Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

One Hundred and Sixteen

RFS Vologda, a Kilo-class submarine in the service of Russia’s Northern Fleet, entered the English Channel. The little boat came in via the wide western end, close to Cornwall, before turning towards France. Le Havre was where the Vologda reached by the evening. The last intelligence reported received, when the submarine was out in the North Atlantic yesterday, said that a major convoy of transport ships coming from the South-Eastern United States (Charleston, Jacksonville & Savannah) would be in-sight off Le Havre. The Vologda was to attack these as per standing orders to impede NATO’s war efforts to ship across the ocean a mass of military equipment. The convoy had already arrived: the Vologda was too late. There were just warships instead, vessels from many member states of the alliance. Inside databanks with the targeting computer there were the recorded sounds of ships detected in earlier (peacetime) cruises by this boat and also others with the Russian Navy. There was no need to surface to classify those ships. There were plenty of submarine hunters there, all of whom had guarded the convoy coming across the North Atlantic and they remained outside of the port area now. Maybe they were going to escort emptied ships going back to collect more military wares? Maybe they were awaiting new orders to deploy elsewhere? The captain of the Vologda didn’t know. He had no weapons aboard capable of attacking the unarmed ships which had got here ahead of schedule but those were enemy warships out ahead which he could target.

The Vologda attacked them. Firings were made of her torpedoes against them in two separate attacks where old but reliable Type-53-65s were used. These were wake-homers which followed the churn of ship’s propellers in the water rather than sonar detection. Many NATO ships had protection against such an attack. This worked to deflect several Russian torpedoes but not others. The Vologda had achieved some good tactical firing positions and would claim three kills in the boat’s war diary. Only one of those targeted warships was actually sunk: the two others were targeted but with failures to sink them. The lone kill achieved today was that of an American frigate, USS Underwood; the Canadian HMCS Charlottetown and the French FNS Montcalm, two more frigates, were shot at with the former damaged significantly and many Canadians sailors killed but the latter came off without a scratch. Quickly, the Vologda ran away. There were other ports to head towards on both sides of the English Channel and also beyond should the little boat chose to go through the Straits of Dover. Not long after departing from the scene of her kill, she got another. This time it wasn’t a warship but a civilian vessel: a cross-Channel ferry in military service and laden with trucks. Britain and France were cooperating significantly, beyond just NATO links, and aiding each other as much as possible due to ties between Cameron and Sarkozy. The ship and her cargo would be missed. In response, NATO would throw a massive effort at hunting her down. They wanted to protect their shipping as well as keep the flow of reinforcements & supplies coming: London and Paris pushed this hard. Moreover, the Vologda would have easily been carrying commando frogmen too. Concern was expressed that they could be used to hit the Channel Tunnel. There had been a worry about this for some time due to the amount of use that was seeing at the moment again with much Anglo-French aid for one another making use of it as a freight rather than passenger link. There were no naval Spetsnaz aboard and attacking something like that would need a lot of men. Regardless, that was the current thinking of many. A lot of NATO military assets – ships, submarines, aircraft and helicopters – would be thrown at trying to get the Vologda in the coming days, far disproportionate to all that it had already and could later achieve.


