In the Winter of 2001 the US Navy began the re-development of the DD-21 destroyer class warship after Congress slashed the original budget. The new ship class DD(X) and named after Admiral Zumwalt was to be the Navy’s first fully integrated command and control (C2) vessel featuring a small crew, multipurpose vertical launch tubes, large flight deck, and with enough electric generation capacity to power small cities or the anticipated kinetic and laser weapons.
What was not divulged at the time was that the Zumwalt’s C2 left little need for fully sentient beings to operate the ship. It has been learned that a black budget division within the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program has been replacing the crew of the DDG-1000, currently at sea in the San Diego, CA area, with mollusks and cephalopods. Mollusks, due to their limited intelligence, (newly hardened) protective shells, and stationary nature, have been integrated into the ship-wide computing networks and are now responsible for intermediating with all sensors and actuators — from missile launch tubes to freshwater valves.
How far along the chain of command has been replaced with coleoidea is unclear. There is strong circumstantial evidence that the ship's captain is a human-octopus hybrid. The recent waterproofing polyethylene application to the inside walls of the ship’s bridge and mission control centers suggest that the hybridization is more octopus than human.
More news to come.
