Glossary of Swarm Terms
General List Notes: Need to Add: shipboard structural integrity terms
This is an outgrowth of the supporting glossary for ZM's story 'Independent Command' and has been expanded to general use for any Swarm Cycle story. If you see a term used in any Swarm Cycle story but not defined, and you cannot figure out from context what it means, please check here. If you cannot find it here either, please tell the author who will get it added to this Glossary.
When the Confederacy came to us for help with the Sa'arm, they had advanced technology but no weapons. They didn't do that sort of thing. That's not a problem for us humans, we've been thinking hard about space warfare for over a century (Reference H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds", published in 1898). We already know what weapons we want to put on our ships, if you will just help us build them..... No wonder they are almost as scared of us as they are the Sa'arm.
Note that, as the vast majority of early volunteers came from all the various descendants of the British empire (US Navy, South African Army, etc), the Confederacy Navy speaks English and was originally organized by US Navy and UK Royal Navy people. It uses USN terms with a strong leavening from the RN and other NATO allies. Of course, we are fighting for our species' life. We don't care where a good idea comes from. If it works we will use it.
AAR - After Action Report
A formal/final report on an event or series of events, usually combat, put together by the victors or survivors, or separate investigators if survivors were not available. An AAR usually centers around a tactical plot replay (TPR), a video presentation that shows the relative positions and actions of all involved. The TPR is often set up for dramatic and entertainment value. The rest of the AAR is a collection of addendums cataloging every aspect (ships, personnel, damage, casualties, etc). When available, the TPR often includes live commentary from the participants, as that usually gives the viewers an understanding of why decisions were made the way they were.
AI - Artificial Intelligence
(Main article at Artificial Intelligence) A device of sufficient computing power that it cannot be recognized, by blind conversation, as a manufactured device; the other side of the conversation cannot tell it from a human. This was the original "Turing Test". Once the first minimal AI is functional, it can be used to help design and build much more capable ones, and a society which has them available for general use will undergo a vast transformation. Confederacy society is driven by AIs, as all equipment more complicated than a shovel will have integrated control systems with hooks for AIs to manage them.
AU - Astronomical Unit
The AU is a common unit used to describe the distances involved in a star system. Kilometers are too small and lightyears are too large. One "AU" is the distance between the center of the "Sun", the star at the center of Earthat, and the center of Earth. In other words, one "AU" is the radius of Earth's orbit.
Earth is 1 AU from its sun. Mars is 2 AU out, Jupiter is 5 AU out, Saturn is 10AU out, Uranus is 20 AU out, Neptune is 30 AU out, and the system has minor planets out to 100 AU or more.
Note that Earth and Jupiter are only 4 AU apart when on the same side of the Sun, but they are 6AU apart when on opposite sides of the Sun.
Other units used for this range of distances are "Light-Minutes", Light-Hours", "Megameters", and "Gigameters". Jupiter is ~ 41 L-M, -0.7 L-H, 780Mm, and 0.78Gm from the Sun. For conversation or quick estimates, it's easier to say "5 AU".
Bridge
The shipboard compartment where the helmsman, OOD, or CO can visually see how close the ship is to the pier, the repair frame, or the landing pad. This implies a window or viewport, which in turn dictates that this compartment is not armored and protected in the middle of the ship where control and management systems belong. The Bridge holds the ship's official "helm" or directional control station.
For space ships that are large enough/complex enough to have a CIC, the nominally "main" helm station on the Bridge is usually not manned. Instead, the "main" helm station is usually slaved to the nominal "backup" helm station in CIC.
Smaller vessels that are completely controlled by one or two "pilots" often call this space the "cockpit".
Bullet-Sponge
A sailor's term for those passengers who serve no purpose beyond getting in the way of a bullet intended for someone more valuable. While a professional bodyguard might take it as a compliment, most Marines don't react well to the label.
BuPers
In the US Navy, the Bureau of Personnel, that mass of office workers responsible for the acquisition, training, assignment, and management of the Navy's people. Actually, this Bureau is remarkable for its ability to rapidly change policies as the real world changes. Whatever the formal name of the Confederacy's personnel directorate, USN veterans will call it "BuPers".
BuShips
In the US Navy, the Bureau of Shipbuilding and Repair, that unwieldy mass of office workers responsible for the design, construction, maintenance, and repair of all the Navy's ships. While they are frequently cursed for their glacial speed, they deal with 15-year-lead-time contracts with commercial shipyards to develop and produce equipment and systems for ships we haven't built yet and may well cancel anyway, so it's not all their fault. Whatever the formal name of the Confederacy's shipbuilding directorate, USN veterans will call it "BuShips".
C1, C2, C3, C4 - Condition Numbers
Shipboard readiness level. Each ship will have its own manning lists, showing where each crew member will be for each condition. Ships in the same class will generally have similar lists. Ships which can be reconfigured for different missions may well change their manning documents as needed.
