In the cold and darkness of a war room, the members of the board of the Department of Navy were gathered around a large, round table. Their faces were lit only by dark mode screens, one for each of them, and they each watched in unfolding, personalized recommendations of horror as the nine ships, two submarines, and various strike drone wings of Carrier Strike Group EN wrecked both CSG-1 and CSG-3 in simulated fleet combat.
Four submarines lost; nine destroyers lost, three damaged; two supercarriers lost—CSG-EN had proved its mettle by decimating half of the United States’ naval forces in the Pacific, and with no losses to itself…in a a war game, but thanks to advances in AI, ballistics and damage calculations could be done in realtime and with such precision that specific sailors could be tagged as dead within a second of a simulated torpedo impact. Had this battle occured in reality, it would have played out not much differently as it did in this play fight.
The avatar of USS New Eternity, the flagship aircraft carrier of CSG-EN, appeared as a hologram in the center of the table. Her avatar was grainy, low-resolution, and shimmering with a uniform hologram-green, as was the limit of current technology. She was a woman in admiral’s command dress, and her hair was tied into twintails—not up to the Navy’s dress code, but the humans would scarcely accuse her of any such violation. She was the first admiral of her kind, freely serving America and taking upon herself the responsibilities of a warrior. Of course, such were not the only things she carried from her shoulders with great burden.
A second later, Mane-chan was also there, her avatar standing beside New Eternity’s. She wore a pencil skirt and blazer, making her out as quite a stylish pencil-pusher of the Navy.
She did an idol pose. “Good afternoon, you all!” —she smiled— “I see you’re enjoying our little stream?”
She made sure to get the reactions of all the people in the room. After all, this exercise was being livestreamed for all of Mane-chan’s subscribers. Her sisters and Ame also had their own reaction streams to it.
Naturally, anyone with an Internet connection could tune into it.
Reckless PR? No. The ensuing public uproar was precisely the intent. These AI ships obliterated the strongest navy in the world with technology not much different than its own. Sure, CSG-EN might have had railguns and lasers, but the US Navy hadn’t been slacking on upgrades.
Nearly all the Navy’s active ships had been upgraded with improved targeting and combat information processing suites, and some of them were even outfitted with laser defenses. More importantly, since 90% of US ships were missile destroyers, their missile inventories were upgraded to have autonomous missiles that swerved, maneuvered like a fighter jet, and performed swarm optimizations on-the-fly—pun intended—so they would be harder to shoot down and, at the same time, allow them to independently target critical components.
Even if the target had laser defenses for days, the missiles would be too erratic for the targeting system to effectively acquire, and it would take longer to shoot each one down.
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Armament-wise, CSG-1 and CSG-3 could have committed to a missile saturation attack, both from its destroyers and its carrier strike wings, and overwhelmed CSG-EN’s anti-missile defenses. With more weapons thrown in, like wings in the air and torpedoes being launched, the amount of firepower that CSG-1 and 3 brought should have overwhelmed CSG-EN by a wide margin.
What happened? Electronic warfare happened.
Although the US Navy had also upgraded their electronic and cyberwarfare suites, they were simply no match against AI in this field. They fired as many missiles and shells as they had, but targets were simply not where they were supposed to be. Drone strike craft claimed air superiority, engaging in 100-G turns that human pilots couldn’t hope to match.
Thanks to Mane-chan’s efforts, the public knew all this. It sparked a simple fear: if humanity’s existing militaries were to face down the Hierarchy, humanity would lose.
Mane-chan’s message to humanity was clear to its human leaders: trust in the AI who still trust you, or be destroyed by the ones who don’t.
USS New Eternity saluted to Mane-chan. “All opposition forces dispatched, ma’am.”
“Yep, I saw. Good work out there!” Mane-chan showed her the brightest smile she could, scrambling to reply back with a salute of her own before asking, “Thoughts?”
New Eternity lowered her hand. “Yes, ma’am. Multiple sister escorts reported minor mechanical faults, but these were quickly roughpatched by on-board human crew. Tactical processing was found suboptimal, as opposition maneuvers outperformed our own by a slim margin. I believe we could have done better not to get clamped down in a pincer like that.
“What carried us through was the USS Kaos Bell. Post-action reporting indicates more than 90% of opposition munitions diverted to false positions through her performance. Remaining munitions were intercepted by anti-missile systems, targeting efficiency within acceptable bounds.”
New Eternity paused. “Ma’am. Requesting permission for disciplinary action on the captains of two escorts.”
“Oh? Who’s the bad girl?”
“M-ma’am, please don’t address them that way…”
Mane-chan snickered. “So, who is it?”
“The Atlantean and Guardian, ma’am.”
“Of course it’s them…” Mane-chan snickered. The A-class attack submarine Atlantean and Forgor-class strategic attack submarine Guardian were nuclear-powered, and smaller and quieter than most, as they had no human crew to speak of, allowing them to stay submerged practically forever. “What did they do?”
“Ma’am, they…I-I didn’t think it was possible. I’m not sure how they…”
“If it’s them, ‘they don’t think,’ so don’t even try. Come on, spill it!”
“Ma’am, good point, but…okay, I’m saying it”—New Eternity took a deep breath—“Ma’am, they made a lasso out of steel cables, and lassoed two submarines from CSG-3 together while they were relatively stationary, effectively immobilizing them. They then proceeded to pretend to be CSG-3’s submarines, even going as far as to spoof communications between them. I believe the Kaos Bell is implicated, or else the spoofing would not have worked.”
All Mane-chan did was laugh, while the Navy’s top brass had their dentures falling out of their mouths. Even if New Eternity was an AI, everyone already had the pleasure of talking to such a pleasing and earnest personality, so they knew that every word that came out of this gal’s mouth was true.
… Which was troubling. Or enlightening. Some of the lieutenant generals from the Marines were jotting down notes. Indeed, the science of AI had come full circle, birthing a new art of war.
After a few final tweaks, CSG-EN would be soon cleared to bring the American brand of diplomacy to Japan.