March 30th, 2025

Dystopic Newsletter

Carrier Strike Groups, Strike Packages, and Facts behind the Signal Chat Scandal

Detailed View of A U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group

Update on my book: How the Hell Did We Get Here?

Just under two more weeks till I submit my book to copy editing by April 11th, with a publication date of early June and a Book release in July.

I'm cross-checking all of my citations and putting in the final edits based on feedback from my beta-readers.

You can find out more about my book and book release updates at my Website HERE.

Now, back to our currently scheduled Dystopic ...

A summary of the "Signal Chat Scandal'

Unless you've been out at sea without internet or living under a rock for the last week, you've undoubtedly heard about the scandal surrounding the end-to-end encryption app Signal. The entire fracas began when National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic magazine, on a list of Senior Trump National Security officials in a chat to update the group's members on a U.S. Navy strike of the Houthis in Yemen.

While the Signal chat group included 18 officials, the most important players in the so-called “Signal Scandal” are: Steve Waltz (National Security Advisor), Pete Hegseth (Defense Secretary), JD Vance (U.S. Vice President),

You can read about the complete list of officials in this scandal and a more detailed background HERE.

In an earlier era, such as the Reagan Presidency of the Cold War years, a newspaper or magazine editor like Jeffrey Goldberg, who is at the center of this story, would have quietly informed the administration of the mistake, and it would have been resolved behind the scenes. Unfortunately, this is the hyper-political 2020s, and Mr. Goldberg couldn't help himself but to make as much political hay out of his accidental access as he could.

Mr. Goldberg's assertion in his Atlantic article and additional social media posts regarding the context of the signal chat is that Pete Hegseth disclosed detailed plans of the attack in the chat. For the record, here are the exact messages in the chat that Secretary of Defense Hegseth noted during the attack with all times noted on 24-hour clock Eastern Standard time:

• “Godspeed to our Warriors” – Hegseth’s shot prayer for the mission as it kicked off
• “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)” – the first airstrike is inbound
• “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)” - noytice no actual location of specific time is denoted and the Drone element of the overall strike was successfully launched.
• “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
• “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)” – thet Drones arrive first and are likely targeting any anti-aircraft targets. Again, no specific target or time is discussed.
• “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.” – Reading the timeline, the 2^nd strike took 1 hour and 51 minutes from launch to the target. A final wave of Tomahawk cruise missiles, likely a mop-up strike based on real-time BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment) and alternate target identification from the first FA18 strike
• “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)” – interestingly, more details on the strike did not follow, at least from Mr Goldberg.
• We are currently clean on OPSEC” — The mission's operational security (OPSEC) was clean; the U.S. strike force had the element of surprise and achieved their goals. You can infer from this statement that the mission was not compromised.

Within the Washington Beltway, opinions on these statements varied widely. In my opinion, Secretary of Defense Hegseth was providing a straightforward status update on a mission underway that every member of the administration's national security team could understand, without disclosing any classified information. Detailed specific information was never provided. And while Mr. Goldberg may assert that all of this was detailed strike package information, as we will see later in this newsletter, this is in no way the level of detail that would truly represent a strike package or compromise the detailed information contained in one.

Michael Waltz made an innocent but terrible mistake in including Mr. Goldberg in the chat. Had he been forthright immediately and owned up to the mistake from the moment it was exposed, a lot less media and political noise would have occurred. However, it's not just the information Defense Secretary Hegseth provided; both Vice President Vance and Secretary Hegseth made some derogatory and unnecessary comments about our European allies, which are completely unproductive and, in my view, unprofessional. Those also came out of Mr. Goldberg's disclosures.

We need our allies, and they need us. Trash-talking about our allies, even in private, especially amongst a group of 18 senior national security advisors, is in poor taste. I've always advised people not to include anything in text or emails that they wouldn't want their mother to read. That simple golden rule is clearly broken here.

I believe Peggy Noonan, news columnist and primary speechwriter and Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan from 1984 to 1986, best summed the situation up:

(side note: I just love the way Peggy Noonan gets to the heart of things. She's a joy to read, and hopefully, all of you reading this get to enjoy her columns every week.