Condition 1 is basically completely unmanned, in port with a very small skeleton crew aboard and often referred to as an "anchor watch". Crew assigned to the ship but not 'on duty' may be on (unofficial) liberty, (official) leave, TAD to a service-related school, or TAD to other duties.
C2 is normal underway with nothing exciting happening -ho hum, another three days until arrival. For training, some of the crew may be running 'sims' or AI-generated simulations of various tasks or evolutions.
C3 is the important one, the manning level that people call "Battlestations". This is the manning level that has people at every post that we want people at, when we are shooting at an enemy and getting shot at in return. This gives the ship the maximum ability to fight and to repair damage. However, it comes at a cost: All of your best people are busy. The CO is in CIC, the best gunner is on the biggest gun. If Joey needs to go to the bathroom, whoever relieves him reduces the ship's combat capability because he isn't as good as Joey. If he was, then _he_ would be the one manning that station at C3, and Joey would be the backup. Staying at C3 for too long leads to gradual at first, then rapidly increasing reductions in combat efficiency as people under stress get tired.
C4 is a fiction, the unofficial "condition" level that refers to what happens if you _lose_ a fight, the struggle to abandon a stricken ship before it is too late. Note that Confederacy warship AIs have orders to prevent enemy access to advanced technology. If a ship is in danger of capture, the ship will self-destruct to prevent such. This can make crew evacuation an urgent matter even if the ship is not actually getting shot at.
CAP - Capability, Aptitude, Potential
(Main article at CAP) Apparently chosen for its ability to make a catchy-sounding acronym, the CAP is a system for testing what an individual is capable of right now, as well as his/her capability for future growth with proper training. The Confederacy needed a combat force to contain the Sa'arm. However, anyone able to beat the Swarm was self-evidently even more dangerous than the Swarm, so the Confederacy insisted upon controls.
Only those individuals with the intelligence to learn, the sociability to follow orders, and the ability to have loyalty to a higher concept than "self" were allowed to volunteer for service in the Confederacy Navy and Marine Corps. At first, the recruiters concentrated on intelligence as necessary to understand all the advanced equipment. Later, as issues emerged with early volunteers, we started paying more attention to other factors.... See "Volunteer" and "Concubine"
CC - Central Command
(Main article at Central Command) The bureaucratic structure that provides overall direction for the war effort. While some direction is necessary, it often seems at the front lines that CC is spending more time feathering their own nests than managing the war. It often seems to suffer from terminal NIH Syndrome, as it appears that only their own ideas are seriously considered.
On the other hand, CC is a resource management system, not a combat command system. CC only provides resources (ships, materials, manpower, research, etc) to the districts. Direct supervision of the combat forces in each district is left to the District Commander, who is the senior combat officer in the district. All Confederacy forces in the district report to him. It is up to the districts to prosecute their part of the war with those resources.
Note that the Confederacy model of government has every colony independent; Central Command has no operational authority over a District Commander, and in turn a District Commander has no authority over a colony's assets. Only Confederacy forces are under his command. A colony may build a fleet of warships for its own purposes, perhaps system defense. If they are not formally turned over to the Confederacy Navy, the District Commander cannot claim them. All he can do is ask that colony's Governor if those ships can be temporarily seconded to the Fleet for some operation.
This failure of authority is only partly due to human factors. It is also partly on purpose. A fully authoritative central or district command will only protect the Confederacy if it is always right. Since this is not likely, a feudal model of authority that allows individual colonies to fail also allows the best chance of someone coming up with the right mix of skills, equipment, and tactics to win.
Events in the 14th year of the war proved this analysis correct. Even with a Sa'arm landing in Africa, CC refused to learn from the field forces and continued to follow doctrine which had been proven to be flawed. The combined attacks of what appears to be three different Sa'arm colony fleets overwhelmed the fleet that CC had held in Sol System to protect Earth, allowing six more landings on the planet. This happened even though Sol System held shipyards that built, during any chosen time period, more ships than all colonies put together. However, most ships were sent out to the districts, those few retained for local defense were not well positioned, managed, or trained, and Sol System was still building ship types that had been discarded as obsolete by the systems out in the front lines instead of building ship types which had proven themselves in combat.
By the 15th year of the war, the war-management functions previously performed by CC had been taken up by a committee of the various District Commanders, with CC relegated to managing the defense of Sol System with oversight by the Committee.
Central Command was often referred to as 'Cockblocker Central' by personnel less than enthusiastic about their NIH tendencies.
CIC - Combat Information Center
The US Navy's term for the protected room that holds the main control stations for all the various ship and combat systems on a warship. Contrast this with the Bridge, DC, and ECR. Few non-warships have a CIC, as it is an unnecessary waste of space. A freighter will usually just have a bridge, with all control stations there.
