Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

I'll add this to my notes for an update coming Monday concerning the US.




Thank you very much.

Sixty-Seven

After two days of relative quite in the Pacific fighting would finally break out on a large-scale in the Far East. The Royal Australian Navy got its first taste of action early in the morning on August 9th. Out in the Java Sea on routine but conveniently-timed training exercises, a pair of Australian warships, HMAS Anzac & HMAS Melbourne, found themselves ordered to head southwards into the Sea of Japan and link up with the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet. Their task would be to support the airstrikes against the Russian Far East which were sure to be swift-in-coming. HMAS Stuart & HMAS Warramunga, two more frigates of the RAN, set sail from Garden Island off of Western Australia, joined by the diesel-electric submarine HMAS Collins. Those three vessels were to join the Anzac & the Melbourne further out to sea as they passed Singapore, itself a country that was mobilising and preparing to deploy troops in aid of NATO. En route past Jakarta, Anzac & Melbourne found themselves stalked by a contact which seemed to appear and disappear randomly in the murky Pacific waters. This was the Russian Project-636 (Kilo-class) submarine Mogocha. Her crew had been eagerly waiting to go into action against US cargo ships passing Indonesia, but instead, after Australia voted yesterday to enter World War III by an overwhelmingly high margin, they now had orders to engage whatever ships of the Royal Australian Navy or the Royal New Zealand Navy that they came across. The Kilo moved into position and fired a trio of torpedoes at the two RAN ships, only to have two of them miss and the third fail to detonate. The Australians quickly counterattacked, with both of the SH-60 Seahawk helicopters on each Australian frigate taking to the skies in search of vengeance. It didn’t take long for them to locate Mogocha, sinking her with an ASROC. Surprisingly, several of the Russian crew members survived the sinking of their boat and were hauled aboard the Melbourne as Prisoners of War.

Russia’s Pacific Fleet met far more success closer to home. An American surface action group was leaving Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, tracked by another Russian submarine. Five vessels, USS Lake Champlain, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, the Burke-class destroyers Shoup & Oscar Austin, and the Perry-class frigate USS Taylor, were there, along with the supply ship USNS Arctic. There was meant to be a submarine from Guam meeting them outside the Japanese naval base, but a delay further south had meant that the USS Virginia would not be on station for some time, leaving the task force without any undersea protection. Those five US Navy ships were tracked as they moved further out to sea, with that Russian submarine, the Akula-class boat Samara, silently trailing behind them. US Navy maritime patrols aircraft as well as surveillance by the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Forces failed to detect the presence of the Samara because of a series of mistakes. Those mistakes would be disastrous for some. Pacific Command hadn’t been as prepared for war as European Command or STRATCOM with its ICBMs and B-52s had been. PACOM hadn’t been allowed to go to DEFCON 3 when other commands had done so and far less forces had been allocated to it that had gone to Europe. The result was that losses were going to be taken due to a general lack of preparedness and enthusiasm. So far, US warplanes were not being allowed to fly from their bases in Japan, and so the ships below lacked air cover as there was no carrier in the area and it would be several days before a carrier strike group would be in position to begin operations against Vladivostok or Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

Samara launched several of her Shkval torpedoes in her first attack run. The American ships manoeuvred to avoid the projectiles, meeting some success. But not enough. The supply ship Arctic was hit and damaged while the smallest vessel in the surface task group, the Taylor, was sunk when a Russian torpedo slammed into her hull, practically blowing the ship in half with dozens of lives lost. The cruiser and the two destroyers scrambled their ASW helicopters in the hopes of catching the offender; their efforts would fail. Not only this, but the Russian submarine came around again to launch a second attack. In a combination of foul luck for the Americans and good luck for the Russians, a false positive was detected at the rear of the American fleet, diverting their attention in that direction and leaving Samara free to strike again from the east. The origin of the false positive was never discovered although some would speculate that it was a Chinese submarine. The Russian submarine paused to launch her SS-N-27 Sizzler anti-ship cruise missiles from afar after running away to buy herself some time to escape. She got off six missiles before being forced to flee away from her victims.

Four of those missiles were shot down; two would strike their targets with precision.

