Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

Sixty–Four

Norwegian forces weren’t able to retake control of the Russian-occupied Bardufoss facility. The joint airbase and civilian airport remained in the hands of those who had forcefully taken it. The initial Norwegian pull-out when hit by Russian paratroopers had been undertaken as a tactical retreat: they intended to return either within hours or otherwise a day or two. The fighting around Bardufoss after its capture gave no hint that the Norwegians would be able to do that. Russian transport aircraft flew in with human cargoes of reinforcements but also ammunition, equipment and supporting troops. With the latter, many of these were engineers and air defence troops. Fighting men worked on expanding the width of the airhead – making sure the main north-south running highway through Northern Norway was cut and defended – while those behind them at Bardufoss aimed to make the facility a fully-functional base of their own. Like the major commanding the reconnaissance company of the 11th Air Assault Brigade (the first man on the ground after the jump), the lieutenant-colonel who led the brigade’s engineering battalion had been to Bardufoss before. He’d come as a tourist when flying through here on a commercial flight. Satellite images and other military reconnaissance of the facility was one thing but to see the place on the ground with his own eyes aided that engineer just as it had the reconnaissance leader. Only war damage hadn’t been factored in because how much would occur was unpredictable but everything else was considered first. Those engineers worked to make Bardufoss extremely useful for the Russian military just as the riflemen on the frontlines did. Bardufoss was a helicopter base for the Norwegian Air Force and it was now used by Russian helicopters too. The runway (something historically funded by NATO cash) saw landings and take-offs from Russian transport aircraft with the planned use of it by Sukhoi-25 attack-fighters soon enough: Tuesday morning was looking likely that the earliest flight operations could begin from here. Bardufoss was held by the Russians because they had expanded their airhead out from here and into the surrounding areas. The facility was on lower ground with high ground to three sides with the other side being water. Upon evacuating yesterday, Norwegian troops from part of their widely-spread Brigade Nord (home-based in this region but spread out far and wide before the shooting started) had used those mountain slopes to engage the Russians below them with distance fire and also shoot at aircraft. Overnight and into today, with much of the 11th Brigade here now – those not lost during the wipe-out at Andoya or trapped near Evenes – those enemy forces had been engaged. Bardufoss was located alongside the E6 highway, the main supply route for the Norwegians. Their forces had been split in two and were further forced apart; moreover, there were Russian forces invading via both the overland and sea routes coming towards those cut-off Norwegians away to the north and east. However, the embattled Norwegians here weren’t going to alone for long.

In the lead up to the war, Norway’s NATO allies had sent forces to the country. There were aircraft and troops on Norwegian soil. Norway was mobilising many of its own men from the reserves to join these yet before then, the Americans, the British and the Dutch with their marines were in-place. Further reinforcements from outside were promised as well with the Netherlands promising to add a second battalion to join with the British brigade of Royal Marines, the Germans having assigned a brigade of paratroopers and the US Marines intending to expand their on-the-ground force significantly. NATO could and would outnumber Russian in the Norwegian theatre. Doing so was going to take some time. Ahead of that reinforcement, the US Marines went into action. The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade began moving last night towards the fight at Bardufoss. They themselves were around Bodo, much further south, yet had the full support of the Norwegians with transportation and logistics, to add to their own impressive capabilities, in deploying towards that fight. This came after confirmation that the Norwegians had stopped Evenes being lost and also there was no follow-up to the Russian failure at Andoya. If either of those airbases on the western flank were in Russian hands, more caution would be needed than was now shown. The Americans had plenty of Marine Riflemen and came with tanks, artillery and air support too. That air support included both armed helicopters and combat aircraft: these struck out ahead of the main body of the 2nd Brigade before it could reach Bardufoss starting tomorrow. FA-18 Hornets flying from Bodo Air Station refuelled in mid-air when making fighter sweeps and bomb runs. As to the AH-1 SeaCobras / SuperCobras, these attack helicopters used forward landing strips held by the Norwegians for their own helicopter operations south of Bardufoss on the way in and back out for refuelling. American aircraft and helicopters came under attack themselves while striking at Bardufoss. The Russians put missiles and shells into the skies and took down several attackers. Those heights which they had, where they had rooted the Norwegians out of, were used for the air defence effort at Bardufoss. The FA-18s were soon forced even higher while the AH-1s flew looping missions coming in from overwater.

Everyone knew that Bardufoss was going to be a devil of a place to retake from the Russians and the Americans were quickly discovering how true that was. They had to strike now though and overcome resistance soon enough. What they didn’t want to do was to fight for Bardufoss after the Russians got significant forces there. Those reinforcements were the rest of the Russian Sixth Army.