CIWS - Close-In Weapon System
Pronounced "seawizz" - A US-developed integrated antimissile system that uses a gatling gun and radar to destroy incoming missiles. They work well but are very short ranged and tend to run through their ammo quickly. In full automatic mode they will fire on, and destroy, any incoming object without regard to IFF status.
The canonical example of a "blue on blue" CIWS incident is any helicopter in the area, because the radar keys on incoming objects like missiles. The main rotors, as they turn, will be sweeping _towards_ the ship on one side of the chopper, and _away_ from the ship on the other side. CIWS has no trouble hitting a target as small as a helicopter's rotor blade. Helicopters do not fly well with their main rotors shot off.
CMC - Confederacy Marine Corps
(Main article at Marines) The Confederacy military arm focused on planetary combat operations, as opposed to the Confederacy Navy which focused on combat away from planets. Contrast this with various planetary armies and militias, which were focused only on defense of their own planet.
The typical CMC Marine is an infantryman, although his equipment changed drastically from the beginning of the Swarm War to the end. The very first “Confederacy Marines” sent out wore the battledress they had trained in, in the Earth militaries they had grown up in. By the end of the war, a Drop Marine wore an armored space suit with integrated weaponry and exo-actuators very similar to those described in Heinlein's “Starship Troopers”.
Not all Marines are Drop Infantry. The Corps uses armed and armored landing craft for opposed landings, and those craft are crewed by Marines. The Corps also has several armor formations which are priceless in some circumstances and useless deathtraps in others. Also, not all those who drop are Marines. The CMC was originally organized along USMC lines, and medical support is provided by CN medical personnel temporarily seconded to the Marine formation.
(Main article at Navy) The Confederacy military arm focused on combat away from planets, rather than planetary combat. The typical CN sailor is a crewman aboard a warship with shields, armor, and multiple weapon systems. Most CN warships are optimized for combat with Sa'arm ships, but some special-purpose ships are optimized for scouting or planetary bombardment.
CNS, CAS, CMS
"Flag" designation for Confederacy ships. This is completely unnecessary as long as everything is either Confederacy or enemy, but the humans insisted. The acronyms expand to Confederacy Navy Ship, Confederacy Auxiliary Ship, and Confederacy Merchant Ship respectively. Fleet ships with offensive armament are CNS, if they only have defensive armament they are CAS, and completely unarmed fleet cargo carriers or working ships will be CMS. CNS includes those ships with non-traditional armaments (troopships with landing shuttles and carriers with bombers), which may or may not also carry integral weapon systems. Privately controlled ships with no flag obligations (like the Darjee traders) will be "SS" for SpaceShip. One captured Sa'arm ship was designated "CSS Stone" for "Captured Sa'arm Ship".
Coilgun
(Main article at Coilgun) Also called a Mass Accelerator. Magnets attract some metals and alloys. An electromagnet can be built with a hole in the middle. If you do it right, you can pulse such a magnet such that a steel-clad item is popped up through the hole. If you were foresighted enough to have a second ring magnet above the first and pulse them both at the right times, you can accelerate the mass a second time before it falls back.
Researchers have been experimenting with mass accelerators since the 1800s, soon after electromagnets were invented. Small devices can be built on Earth. Secondary magnets can be installed to 'steer' the slug. The current draw for each individual ring is manageable and there is no wear on the rings. Unfortunately, larger devices are impractical due to size and the difficulty of maintaining alignment in Earth's gravity. In space, where the weight of the supporting structure is not a factor, a line of such magnets can be made arbitrarily long for any desired acceleration of any desired mass. Contrast with RailGun.
Concubine or Conk
A Human without the minimum CAP score to volunteer for Confederacy service, but who has been allowed to go anyway in return for obedience to a specific volunteer (see entry). The concubine gets off a dying planet and the volunteer gets a servant or slave. Some concubines are selected for their known past performance (taking a wife or husband is common); some are selected for their current appearance (taking the prettiest woman available is common), some are selected for current performance (taking the one who performed the best during a 'test drive' is common). Depending upon the specific patron, a concubine may find him or herself a pampered pet, a trusted assistant, or an abused sex slave. Often informally abbreviated to "conk".
CS - Civil Service
(Main article at Civil Service) The Civil Service is a division of the Confederacy which deals with the human side of the Diaspora. CS Officers, often referred to as "agents" or "reps", deal with personnel management issues all the way from organizing extractions on Earth to ensuring that unwanted concubines on a ship or station are given every opportunity to find a purpose in life. The CS is often looked down upon by the warfighters as simple "babysitters", but the truth is that they do a difficult job that takes skills not often found in warriors.
Because the Civil Service is seen as a manager pool, there are no 'enlisted' CS personnel. Every CS Rep is an officer. DECO policy is to provide every colony and station with at least one CS Agent, but there are never enough people volunteering for the Civil Service to provide as many as are needed.
The Civil Service is often called upon to referee disputes between the other services, usually between the Navy and Marine Corps, but occasionally the Fleet Auxiliary needs their help also.