USNS Arctic, already gravely damaged, was struck and sank when a missile tore through her body and detonated. Many of her crew were killed and others would have to be fished out of the Pacific by helicopters, suffering from grave injuries. USS Lake Champlain also took a missile hit, albeit one less fatal than the strike on the Arctic. Damage control parties expertly gained control of the situation, extinguishing the fires where the Sizzler had struck in front of the bridge and preventing any major flooding, thus saving their ship and their own lives too.

The island of Guam came under attack later on in the day. Russian Bear bombers, only three aircraft in total but each laden with missiles, took off from the Kamchatka Peninsula and flew down southwards, avoiding with some effort the United States Navy’s scattered fleet in the region. Right now, the Americans were focusing on consolidating their forces, before pushing into the Sea of Okhotsk in future. The Bears were detected by a Japanese Air Self Defence Forces Sentry Airborne Warning & Control System aircraft. A decision on what to do next was made in Tokyo. The Minister of Defence was left with the decision to make, advised his Chiefs of Staff for the AWACS to vector in F-15Js from Hokkaido to shoot down the bombers. The Minister eventually decided to refuse this option; he was told that he could at least grant the JSDF permission to vector in American interceptors and allow the US jets to take off from Yokota Air Base.

Half of this request was granted. The F-16s on the tarmac at Yokota would stand down, but the JASDF would release its Sentry to the US Air Force and they could in turn use it to track the Bears and assist American fighters from Guam in shooting them down.

This just wasn’t enough to stop the Russian bombers. They launched their cruise missiles well away from Guam itself, never even needing to enter the interception envelope of the F-22s stationed there at Andersen Air Force Base. The KH-55SMs dropped down to a low altitude to avoid air defences and fighters, but some of them were splashed by the Raptors regardless. As always, it seemed, enough cruise missiles would get through to do the damage that was required of them, but not enough to shut down the airbase for good. A missile struck a hardened aircraft shelter, collapsing it atop several aircraft, while another Kent crashed into the main control tower; more missiles with runway-cratering warheads hit damage to the taxiways but failed to shut them down; the worst loss of life occurred when a Marine Corps KC-130 tanker, filled with fuel, received a direct hit. The predictable result of this was a huge explosion which killed twenty-two Marine Corps and Air Force personnel and sent a fireball rising into the sky. It could have been a lot worse, but Andersen Air Force Base had taken something of a beating. One of the biggest surprises of the day happened some hours after the missiles struck.

Sensors set up around Andersen AFB to detect attacks by biological or chemical weapons suddenly went off. The whole base went to the highest possible protective posture, with gas masks and NBC suits worn. A sniffer south of the airfield reported that it had detected a potential biological weapon rather than a chemical or radiological one. This information was sent up the chain of command. In the end, all it turned out to be was a false alarm. Many were shaken up though; Guam was the perfect place to attack with bioweapons, being an island and thus leaving little possibility of outside contamination. By the time the news reached Raven Rock about a possible biological attack on US forces, it had already been refuted. Fear had been struck into many hearts though. Chemical and nuclear weapons attacks had been considered in much more detail than potential biological strikes, and the Joint Chiefs wanted to put more effort into countering a potential escalation of the war to the WMD level.

All in all, the first day of real fighting in the Pacific Ocean had been a rough one for the Allies. Two warships had been lost and many casualties taken & damage incurred at Guam, with little to show for it beyond a single Russian diesel-electric submarine sunk in the Java Sea.

Nice map, gives us a good insight of how the war goes.

