In Part I, I laid the foundation for the rest of this recitation of events now twenty years in the past. Catch up if you need to.

Armed with antecdotal understanding of the next generation of anit-surface missiles, new RADAR capabilites, a little more understanding of the SH-60B sensor and weapons suite, our staff began many meetings around the table in the conference room in the front of Building W-5, first deck. How would a notional battle group, with a BB as the central unit, be able to project power? Implied, and how can it keep itself knowledgable of the local tactical environment? A big challenge, since we were used to just calling for aircraft from the CV to help us paint the picture of who was who in the briny blue neighborhood. Out of the question. Some land based VP assets, or possibly AWACS, may be available, but just grabbing the secure phone to AREC (air resource coordinator) wasn’t going to cut it. Tasking (to use staff weenies): Solve the problem. No option to report that all options were investigated and it was a bone headed idea. Anyhow, we “appreciated” a challenge.

Along the way to a proposed plan, we began casting nets in various directions, soliciting help. This led to us getting to know the commander at CINCLANTFLT (CLF) in charge of the Tomahawk mission planners. We corraled the crypto guys and, flashed our clearances and demanded details on what info they could provide us. That was good for most, but our Commodore demanded that we find out how it worked, which came to be a major factor in not only the planning, but the follow on analysis of the days at sea. Being insistent paid off. We sat down with the Joint Cruise Missile Project Office (JCMPO) guys and picked their brains. In retrospect, their job was to nudge the system to a fully successful set of conditions, so sometimes, the data seemed useful, but, we found out, sometimes wasn’t the tactical truth to make the rubber meet the road.

The master plan was not only to have the real cooperative mobile target of the WILLIAM V PRATT for four days, the SPRU Can for about two, but CLF was happy to build a pile of “virtual” tracks. At the time, we called them “constructive” tracks, but in today’s market, virtual is a better descriptor. We also had CLF arrange priority tasking for assets to provide long range intel and warning “tippers.”

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