ricobirch
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Post by ricobirch on Apr 13, 2019 14:39:43 GMT
I was hoping for a punitive MOAB strike.
Was thinking the prison was going to be wiped off the map.
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hussar01
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Post by hussar01 on Apr 13, 2019 18:10:31 GMT
Looks like the plot of the movie Zero Dark Thirty will be very different. I can imagine a all star cast of Hollywood A-list actors after the war of this hostage rescue. Micheal Bay to direct. Another good thing about this war, the movie Top Gun 2 will have plenty of material now to use!
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forcon
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Post by forcon on Apr 13, 2019 20:23:07 GMT
Stealing coaches and a MOAB! Brillant work. Thank you! Eagle Claw but workable. I read Beckwith's book more recently as inspiration. |
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forcon
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Post by forcon on Apr 13, 2019 20:29:32 GMT
I was hoping for a punitive MOAB strike. Was thinking the prison was going to be wiped off the map. The airport was a more useful target. A MOAB was how the US decided to show the world that this will never be tolerated again! Looks like the plot of the movie Zero Dark Thirty will be very different. I can imagine a all star cast of Hollywood A-list actors after the war of this hostage rescue. Micheal Bay to direct. Another good thing about this war, the movie Top Gun 2 will have plenty of material now to use! Oh, I have so many ideas for post-war fims, providing Hollywood survives... Zero Dark Thirty - About Operation Midnight Talon (No Bin Laden raid ITTL, at least not the same as OTL) Twelve Strong - About a Green Beret Alpha Team in occupied-Lithuania, working with the resistance to pave the way for a future counteroffensive (Instead of Afghanistan back in 2001) Patriots Day - The hunt for Spetsnaz across the East Coast of the US by the FBI & Delta Force (Instead of the hunt for the Boston Marothon bomber) Darkest Hour - Focuses on Biden's first day in office following the assassination of Obama, ending with the declaration of war in Congress (As opposed to Churchill in WW2) The Six Thousand - This TLs version of Dunkirk, focusing on the NATO brigade destroyed in the Baltic States in the first few days Second of the Third - Focuses on the 2nd BCT of the 3rd Infantry Division during the war, with lots of tank battles and A-10s More will come when we get further in the story! |
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James G
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Post by James G on Apr 14, 2019 18:11:50 GMT
One Hundred and Twenty–Six
Operation Avenging Eagle continued. American B-2 Spirit bombers went back over Russia, striking deep into the heart of the Rodina once more. There were eight bombers tonight. As before, they flew from Whiteman AFB in Missouri, over the North Atlantic onto RAF Fairford in Britain. There they collected their payloads before they flew onwards on lone missions heading east. No massive cruise missile attack against air defences preceded them tonight. The bat-shaped, flying wing B-2s went in ‘silent’.
Two of the bombers headed for Nizhny Novgorod, the city known as Gorky through much of the Soviet period. The Germans had heavily-attacked military industrial targets here during World War Two but World War Three saw a different sort of attack. That difference was precision. The B-2s had all been given semi-official names by the US Air Force. First over Nizhny Novgorod was ‘Spirit of Texas’, an aircraft loaded with eighty guided bombs. The 500lb JDAMs fell upon two targets: the Sokol aviation plant and the nearby airfield associated with that factory. Sokol was still building MiGs for the Russian Air Force with those aircraft flown away from Sormovo Airfield. Not anymore, not after the Spirit of Texas had deposited her payload. It had been the NMZ facility – then known as the Gorky Machine-building Plant when the Luftwaffe had been bombing in the early Nineteen Forties – which the ‘Spirit of Kitty Hawk’ attacked. Half of its eighty bombs fell there with the rest reserved for the nearby Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard. At the former, artillery and SAM systems were manufactured; submarines were built at the latter, this far deep inside Russia and then transported by barge to the oceans. Neither NMZ nor Kransnoye Sormovo were destroyed completely even with such a large tonnage of bombs dropped almost perfectly, but like Sokol and its airfield, these places were put out of action for a long time to come.