Aircraft from Task Force 20 were now active in Norwegian skies. From the decks of the carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Enterprise, FA-18s flew mission after mission. There were so many of them, all doing the job that those which had been on the USS Harry S. Truman were supposed to have been doing before their carrier was sunk ahead of them could see action. These Hornets and Super Hornets were flown by squadrons assigned to the US Navy, the US Navy Reserve and the US Marines. They undertook fighter missions, bombing runs and reconnaissance. Those from the Eisenhower and the Enterprise intended to swap roles daily. One carrier would focus on missions directly over Northern Norway while the other would focus on fleet defence tasks. Today Eisenhower’s aircraft were active above Bardufoss and also Tromsø. Russian forces underneath them came under a furious attack with serious losses sustained. Their own fighters had a terrible time in the sky and while air defences were able to make some impact, the Americans kept on coming. As to the aircraft from the Enterprise, those were ranging far out ahead. FA-18s were in the sky loaded with air-to-air missiles and all ready to take on a Russian cruise missile attack. Buddy-tanking was used to extend the range of the forwardmost fighters far out ahead and there was the support of several AWACS aircraft which each operated in an overlap fashion less the Russians use their long-range AWACS-killer missiles here. Enterprise’s fighters saw some action where they took down several Russian aircraft (reconnaissance jets & transports) who thought they were in ‘safe’ skies though they didn’t see any Backfires. In addition, the carrier’s air wing was also standing ready to launch a major anti-ship strike against the Northern Fleet when possible. The British had got the Russian’s flagship battle-cruiser but the Americans wanted their aircraft carrier.

The two US Navy carriers hadn’t come alone. TF 20 came with escorts of its own and at the same time, now there was significant air cover, NATO moved a chunk of surface naval power into the Norwegian Sea. There were many ships who had been kept back but now were forward-deployed. An equal parity in the air with the Russians beforehand had seen far too many ships lost yet now the situation had drastically changed with TF 20’s safe arrival. Unless the Russians could get through a Backfire strike – against so many ships spread out far and wide too thus making that difficult; and with their focus sure to be the carriers – these ships were all now protected from above. The threat in the Norwegian Sea was now submarines. NATO intelligence overestimated their numbers: they believed that there were four of them when in fact only two remained, one of those effectively trapped inside the Vestfjorden after striking them due to NATO activity to bar any further entry. Against this submarine threat, there were (including those with TF 20) close to fifty major warships – cruisers, destroyers & frigates – now in these waters. They had many tasks to do from anti-air defence to Tomahawk launches to coastal raiding missions soon to begin at the very top of Norway, but the fact remained that the Norwegian Sea was now fully in control of NATO. No longer would it be contested like it had been before.

Many Russian submarines were out in the North Atlantic. There remained several attack models plus also those Oscars with their missile arsenals sent there to engage TF 20 but flatfooted by the American’s ‘deception’ in going the wrong way into the Norwegian Sea: using the Denmark Strait, not the main bit of the GIUK Gap. Updated intelligence reports and new orders came to these submarines today like they had yesterday to the Vologda. Two of the Akula-class hunter-killers and two Oscars were informed of the mass of NATO warships which could be found inside the Norwegian Sea behind them. Moreover, the carriers were now confirmed as being there. Turn back around, the order thus was, and go after the enemy there in less open waters… right into the lion’s den in fact. Acknowledgements were sent back over the satellite link-up. Upon providing those receipts, one of the submarines, RFS Krasnodar with all of its SS-N-19 Shipwrecks so far unused, came mightily close to being caught. ‘Sniffing’ the air for signals to intercept, a US Navy EP-3E Aires caught a burst transmission. Decoding the signal was impossible nor directly localizing it, but NATO aircraft headed that way. Atlantiques, Nimrods and P-3s went hunting for it. They dropped what seemed like an ocean of sonobuoys on the surface with the intention of following them with torpedoes and depth bombs. If they’d gotten a fix, they would have had a kill. Yet, the Oscar had made good a timely escape. Whether the Krasnodar and the others would survive the Norwegian Sea was a different matter entirely.


Another day in Poland, another day of the ongoing stalemate there.

The frontlines were moving all of the time. These movements were never more than a mile – at the very most – in either direction though. Both sides continued to push up against each other and fought over hills, patches of woodland and the banks of small rivers. They were seeking better defensive positions, better offensive positions too. Each fight saw tremendous amounts of ammunition being expended… and great loss of life too. To an outsider, this was all crazy. Maybe it was to those involved too. But to those who made the decisions, it was all important when looking at the big picture. It mattered that those hills, woods and riverbanks were held by their side and not the other! The future was what commanders were thinking of.

