Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

Hot damn!
The Harrogate shootout was excellent but this was brilliant.

Brutal resolution to the assassination arc. Spetsnaz heads are not the only ones that are going to roll.



I think you mean Salt Lake City?

The Spetsnaz commandoes are, because Russia and the United States are signatories of the Geneva Convention, lawful combatants as they are members of the Russian Armed Forces. The fact they were not wearing uniform does not invalidate their status.

Article 43. Armed forces
1. The armed forces of a Party to a conflict consist of all organized armed forces, groups and units which are under a command responsible to that Party for the conduct or its subordinates, even if that Party is represented by a government or an authority not recognized by an adverse Party. Such armed forces shall be subject to an internal disciplinary system which, inter alia, shall enforce compliance with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.

2. Members of the armed forces of a Party to a conflict (other than medical personnel and chaplains covered by Article 33 of the Third Convention) are combatants, that is to say, they have the right to participate directly in hostilities.

3. Whenever a Party to a conflict incorporates a paramilitary or armed law enforcement agency into its armed forces it shall so notify the other Parties to the conflict.

Although the Geneva Convention states a recognisable uniform should be worn, under international law there is no definitive standard of what constitutes a uniform.

The Spetsnaz are under the Geneva Convention entitled to Prisoner of War status as per Article 43 (above) and Article 44 (below), however they have violated the provisions of paragraph 3 and 4 of article 44 so they violate their status but are still to be afforded protections as per the Third Geneva Convention and the 1st Geneva Protocol (which these articles are taken from).

Article 44. Combatants and prisoners of war

1. Any combatant, as defined in Article 43, who falls into the power of an adverse Party shall be a prisoner of war.

2. While all combatants are obliged to comply with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, violations of these rules shall not deprive a combatant of his right to be a combatant or, if he falls into the power of an adverse Party, of his right to be a prisoner of war, except as provided in paragraphs 3 and 4.

3. In order to promote the protection of the civilian population from the effects of hostilities, combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack. Recognizing, however, that there are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly:

(a) during each military engagement, and (b) during such time as he is visible to the adversary while he is engaged in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he is to participate.

Acts which comply with the requirements of this paragraph shall not be considered as perfidious within the meaning of Article 37, paragraph 1 (c).

4. A combatant who falls into the power of an adverse Party while failing to meet the requirements set forth in the second sentence of paragraph 3 shall forfeit his right to be a prisoner of war, but he shall, nevertheless, be given protections equivalent in all respects to those accorded to prisoners of war by the Third Convention and by this Protocol. This protection includes protections equivalent to those accorded to prisoners of war by the Third Convention in the case where such a person is tried and punished for any offences he has committed.

5. Any combatant who falls into the power of an adverse Party while not engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack shall not forfeit his rights to be a combatant and a prisoner of war by virtue of his prior activities .

6. This Article is without prejudice to the right of any person to be a prisoner of war pursuant to Article 4 of the Third Convention.

7. This Article is not intended to change the generally accepted practice of States with respect to the wearing of the uniform by combatants assigned to the regular, uniformed armed units of a Party to the conflict.

8. In addition to the categories of persons mentioned in Article 13 of the First and Second Conventions, all members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as defined in Article 43 of this Protocol, shall be entitled to protection under those Conventions if they are wounded or sick or, in the case of the Second Convention, shipwrecked at sea or in other waters.

In addition the Spetsnaz have committed grave breaches of the third and fourth Geneva Conventions.

Grave breaches

Not all violations of the treaty are treated equally. The most serious crimes are termed grave breaches, and provide a legal definition of a war crime.

Grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions include the following acts if committed against a person protected by the convention:

Willful killing, torture or inhumane treatment, including biological experiments.

Willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.

Compelling a protected person to serve in the armed forces of a hostile power.

Willfully depriving a protected person of the right to a fair trial if accused of a war crime.

Also considered grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention are the following:

Taking of hostages.

Extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.

Unlawful deportation, transfer, or confinement.

So the Spetsnaz can be charged under US law with the crimes committed against the civilians and the hostages they took during their escape attempt. These acts being a violation of Article 51 of the First Geneva Protocol. However the killing of President Obama and the others in the attack on Marine One is a legitimate military operation.