Towards Moscow flew the ‘Spirit of Nebraska’ and the ‘Spirit of Oklahoma’. These bombers didn’t do what had been done in the first Avenging Eagle attacks a week ago and hit downtown Moscow but instead struck outside of it. Payloads of eighty 500lb bombs were used again where air facilities outside of Russia’s capital were bombed from high above. Kubinka Airbase was the first target. This was a military site where the Russian Air Force had its ‘technology demonstration centre’ based in peacetime. Aerial display teams flew from here and so did specialist aircraft on reconnaissance & intelligence missions. Those display teams – the Knights and the Swifts – had a wartime mission where their respective Su-27 Flankers and MiG-29 Fulcrums were undertaking fighter roles over the wider Moscow area. Bombs smashed into Kubinka from high above to knock it out of action. The second strike was against two of Moscow’s airports: Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo. Both were outside the city and not currently in use due to the war. Destroying them with forty (smallish) bombs a piece was impossible but causing a lot of destruction was easily doable. Why hit these airports which were playing no role in the war? Propaganda was the answer to that. Everyone in Moscow would know soon enough that they had been smashed up and the Americans were active with bombers around their city again.
The ‘Spirit of Indiana’ and the ‘Spirit of South Carolina’ attacked Lipetsk Airbase. This facility was referred to many as ‘Russia’s Nellis’: i.e. their equivalent of the US Air Force’s evaluation and training base out in Nevada. There were many different aircraft here in peacetime and now in war. Several advanced model tactical aircraft which had yet to reach full service with the Russian Air Force were at Lipetsk. These included pre-production models of the Su-34 Fullback strike-bomber as well as several variants of the Su-30 Flanker with these being either demonstrators or export models. The Americans believed that the Russians were going to use these all to somehow try to influence the air battles far to the west over the skies of Eastern Europe: good luck with that! Dropping only sixteen bombs apiece, but larger 2000lb JDAMs, the pair of B-2s aimed to stop that happening. Many of the aircraft were out in the open while others were in hardened shelters that had bombs dropped right atop of them. Massive explosions rocked the extensive Lipetsk facility with aircraft destroyed and personnel killed.
Engels Airbase was home to the Tu-160 Blackjack fleet of the preeminent strategic bombers for the Russian Air Force as well as many of their Tu-95MS Bears too. Of all of the Avenging Eagle strikes, this target was the furthest afield and therefore the most dangerous to go after. That danger not just being to the aircrews aboard the B-2s but because Engels was a strategic target: bombing it could look like the beginnings of a nuclear war. However, the decision was taken to hit it due to those bombers there being used in a non-nuclear role throughout this conventional conflict. A message would go out over the Washington to Moscow Hot-Line afterwards to ‘reassure’ the Russians of this. There were no shelters at Engels for the big aircraft on the ground though blast revetments were in-place: the Russians had put the effort into protecting this place against an air attack from the effects of bomb blasts. The Americans had a solution for that. Falling from both the ‘Spirit of Alaska’ and the ‘Spirit of Louisiana’ when each bomber was some distance away from the target instead of above it, were sixteen JSOW guide bombs apiece. As when used over Poland during Operation Dragon’s Fire to destroy a Russian tank division, those used over Russia flew towards Engels in the weapons-carrying role and then dispersed their sub-munitions payloads. Thousands upon thousands of explosive-tipped bomblets fell from the sky. The majority of aircraft beneath them weren’t going to be flying for some time now with many never again getting airborne: that included five of the Blackjacks which were eliminated alongside four more left with major damage.
Avenging Eagle #2 had seen all eight aircraft get into Russia but only seven would get out. After completing the Kubinka strike – one which was arguably the least important of them all and something that had nearly been vetoed –, the Spirit of Nebraska was shot down. This was the second loss of a B-2 during the war. This time it wasn’t a sophisticated SAM which killed a multi-billion dollar bomber but an old, Soviet-era interceptor. One of the Russian Air Force’s MiG-31 Foxhound aircraft was airborne and under the control of an AWACS aircraft. Detection had come when the Spirit of Nebraska opened its bomb-bay doors, losing its stealth for a few moments, and the MiG-31 had closed-in upon the Kubinka area. The AWACS and the interceptor’s own radar couldn’t locate the bomber and neither could the infrared search-&-track system (IRST) at first. However, the weather tonight was acting rather strange and allowed for a second detection to be gained using that IRST. Rapid-firing, the Russian pilot put all four of his R-73 short-range missiles into the sky. NATO called these the AA-11 Archer. Only one Archer struck home yet that was enough. A chunk of the starboard wing of the Spirit of Nebraska was blown of and flight control lost. The bomber was going down. The two aircrew ejected long before their B-2 crashed and, not long after dawn, they would be in Russian custody with an unpleasant time ahead of them. The wreckage of the Spirit of Nebraska would be shown on Russian TV: one of four bombers downed the night before apparently.