Huge mechanised armies had been brought to a halt by the other. Increasingly, lighter troops were entering the fight and replacing heavier forces on those frontlines. At the beginning of Operation Slava, NATO light forces had been run over – literally in many places – and those who survived pulled back with haste less they suffer the same fate. However, now lighter forces were being moved forward into battle instead of retreating. They came from across the alliance and were slotted into the frontlines to replace worn-down units of a heavier nature. On the other side of the frontlines, the Russians and Belorussians were doing the same. There was the withdrawal of some of their heavy units – not on the scale as NATO did – and the replacement too by lighter units. All of these soldiers sent to the front, wearing the uniforms of so many armies, continued to shoot at each other while those behind them were readied to start doing that again soon enough. Of quite the surprise today was that sudden order for full NBC protection amongst troops in the field, those on the frontlines and far behind them too. The reason why wasn’t something given: just the order to do it and do it now. It was no easy undertaking to get so many soldiers into such equipment and to keep them wearing it at all times no matter what else was going on. Civilians both sides of the frontlines noted the ‘men in spacesuits’ and there was a lot of panic among them too, panic which didn’t go away when they were told that everything was supposedly okay.

The US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division had taken wartime losses of sixty per cent overall. They’d been withdrawn from the fighting last week, long before the stalemate set in and Putin’s ceasefire offer was so thoroughly rejected by the Coalition. There was no way that the 3rd Infantry could fight again as it had done before without a major rebuilding. Personnel and equipment losses had been staggering. There was disorganization throughout. Morale within was at rock bottom. Officially, they remained undefeated but they certainly hadn’t been victorious. Talk back in the Pentagon had been of possibly disbanding the 3rd Infantry – on a temporary basis – and distributing what was left across Poland to other US Army units: a new division could be stood up back home at Georgia. Orders from the top had denied permission to do that because the political optics of that didn’t work. Therefore, while in Central Poland now, men and equipment were being added to the division. Work was being done to rebuild the 3rd Infantry in-the-field. This was going to take a long time and all for the sake of politics. In a similar situation was the Russian Army’s 5th Guards Tank Division. Likewise, they too had taken fierce losses which affected the whole of the division completely. The Americans had unleashed their Operation Dragon’s Fire against the 5 GTD and made sure that it ended up combat ineffective. From the bomb-damaged Ministry of Defence back in Moscow, instructions came that the 5 GTD was to stay on the rolls: it wouldn’t be broken up with surviving components used elsewhere. No large numbers of reinforcing troops or equipment came the division’s way when it was pulled back into Belarus but there was some rebuilding attempted. Like its American counterpart, this would take a long time and the best solution would have been temporary disbandment yet politics got in the way. These two combat divisions were the most extreme examples of the visible damage that the opposing armies in Poland had done to each other. That didn’t take away from everything else shot-up though. Neither side was able to go forward and fight a battle of maneuver as they had only so recently done. Rebuilding but also reinforcement remained the shape of things for the current time.

Yet, at some point soon enough, they would be back at full-scale mobile warfare once again.


There were NATO military personnel on the run in the Baltic States like there were behind enemy lines in Belarus, Northern Norway and the occupied parts of Poland. Aircrew were in the same situation as cut-off ground personnel where they were in unfriendly territory with a hostile enemy searching for them. Rescue efforts did occur but these depended upon the right circumstances. Some lasted hours only on the run, others much longer including more than a week… closer to two weeks now in a few cases. Being on the run meant that capture and possibly death could come at any moment. That wasn’t the only issue though. There was thirst, hunger, injuries & illness and also the mental health of those hiding in fear to factor in to how long those on the run would remain uncaught. Willpower kept some out of enemy captivity for a long time yet others just had a lot of good luck. For most though, they couldn’t stay hidden for very long. NATO military personnel turned themselves in, handing over their fates to the unknown. Russian intelligence activities in the occupied territory which was the three Baltic States saw them gain POWs from among out there hiding. It wasn’t the intention though. The FSB was running false resistance groups among the local populations. This allowed for limited acts to take place all to stop larger ones. It was also done to discredit and destroy real resistance too. The schemes were complicated and sometimes contradictory… reports back to Moscow made this all seem perfect and successful though, even when one of their senior officers, a rising star of a colonel, was slain by the Latvian Resistance when he was too clever for his own good. Certain NATO forces came into contact with these groups where they sought shelter & safety or were spotted by duped members of them by chance. The Russians swept up close to a hundred prisoners this way. It was something to consider for them for the future though they weren’t sure how to proceed any further: thought would be put into how this could be done deliberately and on a bigger scale for a sought-for purpose rather than pure chance.