Sixty–Eight

The third day of the war saw a trio of large-scale engagements take place on the ground in Northern Norway. The first of those was in the western part of the region, over in the area of Russian occupation centred upon the captured Bardufoss Air Station. Taking over the fight from the embattled and far-outnumbered Norwegians, the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade moved into the attack to drive the Russian airmobile forces out of there and retake the Bardufoss airhead. They also sought to reopen Highway-6 too. It was going to be no easy task but they went at it with all they had. Part of the 2nd Brigade moved up from the south, following the main road up from Narvik, and thus running into the outer defensive lines of their opponents more than a dozen miles away at Setermoen; the rest of the highly-mobile force conducted a landing at Sørreisa, a coastal village on the Russian’s right flank. American tanks made all the difference at Setermoen. A company of M-1A2s aided the Marine Riflemen in overcoming Russian resistance there. Two of those tanks were destroyed and a third left temporarily disabled when enemy anti-tank missile teams did their worst but the others tipped the scales of the fight greatly in American favour. Their cannons especially had ‘fun’ when hitting Russian light armoured vehicles at distance and with great accuracy. In went the Marine Riflemen behind them and they were all over the Russians. An organised withdrawal became a rout when the retreat went to hell out on open ground. Only when the valley which the highway ran between the mountains was reached were the American stopped due to the Russians firing down from above and their mining of the approach. Before then though, hundreds of Russian casualties had been inflicted. At Sørreisa, Norwegian Home Guard troops had been fighting skirmishes there with Russian scouts when the US Marines arrived by hovercraft and helicopters. The village was taken in the briefest of fights and the Americans moved onwards. Another company of tanks escorted a battalion of Marine Riflemen in their LAV-25 & AAV-7 armoured vehicles to follow the road down to Bardufoss. The terrain here favoured the attacker, not the defender. The Americans were halfway to Bardufoss – they might have taken it too – before there were Russian aircraft in the sky. Flying impossibly low, and after getting through NATO fighter coverage, these Naval Aviation aircraft were Tu-22M Backfire bombers tasked today for the air-to-ground role rather than a missile strike over the ocean. They screeched in and dropped their heavy payloads of unguided bombs before flying away unmolested. Three dozen 1100lb high-explosive bombs fell atop the US Marines. While not perfect, the accuracy of the strike was rather good. American losses were horrendous. The tanks were generally unscathed but the other armoured vehicles, laden with men, came off far worse. The advance was halted around the village of Finnset. The Americans dealt with those as best as possible while also reorganised their men with the intention of moving again in the coming hours. Before they could do that, just an hour after the Backfire strike, a volley of long-range missiles arrived. These were Isklanders launched from a great distance away yet their impacts were remarkable in their accuracy as well. Again, there was a wave of human casualties. Neither the ‘luck’ of the air strike nor the ballistic missiles were just that. The US Marines were under observation with someone calling-in those attacks perfectly in terms of timing and devastation. Russian spotters were clearly nearby. The Americans spread out on the hunt for them, all the while delaying the continuing drive on Bardufoss until they could be located and killed.

The Norwegians had the same issue at Lakselv. They came under air and missile attack from afar right in the middle of their big fight against the Russian ground forces coming over from Kola. While the Brigade Nord – Norway’s heavy ground forces – was engaging the Russian’s 200th Motor Rifle Brigade in a fight which they believed they could win, those strikes took place. It was rather unfair and the Norwegians suffered gravely in the face of them. They had their own spotters out and were trying to do the same to the Russians but were hit themselves much harder. Norwegian F-16s made a fantastic strike over the 200th Brigade where bombs and rockets were used in a targeted strike (two of the fighters were lost to ground-based air defences post-strike though; a serious loss) to impact the fight yet in came another pair of those Backfires dropping their own bombs and Isklanders also arrived. The Brigade Nord had its frontline units hit along with its headquarters and artillery in the rear. Norwegian soldiers at the frontlines were winning until that strike against their support network. Norwegian tanks and armoured infantry, well-supported by heavy guns, were fighting the Russians, even with their T-80 tanks and their own armoured vehicles & artillery, to a standstill. The Russians were channeled into kill-zones and smashed up. Then the brigade commander and most of his staff were killed as well as knocking out of two of the three batteries of M-109 self-propelled guns. The senior surviving Norwegian officer was the lieutenant-colonel commanding the Telemark Battalion and he gave the order for a withdrawal when those strikes were followed by the Russians throwing in even more men. This was something planned beforehand should the worst happen – what came was unexpected in its form but not a complete surprise overall – and the Brigade Nord withdrew from the battlefield. The loss of the majority of their guns really hurt the Norwegians. The Russians had more of their own plus also their BM-21 rocket-launchers; the Norwegian Army’s MLRS systems had been in storage since 2007 and, while being broken out ready for use, they weren’t at Lakselv. Already outnumbered, the Norwegians were now significantly outgunned. Russian spotters clearly had them firmly under observation here ready for more distant strikes. Highway-6 (it ran the length of Norway) wasn’t followed by Brigade Nord as it went the long way around. They instead cut over the wilderness on a pre-scouted route towards Alta. The Russians had ‘cheated’ and won the day at Lakselv yet the Brigade Nord, even hurt as it was, would fight again: the Norwegians aimed to string the Russians out on their way to Alta leaving them open and exposed to more commando attacks on their lines of communications than they’d already had. The withdrawal was successful. The Norwegians cut and ran before the Russians though they would, before they though they could. It would be up to them to now try and follow for another fight further westwards.