DC - Damage Control
An Engineering control station with responsibility for life support functions (atmosphere, gravity control, etc). On smaller ships this is just a station in the ECR. On larger ships it is a separate space which also serves as a backup to the ECR.
DECO - Department of Evacuation and Colonial Operations
(Main article at DECO) The Confederacy agency charged with overall management of Earthat's evacuation program. In parallel, DECO was responsible for the creation of colonies from site selection and pre-settlement development to the selection of colonists. However, once the first colonist set foot on the colony, the Confederacy considered the colony to be self-governing and DECO had no authority over it.
This abrupt change in authority was a constant source of irritation for DECO personnel, as they considered themselves to be the experts in colonial operations as their formal name implied. However, the colonists themselves considered the troubles associated with being under the thumbs of a set of absentee landlords to be greater than the benefits justified, and both Confederacy law and the AIs themselves sided with the colonists so DECO had no option but to swallow the insult.
As long as DECO concentrates on evacuating people and setting up new colonies, everyone in the diaspora supports them. Every time they try to get involved in an existing colony, though, they get kicked out of the system.
District
A volume of space assigned to a single overall commander who acts as Central Command's direct representative for the prosecution of the war in his district. They are of no set size, being set up rather by how busy the war is in that area. A district can also grow or shrink, depending upon how the war is going in that area.
ECR - Engineering Control Room
The control room for all the bits that actually make the ship go: Main Engines, Power Generation, etc. While the ECR is often inside one of the main engineering spaces, it is always completely enclosed and isolated so that an environmental issue (no air, etc) in the space does not directly affect the ECR.
EmCon - Emissions Control
Look, there just isn't a cloaking device. All we can do is shut down all the radars and other emitters, turn the shields off since they radiate like a star whenever something hits them (like the molecular dust you find everywhere in a system), let the engines cool off until they no longer radiate heat, and pretend to be a boring empty volume of space. There are various levels of this, from partial to full. Patrol EmCon has shields turned off and engines as cool as we can make them while still moving. Ex-submariners want to stay at Patrol EmCom all the time. Ex-surface ship sailors don't like running with no shields.
EUT - Earthat Universal Time
All Confederacy Naval and Marine Corps facilities maintain EUT unless they are on a planet; it is common for planetary bases to follow the local 'day' if possible. EUT, while an official Confederacy time format, can be defined for all practical purposes as NATO's "Zulu" or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).
FA - Fleet Auxiliary
(Main article at Fleet Auxiliary) The Fleet Auxiliary is a service branched off from the Confederacy Navy to deal with all vessels, stations, and installations that are not armed. FA personnel will crew freighters, stations, shuttles, miners, and other non-military vessels. This allows a split in training to allow the two services to each concentrate on their part of the overall task of building a fleet that can defeat the Sa'arm.
Hero Gun
A weapon system which uses a railgun to fire a 1000 Kg slug of Titanium alloy accurately at 100 Kps, so named because they were first developed as spinal mounts on the Hero class of large cruisers. A single hit will destroy virtually any imaginable target, but since the weapon can only be aimed by pointing the whole ship, it must be considered a failure in service as the ship could not be 'aimed' quickly enough to defeat a moving target. The Sa'arm quickly learned to keep the ship busy with threats in front while flanking it with small craft carrying crippling weapons like Plasma Torpedos. Almost all were lost before the Fleet learned how to protect them from small craft.
Various districts and systems have gone on to develop variants of all sizes. The Beerat Defense Force “Junior Hero” fires a 100 Kg slug and their “Baby Hero” fires a 50 Kg slug, both at 100 Kps.
HEZ - Hyperspace Exclusion Zone
(Main article at Hyperspace Exclusion Zone) That volume surrounding a gravity well where a Category III FTL drive will not work. Forcing one to _try_ to work inside an HEZ leads to Bad Things happening to everything inside the drive field. To avoid this, the Confederacy has developed mass-sensors that allow navigation in hyperspace, but they involve so much computation that only an AI can do it in realtime. The Sa'arm use much the same drive system as the Confederacy, but lacking AIs they can only use the drive for pre-calculated jumps with no navigation.
HPAB, MPAB, LPAB - Heavy, Medium, and Light Particle Accelerator Beam
The most effective of the weapons our inherited ships came with. Fairly quick to fire with almost light-speed effect, but not destructive enough to destroy an enemy without multiple hits. To help ensure multiple hits, they are often set in twin turrets that can either fire together for maximum effect on a shield, or offset by a fraction of a second to allow one to penetrate armor and the other to damage whatever is behind the armor that just got penetrated. Lighter ships can only carry individual guns.
IFF - Identify Friend or Foe
Basically an enhanced aircraft transponder. When a traffic control radar sweeps across a jumbo jet, the jet's transponder sends out a coded reply pulse that contains useful info (altitude, speed, heading, current label "Delta flight 317", whatever). A dumb radar will just display its own return echo, letting the operator know there is something out there. A transponder-aware smart radar system will decode the transponder's pulse and also display the aircraft's altitude, ID code, etc.
