A Damper for a Blind Rocket
In the back seat of an official vehicle bound for Geoje Island, Park Jincheol, the director of the Agency for Defense Development, sat in heavy silence, staring intently at the tablet PC in his hands.
The short report displayed on the screen kept testing the limits of his reason.
Vibration rate: 0%
...Say something that makes sense.
Park let out a long sigh, rubbing his brow.
Baek Gunwoo.
An executive director at Hanseo Defense, and a man whose presence had recently become the most overwhelming force in the defense industry.
Park Jincheol had never doubted Baek Gunwoo’s ability.
He had solved every long-standing problem that had been left festering inside Hanseo Defense for years. He had produced miraculous export results one after another in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. And there had been the astonishing performance he showed while creating the Hunt-Dog unmanned robot, not to mention the way he had looked just a few days ago, right in front of Park’s own eyes.
No one understood better than Park Jincheol that the man was a genius field engineer with extraordinary insight.
But a hypercavitating torpedo was different.
This was not the world of land systems, where you could cut metal and bolt machinery together.
It was, to put it bluntly, the frontier at which the finest fluid dynamics doctors and control engineers in South Korea had run supercomputers day and night for three straight years and still failed to solve the problem. It was no exaggeration to call it both the limit and the summit of modern engineering.
In common-sense terms, even if Baek Gunwoo’s grandfather had shown up instead of Baek Gunwoo himself, it would have been impossible to believe the torpedo’s vibration problem could be completely solved overnight.
And yet this report had been issued just one day after Baek Gunwoo was assigned to the hypercavitating torpedo project at the request of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Not a month. Not even a week. One day.
“Director.”
The researcher in charge of the hypercavitating torpedo project, Senior Research Fellow Kang Dongwook, who had been riding in the passenger seat, turned around and spoke.
“No matter how I look at it, this has to be a mistake on Solaris’s side.”
“A mistake?”
“Yes. I mean, vibration rate of 0% in a single day? That’s absurd. This kind of thing happens all the time during development, doesn’t it?”
Kang shook his head and went on.
“They probably cranked up the software filtering values just to avoid an immediate failure in front of them. They blind the sensors so they can’t even read the vibration, then convince themselves they’ve eliminated it. It’s the classic kind of blunder where the torpedo’s tail blows itself apart later in real combat and they end up humiliating themselves.”
Park gave a bitter smile and nodded at Kang’s confident analysis.
He was right.
To be honest, Kang’s rational suspicion sounded a hundred times more plausible from an engineering standpoint than a report claiming Baek Gunwoo had worked magic in a single day.
Still—
“Even so... if it was Executive Director Baek, of all people, and he handled the main console himself, maybe it’s different.”
“Director, no matter how capable Executive Director Baek is, fluid dynamics is a different field.”
“Let’s go see. It won’t be too late to talk after we’ve seen it with our own eyes.”
“Well... yes. That’s true.”
Kang turned forward again with a dissatisfied expression.
* * *
The vehicle soon arrived at Solaris Marine’s Third Dock.
Park and his party rode a rugged elevator down forty meters below ground to the deep-sea fluid dynamics tank test facility.
When they opened the thick blast door and stepped into the observation room, they found the major figures who had already arrived.
“Oh! Director Park, welcome!”
The Chief of Naval Operations came over with a strangely cheerful expression and seized Park Jincheol’s hand.
By contrast, Chairman Song Tae-hwan of Solaris Marine, standing behind him with his arms folded, wore an expression of exquisite complexity.
Well, of course he’d be miserable.
Park guessed as much from the chairman’s stiff face.
Until just yesterday, the man had been shouting his head off about some unknown nobody daring to strut around in front of Baek Gunwoo.
Then morning came, and he was told the tank test had succeeded perfectly on the first attempt. No wonder his insides were in knots.
At any rate, if Baek Gunwoo succeeded in this experiment and resolved the long-festering hypercavitating torpedo problem for Solaris Marine, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for Park either.
“How is the test going?”
Park asked the Chief of Naval Operations as he naturally looked down through the thick glass window of the observation room.
Beyond the massive sealed tank, the control room was awash in the light thrown off by dozens of monitors and measuring instruments.
Physicists and engineers who proudly considered themselves the best elites in South Korea were clustered around the screens with bloodshot eyes, moving busily as they prepared for the next test.
And at the very center of it all—
Fsssh—
Baek Gunwoo was leaning carelessly back in the most prestigious chair in front of the main console, casually popping the lid off a can of coffee.
For a man carrying the fate of a national defense project worth hundreds of billions of won, he looked absurdly calm from behind.