Battle no. 3 was fought at Tromsø. It involved Anglo-Dutch forces fighting Russian marines, the 3rd Commando Brigade and the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade. Each moved on the Tromsø area to get there ahead of the other. Air and naval support was provided for each while they both had men on the ground ahead of their landings: Norwegian special forces and Home Guard troops for NATO with the Russians having commando frogmen there. What a fight it was. For each side, controlling Tromsø with a significant force meant not just denying it to the other but using the commanding position to influence the other battles raging both to the southwest at Bardufoss and to the east at Lakselv (later Alta). There was a reasonable understanding of the other’s intentions too and thus efforts made to stop their opponents from getting their men there ahead of friendly forces. Each could have backed out at the last minute, maybe they should have in fact, yet they went ahead. Tromsø suddenly became the key to winning the fight for control of Northern Norway when beforehand attention had been elsewhere. It would be a make-or-break for NATO and Russia too with neither side predicting the draw, rather than outright victory or defeat, which occurred when they clashed here.

Royal Marines with the Brigade Patrol Troop – joined by some Dutchmen serving among their Mountain Reconnaissance Troop – met with Norwegian forces on the ground. There were regular special forces there but also high-readiness forces of their Home Guard. The Norwegian Home Guard was no joke, especially the locally-based reconnaissance & sharpshooter detachments at Tromsø. Clashes with Russian naval Spetsnaz took place with the Russians coming off far worse. NATO troops opened the way for the arrival of incoming forces to make use of the extensive transportation facilities which Tromsø offered. The Russian commandos failed to take either the airport, the port nor the tunnel & bridges. Helicopters started to deploy Royal Marines from 42 Commando into Tromsø as NATO won the race. Incoming Royal Navy and Dutch amphibious ships were bringing in more men and they were covered by external support. Everything was going oh so well before Russian aircraft turned up. NATO air support was supposed to be on-hand yet it was missing at the crucial moment when Su-27 fighters engaged Norwegian F-16s and neither the British nor the Dutch had fighters of their own present. Below the high-altitude fighter battle, several flights of Su-24s came in after racing down fjords where a couple of them fell to Norwegian missile teams but not enough to make a real difference. Tactical anti-ship missiles fired from the Su-24s hit several vessels in a complete failure of the overall air defence set-up. HMS Albion was struck by two Ka-31 missiles and the Dutch HNLMS Johan de Witt was hit by another. These were big ships, Landing Platform Docks with helicopters and well-decks, each well away from Tromsø itself. Neither would be lost but major losses occurred aboard in terms of men leaving them out of action. A trio of frigates assigned to support them (one British, one Dutch and one Norwegian) all escaped unharmed from this attack: their mission was to stop a missile attack but they had failed. Closer to Tromsø, other flights of Russian aircraft got in-closer aiming to hit smaller landing craft disgorged from the struck LPDs and also shoot-up any helicopters as well. They weren’t so effective yet did cause quite the amount of chaos. Everyone was asking where were those fighters from the US Navy aircraft carrier out to sea – why weren’t there American jets in the sky? 45 Commando was meant to follow 42 Commando into Tromsø before afterwards the Dutch 2nd Marine Combat Group (battalion-sized) would follow along with the 1st Battalion, The Rifles: a British Army unit assigned to the 3rd Brigade. There would be landings on the island which Tromsø sat directly but also all around it including the mainland to which it was linked. Much of 45 Commando was aboard HMS Ocean, a helicopter carrier which had hit an incoming Ka-31 anti-ship missile with its Phalanx multi-barrelled guns when RAM anti-aircraft missiles from the escorting Norwegian frigate had failed to do the job. The airlift using Sea Kings and Chinooks went ahead to get 45 Commando to Tromsø less they be aboard ship when another Russian air strike came. This was underway when the Russians started their own landing operations, coming in from the north.