Late on Monday night, the new prime minister in Rome had instructed that Italian military forces be made available to help defend the country’s NATO allies abroad. By Wednesday, there were Italian aircraft flying from a Polish airbase. This was rather quick! Tornado IDS’ and ECRs – the strike and electronic combat versions of this aircraft – were flying their first missions against those who had invaded Poland. 1 ATAF tasked the Italians sent from 6^o Stormo (6th Wing) to aid the Poles between Warsaw and Brest and they attacked the Belorussians below them. Only a few aircraft were involved on the first night but it would be an effort which would grow significantly. The speed of which this deployment was done was due to this being arranged before Berlusconi resigned. Direct contact between the Italian Armed Forces and NATO to plan this was approved at high levels on both sides (the Italian defence minister in Rome was involved) and so once the political decision had been made, off those jets flew from their base in Northern Italy to Radom Airport. The Italian Air Force had more aircraft in service though no more would be coming to north: they were instead involved in missions going southwards toward Libya alongside allies too. However, the personnel with 6^o Stormo weren’t the only Italians who were being sent to Eastern Europe: they’d be joined by troops too in an even bigger logistics effort (also something pre-planned) than which brought these aircraft here.

Down in Transnistria, the Bulgarians and Romanians broke through the last major organised resistance in their way to completing the occupation of most of that tiny breakaway nation. The worn-down Moldovans stayed back in their own country. A pincer movement saw the capital Tiraspol surrounded by heavily-armed mobile NATO troops in tanks and armoured vehicles. They had air support in the sky with them (American jets in number) along with plenty of their own artillery to blast away at their opponents. Infantrymen was what Transnistria had a lot of as well as lighter gear: these were unable to stop the advance forward though it was a costly one. Tiraspol would be fought over, but not today. As Transnistria fought its penultimate fight, the Russians evacuated the country. They went eastwards and into the Ukraine: the Ukrainian Army on the border stood aside on orders from Kiev as Russian paratroopers abandoned their ally and fled to safety. This was the last evacuation out of the country though there had already been preceding ones where support personnel rather than combat soldiers had been airlifted out before that air route was shut by NATO tanks occupying airheads. It was because of the Ukrainians opening the border like they did, along with a lot of other things that Kiev had done too though, that tonight, as gunfire took place around the edges of Tiraspol, the Operation Crowbar was launched. Flying from Romania and laden with a human cargo of Romanian special forces & pathfinders instead of Americans, two US Air Force MC-130P Combat Shadows dropped them at low altitude in unfriendly territory far beyond the borders of Romania and Transnistria. The Romanians followed those Russians who left Tiraspol first. Tomorrow other troops would follow them as the long-delayed Crowbar got going. That operation would take place on a certain peninsula within the Black Sea and the Romanians sent first wouldn’t be out there all by their lonesome for long.

There is a reason to be explained on Saturday.
Ukrainian neutrality is really, really stretching the limit: they are doing some rather un-neutral stuff. The Russians didn't mind the Ukrainians staying out because they rate their army poorly but NATO isn't so sure.