Killing that one bomber was a bit of luck. The Russians were unable to get anywhere near the other seven. NATO air attacks against the air defences both forward and increasingly further backwards meant that they were impotent to do so. Cruise missile strike after cruise missile strike had seen SAM-launchers, radars and command posts hit. Airfields from where interceptors flew had been hit with those aircraft either struck there or in the air by NATO fighters. That particular MiG-31 over Kubinka had been from a regiment (the 764th) recently transferred from its Urals base to Western Russia. Russian SAMs and aircraft had engaged many cruise missiles in the skies yet had failed to get at the distant aircraft which launched them with abundance. Intelligence summaries said that by now the Americans should be out of or almost out of such weapons unless they kept a reserve back: they’d fired so many and their supply wasn’t limitless! Such an assessment was correct but also incorrect too.
After the B-2s had dropped their bombs tonight and began their escape, their attack was no longer silent. Operation Eclipse sprung into action with yet another night of air strikes made far beyond the frontlines of the war. This was the eleventh night of these: there had been several one-night gaps rather than massive strikes every night. The US Air Force fired cruise missiles from B-52 bombers which came nowhere near Russian airspace and the US Navy launched Tomahawks from warships & submarines. Their NATO allies joined in too though, adding to the numbers of inbound weapons. The RAF with 617 Squadron flying Tornados from the UK out over the Baltic on solely Storm Shadow missions and French Armée de l'Air Mirage-2000Ns (who also had a nuclear role) with SCALPs & Apaches shot them off too; the Italians with their Tornados which had recently turned up in Poland were launching more SCALPs as well. On other nights, Eclipse had seen low-level air strikes made by manned aircraft going deep into enemy airspace though tonight it was just this cruise missile wave. There was no doubt that the munitions expenditure was high. After two plus weeks of war, it would be. Russian intelligence missed the major commitment of missiles being used by the British and French though – believing that they would fire far fewer than they did – and also misunderstood the Americans. Yes, they would keep some of theirs back for contingencies at a later date but not that many. This was especially true when US arms manufacturers had massive orders on their books to build more and more missiles. These couldn’t be manufactured overnight but it wasn’t going to take that long to build them, was it? The error made here was a classic intelligence failure than better people that the Russians had made about their opponents: assuming that the other side would do things just how you did it without regard to their own needs.
The missile strikes would go on for several hours, smashing up Russia and its armed forces as they did so. NATO’s armies preparing for a counteroffensive on quite the scale would be following those missiles in time.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Apr 14, 2019 18:12:52 GMT
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oldbleep
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Post by oldbleep on Apr 14, 2019 23:24:22 GMT
Other possible post war films, Target for Tonight (The planning and execution of Operation Avenging Eagle, as opposed to the 1941 version being the planning and execution of a Bomber Command raid), not that I'm showing my age you understand  Raid on Tripoli (Operation Midnight Talon, based on Raid on Entebbe) or Who Dares Win (Operation Midnight Talon) As you've said loads of possibilities  |
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James G
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Post by James G on Apr 15, 2019 12:20:51 GMT
I'm going to do an update tonight because Forcon is absent. As to where he is... it's a secret as in 'classified under pain of a trip to Gitmo'.
While this is just a rumour, I have heard he is re-enacting Clint Eastwood in Firefox. Though keep that under your hats, ladies and gentlemen: the FSB / GRU / SVR have eyes and ears everywhere!
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raunchel
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Post by raunchel on Apr 15, 2019 12:25:55 GMT
It's a shame that one of the B2s was lost, but it should certainly lead to stronger demands to do something, which will mean that the frontline will become more exposed to NATO air attacks.
And in terms of movies, there has to be something epic like the Longest Day, perhaps about the start of the Coalition Counteroffensive or the like.
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James G
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Post by James G on Apr 15, 2019 18:22:33 GMT
It's a shame that one of the B2s was lost, but it should certainly lead to stronger demands to do something, which will mean that the frontline will become more exposed to NATO air attacks. And in terms of movies, there has to be something epic like the Longest Day, perhaps about the start of the Coalition Counteroffensive or the like. Two B-2s have been lost now but they and others have done great damage. They are bombing deep inside Russia at strategic targets that Russia cannot afford to lose. Sokol was the most important target of the recent attacks but there are other aircraft plants all on the list. You are correct, in the Kremlin there will be uproar at the American's ability to do this and new orders issued. |
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James G
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Post by James G on Apr 15, 2019 18:23:26 GMT
The update below is just a bit of fun really.
I hope readers can spot the many Red Dawn references: I'll probably think of more later and regret not using them!