Since the Goal of Dystopic is to look at the “Technology Behind Today's News,” this newsletter is going to break down three elements of the story you likely have little exposure to:

1. The elements of A US Navy Carrier Strike Group
2. What is a strike package?
3. What is end-to-end Encryption, and why are government officials using it?

What Is a U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group

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At the Heart of the Signal Scandal are the details behind an anti-terrorist strike on the Houthis terrorist group in Yemen. To understand a strike package, the detailed attack plan Mr Goldberg believes was divulged, we must first understand that the maritime group that delivers that strike: a U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group>

A carrier strike group is centered on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, accompanied by five to seven ships and a nuclear-powered attack submarine, as depicted in the graphic at the beginning of this newsletter.

Each element of the strike group has a specific function as follows:

Los Angeles or Virginia-class nuclear submarine: acts as a scouting element to seek out and destroy hostile surface ships and enemy submarines.

Ticonderoga class cruisers: one or two cruisers carrying Tomahawk missiles to provide long-range strike capabilities

Arleigh Burke or Spurance-class destroyer: at least two destroyers are included in the strike group. They primarily provide anti-air protection for the strike group.

Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates: one or two frigates are used for anti-submarine warfare.

A replenishment ship: provides resupply for ammunition, fuel, and other supplies to keep the strike group operational

The Carrier Air Wing:

• Strike Fighters: 3 to 4 squadrons of F/A1-8EF Super Hornets, each consisting of 10 to 12 planes per squadron. In some cases, a squadron of up to 12 F-35C Lightning II may be included.
• Electronic Warfare: 4 to 8 EA-18G Growler aircraft to provide electronic warfare capabilities to disrupt enemy radar and communications
• Airborne Early Warning: four to six E-2D Hawkeyes provide airborne radar platforms with greatly extended radar coverage for the carrier strike group\
• Other Aircraft: 1 to 3 C-2 greyhounds used for cargo and personnel transport. An array of helicopters for search and rescue, anti-submarine warfare, and logistics

In short, a US carrier strike group carries enough firepower to perform extended offensive operations against an enemy for several months. Add a Marine Corps amphibious assault battalion carried on a Marine amphibious assault carrier (Amphibious Assault Vehicle, or AAV for short), and you can take on enemies on land or sea, any place in the world. This is the definition of a “Blue Water Navy,” one that can fight anytime, anywhere.

Armed with the background on the US forces deployed against the Houthis in Yemen, let's take a detailed look at what a strike package entails.

What is a strike package?

A strike package is a detailed plan based on an exact timeline that coordinates forces to strike specific targets at specific times, assesses the damage, and generally follows up with a secondary strike on additional targets that were found and those that were only partially destroyed. A strike package is a carefully choreographed military operation designed to inflict destruction against one's enemies.

Both ingress to the attack enemy and egress to return must be carefully planned to avoid accidentally targeting friendly forces once the battle has commenced. The element of surprise is always important because the US Navy typically faces forces that have some form of air defense. The first phase of any general set of strike packages typically involves missions to suppress enemy air defenses, known as "Wild Weasel" missions in the 1970s through 2010s, which were carried out before the advent of drones.

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We can use a diagram of a typical Vietnam War Era strike package to illustrate the waves of aircraft and timing associated with a single strike package, and by extension provide a view of last week's operation against the Houthis.

The first wave, as we have noted, is designed to suppress the enemy's anti-aircraft capabilities. In this diagram, they are referred to as iron hand missions and require an armed escort. In the attack on the Houthis last week, Predator MQ-9 drones were used instead of those anti-aircraft suppression missions.

Next up came the second wave, the primary (main) strike itself. The striking bombers, along with their escorts, delivered the main punch of the mission. In a modern primary strike, FA-18 fighter bombers can provide both striking capability and escort capability within a single squadron or set of squadrons used in the strike.

The Houthis' strike contained two additional waves: A second FA-18 strike and a coordinated strike of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the carrier strike group's Ticonderoga-class cruisers.

Finally, there are several support functions in every strike, such as standoff jamming, bomb damage assessment, and reconnaissance, which assess the effectiveness of an attack. Today, satellite reconnaissance has replaced the aircraft-based missions of a previous generation. Powerful optical and synthetic aperture radar satellites would continuously monitor both the attack and the ensuing damage and be provided to the carrier group.