Hopefully, they'll smarten up damn quick in Mexico City.
Declare the cartels in league with Russia, denounce Russian violation of their sovereignty (forgetting the American action) and join the Coalition with haste. Otherwise it'll be US Marines in their capital!

Yeah, I don't think Mexico wants a repeat of the Mexican-American War...

Like that you mentioned Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, BTW (it's where George H.W. Bush trained in World War II IOTL)...

One Hundred and Eighteen

Uninvited, those Romanian special forces & pathfinders had gone to Kacha Airbase in the Crimea. This was one of four military air facilities on this Ukrainian peninsula. Kacha & Gvardeyskoe were exclusively for the use of Russian Naval Aviation, Saki was a Ukrainian facility which Russia was allowed access to and Belbek was an exclusive Ukrainian base. Kacha was a base for the Black Sea Fleet’s helicopters and fixed wing support aircraft; their combat aircraft were at Gvardeyskoe. In addition to those naval air operations from Kacha, missions over Transnistria had been conducted from here too which each time saw the aircraft involved cross Ukrainian airspace above the Crimea yet also mainland Ukraine too. It was those, especially in the last few days, which had seen the Americans transport the Romanians here with the intention of joining them. The Russians had taken prisoners out of Transnistria before the last resistance was confined to the capital Tiraspol. These POWs were NATO aircrews but also selective ground forces personnel from the fields of communications, intelligence and planning. The numbers of how many prisoners there were at Kacha and where exactly inside the base they were was something that Allied Forces Romania (the pre-war name remained for this three-star joint command despite the war being fought in Moldova and Transnistria) had been trying hard to determine since they had discovered what was going on with these flights. There was also the intention held since the beginning to go and liberate those prisoners but from higher up, that had been refused. NATO and the Coalition didn’t want the war to spread to the Ukraine. This had been a long-held position, even before the conflict erupted where war wasn’t wanted with Russia either but it was thought that the cost of fighting the Ukrainians as well would be too much. Moreover, there had been the hope that the Ukraine would turn against Russia and join the Coalition: such an act was believed to be something that could fatally damage Russia.

Ukrainian neutrality had been violated throughout the war. NATO drones had overflown the country to study its military forces stacked up against the borders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Twice the Crimea had been struck by the Americans with cruise missiles – fired from the destroyer USS Ross before she was sunk and from those launched by US Air Force B-52s – when aiming at Russian targets with some of those missiles going off course. In the eyes of the Coalition, none of this excused what the government of President Yanukovych in Kiev was doing though in cooperating with Russia’s war efforts. There had been the use of Ukrainian-flagged ships and Ukrainian-registered transport aircraft by Russia. Ukrainian airspace had been used for both Russia’s air actions against Poland and Moldova; the borders had been crossed on the ground with countless violations too not including the recent escape of Russian forces out of Transnistria. Ukrainian civilians had been caught up in multiple Russian intelligence operations and there was the suspicion – though no direct proof – that Ukrainian intelligence agencies had assisted in this directly. American intelligence was asserting that Kiev had agreed with Moscow that Ukrainian Air Force combat aircraft – MiG-29s, Su-24Ms & Su-27s – would be ‘transferred’ to the Russian Air Force to replace losses with payment made of new aircraft at a later date. What that transfer entailed, the CIA was saying, was for pilots and ground crews to come with the aircraft and there would just be a change of markings. This had been something that the DGSE’s Ukrainian spy at the embassy in Moscow was saying wasn’t exactly true – it was transports, not combat aircraft – as France disagreed with the United States on the detail… yet the intent was the same: the Ukraine was supplying Russia with much-needed equipment when Russia was in dire straits when it came to air power. Other things were going to be done on a political level but Operation Crowbar was to occur first.