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James G
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Post by James G on Apr 15, 2019 18:25:53 GMT
Interlude #3 – Red Dawn
‘Red 11’ was a Tupolev-22MR Backfire D, a reconnaissance model of the missile-bomber. Flying with the 200th Guards Heavy Bomber Regiment – which operated Tu-22M3 Backfire Cs as well –, Red 11 had been given the mission of conducting a high-speed and low-level reconnaissance flight down the east coast of Britain this morning. To reach the UK, the aircraft went from its new base in Western Russia, above Latvia, out over the Baltic, crossed over Sweden (the Swedes putting Gripens up but failing to get the intruder) before then reaching the Skagerrak. The North Sea was then overflown before Red 11 was meant to start its run heading southwards. NATO defences had been bypassed in getting this far and they were intended to be during the surveillance undertaken and then during the flight home. This was a big ask, but one which was doable. Unfortunately, NATO refused to cooperate. Not very long at all after the reconnaissance mission began using a Sideways Looking Airborne Radar to hoover up data, and with British air defences scrambling to claim themselves a kill of what was thought to be an aircraft on an attack mission, the Tu-22MR was engaged. It was the Deutsche Marine which attacked Red 11, using a SM-2 missile to strike the aircraft in the sky. A German warship off the British coast brought down an enemy aircraft: oh, the historical irony. The missile-frigate FGS Sachsen afterwards would have a silhouette of a Backfire painted on its pilothouse (done both sides so as no one would miss it). It was quite the kill and one to be proud of too.
Red 11 had four men aboard when hit by that SAM.
Boris was the navigator. His pilot had got them over land – Lincolnshire, Boris shouted… hoping he was right in that – and he was the first to eject. Boris’ parachute opened as it was meant to and he floated towards the ground. Looking around through the sky, Boris tried to get his bearings. Which way was north, south, east and west? It should have been easy to tell but with the clouds and the harsh breaking sunlight, plus looking down to see the ground coming up towards him, Boris just couldn’t do it. It was all too much for him.
His head hurt. His eyes were wet but he wasn’t crying. Liquid ran down his cheek and into his mouth. Boris only took a second to know what the taste was: it was his own blood.
“Don’t panic,” he spoke aloud to himself, “you’ll be...”
He was unable to finish what he was saying. Boris shut his eyes to take away the pain, which only got worse regardless.
He passed out.
Boris’ body reached the ground. He was already dead due to the head injury he had sustained when the Germans hit Red 11 but if he hadn’t been, smashing uncontrollably into the tree like he did would have killed him.
For three days, his corpse was in that tree. When attacked by wildlife, it moved and eventually fell down. Only then were Boris’ remains found.
Ivan, the co-pilot, was the second man to eject. Successfully escaping from what he was told was a doomed aircraft, Ivan reached the ground. He would become a youtube star.
A Lincolnshire farming family caught Ivan after he was alone for barely two minutes on British soil.
“Dad, there’s Russian parachutists landing in the sheep field out back.” The farmer’s son had told some tall tales in the past few weeks, all in relation to a distant war, but this was ridiculous! There weren’t going to be any ‘Russian parachutists’ out back, why did the famer look when he just knew that…
Oh.
Grabbing his shotgun as if he was in a Hollywood action movie, the farmer was soon outside. His son was behind him and filming what was going on, all ready to make his father famous: their wife & mother stayed inside the house and sensibly called 999.
Ivan was still rolling up his parachute, aiming to bury it somewhere to avoid being found, when the gruff looking man appeared out of nowhere pointing a weapon at him. Ivan saw the teenage boy behind him with a handheld camera. The farmer with the shotgun made Ivan wonder for a second if he was in the American West, not rural England.
“Get your hands up or I’ll shoot you.”
Ivan didn’t understand the words but he got the intent. His pistol was on his survival belt and maybe he could have taken it out to get away from this maniac and his kid…
The farmer hit Ivan. He used the end of the barrel to whack Ivan in the face right after he took off his flight helmet. Down to the ground went the Russian aviator, stunned at the sudden attack.
“I told you to raise your arms!”
Bleeding from the face, poor Ivan was tied up with some of his parachute cord. If he could have understood English, he would have argued back with the man who told him to do one thing, hit him and then said that he’d demanded something else. Alas, that was not to be. His pistol was still in its holster but Ivan was unable to get to it. The kid found it soon enough and started waving about like it was a toy. His father gave him a clip around the air, pocketed the trophy and smiled when he heard the police sirens coming up to the farm.
This was all on film and this was all going global.