Two Russian medium brigades – the 25th & 200th Motor Rifle – were inside Norway now after entering the country from the Kola Peninsula. The latter was out in the lead with the former railing behind. The advance elements of the Russian ground invasion force had crossed the Tana River and rounded the very-most northern extremes of Finland on their way. Going was hard. Norway’s defenders were making the best use of terrain available, terrain which they had for decades trained to fight for in such a scenario as this. Border troops long based near the Russian frontier had withdrawn to undertake delaying actions and were fighting alongside Norwegian commandos as the invaders came forward. The fight against the 200th Brigade was a brutal one. No quarter was sought and none was given. Both sides killed the enemy any way that they could. Still the Russians came onwards, running into ambushes and controlled demolitions on the way. They used their firepower extensively and caused themselves heavy delays to their timetable to do so. This was the only way to move forward though. All of that firepower couldn’t kill all of the Norwegians, especially those fast gained experience at getting out of the way, hunkering down and waiting for the exposed follow-up units behind the main fighting troops to come into view.

The end of the war’s second day saw the furthermost Russian units closing in upon Borselv. This would put the scout cars and tracked armoured personnel carriers, linking up with riflemen deposited by helicopter, at the eastern side of the Porsangerfjorden. That immense stretch of water had the larger town of Lakselv at its base. Stronger Norwegian forces were concentrated around there and these were those assigned to Brigade Nord. Two of that formation’s three combat-manoeuvre battalions, the Armoured Battalion and the Telemark Battalion, were there; the 2nd Battalion (a lighter unit) was the one split in two around Bardufoss. The Norwegians had an airfield at Banak for forward flight operations and extensive preparations had been made to shape the battlefield here with a fall-back position at Alta too where they’d withdraw to if needed. Even outnumbered, the Norwegians were confident of their position here. The ground would only allow the Russians to move one brigade at a time against them, not two abreast, and they would have to take Lakselv if they wanted to move onwards to Alta and then all the way to Bardufoss eventually. Norwegian Cold War planning had been for the main defensive position of the country’s armed forces to be much further west at the Lyngenfjorden position but in 2010, the Brigade Nord would fight at Lakselv. If the Russians had been inside Finland, then they’d be in trouble yet Finland wasn’t involved in this war. By the day’s end, Russian scouts were in control of Borselv after skirmishing with Norwegian commandos there. Next up with going to be the Battle of Lakselv and it would be a make-or-break fight for both the Russian Sixth Army as well as the Brigade Nord.

Russia’s Northern Fleet still had its ships at sea: the battle fleet and the amphibious group too. There was a whole brigade of heavily-armed Naval Infantry on the transports, all destined to join the fight ongoing inside Northern Norway. To get to that, to force a new front away from both Bardufoss and Lakselv, they needed to have the way opened for that first. That was the job of the battle fleet. It was quite the flotilla indeed where Russia had its big ships at sea. The aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov (equipped with Sukhoi-33 fighters) was present along with the battle-cruiser Pytor Velikiy and the missile-cruiser Marshal Ustinov. Several destroyers and a couple of frigates joined them. It was impressive as a battle fleet, that wasn’t in doubt, though to many in NATO these ships were all just targets to be put on the ocean floor. Norwegian submarines had already eliminated a destroyer, done significant damage to a frigate and also sunk a tanker when engaging the Russians off the North Cape. The Northern Fleet was past there now and inside the Norwegian Sea. They were far from shore, out to sea and rather inactive in any offensive manner. The US Navy had their own carrier charging towards them and the Norwegians had the coastline inside full of small warships, scattered marine commandos on several islands armed with missile-launchers and also a submarine present too. Ahead of the incoming American carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman, several NATO hunter/killer submarines were stalking the Russians from afar as they looked for an opening inside. NATO was waiting for the Northern Fleet to make its move with the belief that they would do so before they had all the pieces of their own in place to attack first. They weren’t about to be disappointed there.

Late on August 8th, the Russians made their move. The battle fleet increased speed and headed southwest: it was on a likely intercept course along the planned track of the incoming American carrier and its escorting battle group. This uncovered the Northern Fleet amphibious ships from close protection. They were moving themselves and sailing south once it was dark. Their destination was Tromsø. That was quite the interesting place for them to go to as not only would it mean (if they could successfully land there) they would be between Bardufoss and Lakselv, but it was also where NATO was in the process of moving the British 3rd Commando Brigade to so they would be behind the Norwegians. Royal Marines and the Dutch ‘cloggies’ with them were tomorrow going to go head-to-head with the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade.

