• About Fleet Operations
  • So what exactly is this, anyway?
    Like the rest of my website, Fleet Operations is about my avocations.

    I'm a naval analyst and wargame designer by profession. Along the way, I've learned an awful lot about how militaries -- and especially navies -- operate. My hobbies consist taking that information and applying it to fictional settings, primarily science fictional. In my off hours, I'm a naval analyst who analyzes navies that don't really exist. Moreover, I spend a lot of time thinking about the implications of technology. Fleet Operations is a special conduit whereby some of those disparate thoughts move from my head to yours.

    In its own way, Fleet Ops is my counterpart to Winchell Chung's excellent ATOMIC ROCKETS webpage.
  • Is Fleet Ops a blog? A wiki?
    Yes. And no.

    Blogs are characterized by information presented in chronological fashion, with some degree of permanence. This is different -- the chronological piece is only there to let you know what might be new, and that includes things that have been rewritten. Thus, Fleet Ops doesn't look like a traditional blog. It's probably closer to a wiki, and I may shift it over to wiki software at some point.
  • What do you mean "rewritten"?
    I mean that posts are considered to be works in progress, and will be expanded, corrected, modified, and generally improved as circumstances warrant. Posts that get too long, and acquire some degree of permanence, may be added to the Essays page on my main site, with a link here pointing there. (The Permalink will remain useful, if not the ultimate destination.)
  • Why no comments?
    Comments are a huge pain. They require not only technical forethought and capability (or else they are a big security hole), but policies to be established. It's far, far easier to make the comments go through me.

    If I conclude at some point that comments are necessary to further the mission of Fleet Ops, I'll add them. In the meantime, feel free to email me.
  • Ground Rules
  • What are the ground rules?
    The ground rules are that you read and understand the following. (Mostly I'm trying to pre-empt a few emails.)

    First, I understand that fiction is fictional and not simply the 20th century with the serial numbers filed off. My goal is not, for example, to argue Gene Roddenberry is wrong because Starfleet doesn't look like the U.S. Navy; my goal is to highlight the similarities and differences between the two so that people don't think that Starfleet does look like the U.S. Navy. And in the process of doing so, I expect to highlight a few issues that might crop up in a science fictional setting.

    Second, just so that you know, the military is not my only interest, and military SF is not my only SF interest. In fact, if you use the operational definition of military SF as being "it's milSF if you can tell how much ammo has been expended," I generally don't read milSF.

    Third, when I mention a book or TV show or movie, it generally means that the work in question does either a really good job of exploring some facet of the topic under discussion, or it handles it particularly poorly. And even if it gets one thing right it might get other stuff wrong. Some of my best examples of getting something wrong come from my favorite shows; other works I do not mention may be works I consider excellent.

    Fourth, I'm not real interested in fanboy discussions about whether the Enterprise could beat the Executor, or whether Honor Harrington is tougher than Susan Ivanova, or anything else of that ilk.

    These ground rules may change over time. Assume they apply to any of my contributors as well.
  • What happens if I ignore the ground rules?
    I'll tell you to read them. If you refuse, I'll stop answering your emails.
  • Contributors
  • Christopher Weuve: Naval analyst, wargame designer, Macintosh zealot, book evangelist, and science fiction geek.
    Chris is a wargame designer and naval analyst. After six years at the Center for Naval Analyses as a wargame designer and naval exercise analyst, he joined the research faculty of the US Naval War College in 2005, where he has focused on using wargaming as a research tool. He moderates several SF and wargaming mailing lists (inc. SFConsim-L, NavWarGames and Exordium-L), and spends his spare time pondering the differences between fictional and Real-World(tm) naval forces and combat. He is the moderator several science fiction and wargaming mailing lists, including the Science Fiction Wargames list (SFConsim-L), the Naval Wargames List (NavWarGames) and the Exordium mailing list (Exordium-L).He also claims credit as the founder of the Society for the Conservation of Angular Momentum, although he admits that was an accident. Chris has a Bachelors in Political Science and History from the University of Iowa, and a Masters in National Security and Strategic Studies from the US Naval War College. He has 87 days of sea time on U.S. Navy warships, on four aircraft carriers (four cat shots and four traps), two destroyers, and two cruisers, plus time spent in command spaces ashore.
  • And others...
    ...To be recruited.