Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

The escape of the Latvian President reminds me of the scene from Hunter Killer where the Russian President was rescued by Navy SEALs.

I would imagine a no holds barred assault on the internet by Russia. Banks, media, universities, utilities, everything.

Forcon has done very well here with this!




Yep, this aspect of modern life shall make things rather interesting.
Tonight.


They've had a good already and causes some issues, though as the UKGov was told, it didn't look over yet.

(These have been approved by forcon)
These are some of the citations for awards from the opening days of the fighting.


The QUEEN has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross to the undermentioned:

Sergeant Andrew Harris, 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment
7th and 9th August 2010
Zealand

On 7th August 2010, Sergeant Harris led his men in one of the first combat drops by the Parachute Regiment since the Korean War. Upon landing, Sgt Harris and his section came under immediate heavy and accurate fire from enemy forces. Showing great initiative and calmness under fire, Sgt Harris gathered his men into a defensible position, and began to return fire. On three occasions, Sgt Harris left the safety of his own position to guide other members of the Parachute Regiment company towards their position. This action created a strong point of resistance and allowed for a concentration of strength in actions partaken later that day.

On the 9th August, Sergeant Harris led his men on a patrol towards the village of Jersie, near Havdrup. The planned patrol ended after Sgt Harris' section discovered a strong enemy force on the eastern outskirts of the village. Unawares of Sgt Harris' patrol, the enemy force began to move westwards towards British positions. Showing great presence of mind, and coolness under a very difficult situation, radioed a number of warnings back to Company HQ allowing the Men of 2 Company, 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment to meet the enemy force in Battle.
Sgt Harris' patrol were discovered and became involved in a heavy firefight with significantly greater forces.
Sgt Harris called in fire support very close to his own position, at times having to stand exposed to enemy fire to call in updates, before returning to his company position, suffering no casualties in the process. After battle examination determined that Sgt Harris' actions that night, prevented approximately 2 companies of enemy solders from attacking British positions and thus gaining a tactical advantage.

His actions on the 8th & 9th of August, showed conspicuous gallantry in the face of enemy action and had a significant impact on the outcome on later military operations, going beyond the call of his expected duty and upholding the proud traditions of the Parachute Regiment and the British Army.
Sergeant Andrew Harris is awarded by order of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, this day - 28th February 2012.

Sixty

Despite everything which had happened since the late summer of 2008, and especially throughout this summer too, there remained Westerners inside Russia. These were from NATO countries and those traditionally associated with ‘the West’. Ambassadors and the majority of diplomatic staffs had been pulled out long before the war began. There were travel advisory notices – even outright bans from some countries – when it came to visiting Russia to say nothing of how difficult Russia had made matters with visa requirements. Things had been getting tense inside the country for Westerners with harassment from unofficial elements of the Russian state – teens with Nashi – berating them in the street for the attitude of their home governments. Regardless, there were a good few thousand within the borders of Russia at the outbreak of war. The Russian government had a good idea where to find most of them. They had been forced to register their hotels or places of residence with the police since the middle of July. Once the war started, efforts were made to detain these people. Russia wanted them in custody but not to hold them as hostages to use them as bargaining chips with the West. Instead, it was to expel them from the country. This would be done ‘politely’ too. There was a propaganda war alongside a shooting war. Russia would play by its own rules and do things which it thought would play out well – whether they would or not was to be seen – and that included removing Westerners from their country. For their own safety, they were told, foreign civilians were asked to report to police stations nationwide. They then began their journey out of the country with Russian intending to sent them out through neighbouring countries like Finland, the Ukraine and Turkey: whichever would agree to aid Russia in this. They weren’t robbed, beaten or overtly treated badly but they were firmly removed from Russia starting on the war’s first day. Public announcements were made directed at those who hadn’t yet done so to report to the police as well as urging Russians to remember their patriotic duty and assist such people in leaving the country… that second bit concerned many Westerners who heard translations of such a remark. There were those diplomatic compounds too. Consulates and consulates-general outside of Moscow in many cities were already closed but there remained embassies in the capital. Such places had few high-ranking staff left working there and for some time now, Russian nationals employed at them hadn’t been into work. Moscow police and even FSB personnel in uniform were around them all throughout the extensive period of crisis. Those FSB officers, joined now by people from the Foreign Ministry, entered the compounds. There were ‘incidents’ at several including the American and French embassies where threats were made of shooting. This eventually didn’t occur though and such places were taken over by the Russian state without violence. Diplomats were told that they were being expelled from Russia and with immediate effect. For the US Marine guards at the American embassy, their fellow US Marines were fighting elsewhere in the world though here in Moscow they were instructed by their senior diplomat present to put down their weapons, leave their posts with him and see the embassy taken over without a shot being fired. Heroic and suicidal stands for no reason weren’t going to take place.