A military IFF system includes an encrypted signal that (hopefully) an enemy cannot spoof, so you know whether the blip is a friend or a foe. The weapons guys insist that their homing missiles ignore a ship with a valid IFF code, but no sane person would actually trust that; what if the missile is loaded with yesterday's codes? Any warship will immediately target any missile that _appears_ to be headed towards them, regardless of who launched it.
An IFF system can also be used in "active" or commanded mode, where it sends out an "I'm a good guy" pulse without waiting to be poked by a search radar or scanner. This allows receivers that recognize the pulse to localize the sending ship even if the ship itself cannot be detected yet.
JAUP
Acronym describing those personnel onboard but not part of the crew and probably not doing anything meaningful, it expands to “Just Another Useless Passenger”. Frequently has another letter added to make JAFUP or JAUFP.
Liferaft
A minimal boat or shuttle carried by ships that are too small to carry a reasonable-sized ship's boat, or in addition to the normal ship's boats. The ones carried by the Castles and Patricians have four inflatable bubble "bedrooms" that can each sleep 20 adults, although the environment plant is only rated for 60 adults for 2 months. Even if one is found with no survivors, it should be recovered because CIC provides all liferafts and shuttles with a continuous tactical download until launch. This will tell the recovering ship what happened to the launching ship, and thus where else it should look for survivors -and the culprits.
Magazine
Not all space weapons are strictly energy-transfer devices. All of the slug-throwers (CWIS, rail guns, etc), rocket launchers, and missile launchers need storage space for whatever they launch, if they want to be able to fire more than one shot. No matter what it holds, it is called a magazine.
Morgue
On a troopship (or any ship carrying combat Marines), the space that holds the Marine's powered armor suits when not in use. Since the empty suits in their cradles look like so many dead bodies lined up, the compartment resembles a morgue. Some ships have the morgue right next to the small-arms armory for maintenance convenience, while others don't have that large an area to invest and may have the armory somewhere else, or even have the morgue split up into two or more spaces.
By design, powered armor is as invulnerable as practical. These suits are so difficult to disable with small-arms fire that one or two troublemakers wearing them could basically destroy a ship from the inside before anyone else could stop them. This leads to the morgue being almost as well protected by the ship's internal security systems as the Bridge, CIC, or ECRs.
CO, XO, Nav, Tac/Nav, Comm/SensO, SuppO, ChEng - Most officer titles are lifted wholesale from US Navy use.
The ship's crew has, at the top, a "Commanding Officer", a "CO" or "Skipper". After the rank "regularization" scam got shoved through the Fleet, his official title is "Captain", a term which is no longer used as a rank designator. Anyone with the rank of "Captain" became labeled "Colonel". His second in command is his "Executive Officer" or XO.
Various senior officers are referred to by the titles of the departments they run. Note that on small ships these overall responsibility areas are often combined to give you a Tac/Nav, Weps/Ops, Comm/Nav, or Comm/SensO officer.
The head of the Navigation Department will be called the "Navigator" or just "Nav".
The department with offensive equipment -the guns, missiles, and various launchers- will be called "Weps" for "Weapons Department" for warships or "Tac" for "Tactical Operations Department" on non-combatant vessels. On smaller ships, this department will also have defensive equipment. On larger ships, there may be a separate "Countermeasures Department".
A ship's maintenance effort, housekeeping, and other unrelated items are often gathered into a catch-all "Operations Department" with a department head called "Ops".
A large ship's small craft are often run by a "Small Craft" shop, with their head referred to as "Boats". If a ship has small craft delivery as its reason for existence, as in an aircraft carrier or a troopship, the Boat Ops department will be huge, headed by the Boat Boss. Once launched, however, their actions will be dictated by the "Flight Ops" department, which is manned from the embarked small-craft formation, not the ship's core crew; they know how to get the most out of their fighters, bombers, troop landers, ground support, and other special-purpose intel and control craft.
A ship's sensors or information-gathering instruments will be managed by the Sensor Department headed by the SensO, a term pulled from aviation rather than wet-navy ships.
A ship's major machinery and utility services are watched over by the "Chief Engineer", often shortened to "ChEng" which rhymes with 'rang'.
A ship's ability to communicate with others is the responsibility of the "Communication Department", headed by the "Comm" officer.
The "Logistics" or "Supply" effort is headed by the "SuppO" or informally the "Chop" or "Head Thief".
NIH Syndrome - “Not Invented Here”
That tendency for any bureaucracy to discount any invention, technique, or other improvement that originated outside of the bureaucracy itself.
OBE - “Overtaken by Events”
A quick way of explaining why something useful and good was discontinued. Room service on RMS Titanic was wonderful, but it became OBE after the iceberg incident. Most of my hobbies were abandoned as OBE after my wedding.
