe to assume that these estimates underrepresented enemy strength since they only reported units that had been actually observed by friendly forces.  His brief had said that ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) was very thin on the ground so they could be missing huge numbers of enemy assets scattered around Southern California and northern Mexico.

He continued to investigate the display, but suddenly, the icon indicating data link quality went red.  The system remembered everything it had seen, but new updates weren’t coming in any longer.  However, the system had been up long enough for him to see a couple of vital details.  One was that there was an overall theater commander.  That hadn’t been true when he got on the plane at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) New River the day before.  He assumed that the brief sync also showed his position to theater command.  Without operative satellite communications, he had no way of communicating to “Bravo Uniform” which was the radio code name for the USS Bougainville.  He sincerely hoped that SACWEST was paying attention.

United States Cyber Command

Fort Meade, Maryland

“The system is compromised.”

The CIA deputy director, a lean man dressed in his normal worsted wool suit leaned back in his chair.  “What do you mean compromised?”

The black team lead grimaced.  “You have Chinese malware running all over your network.”

“The malware is running inside of SIPRNet?”  SIPRNet was the global secure network that the DOD used to communicate.  Any malware running on SIPRnet was a very serious breach of security.

“Sir, the malware is running SIPRNet at this point.  All your major nodes are compromised, the routers have been infected, it’s everywhere.  Land lines, satellites, the works.  Looks like a virus, but it doesn’t matter how it got there.  The point is that it’s in there.”

The deputy director turned to the Cisco employee in the room.  “How is that possible?  SIPRnet is completely secured from the internet.”

The Cisco engineer scoffed.  You could tell he was extremely senior in the company because he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops.  “We’ve been telling you for years, the Skittles defense went out of fashion in 1990.”  The engineer, a Cisco fellow, was so senior within the organization that he could talk to people in any way he wanted, and he often did. 

“Skittles defense?”

“Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.”

“But how did they get in?”

“My guess, they penetrated one or more network segments and decrypted your traffic using quantum computing.”

“Sorry?”

“Quantum computers allow you to solve math problems that are normally extremely difficult to solve.  Modern cryptography is based on the idea that the math to break your encryption is so hard it would take a supercomputer a century to solve it.  Thus, you are safe because by the time they crack it, you’ve moved on.  A quantum computer can solve that problem in minutes.  If they can break your encryption, they can do whatever they want.”  He looked over at the general in charge of Cyber Command.  “Sir, we told you this two years ago.”

“Yes, and we have a funding request in to resolve it.”

“How did that work out for you?”

The general was becoming visibly angry.  “It’s your gear that has failed, don’t blame us for your error.”

“It’s operator error.  If you drive your car into a wall, that’s not Ford’s fault.”

The general stood up, red faced, but the deputy director put a hand on his shoulder.  “Blame game later.  What do we do now?”

“You blow up SIPRnet.  Start fresh with QR encryption.”

“QR encryption?”

“Quantum resistant.  It means that you re-do your encryption to resist quantum computer hacking.”  He reached into his backpack and pulled out a document.  “It’s all here in the report.”  He flipped the thick document on the table.  “That we submitted two years ago.”

“Cut the attitude.  What can we do right now?”

The Cisco engineer blew out a big breath, his eyes to the ceiling.  “I think we have a couple thousand ISR routers in a warehouse in Viginia.  Use RFC 8784 pre-shared keys and SKIP for strong encryption of IKEv2 and IPsec packets using post-quantum PPKs.  You get me a clean network and I’ll secure it for you.  Hell, you have dark fiber between most installations.  Rip out all the gear and use the existing glass.  Couple of days per site.”

Everyone in the room’s eyes were starting to glaze over from the technobabble.  None of them were networking experts and they didn’t understand the underlying details.  The deputy director made a slicing motion with his hand.  “Net it out for us.”

“The Chinese own you.  They’re in your network.  We need to build a new one.”

After a few moments the general calmed down enough to think through the problem.  “We need something mobile that can work anywhere in CONUS.”

The national security advisor, who had been quiet until this point, laughed.  “Starlink.”

The general looked at him for a moment, confused.  Then he nodded.  “It’s Ukraine again, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the president has been looking for an excuse.  This is it.”

“DPA?”

“Yes, I’ll write it up.  The president will sign it in seconds.”  The Defense Production Act (DPA) was a broad law that essentially allowed the US government to demand that US companies supply things to the government.  Normally it was used to ensure that critical components like munitions were produced, but the law was very broad and essentially allowed the government to issue orders to private companies.

The general looked back to the Cisco engineer.  “OK, we want a kit that connects a Starlink system to an ISR, pre-configured and ready to go.  Pack it into a pelican case and ship them everywhere.”  He turned back to the national security advisor.  “Add these guys to the DPA.”

“Right.”

The Cisco engineer frowned, concentrating.  “The trick is that we need to manually distribute the encryption keys.  If we do that, we can use any network, including the internet.”

The general wasn’t convinced.  “We cannot use public networks for secure traffic.”

“Sir, you don’t understand me.  All networks are essentially public now.  Unless you have a single piece of wire and you control both ends, it is a public network at some point.  The entire point is that you MUST assume that the bad guys see every packet and make it so that those packets don’t do them any good.”

The CIA deputy director nodded.  “We know that the Russians have been going after undersea cables for years.  Hell, we did it to them forty years ago; they’re finally catching up.  We should assume the Chinese are doing the same thing.”  He nodded to himself.  “We have to assume that our networks are compromised by default.”

The general finally nodded.  “Very well, I want the design vetted by my people here first.”

“Of course.”

“Make it happen.”

“Yes, sir.”