I wonder about the mindset about Putin in this TL. Was he REALLY that paranoid about NATO expansion ( of course, the East bloc nations specifically requested to join and we could not turn them down) and/or is he playing the "Russian nationalist/patriot" card?

We're taking liberties greatly, yes. Though the strong OTL domestic reaction to protests in 2010 / 2011 can with accusations that the West, Clinton in particular, was supporting them. A colour revolution was feared at the time.
NATO expansion is really the icing on the cake. If you consider it from his view, NATO just keeps creeping forward and closing the noose with all those countries seen as in Russia's natural orbit. I think of it as how the US would feel with Russian influence (hypothetical) moving from Cuba and Venezuela to Central America and more of the Caribbean with Mexico then being a Ukraine analogy.

Sixty-Five

Back in 2008 when NATO staff were drafting the initial variant of the Eagle Guardian battle strategy, Pentagon planners – military staff officers and civilians alike – had dusted off Cold War-era plans for strikes by what was then Strategic Air Command against targets in the Warsaw Pact countries. How these nations’ air defences would be penetrated was studied along with infiltration and exfiltration routes for aircraft launching strikes there. Over a dozen different blueprints had been written for strikes against targets in Belarus, Kaliningrad, and Western Russia. This was all dependent on political willpower and the scale of the conflict being fought; for example, if Russian forces had solely invaded Estonia or cut the Suwalki Gap in Lithuania then airstrikes might have been limited against targets of vital strategic and tactical importance in Kaliningrad.

The sheer scale of the Russian offensive that was happening now was not something that NATO planners had anticipated, but nonetheless the Alliance had plans ready to counter a large-scale offensive using airpower. Similar tactics to those that would have been used in the eighties were to be followed, with many new technologies incorporated into the battle plan as well. All these plans were now to be initiated by Allied Air Command back in Germany at NATO’s Ramstein Air Base.

It would have been preferable to NATO commanders for the alliance to hold off on initiating its air campaign – Operation Eclipse – until Special Operations Forces could be inserted into Belarus and Kaliningrad in numbers, with those small groups of commandos being in a position to mark targets for airstrikes and attack radar sites and air defence batteries. Political pressure overcame the military realities of the situation, however; NATO was getting its behind kicked on the ground in the Baltic States and Poland, and some form of military offensive was necessary to offset this.
Thus, Allied Air Command initiated Operation Eclipse at dusk on August 8th.



It was not, as expected, aircraft that made the first strikes of Operation Eclipse, but rather a trio of nuclear-powered attack submarines, two of which were from the United States Navy and one which was from the Royal Navy. Out in the North Sea, HMS Triumph, USS Pasadena, and USS Hartford launched a volley of fifty-two UGM-109E Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACMs). Those three submarines had begun their war out in the North Sea, with the Royal Navy vessel having been ordered north towards Norway and the two American boats in position to prevent Russian surface forces from moving out of the Baltic should Zealand fall. The Tomahawks were the first wave of a massive attack against both Kaliningrad and Belarus, with many manned warplanes behind them. Their targets were six SA-10 Grumble and three SA-21 Growler anti-aircraft missile sites located across both of those regions, along with a Russian radar station in Belarus. Russian air defences did detect some of the inbound Tomahawks as they streamed over the choppy waters of the Baltic Sea, despite the fact that the missiles flew at low-altitude to avoid detection on radar.

They didn’t have enough time to react though. Some Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) were launched at the American and British cruise missiles, and a handful were knocked out of the sky. There had been a few failures caused by mechanical issues as well, but NATO planners had taken the possibility of this back into account. The opening phase of Operation Eclipse had enough redundancy to work even if a third of the Tomahawk missiles went down before reaching their targets.

The first target to go was the SA-21 battery located outside Chkalovsk Naval Air Base on the coast of Kaliningrad. The site had been located by tracking its own radar, and despite enemy doctrine requiring SAM batteries to be moved around frequently to avoid destruction, this Growler site had remained in place. Its crew paid the price when three Tomahawks slammed into the missile’s mobile radar as well as the launch system itself. The pair of Grumble batteries that had been located in Kaliningrad were meant to suffer the same fate; it only befell one of them. The missile site outside Volodino, a city further south within the Russian enclave, was hit and neutralised just like the Growler was. However, another Grumble battery evaded this fate; its crew had repeatedly changed locations and the Tomahawks dedicated to this target crashed uselessly into an empty field.