There was quite the disturbance inside the Kremlin. Fradkov and General Shlyakhturov – the heads of the SVR and the GRU respectively – almost came to physical blows during a meeting of the Security Council. Some of the others present pretended to be shocked and outraged at such a protocol violation yet secretly were rooting for fisticuffs between the two men. Why did their verbal argument nearly turn to violence? It was because Hillary Clinton was dead. The SVR’s intelligence-gathering operations deemed the ‘Chappaqua Connection’ came to an unexpected end because the GRU had assassinated her alongside Obama and the others in Marine One. No more would intelligence of the highest quality coming from the American secretary of state be available for Russian exploitation. The line was dead there, Fradkov said. Shlyakhturov shrugged his soldiers. He’d told Putin and the others that she hadn’t been targeted directly as Obama was the priority target but there was more benefit from her death than loss to Russia. The Americans would be on their knees in tears at the loss of so many important people; she too was an enemy of Russia who would have gladly seen all those here in the Kremlin hung from lampposts in the streets from the mob. He also mocked Fradkov and asked whether he would be on his knees crying for her too. Bortnikov got physically in the way of the two men and then Patrushev called for order and respect… especially in the presence of the president. Eyes turned to Putin, glaring at them as was his way, and those up on their feet sat back down. Shlyakhturov ignored Fradkov and moved to talk about all of the successes that the GRU had had with their specialist operations elsewhere too. There was plenty of report and all of it was framed as success. This came as part of a longer briefing given to the Security Council by others as well. Those gathered inside the Kremlin – ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice if necessary – to hear the series of military briefings were treated to news similar to what the GRU head had said. Russia’s armed forces had had a good day. There had been some reverses met, of which details were provided, but these were few and not that severe when it came to the overall aim of the conflict sought. Russia, those present were told, had started the war as it would go on: with victory.

Russia hadn’t embraced the internet like the West had – it was invented over there to be fair – yet neither was it something ignored. Its uses were exploited though there was often a refusal at the highest levels to go all the way. It was something seen as dangerous, something which couldn’t be controlled. All of that information, all of that means of unchecked communication… The internet was a weapon though. Cyber warfare was something understood in Russia. They’d witnessed it done to others and used it themselves. Any notion in the West that Russia was behind the curve here was shown to be entirely false with actions undertaken to conduct cyber-attacks at the outbreak of fighting. More of these were due to come too past the opening strikes. There was the possibility that the West would take the step of activating ‘kill switches’ to their internet services (less dramatic than it sounded; telecommunications companies could be ordered to cut services rather than someone with a Big Red Button) but before then, what damage would be done would be. As to those other aspects of the internet, Russia was monitoring them ahead of the fighting commencing and once it did so as well. Information was sought through systems broken into yet also open-source means. The latter were social media platforms. There were intelligence-gathering assets instructed to exploit these looking for avenues to aid the war effort. Unfortunately, they were suddenly overwhelmed. There was so much information out there and the useful stuff was hidden among that. The big websites for internet communications used across the West were alight with comments and media. It would take hundreds, maybe thousands of years to go through all of this and that would be far too late! Russia just wasn’t in a position to exploit what there was out there. The reaction which came online to the outbreak of war filled websites with so much of use yet all drowned out by what really wasn’t. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter weren’t able to be used like Russia wanted them to be done to gather information. Youtube, the video sharing platform which was growing faster than many had expected in recent months following the period of international crisis and civilians in the West uploading content, was more useful than the others. Russia had watched pre-war as it was filled with ‘citizen journalists’ filming military deployments and security measures to post them online for friends and strangers to watch. Once the war started, these increased. People put themselves in grave danger in doing so; Russia was ever so grateful for this! One senior GRU officer made a throwaway remark to his colleagues that in the future, this conflict might be called the ‘Youtube War’. You never know… Videos titled such as ‘Russian parachutists landing in Sweden’, ‘Croydon Looting’, ‘Putin killed my Mum’ and ‘Look at all those cars!’ were online. These four examples concerned footage of two aircrew who had ejected from a downed Russian fighter reaching the ground in Sweden (and being detained by the Swedes), a wave of looting of shops taking place in South London by criminal youths, a video of a woman lying dead in the street in Copenhagen with her daughter crying while describing what had happened and traffic jams at a border crossing on the US-Mexico frontier where it was closed. These were just a very few of oh so many. The footage wasn’t that great. There were grainy, jumpy images and more talk than action. Those watching actually saw very little. Another video entitled ‘News chopper down over D.C.’ sparked GRU interest: there was footage of a helicopter crash moments after it had come down in the American capital with the man who recorded it believing then and afterwards that he had filmed a media helicopter on the ground & alight. Only later did he realise that it was Marine One on the ground and once that was revealed, viewership rates for his video were astronomical. Russian operatives watched these videos. They saw others too with images of fighting taking place in Denmark, Norway and Poland. Further military deployments were recorded from afar and posted online too with no one stopping this. However, among all of these goldmines of intelligence, there was once again plenty of chaff to wade through. People recorded video diaries of what they said where their final moments as they waited for ‘the bomb’ to fall… and waited. There were those too who repeated rumours and falsehoods: some stupid people even made fake propaganda purporting to be from inside Russia claiming that the West was about to fall and the end of the neo-liberal order was about to be ended with Russian tanks taking over Berlin, Paris, London and even Washington. It was madness, pure insanity!

