Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

USS TOWERS (DDG-103)
NORTHERN ARABIAN GULF
SUNDAY; 13 MAY
1601 hours (4:01 PM)
TIME ZONE +3 ‘CHARLIE’
CHAPTER 13
It appeared on the video screen without warning: a brilliant wedge of
jittering green static that dominated the lower left quadrant of the SPY
radar display. Operations Specialist Third Class Angela Hartford stared at
the flickering green triangle with disbelief. She had been tracking three air
contacts in that sector, and now she couldn’t see any of them. They were
totally eclipsed by the pulsing wedge of static. It was an equipment
malfunction or maybe a software error. It had to be. Because the only
other possible explanation was impossible. At least it was supposed to be
impossible.
Hartford glanced across Combat Information Center to the Radar
Control Officer’s console, to the left of the Tactical Action Officer’s
station. She punched the channel selector on her communications panel,
patching her headset into the Radar Control Officer’s circuit. “RCO—Air.
I’m getting some kind of weird system artifact on my air tracking display.
It’s gobbling up about a sixty-degree sector of my radar coverage. Can
you run a quick diagnostic on SPY and check it out?”
The AN/SPY-1D(V)2 phased-array radar formed the heart of the ship’s
Aegis integrated sensor and weapons suite. With a power output of over
four million watts and a high–data-rate multi-function computer control
system, the most recent generation of SPY radar was capable of detecting
and tracking nearly two hundred simultaneous air and surface contacts. In
Aegis ready-auto mode, SPY could detect a contact, classify it as friendly
or hostile (based on its radar signature, movement characteristics, and
approach profile), prioritize it in relation to other threat ships or aircraft,
and—if necessary—assign and launch missiles to attack it. Following a
missile launch, SPY could even assess the target for damage and decide
whether to launch additional missiles to finish it off.
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