OF - Orbital Fortress
Also referred to as an Orbital Weapons Platform or OWP, this is a space-based construct that is basically a warship without engines. Thus, any space/power/resources that would have been used by engines on a ship could be diverted to more weapons, more armor, more sensors, etc, etc, etc on an equal-sized orbital fortress. However, an OF cannot be completely immobile, because it needs to be able to re-orient, or move to cover a hole left by another OF that had been destroyed, or whatever. Thus, it must retain at least minimal mobility, which means that a significant amount of volume and mass still has to be "wasted" on engines that it will probably never use.
This makes an equivalent-sized ship that has engines powerful enough to be used tactically more useful than an OF, if there is any possibility of the ship or OF being needed elsewhere. An OF is only cost-effective if it is set to guarding a high-value resource, something that MUST be protected, that couldn't protect itself or even move. During the Swarm War, any inhabited planet fit this need, and OFs were common around most inhabited planets once that system had the industrial capability to build them.
Some people differentiate between the two terms, saying that a "Fortress" is a defensive emplacement, used to protect something like a planet or base. Those people say that a "Orbital Weapons Platform" is an immobile offensive unit, used to destroy a nearby enemy.
OOB - Order of Battle
A force's OOB is a quick summary of units available if thrown into combat today. A Fleet's OOB would show task forces, squadrons, and individual ships by class. An armor unit's OOB would show maneuver formations and vehicle numbers by type. An infantry unit's OOB would show smaller formations and numbers of men by skill or equipment. Compare to TO&E and TOO.
OOD - Officer of the Deck or Officer of the Day
In port, a ship will have most of its crew gone (home, school, transferred, in a bar, whatever). The crew remaining onboard is under an Officer of the Day who has responsibility and authority, under the CO, for all aspects of the ship until he is relieved by another OOD. This is typically a 24 hour post and the OOD can go anywhere necessary for the proper performance of his duties including off the ship for short periods, as long as he is nearby and can immediately return if needed.
At sea or in space, a ship underway is directed by an Officer of the Deck who has similarly has responsibility and authority, under the CO, for all aspects of the ship until he is relieved by another OOD. The underway post is usually stood at the Bridge or CIC and is a much shorter period due to the more intense attention required, usually no longer than two to four hours.
Patron
When used in connection to a particular concubine, it means the volunteer responsible for that concubine. The term "Sponsor" is also often used.
PDL - Point-Defense Laser
(Main article at Point-Defense Laser) An automated weapon mount that uses an expendable laser cartridge to fire a laser pulse at incoming threats. As long as the "threat" is unmanned, ie an asteroid, a missile, or similar, it can be fired under AI control. No human gunner is required unless the target is "manned". The crystal magazine is integrated with the mount and holds several thousand cartridges so it is considered for all practical purposes to be a Drake- or Laumer-style "infinite repeater".
PDR - Point-Defense Railgun
(Main article at Point-Defense Railgun) A weapon mount that uses a small railgun to launch inert slugs at incoming threats. As long as the "threat" is unmanned, ie an asteroid, a missile, or similar, it can be fired under AI control. No human gunner is required unless the target is "manned".
The mount has two integrated slug magazines which each hold several hundred cartridges. The PDR is not quite an "infinite repeater" but an empty magazine can be easily replaced with a full one, so as long as the ship or station it is supplied from can keep changing magazines the effect is the same. Note that, like all other railguns, rail wear will rapidly affect accuracy.
Pickup
(Main article at EvacuationExtraction) During the first decade or so of the Swarm War, the bottleneck in DECO's evacuation effort was a combination of lack of transport and lack of places to put colonists when they did get transported. Officially the events were 'Extractions' and part of DECO's 'Evacuation' plan, but they were commonly called "Pickups" by both the Confederacy personnel running them and the prospective Sponsors and Concubines trying to get extracted.
Human nature being what it is, all early attempts at a pre-announced orderly selection and evacuation of colonists were overrun by people who were not on the list for that event but were determined to get on the ship anyway. At that time, the AIs were not willing to support lethal methods of crowd control, and nothing short of machine-gunning the mob would stop it.
At first, we didn't have the ships to evacuate colonists and we didn't have colonies to put them on, either. We were eventually able to build a large enough transport fleet to evacuate any number of people, but they still had to be processed individually and the colonial ability to absorb newcomers never grew to match the shipping available. Most colonies were sited on marginal planets, partly as a defense against the Sa'arm and partly because completely Earthlike planets are rare so we made do with what we could find.
When a colony is on a planet with an unbreathable atmosphere, it is basically a space station with ready access to raw materials. There is no way it can produce enough homes to absorb the quarter-million people that a full Cube Ship can hold. Thus, the evacuation bottleneck remained even after our transport fleet grew large enough to carry everyone who wanted to go.
