Case Zulu!!!

In On Basilisk Station, when Honor sends word back to Manticore that the Peeps are coming, it's noted that "Case Zulu" is never, ever used for any other purpose than to announce an imminent invasion. Yet, in The Shadow of Saganami, when Hexapuma's Marine company goes to take out Norbrandt's hidden bunker, "Case Zulu" is used to annouce that the enemy has modern heavy weapons and the action shifts from a police function to a military assault. What's up with that? Sloppy com discipline, or is this a Marines versus Navy procedural thing?

It reminds me of my own Army com training, where they told us to use "say again" instead of "repeat", because the latter could be misheard as "retreat" and screw up a perfectly good strategy. The RMN appears to use "repeat" and "Say again" interchangably, but maybe their com quality is a lot clearer.

Likely it is the difference between the Marines and Navy. There are after all a limited number of code words that exist.

dscott8 wrote:In On Basilisk Station, when Honor sends word back to Manticore that the Peeps are coming, it's noted that "Case Zulu" is never, ever used for any other purpose than to announce an imminent invasion. Yet, in The Shadow of Saganami, when Hexapuma's Marine company goes to take out Norbrandt's hidden bunker, "Case Zulu" is used to annouce that the enemy has modern heavy weapons and the action shifts from a police function to a military assault. What's up with that? Sloppy com discipline, or is this a Marines versus Navy procedural thing?

It reminds me of my own Army com training, where they told us to use "say again" instead of "repeat", because the latter could be misheard as "retreat" and screw up a perfectly good strategy. The RMN appears to use "repeat" and "Say again" interchangably, but maybe their com quality is a lot clearer.

Very good point.

It's a good thing HH's Grayson armsman don't use the RMN's "Vampire" call(AOV) when there's an attempt on their Steadholder's life. The'd never be able to read Bram Stoker or watch the "Underworld" or "Blade" holodramas without being horribly confused.

The military has standard phonetic spelling today. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta .......... Zulu.

Zulu is phoneetic for the letter Z. Thus, for the navy, case Zulu is actually case Z.

Thirdbase wrote:Likely it is the difference between the Marines and Navy. There are after all a limited number of code words that exist.

Case Zulu, or Zulu is often used(real world) to mean this is really scary sh** incoming. Another used this way is Omega. Zulu was used by the marines to indicate the worst situation they had planned for and they still underestimated the determination, or stupidity, of their opponents.
The RMN uses Case Zulu to indicate the worst situation for them, an imminent invasion of sovereign territory.

dscott8 wrote:It reminds me of my own Army com training, where they told us to use "say again" instead of "repeat", because the latter could be misheard as "retreat" and screw up a perfectly good strategy. The RMN appears to use "repeat" and "Say again" interchangably, but maybe their com quality is a lot clearer.

Actually, you were misinformed. The reason why we don't use "repeat" in that manner is that repeat is an artillery proword - it means repeat the last indirect fire order. If you used "repeat" instead of "say again", someone would shoot something at someone - not the intent.

Evidently, the RMN has another way of telling people to repeat the last call for fire.

looktowindward wrote:Actually, you were misinformed. The reason why we don't use "repeat" in that manner is that repeat is an artillery proword - it means repeat the last indirect fire order. If you used "repeat" instead of "say again", someone would shoot something at someone - not the intent.

Yup. The response to "repeat, over" is "shot, over".

Hi KZT,

LooktoWindward is quite right, as we appear to all have some FA experience.
For me it came early since I was born into the 6th Field Artillery when my dad was the Battalion Commander at Fort Sill.
I didn't return until almost 3 decades later after ROTC for my basic and advanced training, but after 20+ years of practice its almost second nature.

Returning to the thread subject, I think Thirdbase and Alphapatch are correct, in Navy and Marine usage.

The Marines will never send Case Zulu, as that's a navy responsibility (granted if the marine were the only officer left to send the message, I doubt there would be much quibbling over his branch), and using Zulu for their worst case scenario, or Omega Zulu as described, makes sense.

L

kzt wrote:

looktowindward wrote:Actually, you were misinformed. The reason why we don't use "repeat" in that manner is that repeat is an artillery proword - it means repeat the last indirect fire order. If you used "repeat" instead of "say again", someone would shoot something at someone - not the intent.

Yup. The response to "repeat, over" is "shot, over".

Very good points above, but another thing to consider is the difference between tactical communication (the Marines using the term to for immediate, short-range information exchange), and strategic communication (Honor or other higher level commanders sending a message back to Manticore).

Although you do have to be very careful about using certain words and phrases in other than very specific circumstances, there is some (limited) interchangeability when you are talking about totally different levels of communication.

While this contradiction in use of Case Zulu was pointed discussed even before the initial snippets of that part of SoSag were released in 2004, I don't recall if DW ever directly commented on it. The response that was received (via a late and honored friend of his) did indicate it was a variance in RMN vs RMMC comm practices. Personally, that never stood well with me, as IMHO the depth of shown RMMC integration into the RMN crews is too great for separate lexicons using identical codes to exist, or to risk the chance of confusion by Marine personnel.

"OK, hold on, Sarge - was that a Navy or a Marine Case Zulu that was just issued?"

dscott8 wrote:In On Basilisk Station, when Honor sends word back to Manticore that the Peeps are coming, it's noted that "Case Zulu" is never, ever used for any other purpose than to announce an imminent invasion. Yet, in The Shadow of Saganami, when Hexapuma's Marine company goes to take out Norbrandt's hidden bunker, "Case Zulu" is used to annouce that the enemy has modern heavy weapons and the action shifts from a police function to a military assault. What's up with that? Sloppy com discipline, or is this a Marines versus Navy procedural thing?