Park swallowed quietly as he watched the surreal scene.
Did you really break that curse in one night?
Amid the mingled doubt and anticipation in his gaze, the control room speakers soon began to ring out with the countdown for the next test.
This was the guided steering test—the moment they would examine the torpedo’s true limits.
* * *
After a brief round of adjustments for the test was completed, the countdown began over the facility speakers.
Trying to steady his nerves, Park watched the hypercavitating torpedo inside the tank.
—5, 4, 3, 2... launch.
Along with the voice echoing through the speakers, a heavy concussion shook the test hall.
Whoooosh—!
Park’s gaze snapped toward the tank beyond the glass.
The torpedo tore free of the launch tube and sliced through the water with ferocious momentum.
Three hundred kilometers per hour. An astonishing speed that erased the drag of the water itself.
But neither Park nor Kang was looking at the speed.
They were looking at the bubble sheath wrapping the torpedo’s hull.
The bubble sheath of a hypercavitating torpedo reduces the friction between the torpedo and the water almost to zero.
It was, in effect, the lifeline of the weapon—a protective barrier that made underwater travel at 300 kilometers per hour possible.
Only yesterday, that very barrier had been said to convulse wildly and collapse under its own instability. Now it remained as smooth and solid as a mirror.
There wasn’t the slightest tremor, not the faintest sign of an unstable collapse.
The torpedo traced a flawless trajectory and buried itself dead center in the target net installed at the far end of the tank.
“......”
One second.
No, two seconds of silence that felt like an eternity.
“D-Director...”
Kang, standing beside him, chattered his teeth and let out a pained sound.
“I-it’s real? No, how is this even possible? It’s only been a day... Did von Neumann come back to life? No, wait— even he couldn’t have done this...”
Beside him, Kang muttered with a face full of confusion.
The usually cool, rational, and thoroughly logical senior researcher was truly flustered now.
Was his voice the signal flare?
“Wooooooaaaaaah!”
The researchers who had been staring blankly at the sight finally sprang to their feet and began shouting.
“It worked! It workedddddd!”
“Aaaaaaah!!!!!”
Some hugged one another, while others thrust both clenched fists into the air.
Meanwhile, Factory Director Go Kwangsoo seemed to have gone weak in the knees; he had simply collapsed to the floor and was grinning foolishly.
And the Chief of Naval Operations?
“Hahahaha! See, Chairman Song? I told you my eyes weren’t wrong!”
The Chief of Naval Operations burst into a laugh of sheer delight and shouted.
For a moment, Chairman Song’s face twisted.
Then he strode down the stairs into the control room.
He put on an affectingly pleased expression and patted Senior Engineer Yoon Jinho on the shoulder.
“Good work, Senior Yoon! You worked all night, and it looks like your team finally found the solution on its own? It’s fortunate that it succeeded right when the Hanseo executive director came to observe. Isn’t that right?”
The words were wrapped in pleasant-sounding praise, but the intent beneath them was obvious.
Baek Gunwoo was just there by chance. This success belongs entirely to our Solaris elite team.
The chairman’s desperate pride, determined to smother the truth, seeped through his words.
But Senior Engineer Yoon shattered his expectations in a single blow.
“No, Chairman.”
“What do you mean, no? You people did it, didn’t you?”
“We did not solve it. Executive Director Baek... identified the decisive cause with a single observation. As soon as we modified the mount the way he instructed, the problem was fixed immediately.”
“...What?”
Chairman Song’s face crumpled as though he’d bitten into a turd.
By contrast, the Chief of Naval Operations, who had followed him into the control room, was grinning so broadly his mouth nearly split his face in half, delighted that his choice had once again been proven perfect.
That old man really is something else.
Park, who had entered the control room after the Chief of Naval Operations, watched Chairman Song’s face stiffen and shook his head.
His gaze then shifted toward Baek Gunwoo.
In the middle of this chaotic control room, where everyone was cheering over a miracle and someone else was swallowing humiliation, Baek Gunwoo alone remained wholly disconnected from the excitement.
The more I look at him, the more interesting he gets.
This was only the second time Park had seen him in person.
And yet at some point, Baek Gunwoo’s name had begun to reach even the ears of the director of the Agency for Defense Development.
At first it had been nothing more than talk that Hanseo Defense had such a capable man.
But now he had become a figure drawing attention not only from Hanseo Defense, but from Taesung Heavy Industries and Solaris Marine as well.
There had even been whispers within the Agency for Defense Development that they ought to recruit Baek Gunwoo themselves.