The Northern Fleet battered its way past NATO efforts to stop them doing so. They took loses which NATO believed would have forced them to call off the landings and did so at a time when everyone was waiting for aircraft from the carrier USS Harry S. Truman was going to show up to finish them off. That wait for carrier aircraft would be a long wait indeed… Norwegian forces engaged the Russian amphibious ships and escorting warships. They used submarines, hastily-laid minefields and also the best efforts of the Kystjegerkommandoen (KJK: the Coastal Ranger Commando) to try and stop them. KJK special forces teams used CB90 highspeed coastal boats to deposit missile teams throughout fjords among tiny islands and inlets where they had Hellfires with them to join those fitted to other boats. A missile such as the Hellfire was going to ruin anyone’s day. Several of these were fired successfully at Russian ships while other vessels ran into torpedoes fired from beneath the waves or mines. Serious Russian loses were inflicted. Eyes went upwards. Where were all those incoming American aircraft? The Russians went onwards. Their own amphibious ships including two rather old Ivan Rogov LPDs removed from reserve status last year & patched up for service started launching landing craft and helicopters. Escorting them and other assault-rolled ships were many warships. The biggest was a lone destroyer but the rest were missile-armed corvettes all of which were very far from home and had had a terrible voyage. If it hadn’t been summer with reasonable weather, these would never have made it this far considering their age and condition. For many, this would be their last voyage too. They approached Tromsø and joined in the fight. The 61st Brigade had two battalions of marines – one specialising in helicopter assaults and the other for landing craft – as well as a battalion of tanks and two more of heavy guns. Russian mobilisation earlier in the year had seen a further pair of less-trained reserve marine battalions added to the brigade’s strength. They were all sent to Tromsø, aiming to land like NATO did on the island but also nearby. The 61st Brigade put men ashore in a hasty fashion and often in the wrong place. Exposed aboard ship, there was a rush to get them on dry land. An actual assault into Tromsø – onto the island of Tromsøya – failed when the Norwegians drove that off before the Royal Marines rushing to the landing site could get involved: how the Norwegians would celebrate! Legends about the prowess of Norwegian Home Guard men firing their HK416 assault rifles in an attack following the reputed words of their commander (Men dere som er rovdyret. Russerne er nå byttet. Til Valhall!) into battle like Vikings of old were created. Defeating that landing near the airport was equally down to KJK firing a Hellfire into one of the landing craft bringing in men of the second wave. Bigger and more effective landings were made outside of Tromsø. The Russians got men and equipment ashore and were fast out to surround it. Yes, Tromsø was wanted as a base of operations by the 61st Brigade and they weren’t finished here, but they were always going to move off it with their follow-up effort to strike into the Norwegian mainland. Now that was underway. None of this was over. NATO was still fighting here and the British and Dutch were going to carry on bringing in men to keeping fighting alongside the Norwegians to drive the Russians out of what ground they had taken.

Once again, men were looking skywards and asking where were those aircraft from the American carrier?


The Harry S. Truman couldn’t put aircraft over Northern Norway because the gargantuan carrier was alight and soon to be lost after a cruise missile strike.

The Russian Navy’s submarine arm had been having a terrible war with many loses taken to several boats in multiple theatres all for little real gain. In the Norwegian Sea, they got themselves a real prize though. The US Navy had sent one of its carriers across the ocean and inbound for fighting both the Russian Navy at sea and also influencing the battle over Norway. The Northern Fleet’s battle fleet, with its own big ships including Russia’s own aircraft carrier, were in the American’s sights. Meanwhile, a Backfire strike was planned with a ‘dance of the vampires’ included in that where those missile-carrying bombers would join with the surface ships of the Northern Fleet firing its own missiles. Each was looking at the other ready to attack their opponent in the skies and on the surface However, before then, the submarine Orel made its own attack and what an attack that was!