The Romanians out ahead had spent the night gathering on-the-ground intelligence to add to images from satellites and also a drone overflight of Kacha too. Crowbar was a risky operation because not all of the necessary pieces were in-place when it came to intelligence. There were actually some last-minute calls back at Buzău – where Allied Forces Romania was headquarters – for a delay at this late stage. Whereas before politics had held this back, now it pushed it forward. The rescue mission was a go. American CV-22s along with further MC-130s, escorted by F-16s as well as some Hungarian Gripens, flew from Romania across the northwestern corner of the Black Sea. The waters below them had seen the death of much of the Romanian Navy (they had lost both of their frigates they had received in recent years from the Royal Navy as well as many other ships too) in the past thirteen days. Aboard the tiltrotors and the specialist assault transport aircraft were Romanians as well as Americans. Romanian special forces had served alongside the Americans in Iraq and joined them in coming to the Crimea.

Kacha was quite the fight. It didn’t all go perfectly. The Russians were unaware of what was coming but still reacted quick. They were overawed though by the massive assault which hit them. They were supposed to be safe here in the Crimea. Kacha had been hit by a few cruise missiles but nothing else. Now there were bombs, missiles and enemy commandos. Not everyone stood about with their jaws open and with wet underwear. Others fired back where they used their weapons for their first time… against a high-trained and motivated opponent. One of the Russians, a GRU lieutenant-colonel quickly thought of the consequences of those POWs being liberated and revealing all that had happened to them plus comrades of theirs who’d ended up in shallow graves back in Transnistria. With his pistol, he started shooting captives: dead men tell no tales. He murdered five of them before the Romanians killed him themselves – their own commander wished that his man had taken his prisoner – and saved dozens more from execution. Twenty-nine NATO military personnel would be rescued from Kacha. The operation cost NATO seventeen of the rescuers with the majority of those losses coming from a CV-22 downed by a man-portable SAM-launcher. Russian losses would be far higher. Before departing, those involved in Crowbar devastated the base. They destroyed aircraft & helicopters (An-26s & Mil-8s), set fire to buildings and left some nasty surprises in the form of bobby-traps to impede recovery efforts. POWs were taken too, some high-value ones. Then they were out and heading back to Romania. There had been no reaction from the Ukrainians who had troops plus aircraft on the Crimea. They did absolutely nothing to stop this because they were waiting for orders. MiG-29s from Belbek, tasked for air defence of the Crimea, didn’t get airborne; a battalion of soldiers in infantry carriers didn’t leave their barracks. Gvardeyskoe was home to naval-rolled Russian Su-24M which had a fighter capability. On strip alert, a pair of them took off with haste with others soon to join them. Hungarian Gripens opened fire on them, seeing action here very far from home just like others had done yesterday when the Hungarians had sent their strike-fighters into Transnistrian skies aiding the mixed NATO Brigade on the outskirts of Tiraspol. The two Fencers were lost with one exploding in the sky and the other crashing into the ground on the outskirts of the small city of Simferopol. Two for zero was a fantastic opening score for the Hungarians here.

War had come to the Crimea but would it expand or be nipped in the bud? The Coalition hoped that this would be enough to stop an expansion of the conflict to the Ukraine. Contact between diplomats was made to inform Kiev that this was an action undertaken against Russia, not the Ukraine, who had been using their soil. Danger could only come from continuing to allow Moscow to do this. Perhaps Yanukovych should reconsider supporting Putin…


Russian Naval Aviation units assigned to their Baltic Fleet had an equally bad day as their comrades with the Black Sea Fleet. However, at least there were still Russian warships in the Black Sea by the end of the day (many of them in fact): that would not be the case in the Baltic. August 19th was the last day for the Baltic Fleet. NATO’s own Baltic fleet – Task Force 100 – spent the Thursday put an end to their opponent. Neither Russian naval aircraft nor their Coastal Troops could save the ships out in the water. Those Coastal Troops weren’t marines – the Naval Infantry had been lost at Copenhagen – but rather the missile-launchers for anti-ship & anti-air weapons, engineers for maritime defences, communication & guard forces for the naval bases and so on. There were NATO air and missile strikes which commenced against these land-based elements of the Baltic Fleet alongside the ships at sea. TF 100 had been assembling for more than a week in preparation for their now final attack. There were over forty major warships, from eight navies. They had everything they needed to complete this mission. That they did.