If any aircraft had been shot down, rescue helicopters along with combat air cover would be sent to retrieve the downed pilot.

All I have provided you is a simple overview; a true strike package provides down-to-the-second details to each aircraft pilot and each missile fired for a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser. These individual orders include the exact times weapons are deployed, the time of flight to target, the exact time of attack, and the exact location of the attack. Pilots are given explicit egress routes to evade enemy anti-aircraft batteries and to clear thet way for any additional waves of attack in the strike plan.

When I expressed my opinion earlier that Defense Secretary Hagel's comments were not a strike package, it was because none of these details were provided; it was simply an account of the general progress of the attack. That is still no excuse for the poor communications security exhibited by the new national security team, but at least they were wise enough not to discuss specifics.

Now that we've brought up communications, let's take a look at the technology behind the Signal APP. The concept of end-to-end encrypted messaging.

What is end-to-end Encryption, and are government officials using it?

In the good old days, when I worked at the National Security Agency in the 1980s, there was no messaging system for general defense employees, but we did have STU-3 (Standard Telephone Unit 3) to provide encrypted voice communications. STU-3s were landline, not mobile, phones. The Defense Department had an array of encrypted satellite and tactical communication systems used by the upper echelons of command in those days. These were completely isolated systems. There was no possibility of adding an outside party to the distribution list for communications.

The times have changed, the world has changed, and our need for efficiency has changed. Let's face it, everybody is managing their life through their smartphone. In today's world, it'd be impossible to conduct business, including strategic defense, without using smartphones. The government can’t keep up with the pace of technological change in the private sector. Over the last decade, the U.S. government has been leasing bandwidth and utilizing commercial systems for its own purposes.

Starlink, for example, is used operationally by the armed forces – even by Russia, via black-market SpaceX terminals. Ukraine has a near total reliance on Starlink and could not survive without it.

Signal came into the picture when the Army and Marines authorized the use of cellular communications as a backup during operations. In 2022, the Army adopted a new policy called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). The Biden Administration followed suit and authorized the use of Signal as a secure messaging platform for senior government officials to conduct classified conversations.

Signal is a messaging app that implements end-to-end encryption, as shown in the following diagram. Quite simply, end-to-end encryption operates using encryption keys known only to the sender and to the receiver. on paper. Everything should be completely secure because only the sender and receiver have the proper keys to encrypt and decrypt the messages.

Theory is one thing, and practicality is another. There are two critical limitations in the use of end-to-end encryption platforms like Signal:

1. Unreliable Receiver: The sender cannot guarantee that the receiver will not disclose the secret communication. That is exactly what Mr. Goldberg did, highlighting the human limitation of any secret communications.
2. Broken Encryption Path: messages traverse the Internet and can be exposed when they cross bridges. Bridges are internet infrastructure devices that connect two or more network segments, effectively treating them as a single network. At the bridging points, messages can be intercepted and exposed to hostile decryption procedures, possibly compromising the messages.

A hacker's forum chat room best outlined the broken encryption path issue. Hacker forum member Tao Oat expressed the problem succinctly:

You can read more about what hackers think of Signal HERE.

The primary concern when using the Signal App outside the U.S. is that foreign intelligence agencies can intercept messages and attempt hostile decryption efforts to extract intelligence. Here in lies the problem:

Steve Whitkoff, President Trump’s Ukraine and Middle East Envoy, was meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time of the attack. He was one of the 18 officials in the Signal chat group. Were Witkoff’s messages intercepted inside Russia? Were attempts made to decrypt them by the Russian FSB (i.e., Russian intelligence)? Were any messages successfully decrypted? We will never know. But we do know that the message did not compromise the Houthis' mission. The mission maintained the element of surprise, and no pilots or aircraft were either damaged or lost/

There is a lesson here:

For the sake of being repetitious, never put anything in an e-mail or message that you wouldn't want your mother to read, and certainly nothing classified.

End of story!

Well, that's it for this week's Dystopic - I'll see you next week.

Dystopic- The Technology Behind Today's News

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