The Orel was a Type-949A (to NATO an Oscar-class) cruise missile submarine. It was designed to launch waves of cruise missiles rather than as a multi-purpose platform like other Russian submarines active in the past few days which had also been firing torpedoes too. The huge submarine was noisy and couldn’t get close-in to the Americans. Already, she’d nearly been detected when first stalking the Royal Navy from afar: a task group built around the HMS Ark Royal complete with ground-attack RAF Harriers aboard that ship had therefore been sent south and out of the way ahead of the Tromsø mission. The US Navy was aware that there was a submarine out there and got one late yesterday, hitting a smaller boat (as said, Russian submarines weren’t having a great war) which they believed was the one which had threatened the British. Afterwards, the Truman went onwards and thus to her doom. A volley of seven missiles – an eighth refused to fly – were fired from VLS tubes from the Orel before she disappeared. Two thirds of her armament remained available for later strikes, including having another go at this American carrier is this one failed… which it didn’t.

From ninety miles away, those seven cruise missiles shot from their launch point towards the Americans. They were fast, very fast. Each flew low and quicker than the speed of sound towards the Truman. Their launches were detected on radar and then the search radar which one of them activated was picked up too. Identified in milliseconds for what they were, the US Navy realised it was facing an attack by P-700s: missiles given the NATO codename SS-N-19 Shipwreck. These were known to operate in swarms using artificial intelligence and the fear at once was that they really were going to cause a shipwreck indeed. Defences measures were enacted. Several escorts fired their guns and missiles. Jamming systems came online and decoys were attempted. Two of the P-700s were brought down and one spoofed away. Given more time, the Americans could have gotten them all. They filled the skies with ordnance and the pair of missiles which they hit in-flight were those which climbed up higher to use its radar to guide-in the rest. Yet, the third one which did this matched up the radar profile of the targeted American carrier just as the two before had done wasn’t shot down. It guided itself and its three sisters into the ship ahead.

All four missiles struck the Truman down its starboard side.

These were huge missiles: each was ten meters long. They carried with them a 1600lb high-explosive warhead as well as unspent (and also high-explosive) rocket fuel. The force of their impact was extremely damaging and that came before the warhead detonations. Rocket fuel was spread everywhere and this went up too. The fires which engulfed the Truman were like the legends of hellfire. Almost six thousand crew were aboard. Men and women sailors of the US Navy were all in the way of the explosions and the fire. In the event of an attack on the carrier, everyone had a job to do. The crew tried and damage control efforts were made. Heroism was shown aboard. The challenge was too much though. The damage done was terrific and the fires moved with a rapidity unforeseen. Hundreds of casualties were inflicted at the moment of impact and hundreds more were caused within minutes. More and more of the ship was being lost to the flames and also the choking, deadly smoke. Soon enough, the carrier was effectively cut in half in terms of the ability to move damage control parties and firefighters up and down her length. The Truman just kept burning and this couldn’t be stopped.

Forty minutes after impact, the order came to abandon ship. Casualties went off first followed by the rest of the crew soon enough. There were several warships nearby which took aboard a mass of sailors each. Forty-one hundred got off, just over two-thirds of the Truman’s crew. The rest, all of those sailors who’d called the carrier home and gone to war aboard here, would be lost with her. In the coming days, burnt out and left drifting, the sea would take the Truman and those inside down to a watery grave at the bottom of the Norwegian Sea. As to those other US Navy ships which had been part of the battle group, two cruisers & three destroyers & a frigate & two support ships, they not only had to accommodate those who escaped from the Truman (many of whom were injured; the burns victims being plentiful), but they now had no air cover. There was a Russian battle fleet over the horizon. Its twenty or so Su-33s might not have looked that threatening when the Truman had her fifty plus FA-18s yet things were different now. Those Russian ships had all those missiles too: many more P-700s looking to cause another shipwreck. The US Navy turned around and ran from that fight. They headed south and seeking the safety of air cover from land. They could only hope that the Orel didn’t finish them off with another missile attack during that flight to safety.

I personnally doubt that consider that line seems like the epic-esque way nobody actually talks. Also, it should be "rovdyrene" (predators), "rovdyret" is singular, not plural. 

Great update! Kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Two more updates out tomorrow!