Out on and below the water, TF 100 sunk fifteen warships and one of the two submarines that the Russians had left. Those warships were the missile-corvettes operated by the Baltic Fleet and their largest combat vessels remaining after earlier sinkings. A couple of corvettes armed with anti-ship missiles got away and fled northwards, into what would become the bastion the was the Gulf of Finland, but the rest were sunk. NATO hit them with aircraft, missiles fired from their own warships and also their own submarines: they had a dozen of these under the water. A submarine-on-submarine engagement took place where the Dutch HNLMS Walrus took out the RFS Sankt Petersburg. The latter was a much-newer vessel than the former but was full of problems of both a mechanical and technical nature: the Dutch Navy had a reliable boat with a good crew who followed their training to sink an enemy vessel just as they were meant to. At sea, TF 100 also hit several minesweepers and little patrol boats as well. This was a merciless process where everything seen on radar screens was struck at. TF 100 was left in complete control afterwards of the Baltic afterwards apart from inside that heavily-defended Gulf of Finland and also the Gulf of Riga too: both places were full of minefields.

TF 100 was commanded from HMS Illustrious, a Royal Navy light carrier which had RAF Harrier GR9s aboard who had previously seen action over Zealand. Air cover for today’s fighting was provided by land-based air cover out of Denmark and Poland because those Harriers didn’t have the capability nor numbers to protect all of the ongoing operations which were taking place. There were those engagements against Russian ships at-sea but also attacks made against land as well. NATO warships used guns and missiles to strike targets all the way from the small bit of coastal Poland held all the way up to the Estonian islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa. The naval base at Baltiysk was hit and so too were inland airbases in Kaliningrad as well as through the occupied Baltic States; Tomahawks from the US Navy ships with TF 100 went after the latter. There were bombardments undertaken against where those anti-ship missiles were, especially when they opened fire against the mass of warships offshore in attempt to sink them. The British Harriers went after the mobile launchers in Latvia – further south there were too many air defences – and dropped Paveway laser-guided bombs on several systems. Two aircraft were brought down though: the Russian air defences that far north weren’t as weak as believed. Where missile launches were made, those flew out to sea and headed towards the ships of TF 100. There weren’t that many missiles and the Russians weren’t able to make saturation attacks. NATO warships fired off SAMs and took down the majority of them. A couple got through though and did manage to see fatal hits made upon two vessels: FGS Augsburg (a German frigate) and ORP General Tadeusz Kosciuszko (the last surviving Polish Navy frigate). These losses occurred when mistakes were made and the Russians got their missiles into exposed ships. Elsewhere there were intercepts achieved at great distance. The Baltic Fleet opened fire with the majority of their weapons all for no real gain overall. Their positions had been uncovered and thus counterattacked. There was no incoming amphibious landing which these firings were supposed to stop but even if there had been, the little effect had meant that one would have succeeded. That was to be a lesson learnt in many places.

Russian aircraft came out over the sea. The Baltic Fleet had Fencers and Flankers and undertook stand-off attacks with missiles rather than attempting to make bomb runs. They found the skies full of missiles launched from TF 100 as well as NATO fighters. As to the warships, the US Navy’s missile-cruisers USS Philippine Sea and USS Vicksburg with their Aegis systems proved to be extremely effective in either getting the aircraft before they fired or hitting their in-flight missiles. HMS Daring joined in with the Americans here in this long-range fight. This was the maiden cruise of this Royal Navy destroyer and she was alongside HNLMS Tromp which also had many air defence missiles. Eleven aircraft were brought down by NATO warships over the Baltic. In exchange, from their aerial efforts here, the Baltic Fleet’s Naval Aviation component only managed to damage a Danish ship but did set fire to the HMCS Iroquois, leading to the total loss of that destroyer. And that was it. The disaster in the air was only made worse when Luftwaffe and RAF Tornados then raided the dispersed airfields that many of the surviving Russian aircraft were flying from very soon after they landed. NATO had been waiting for this opportunity and planned their strike well here to catch their opponents exposed. Unfortunately a couple of Tornados were brought down by Russian SAMs but the mission had been effective with Russian aircraft blown up, airfields smashed up and a lot of dead personnel.