Article 51. - Protection of the civilian population

1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.

2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.

3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.

4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are: (a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective; (b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or (c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;

and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.

5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: (a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects;

and

(b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

6. Attacks against the civilian population or civilians by way of reprisals are prohibited.

7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.

8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.

There is no legal provision under the Geneva Convention for summary execution of prisoners.

I hope this is of use to the forum. I look forward to the next instalment of this engaging alternate history.

Ninety–Two

In the very early hours of yesterday morning, the Americans had put their B-2 stealth bombers over Russia and used them to drop bombs on Saint Petersburg as well as an airbase to the south of the country’s second city. One of those had been shot down – a mighty success indeed for Russia’s air defences – but only after dropping its payload; the other pair had gotten away clean. No agreement had been made officially or unofficially with the United States when it came to not attacking the territory of each other… leaving out those of allies, naturally. In the Kremlin, Putin and his gang had just assumed that the Americans wouldn’t dare do such a thing. The risks were just too great that nuclear escalation could occur from that. Biden wasn’t playing by the ‘rules’ set in Moscow though. Earlier today, American cruise missiles, fired by a submarine far off that Russia hadn’t seen, had slammed into military targets across the Kola Peninsula. Sovereign Russian soil had been hit again by American action. Retaliation was already planned for the B-2 strikes though only reinforced with extra haste due to the Tomahawk hits. American actions like this couldn’t carry on. They would have to be stopped and the only was which was seen as being capable of doing that was to hit back, and hit back hard too. Biden would thus then surely see sense, yes?

Operation Yastreb (Hawk) went ahead, striking deep into the heart of the American homeland this evening.

A pair of Ilysuhin-78 airborne tankers refueled Russian bombers over the Kara Sea before then orbiting in wait for those aircraft going over the Pole to return. The bombers were Tupolev-160Ms: two Blackjacks laden with belly-fulls of cruise missiles within their internal bomb bays. These high-flying aircraft went above Novaya Zemlya, the Greenland Sea and then the top of Greenland. They kept on going, crossing the Arctic and the top of the world as they did so. Then it was back down the other side. Baffin Bay was overflown before they overflew Baffin Island. Canada was now below them and they were detected. Radars associated with the North Warning System – the successor for the Cold War era DEW Line – picked up first one and then the second Blackjack. Instantaneous reports back to NORAD informed the joint US-Canadian air defence set-up that Russian bombers were inbound on North America after coming over the Pole.

Upon reaching landfall where known radar coverage existed (there was no conceivable way around it), and moments before being detected, confirmation signals had been sent from the bombers that they had gotten this far. Just as quick as the NORAD systems were working, the Russians were fast in action too. From Moscow a message was sent over the Hot-Line connecting the Kremlin to the Pentagon. A pre-drafted email was delivered to the Americans. The gist of it was simple: a military strike is being launched against your country in retaliation for your own against our nation – no thermonuclear nor any other special weapons are being used – Russia will respond disproportionally to any counteraction using thermonuclear or special weapons – this is not a leadership decapitation strike.

Yastreb continued. The bombers, separated by over a hundred miles of sky between them, carried on going south and were soon above Hudson Bay. They were deep inside Canada. Neither the Americans nor the Canadians had any interceptor aircraft nor missiles anywhere within reach of them. Their launch points were achieved and the firing of their war-loads commenced. Bomb-bay doors opened and cruise missiles fell free. Twelve Kh-101s each with a 500kg high-explosive warhead came out of each Blackjack. Three of those missiles wouldn’t make it to their targets but the other twenty-one would. With the payloads gone, those bomb-bay doors were shut and the bombers made a sharp turn to the north. They went back again, making the long flight above the Arctic towards those tankers waiting for them very far away. As was the case before launch, no fighters nor missiles chased after them. They would get home safe.


