Future Fiction: ShipSim: DRY RUN [2030]

Byline: David Nelson, Director, Mixed Reality (MxR) Lab

They say no plan survives first contact. But that doesn’t mean you don’t plan like hell.

I’m sitting in the ready room of the USS Lynett, the hum of engines beneath me, salt-slick air seeping through the bulkhead door. We’re a few days out, destination redacted, but anyone with a map and a sense of recent events could probably guess. Somewhere out there, just beyond the horizon, is the beach we’ll have to take.

In front of me sits a black pelican case, with a sticker that reads: WSSOF. I flip the latches and crack it open. Nestled in dense foam is a ruggedized head-mounted display, and a compact laptop loaded with the real star of the show, the WSSOF software.

Watercraft and Ship Simulator of the Future. Sounds fancy, but to me, it’s the closest thing to a crystal ball I’ve ever had in the Corps.

I boot it up. The screen flickers and within moments I’m in. Not in the usual “stare at a screen and pretend you’re there” way. I mean I’m there. The headset wraps around my head like a dive mask and snaps me into a world made of ones, zeroes, and a whole lot of classified topography.

I load today’s package. The system pings the ship’s connection and pulls in the latest. Geo-specific terrain – check. Updated bathymetry layers – check. Weather parameters selected and verified. Sea state 3 now, but I can dial it up to 5 if I want to feel the boat slap a little harder.

The location fills in. A narrow inlet framed by two rocky bluffs, with a stretch of marshy flats behind it. The kind of place that looks peaceful until you realize it’s the perfect location for an ambush or a minefield. My job? Beach the landing craft, establish a secure path inland, and link up with another squad coming in from the south.

In the real world, that’s a one-shot deal. You don’t get do-overs. But here? I can rehearse it a dozen times before my boots hit wet sand.

I drop into the pilot’s seat of my virtual landing craft and take the helm. I snap in the modular control console, the same throttle and steering interface I’ll be using on the actual vessel. It fits easily into the rig’s input mount. The system recognizes it instantly. The interface is intuitive, no need to fiddle with menus or buttons. The physics kick in as I throttle forward. The nose rises slightly, and the boat hums across the virtual water. Swells roll in, responding to the simulated wind and tide. I can feel it, even if I’m standing in the stark repurposed ready room.

I line up my approach vector, scanning for submerged obstructions. WSSOF’s model renders current flows based on the bathymetry. I shift course five degrees east to avoid an undertow channel. If I hadn’t run this now, I probably would’ve bogged down the prop in the real thing.

Midway through my second run, I hear an incoming message. It’s Alvarez from San Diego, another amphib on our task force. He’s already got his rig powered up in his quarters, linked into the sim. I accept the handshake request, and just like that, his vessel materializes in my scenario, coming into view beside mine, same conditions, same mission.

We’ve trained together before, but never like this. Not while physically deployed. Not while en route to the actual operational zone. We run two variations of the approach, him taking point, then me, testing comms and spacing. The system lets us play out different timings, adjust formations, even drop in unexpected contacts if we want to simulate chaos.

We coordinate the beachhead timing to the second. No signals, no guessing. When we hit the real beach, it won’t be the first time we’ve done it, it’ll be the fifth, or sixth, or tenth.

When we wrap, I log the session and pull the headset off. My face is damp with sweat. Maybe it’s nerves. Maybe it’s the HMD. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is that we’ve seen where we’re going. We’ve felt the roll of the surf, the hiss of the wind, the crunch of gravel under the boat ramp. We know what to expect.

And that? That might be the edge that gets us through.

Because in this line of work, the difference between a smooth insertion and a tragic headline is often just one run-through away, and with WSSOF in the case, that run-through can happen before the surf ever hits the hull.

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