The Danish ship hit by an air-launched missile was the HDMS Absalon. Absalon (and her sister-ship which was also with TF 100) was a multi-purpose ship which was both a frigate and an amphibious assault platform depending upon mission fit. The Russian landing on Copenhagen on the war’s first day had seen the Absalon that morning far away: out in the Bay of Biscay as she came home from an anti-piracy mission in the Indian Ocean due to NATO-Russian tensions. Missing that fight, she was now taking part in another. Further special forces teams were being put into occupied territory with the Danish ship putting ashore Danish commandos alongside Americans, British, French and Spanish units into the Baltic States including this mission into Estonia’s offshore islands. Iroquois was struck by a pair of Kh-41 supersonic missiles while trying to defend herself and the Absalon. USS Kidd – a multi-battle veteran of the fighting in the Baltic – was also present where this fight occurred and got some of those modified Sunburns but not enough. The Danish and US Navy ships would afterwards rescue many of the Canadians before they departed the area: US Air Force F-15s turned up afterwards but, to the ire of those on the ships, too late to have had an impact. The insertion of special forces into Hiiumaa and Saaremaa weren’t the only landings made. Others went into mainland Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and also Kaliningrad too: with the latter, those men entered that Russian territory by submarine rather than landing craft or helicopters. TF 100 wasn’t just smashing up the Baltic Fleet today but also aiding the main deployment of a mixed NATO command of commando units deemed Task Force Hammer. There were lots of men to get into the Baltics with others due for parachute drops which didn’t need naval cover. However, with NATO warships now utterly dominating the Baltic, there were going to be fewer problems getting them in.

TF 100 had exposed the whole right flank of the Russian forward position deep inside Poland. NATO couldn’t do anything it wanted here, but they could do an almighty lot. Down in Krakow, the planning staff of General Mattis’ CJTF–East was involved in both TF 100 and TF Hammer’s actions. The US Marine known as ‘Mad Dog’ had a large number of officers assigned to his planning staff. CJTF–East had ultimate command over Baltic operations as well as others further afield from Poland such as those in Norway and the Balkans too. The planners were busy. Mattis had them looking at offensive operations for the future beyond those undertaken today on both maritime flanks of his force’s main areas of operation: those being out ahead inland. Political guidance was still something needed yet he had been informed by Petraeus – who had slotted in well to the role as SACEUR – that that should be forthcoming soon enough once the upcoming NATO summit in Paris was completed. Regardless, Petraeus informed Mattis that there was no expectation that anything else other than instructions to go forward and liberate NATO territory would be the main thrust of that political guidance. What else could it be? The planning for that was already taking place. Enemy forces – including in Belarus the recently-arrived Russian Thirty–Sixth Army with troops from the Far East; Russia would miss them greatly there soon! – were factored in along with terrain, available NATO forces and also the ability of supplies to keep on arriving in Eastern Europe. From Paris the final decisions would be made, but Mad Dog was thinking that an offensive should be able to take place next week. Things could change in the meantime, of course, but that wasn’t likely. CJTF–East was every day growing larger and despite their reinforcements, the Russians looked weaker as time went on too.

Considering the chaos around St. Petes, Tallinn landing. But that might be a to bold move. Riga is more realistic. And then spread out from Riga to Narva and from Riga to meet up in Vilnius. And then for Minsk. Once at Narva, establish a blockade of St. Petes.

Another food update James G