The interim solution was to stage 'random' pickups where the Confederacy agents expected to find the people they wanted, but the people present did not know in advance. Each pickup had site security provided by a CMC contingent which prevented gate-crashers from entering the site. Methods included a portable version of the shipboard “Nav Shield” set to stop _ALL_ matter and energy, as well as standard infantry combat tactics when needed.
Pickups started small, at restaurants, bars, and stores, but as the colonies got bigger and the transport fleet grew, the pickups grew as well to include hotels, entertainment events, malls, stadiums, cruise ships, and complete small towns. Once the Cube Ships became available, the collection of complete cities became possible. However, that only got the city's inhabitants off of Earth. That Cube Ship was unavailable for any other purpose until the passengers had been unloaded somewhere. In some cases, that took years to accomplish. The Cube Ships became, in effect, mobile colonies in their own right.
Plank Owner
An officer or crewmember of a ship at the time of its commissioning. The refence is to older wooden ships which were made with planks. This is a US Navy tradition, although it may exist in other services as well. Some crew have taken to calling the original concubines on board at the time of commisioning 'bunk owners'.
Plasma Torpedo
A weapon system which projects a non-steerable containment field holding a charge of matter in a high-energy plasma state. The Confederacy version is launched from a shipboard projector, usually in a trainable mount or turret, which is able to recharge for another shot within a minute if power is available.
The Sa'arm version is launched by small craft we call bombers, and it appears that each bomber carries two single-shot projectors. Both versions have an effective range of about 100 Km, but the effect of the Sa'arm version is much greater than that of the Confederacy version. To date we have not been able to determine how this is done. While the fleet would like to capture a bomber to examine it, they are too deadly and SOP usually includes a directive to kill all Sa'arm bombers by any means available as quickly as possible.
PLRB - Personnel Loss Review Board
A Navy investigation board, a semi-formal management look into the circumstances surrounding any human crew loss, whether due to death or long-term disability. Often a complete waste of time, occasionally a meld of different viewpoints allows a procedure change that prevents accidents in the future. Unfortunately, the usual result is an added step to an SOP that merely wastes more time for everyone else who ever uses that SOP.
PreCom Unit
Short for Precommissioning; a sort of "placeholder" for a ship before it is commissioned. There is a lot of organization and management going on in the background, starting with crew assembly and training. If CNS Triumph (BB-32) is not yet ready for active service in the fleet, the crew, hull, and any equipment assigned (boats, stores, etc) belong to the organization named "BB-32 Triumph Precom Unit".
Rabbit
Standard CMC ambush notification code, also used by CN when appropriate. The announcement is made by the overview element during an unfolding ambush when the target realizes there is a problem and suddenly runs for freedom or safety. Usually repeated several times to ensure that everyone hears it, no matter how focused or busy. Contrast with "Rhino".
Rail Gun
(Main article at Railgun) The electrical version of an aircraft carrier's steam catapult. A system for accelerating a conductive item down / between / along a set of rails which have pulsed current running through them. A sort of ion thruster engine with Really Big "ions", if you want. Earth's governments have been experimenting with them since the 1970s, with two remaining practical issues: the pulsed current draw is immense, and the rails don't last very long. Fusion plants and advanced alloys covered by ceramics solve both of these problems. Contrast with Mass Accelerator.
REMF
Not a polite term; it is a combat soldier's reference to people who stay back in safety. Some of them help the war effort, some of them only THINK they help the war effort. Either way, they are all Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers.
Rhino
Standard CMC ambush notification code, also used by CN when appropriate. The announcement is made by the overview element during an unfolding ambush when the target realizes there is a problem and suddenly turns to attack hidden or sneaking ambushers. Usually repeated several times to ensure that everyone hears it, no matter how focused or busy. Contrast with "Rabbit".
Sea Scouts
A US youth organization. They are an affiliate of the Boy Scouts intended for older teenagers, serving as a bridge between them and the maritime services (US Navy, US Coast Guard, and US Maritime Marine). Some Sea Scout troops are competent to act as auxiliary support for our ships while others are little more than yacht clubs for the underprivileged.
Shuttle
(Main article at Small Craft) In reference to a starship's equipment, this is a "small boat". A general term for a local-space craft that goes with the ship when it travels. Generally set up to move either people or cargo.
SLJPO - "Shitty Little Jobs Petty Officer"
The completely unofficial title given to the junior enlisted man in any US Navy office who gets all the odd obscure tasks dumped on him. Such jobs, if their sensitivity requires someone with a commission, will be given to someone with a similar title, the SLJO.
SOP - Standard Operating Procedure
For any evolution that is done more than once, the survivors of the very first attempt will write down what worked, what _didn't_ work, and what they recommend for the next time. _Any_ evolution: Getting underway, inspecting the port rail gun, calibrating the grav grids, _anything_ that can be done more than one way, with the possibility of personal harm or equipment damage if done wrong. Before long, the "right way" to do the evolution, whatever it is, will be codified in an SOP document which all right-thinking people will follow as closely as possible, recognizing that sometimes conditions are different and the SOP may not be exactly right. Again, the survivors of this slightly-different situation will get to provide input to the next revision of the SOP for that evolution.