More Tomahawks came in over Lithuania and into the airspace of Belarus.

A Russian-manned Growler battery defended Baranovichi Air Base, one of Belarus’ largest and a focal point for Russian warplanes flying sorties over the Baltic States. This missile site was badly damaged, rendered combat ineffective though not totally destroyed, by American cruise missiles. Another SA-21 battery which was defending the major highway intersection north of Orsa on the Russian-Belarusian border narrowly avoided destruction, having moved from its suspected position less than an hour before the missiles arrived. Russia had also positioned SA-10s outside Minsk to defend the Belarusian capital, on the insistence of President Lukashenko. There were two of these Grumble sites in and around Minsk. One of them was outside Minsk International Airport, which had now become a major military airbase. The missile site was totally destroyed as four Tomahawks piled onto it, one after the other. The radar, the missile launcher systems, and the control vehicles were obliterated. Less success was met in targeting a Grumble which had been positioned in the farmlands north of the Belarusian capital, but the battery was temporarily rendered inoperable. The last SA-10 site to be hit was outside the 116th Guards Air Assault Base in Lida; this Grumble, like the one outside Minsk International Airport, was destroyed by several Tomahawks.

The final target for the remaining Tomahawks was a somewhat less difficult one to destroy, as it was a fixed one and not mobile like the SAMs were. No less than six Tomahawks hit the Hantsavichy air defence radar site in western Belarus. This facility was operated by Russia and not by the Belarusian Armed Forces; in order for Allied bombers to get into Belarusian airspace, it had to be destroyed and so this was done with cruise missiles. The main control building and several radar dishes were wiped off of the map by the Tomahawks, and the facility was put out of action and would be unusable for weeks.



A fighter sweep to clear the skies over Belarus was launched by the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force just minutes after the Tomahawks hit their targets. F-22A Raptors belonging to the US 27th Fighter Squadron, which was flying its jets from Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, lead the sweep. All twenty-four jets of the squadron took part, joined by RAF Typhoon FGR4s from No.11 Squadron, which had moved from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire to western Poland during the last days of peace. Two E-3Ds supported the fighter sweep, coordinating the jets from over Poland and themselves escorted by Polish Fulcrums. Over two hundred strike aircraft flew behind the Raptors and Typhoons. They would play their part later.

Belarusian MiG-29s and Russian Su-27s rose to meet the American and British fighters. Coordinated by their own A-50 AWACS aircraft, those Russian fighters were a dangerous foe for anything other than the vaunted Raptors. The miniscule radar profile of the F-22As, however, made their task a much easier one. The F-22 had been built with one single objective in mind; killing MiGs. Russian and Belarusian fighters plummeted from the sky in great numbers, particularly those flown by lesser-trained Belarusian pilots. Warnings blared through headsets to inform the Fulcrum & Flanker pilots of incoming AMRAAMs, launched by aircraft that they hadn’t even detected. The RAF Typhoons joined in the fight too, scoring their fair share of kills amongst the enemy aircraft, although one Typhoon would fall victim to a missile from a Russian Flanker and another would be shot down by a surface-to-air missile. By the time the ‘fur-ball’ was over, twenty-six Russian and Belarusian fighters had been downed, with only the two RAF Typhoons and a damaged F-22 to show for it.

Everything from modern and effective SA-15s to ancient ZSU-23 anti-aircraft guns and man-portable SAMs were present, and they had to be eliminated before the major strikes could go in. The SEAD strike package consisted largely of F-16CGs from the US Air Force 31st Fighter Wing, based down in Italy. Whatever the Italian government was saying, those aircraft took off from Aviano Air Base and lead the defence suppression missions. They were joined by Tornado ECR jets of the German Luftwaffe, aircraft that were specifically designed for the SEAD role. Using High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles or HARMs, those F-16s and Tornados targeted many smaller SAM sites and mobile radars, causing great damage though sustaining a particularly large number of casualties themselves. They carried radar and electronics jamming equipment as well as their bombs and missiles, but all of this failed to totally blind enemy air defences as the SEAD aircraft struck their targets. There were plenty of dummy targets utilised by the Russians here in Belarus as well as in Kaliningrad; inflatable SAM look-alikes had been scattered around the countryside and many NATO bombs and missiles were wasted targeting these. Missiles reached up and plucked the American and German warplanes out of the sky in numbers almost comparable to the slaughter that the Raptors were inflicting on the Russian and Belarusian interceptors. A large number of air defence batteries were destroyed on that first night of Operation Eclipse, but many more survived the night and would remain active.