Canadian CF-18 Hornets from 410 Squadron had stayed at home for air defence tasks while aircraft and personnel with four combat squadrons of further Hornets were undergoing or had already completed deployment to Europe. 410 Squadron was a training unit and home-based at CFB Cold Lake in Alberta. What aircraft and personnel there were operational were spread across various sites while now preforming NORAD tasks alongside the Americans. These locations were very far away from Cold Lake. Inuvik and Yellowknife were across in the Northwest Territories while Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet were spread across Nunavut. Forward Operating Locations (FOL) had long been established at these places, all for the purposes for dispatching fighters to these lonely FOLs for wartime use only. There was room for six aircraft at each though only two CF-18s were currently assigned to each of the four locations: there had been the intention of the Americans to send some of their Air National Guard F-15s to at least two of the FOLs yet that had yet to come to pass. How the Americans could regret that delay. From out of the Nunavut sites, Canadian fighters climbed into the skies. They were too late to catch the long-gone Blackjacks heading north and neither in a position to go after the cruise missiles heading south. Given time and more warning, they could have done so much but, alas, the fighters flew around impotent to stop what had happened.

There were American fighters in the Upper Mid-West. Those ANG fighters whose forward deployment into the Canadian Arctic had been delayed had come from their home station in Louisiana first to Minot AFB in North Dakota. Several of the F-15C Eagles flown by pilots with the 122nd Fighter Squadron were in the meantime sub-deploying to airports through Minnesota and Michigan. The NORAD alert was sent to them and they had more time to get airborne. Six were in the sky soon enough – three pairs – and received information that while the detected bombers had tuned back, there were cruise missiles in the sky instead. The Kh-101s weren’t clustered together. There were more than twenty of them all over the sky above Canada and lancing southwards. They overflew Ontario just like the F-15s did. Missile shots were lined up against some of the cruise missiles where the Americans struggled to get close enough to do so. Sparrow and AMRAAM air-to-air missiles were fired…

…with none of those achieving a kill. These ANG fighters just didn’t have the most-modern onboard technology to make these kills: other F-15s which remained in frontline US Air Force service did, but those weren’t in Canadian skies this evening.

The Kh-101s flew onwards, crossing into American airspace. There were other ANG fighters, F-16s from many units either tasked for NORAD missions or in the final stages of readiness for overseas deployments, which got airborne and too failed to bring down the cruise missiles. One F-16 pilot with the Ohio Air National Guard put in a later claim for a ‘kill’ of a Kh-101s after firing a Sparrow at it when the missile and aircraft were each above Lake Erie though a malfunction brought that missile down. These were just weapons that the Americans found themselves embarrassingly unable to eliminate as they penetrated their homeland.


The Russian message over the Hot-Line had said that this wasn’t a decapitation strike – erm… hadn’t they already done that when killing Obama? – and nor was it a nuclear attack. The Americans had no idea whether that was true or not. NORAD showed two scattered groups of missiles targeting different areas of the nation. One was heading into the Mid-West; the other was lancing towards Washington. It sure as hell looked like a decapitation strike! Reactions were made accordingly. The United States prepared to undertake a nuclear response as those missiles carried on coming. Biden on his was out of Washington the moment the first warning had come of the Blackjacks and aboard a NEACP aircraft when those missiles started to reach their targets. NORAD plotted likely impact points, a process which was updated and frustratingly changed several times. Multiple ‘certain’ locations were eventually presented to the president moments before impact. It didn’t look like a nuclear attack but no one could be sure until the moments those cruise missiles started hitting American soil.

Nuclear attack options in response were at Biden’s fingertips in those last few moments.

Then the Kh-101s hit where they did. The Russians had kept their word: these weren’t thermonuclear blasts and – should Biden have been unable to leave Washington – this wasn’t set up as a decapitation strike either.

Eleven cruise missiles hit four targets in the Mid-West. Scott AFB in Illinois was struck with a lot of destruction caused here at this important US Air Force facility. Nearby, the Boeing plant at St. Louis, where Missouri meets Illinois, was hit as well: that was where there had been an immense recent increase in activity since the war started because St. Louis was where Super Hornets were manufactured. Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, a transportation facility of much more importance than Scott was, suffered little damage in comparison to what was seen in Illinois. Another Ohio target was the government-owned Lima Army Tank Plant: the Russians hit the place with three missiles for the same reason that they targeted Boeing, to cause major disruption to the urgent activity here too. None of these four sites were destroyed. Immense damage was done at three, little at a fourth. They were too big to be eliminated by those few missile which hit them… only a nuclear warhead would have done that. Casualties were high though, especially in St. Louis where the suburb of Ferguson had a Kh-101 land there when it missed the Boeing site.