And that same Baek Gunwoo was now leaning back in the chair in front of the tank test control console with an expression so blank he seemed to feel no joy at all over the success.
Then he even took another sip from his can of coffee.
His eyes were fixed only on the complex torpedo blueprints displayed on the monitor.
His brow was faintly furrowed, as though he were lost in thought.
What on earth is that guy thinking about right now?
Watching that strange, heavy stillness, Park naturally remembered what had happened recently.
The demonstration voyage of the Kim Gu.
The confrontation with the Chinese Yuan-class submarine that had suddenly appeared beneath the sea.
That suffocating moment, and how the mere touch of a man named Baek Gunwoo had brought out a dramatically overwhelming performance from a South Korean submarine.
Right. That guy isn’t the type to be satisfied with getting a torpedo to go straight once and then chortle over it.
Perhaps.
Just perhaps, the perfect next move had already taken shape inside Baek Gunwoo’s head.
Before he knew it, Park had begun walking toward him, almost unconsciously drawn in.
“Surely you can afford to be a little happy today, too.”
At Park’s call, Baek Gunwoo slowly lifted his gaze from the monitor and turned his head.
Only then, upon noticing Park, did Baek Gunwoo set down the coffee can and bow his head.
“I was too preoccupied earlier to greet you properly. Good day, Director.”
“I’m always doing fine. But you, the one who ought to be fine, don’t exactly look fine at the moment. At this point, we ought to be raising a toast.”
At Park’s pointed joke, Baek Gunwoo gave a faint, awkward smile.
Park glanced at the monitor screen where Baek’s eyes had been lingering—the blueprint of the torpedo’s tail fins—and asked,
“The hypercavitating torpedo. That’s what’s giving you a headache, isn’t it?”
Baek Gunwoo shrugged lightly and replied,
“The thing itself has a lot of inherent limitations. It looks like there’s still a long way to go before I can celebrate just getting it to run straight once, so I was thinking about how to solve that.”
“The limits of a hypercavitating torpedo, huh. Well, they’re the kind of problems nobody in the world has really solved yet.”
Park folded his arms and nodded.
He knew better than anyone the fatal flaws that came with hypercavitating torpedoes.
“First, they’re so fast that changing direction is practically impossible. Second, once they start moving, the rocket motor’s roar is so loud it practically deafens you, which makes active tracking impossible.”
“And third, because of the insane speed and the drag of the water, even wired guidance with a cable attached becomes impossible because it snaps right off. In other words, it’s a blind rocket that only goes straight.”
Baek Gunwoo picked up Park’s thought and continued it.
Anyone with even a passing interest in hypercavitating torpedoes would know that much.
But that made it all the more hopeless a subject.
It was a matter that brushed directly against the engineering limits of human civilization in the twenty-first century.
“Don’t push yourself too hard. Russia couldn’t solve it, Germany couldn’t solve it, and didn’t they basically give up on it in the end?”
Park said those words in a low voice.
And then—
“It’s still a torpedo, isn’t it? I can’t exactly spend hundreds of billions of won building a blind straight-line rocket that can’t even hit anything. I’d feel a lot better if I solved at least that much.”
“...What?”
No, what the hell was this man saying?
Park stared at Baek Gunwoo, doubting his own ears.
Baek Gunwoo’s face was still as calm as ever.
“Are you saying you think you can solve those problems?”
“I can’t say I’m certain. But this is a weapon underwater, something I’ve never really put my hands on before, so it’s... interesting. I’m examining it as closely as I can.”
“...This is insane.”
Not only in South Korea, but in countries like the old Soviet Union, the United States, and Germany, the finest geniuses in the world had bled themselves dry trying to solve this curse and failed.
And Baek Gunwoo was treating it like nothing more than an interesting puzzle.
If anyone else had said that, Park would have snapped at them to stop talking nonsense and put them in their place.
But this was Baek Gunwoo.
Park’s heart was pounding.
“So. You’ve found some kind of method, then?”
“Yes, well. I’ve found something along those lines. I’m still testing it in my head, though, so it’s only a provisional conclusion.”
Baek Gunwoo picked up the coffee can again and spoke with an unruffled tone.
“If it can’t withstand the force, then you have to let it flow away. If there are a few spare active hydraulic dampers in the materials warehouse that could be used for a tank suspension, I think I could show you a trajectory correction as soon as tomorrow.”
“...What? Dampers?”
No—what on earth was this bastard talking about?
Park could only doubt his own ears.
Use hydraulic dampers for a hypercavitating torpedo’s steering? And not just any dampers, but ones fit for tank suspension?