SOPA - Senior Officer Present Afloat
Any organization that is large enough to have different specialties will have the opportunity for confusion when a senior person in THIS specialty tries to give orders to a junior member of THAT specialty. Earth's history gave us the concept of a SOPA, the Senior Officer Present Afloat.
At the Dunkirk evacuation, a ship or boat would go to the beach to pick up everyone who would fit on the vessel. Often that would include a senior Army officer, a Colonel or even a General. The captain of the fishing vessel may well be a sublieutenant in the Royal Navy Reserve, but he's the senior Sea Service officer on that boat, the SOPA, and he doesn't have to listen to the General.
This concept is extended to bases and fleets. All sailors at a base answer to the senior Navy officer present, not a senior officer of any other service.
TAD
A term taken from the US Navy, TAD stands for "Temporary Additional Duty" like when your ship still claims you, but wants you to go spend some time at the Advanced Helmsman course taught somewhere else. The school can direct you while you are enrolled, but you don't _belong_ to them like the staff does. You're just TAD.
Other Earth services have similar terms, and the multitude of different ways to say the same thing can easily cause trouble: TemDuInst for "Temporary Duty for Instruction", etc.
Task Force
Informally known as 'Taffies', a Task Force is a functional subunit in an active fleet. A fleet is often divided according to capability or tasking. A fleet that is sent out to attack an enemy will be divided into one or more of each of the following: a scouting task force, a covering task force, a strike force, a bombardment task force, a supply task force. Each task force will (well, "should") include all units that are necessary to perform that task.
A scouting task force will have small, stealthy, and fast ships for scouting. It may also have heavier ships to provide some firepower as well as supply ships to allow the scouts to remain on station as long as needed.
A covering force or strike force will have as many small-craft carriers or other long-range weapon ships as possible. It will also include some armor, some scouts, and some screen ships to protect carriers or cruisers.
A bombardment task force would include the largest weapons and the most armor available. It will also include some smaller ships to act as a screen to protect the larger ships from small attackers.
A supply task force would include warehouses, supply ships, and repair ships. Freighters are usually designed around maximizing cargo space. Speed, armor, and weapons are usually not included. Because of this, a supply Taffy will also include some warships to protect the helpless supply ships from attackers.
TEG - Targeted Extraction Group
The office tasked with finding and extracting the unusual requests, for when you just cannot get the job done without a redheaded lefthanded sailor with a master mariner (sail) license who _must_ be under 5'2". By all accounts, TEG is run by a manager who is just as oddball as the requests he gets.
Test Drive
Common term for the events surrounding a Confederacy pickup, taken from the common step in buying an automobile where the prospective buyer will take the car for a short drive to ensure to his/her satisfaction that the vehicle runs well and meets his/her needs for transportation before actually buying the vehicle. As used in a Confederacy pickup, the term refers to those actions a prospective Sponsor may ask a prospective Concubine to perform in order to be considered as a companion. Since the Sponsor is under no obligation to select the applicant even if the 'test drive' is satisfactory, there is often significant drama.
TO&E - Table of Organization and Equipment
A breakdown of personnel assigned, what each did, and their relationship with the equipment assigned to the unit. This was the normal way to explain the makeup of a military unit that considered each individual in it to be combat-capable in his/her own right, as in an infantry or armor formation. Contrast with ToO and OoB.
ToO - Table of Organization
A breakdown of personnel assigned and what each did. This was the normal way to explain the makeup of a military unit that considered each individual to be components of a single combat unit, as in a warship manning document. Contrast with TO&E and OOB.
ToT - Time-on-Target
If you have multiple weapons available for a single target, they will have maximum effect if they all strike at the same instant instead of spread out over time. Therefore, you synchronize your weapons to fire the slowest ones (or farthest away) first, then successively faster and closer weapons, all timed so that they impact at the same instant.
Note that sometimes you _want_ a delay, as when you expect a strike to penetrate shields or armor. In that case, you split some of your attack into a second wave that will impact immediately after the first one, taking advantage of the downed shield or destroyed armor to strike the now-unprotected target behind before it can move.
TPR - Tactical Plot Replay
A video presentation made from a Tactical Plot, the graphic representation that ships and command centers use to show who is where and doing what.
Volunteer
A Human with the minimum CAP score to be allowed to leave Earth, and who has accepted an offer to serve the Confederacy. As a combination keep-him-happy and keep-the-species-going policy, each volunteer is authorized to take two [or more] non-volunteers with them (see "Concubine") from those immediately available at the pickup point, but the volunteer is in turn completely responsible for their concubine's behavior. To help populate colonies, the volunteer is also allowed (read as 'strongly recommended') to also take any of the volunteer's or concubine's underage children.
(Someday this will be a navigation template. It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links. Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))
