Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 173
She continued. “Captain, the USW Officer’s plan is a good one, but
I’m afraid that I have to disagree with one major part of it.”
Ensign Cooper stared at her, obviously shocked at the idea that his own
chief petty officer would contradict him in front of the captain. “Um …
which part do you … um … disagree with, Chief?”
Every eye in the room was on the chief now, and she was suddenly
conscious of just how far out of her territory she was. “I don’t think we
can afford …” She stopped, swallowed, and started again. “I don’t think
we can afford to trust our tactical USW doctrine in this situation. In fact, I
think we have to avoid using our tactical doctrine at all costs.”
The USWO rubbed behind his ear, a puzzled look on his face. “Help
me out here, Chief. I’m trying to understand what you’re saying.”
“I know it sounds crazy,” the chief said. “But think about it, sir.
Nearly every tactic in those books has been shared with NATO. Search
patterns. Attack patterns. The timing of our zigzag plans. Even the
spacing of our sonobuoys. The lion’s share of our doctrine was designed
for use in cooperation with NATO. The Germans have been members of
NATO since the get-go—which means they’ve already read our playbook.
If we follow our doctrine, they already know what we’re going to do
before we even do it.”
Captain Bowie nodded. “I think you hit the bull’s-eye, Chief.
Excellent job. That explains how the Germans managed to clean Kitty
Hawk’s clock so easily.”
The XO’s eyebrows went up for a few seconds. Then, he clapped his
hands and rubbed them together briskly. “Sooooo … I guess we start by
throwing the old book out the window and coming up with some new
tactics.”
“I agree, sir,” the Combat Systems Officer said. And when we do get
something hammered out, we can punch it into the Link and shoot it over
to Benfold and Ingraham and see if they can suggest any improvements.”
The captain nodded. “Good call.” He turned back to the chief.
“You’ve been doing this half your life—got any pet theories you want to
try out against some no-shit hostile subs?”
Chief McPherson nodded. She’d been right. This was why the captain
had invited her to this meeting. “I might just have one or two ideas
gathering dust at the back of my brain, Captain.”
The captain smiled. “I kind of suspected that you might.”
The chief glanced at Ensign Cooper. His face had whitened visibly.
She could nearly hear the thoughts tumbling around in his head. All of his
knowledge of Undersea Warfare had come from studying tactical doctrine.
Now, those neatly bound tactical manuals were useless to him. Even his