The general Washington area was hit by the remaining ten missiles. Last minute changes to Yastreb had seen Andrews AFB knocked off the target list because that really was a decapitation target upon reflection and instead NAS Patuxent River struck instead: this was an important US Navy air facility though hardly worth hitting compared to what elsewhere was struck. These were the headquarters complexes of three United States intelligence agencies outside of Washington. At Chantilly in Virginia, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), was the first of those locations targeted. CIA headquarters at Langley, also in Virginia, was the second. The NSA at Fort Meade, up in Maryland, was the third. Up until the very last moments, the Americans had no idea that these places were where the Kh-101s would hit. They could have come screaming in to blow apart the White House, Congress, the Pentagon, Andrews… anywhere really. Russian targeting of these latter three places was very important. They weren’t going to destroy either of them but they aimed to cause maximum destruction and high casualties. To show the United States how exposed its critical national security infrastructure was to attack was the ultimate objective. From these places, war was being waged against Russia like it was from the White House and the Pentagon. The NRO came off the lightest with only one accurate hit of two: the other missile landed within the grounds of the nearby Washington-Dulles International Airport. Langley was hit hard with two of the main buildings each taking a direct hit. Across at Fort Meade, the carparks which surrounded the NSA buildings had one Russian missile tear an almighty hole in them. Two more missiles each slammed into the smaller of the two main headquarters’ buildings. They were meant to strike one apiece, eliminating each of these two iconic structures with all of that dark & menacing glass which formed their external appearance. The one hit was brought down, bringing numbers of casualties in the high hundreds, and there was still much destruction caused to the second.

Russian missiles did more damage to the US Intelligence Community than any spy or any whistleblower could ever do.


Biden wanted to know when the US Air Force was going to start putting bombs and missiles into buildings in and around Moscow. That early response from the president came when he was informed of the death and destruction caused outside of Washington. The Mid-West strikes were important yet those in Maryland and Virginia took most of the attention of the president. This was worse than 9-11 or what was being called 8-6 (the late-night August 6th downing of Marine One). Others might argue differently saying that those other attacks on the United States’ were far worse yet Russian cruise missiles killed more on August 12th than other outrages on American soil. That the latter didn’t come out of the blue like 9-11 and 8-6 would mean that for the time being they wouldn’t be ingrained on the public consciousness like the former pair. This was wartime and news of what happened, especially the media reaction where they could show iconic images to the public, was less prominent. News helicopters weren’t flying over Fort Meade broadcasting images of missile impacts. These attacks weren’t going to be secret, and neither could they be, but they just wouldn’t have that earlier effect throughout the country.

Debates over significance were for another day. The last of the missiles had impacted and no more Russian bombers came over the Pole today. Failure to have fighters in the sky and then the inability to shoot down those missiles on the way was a big deal. The failure of missile defences around Washington – there was a Patriot battery from a training unit out of its Oklahoma garrison but the low-flying Kh-101s were targets they couldn’t track against ground clutter – was also something not to be overlooked. However, what occupied the president and the top-tier of the government afterwards was how to respond. Russia just wasn’t going to get away with this. These attacks were just the latest addition to a list of atrocities which all needed an answer. That answer had to be done soon too.

There was no intention in Biden’s mind in the aftermath of the Yastreb operation to stop attacking the Russian homeland. That would be done at the earliest opportunity. How could he not order that done?

Ferguson? Oh, crap...

Wondered how the Russians were going to respond; I think there will be more attacks on the mainland of both nations...

Waiting for more...

I doubt it. That is a point-defence weapon... which leaves the question as to what happens with the downed wreckage of an aircraft hitting the ground.
These cruise missiles have defeated US fighters with standard weaponry - not the best, which is elsewhere - by terrain-hugging and onboard jamming. There really isn't much that could have stopped them. Maybe the latest Patriots but I think that the Kh-101 wins that fight.
Earlier in the war, Dutch F-16s - without the latest targeting upgrades - got Russian cruise missiles elsewhere overwater and there have been other successes against such weapons: that has been the combined efforts of AWACS support as well. When they are overland and flying low, the problem occurs.