This was bad news indeed for the bombers. A massive fleet of strike aircraft had been assembled in Polish airspace. It was a nightmare coordinating all of these jets; there were still NATO fighters and ground-attack aircraft flying sorties over the frontlines in Poland in a tactical role and these air battles had to be avoided by the main strike package as it formed up and began flying eastwards. There were French Mirage-2000s & Rafales of the Armée de l'Air, German F-4F Phantoms & Tornado IDS’s, RAF Tornado GR4s, F-15Es of the US Air Force, F-16s in the service of the US Air Force, the Belgian Air Force, and the Royal Netherlands Air Force, F/A-18s flown by the Spanish Air Force, and CF-188s being flown by the Royal Canadian Air Force. There were tankers and electronic warfare aircraft behind them, supporting the strikes as they went in behind the SEAD planes. Allied Air Command had even managed to persuade Global Strike Command to release three B-2A Spirit stealth bombers to conduct missions as part of Operation Eclipse, and the B-52s at Fairford over in England were also authorised to take part.

Many of those aircraft flew at extremely low altitudes, replicating the missions flown during Operation Desert Storm. In itself this caused several accidents as aircrew misjudged their height or made very short-lived contact with power lines or even trees. The overwhelming majority of strike aircraft made it to their targets though and despite a multitude of losses to accidents, as well as SAMs & fighters that had been missed by the fighter sweep and SEAD missions, they inflicted a devastating amount of damage. Casualties amongst the low-level strike aircraft especially were extremely heavy, coming close to reaching twenty percent of the overall strike force on the first night of the air campaign.

Operation Eclipse had two major objectives; firstly, the Russian and Belarusian air and air defence forces were to be destroyed; secondly, Russian supply lines through Belarus were to be taken out. This latter objective would require the first to be completed beforehand. No airstrikes were to be mounted against enemy supply lines tonight; this was about hitting enemy airfields.

In Belarus, the airbases at Baranovichi, Lida, Machulishchy, Bereza, Pruzhany, and Ross were all struck numerous times. GBU-24 Paveway III laser-guided bombs were used on a massive scale, combined with AGM-65 Maverick missiles. There were many other munitions expended, but those weapons were some of the most commonly utilised against Belarusian airfields. Civilian airports were also targeted just as the military airfields were, along with communications centres and other military targets. One of those B-2 Spirits assigned from Global Strike Command soared over the Belarusian capital and dropped cluster bombs on the Minsk International Airport, severely damaging the facility and catching numerous aircraft on the ground. Another stealth bomber came in from the south over Ukrainian airspace and hit a power station just outside of Minsk that was supplying the energy of much of the Belarusian capital, causing blackouts and panic within the city. B-52 bombers over the Baltic Sea launched AGM-86 LACMs at a target inside Minsk proper; the Defence Ministry building. That target was hit with numerous missiles and the building flattened, but there was collateral damage nonetheless, with one of the missiles going off course and striking an apartment building.

The situation was much the same over Kaliningrad. Despite heavy losses, laser-guided bombs as well as missiles and conventional munitions struck fuel and ammunition dumps, hangers, runways, control towers, and barracks located on the Russian airbases at Chkalovsk, Chernyahovsk, Donskoye, and Khrabrovo. Heavy damage was caused, especially at Chkalovsk when another Spirit flew in directly above its target and released cluster munitions, successfully rendering the runway inoperable.

Clashes over the Baltic Sea occurred first at long range with the Americans using their AIM-120 AMRAAMs and the Russians using their similar R-27s. Eagles, Flankers & Foxhounds alike manoeuvred at high speeds, pulling turns at almost impossibly high gees. They dispensed pieces of metal chaff to distract radar-guided missiles as they flew. For some, these defensive efforts worked; others were not so lucky. More long-range missiles were fired as the fighters closed to grapple at shorter range. The American pilots then switched to AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, heat-seekers rather than radar-guided weapons. The sky in which they fought was pitch dark and pilots had to make snap judgements about the validity of their targets. Friendly-fire incidents happened in significant numbers despite the use of Identify Friend/Foe (IFF) systems.

The duel would end with the F-15s bugging out westwards and returning back to Lakenheath, with the pilots of the 493rd being able to claim eleven kills; the Russians could claim six.

The fighter losses are huge. There might be some high claims by NATO pilots though the Russians have still taken a huge beating in the air.
You're correct, they can't keep taking these loses fir very long and have a functioning air force.