Russia’s worldwide allies did what Serbia had done and refused to enter the war against the West. Serbia had said no when it came to the matter of Kosovo and this was the same with those who could be considered as far closer to Moscow than Belgrade was. In Caracas, Damascus, Havana, Pyongyang, Tehran and Tripoli, these opponents of the West declined to go to war as well. The regimes in each weren’t about to join in the conflict that Russia was involved in. Hesitation had been expected by those in the Kremlin but they instead got a rude surprise when they received a series of rejections to their suggestions that the time was ripe for them to strike. The military briefings which the leadership received on the course of the war had brought much assurance of ultimate victory but that was then tempered off by the news which kept coming in from elsewhere where those countries were staying out. Were Russia and Belarus going to remain all alone in this war? They didn’t need others, did they?


End of Part Three

Another citation from the 3 PARA landing.

The QUEEN has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the Victoria Cross to the undermentioned:
Corporal Dalvindar Singh, 144 Parachute Medical Squadron (TA), 16 Close Support Medical Regiment
7th August 2010
Zealand

Corporal Singh took part in the Parachute drop in the vicinity of Havdrup on 7th August 2010. Before they had landed, members of Cpl Singh's section had become casualties and upon landing, he immediately began to give medical treatment to those around him before moving them into a position of relative safety. During the course of the battle, Cpl Singh repeatedly left cover at great personal risk, to provide emergency medical treatment to fallen comrades and recover vital medical supplies that would otherwise have been lost to enemy action.

At approximately 2pm on the afternoon of 8th August 2010, Cpl Singh received notification of a group of casualties on one of the lower slopes of the surrounding hills. Pausing only to ensure that his medical supplies were complete, Cpl Singh went out into open ground, exposed to enemy rifle and rocket fire, crossing nearly 400 meters to reach the casualties. Upon his arrival at the site, he found that while two of the group had sustained minor injuries and could return on their own accord under covering fire, one of the casualties could not due to the seriousness of his wounds. Cpl Singh treated the man's wounds then carried him, single handed back across the open ground to friendly positions. During this return, one of the previous casualties had been hit again and lay in an exposed position. Cpl Singh returned to the casualty, placing his own body between the casualty and the enemy fire in order to render medical assistance. It was during this, that Corporal Singh was struck multiple times by enemy machine gun fire, grievously wounding him. Despite this, Corporal Singh remained with his body shielding the casualty until they were recovered by members of the Parachute Regiment. While Corporal Singh later died of his wounds, the treated casualty survived.

By his actions, displaying exceptional valour in the face of overwhelming enemy fire, placing himself in extreme danger to rescue British soldiers wounded in action, Corporal Dalvinder Singh upheld the very highest traditions of the Royal Army Medical Corps, sacrificing his own life so that others may live, while personifying the Corps motto - In Arduis Fedilis, "Steadfast In Adversity", he inspired many subsequent acts of bravery during this engagement, Corporal Dalvinder Singh is thoroughly deserving of this significant award. 

Two very minor quibbles about the gallantry citations in this excellent alternate history;

1. A citation will start with the following words
The QUEEN has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the [Insert Award] to the undermentioned:

2. The timeframe shown is somewhat unrealistic.
If we use the example of LCpl Leakey who was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in Afghanistan, he committed the act he won the VC for on the 22 August 2013 but the award was not gazetted in the London Gazette until 26 February 2015.

A recommendation for the VC is normally issued by an officer at regimental level, or equivalent, and has to be supported by three witnesses, although this has been waived on occasion. The recommendation is then passed up the military hierarchy until it reaches the Secretary of State for Defence. The recommendation is then laid before the monarch who approves the award with his or her signature. Victoria Cross awards are always promulgated in the London Gazette with the single exception of the award to the American Unknown Soldier in 1921.

As I said these are just minor quibbles. This is a absolutely cracking alternate history and I am always in awe of you guys who write these histories.
I look forward to the next instalment.