Nikolai was the weapons operator for Red 11. He ejected third with his pilot shouting that he would follow straight afterwards. Nikolai got bashed about during the ejection but was okay: it was nothing serious. He’d been seen by that farmer’s son – hence ‘Russian parachutists’ – but landed nowhere near that farm. The kid was also not believed either by his parents nor the police who attended the scene of Ivan’s capture that there had been a second man in the sky descending towards the ground.
Later in the morning that would change.
Nikolai buried his parachute and got his survival gear out, including his pistol. He found some woodland and got far inside. He was deep in the countryside with no sign of any life. Hidden but able to defend himself if discovered, now what was he to do?
Like all those aircrew with the 200th Guards, Nikolai had been told that rescue if shot down was something remote. Maybe there might be a chance if landing near friendly lines… but Britain was seemingly half the world away from Poland or the Baltic States. Nikolai was on his own. Russian tanks and infantry carriers weren’t about to come across the fields nearby and enter this woodland to reach their comrade, were they?
Nikolai had discussed with others in the past few weeks that if any of them were to be shot down and survive, they would try to evade capture for as long as possible. This would be done to not be taken prisoner, interrogated and give away information which would harm their comrades. Information in their head would go stale the longer they weren’t caught. Russian Air Force policy was similar though the focus there was on not giving the enemy a propaganda victory with a POW to parade.
He did his best. Nikolai lasted all day and all the coming night where he stayed hidden. There was military activity all around him. He saw several helicopters, army vehicles and groups of soldiers. None came near enough to him but Nikolai knew they were looking for him. He had hidden well though. Maybe if they had dogs… Nikolai didn’t like dogs. If they brought in dogs, he would have given up.
The British didn’t have such animals with them when hunting for him yet Nikolai still gave up after a total of twenty-six hours in hiding. He did so because he had no food and no water. He was in the countryside and should have had access to both with ease but it wasn’t that simple. Could he hunt wildlife? Could he take a stroll to try and find a stream? He couldn’t do neither.
With his arms raised in the air, Nikolai emerged from hiding when a patrol came past the next morning. They were rather surprised to see him: one soldier, a Territorial Army man, almost shot him dead. Luck favoured Nikolai though and the soldier steadied himself. He was taken into custody, given food & water and not paraded for the cameras like he was told he would be.
Nikolai would sit out the rest of the war in relative comfort, shipped off to somewhere in American called ‘Colorado’ and a POW camp there before the conflict ceased.
The pilot was Mikhail. He had meant to eject, following Boris & Ivan & Nikolai, but had looked down at his left leg. It was a mangled, bloody mess. That missile explosion had been close.
If he ejected, he’d be leaving his leg behind. Mikhail realised that that would kill him. He decided to save his own life. The only way he could think of doing that was to land.
Mikhail had been told his English was good. It wasn’t good. When he switched the radio channel to the civilian GUARD channel (for use in emergencies) and declared a ‘Mayday’ before explaining who he was and what he wanted, they were very confused. A Russian-speaker then came on: Mikhail was speaking to a military officer now. He said that he was over Lincolnshire and gave an approximate position. Mikhail asked for a divert to an airfield which could take him. He would have to land soon, he told the officer on the other end of the connection, or he would crash. Mikhail was asked if he had any nuclear weapons aboard.
What!?
Of course not!
The wait was a long time. The Tu-22MR wasn’t going to stay airborne for very much longer. Mikhail fought with the controls to keep his aircraft circling. His radar warning receiver went off and then straight after that, two fighters flashed past. The RAF Typhoons had finally got here!
Finally, the British said they would take him and his aircraft. It was to RAF Waddington where they sent him, somewhere that Mikhail’s comrades with the 200th Guards had used their aircraft as platforms to fire cruise missiles at in recent weeks. The Typhoons stayed on his wingtips as Mikhail headed there. He was talked down by another man, who spoke excellent Russian and tried to give Mikhail comfort. There were medics waiting for him and they would he the first to him once he was down.
Take it easy, come on in and be saved.
The Backfire landed at Waddington. As to those RAF medical personnel, they were fast with Mikhail though there were RAF Regiment soldiers who also were all over the cockpit and shot-up bomber. No effort was spared to save Mikhail's life but that wasn’t to be. He’d been hurt worse than he realised with so much blood lost. Mikhail would get a full military funeral with honours conferred upon him.
The aircraft he had brought to Britain was soon towed off the runway where, despite being struck hard by the Germans, it had come down almost perfectly.
It would be three years before Red 11 flew again. Boris, Ivan, Nikolai and Mikhail had all believed that their aircraft was doomed. The damage was bad and they wouldn’t have made it back to the Rodina. However, the Backfire had been patched-up over the years then transported overseas in several parts.
When flying for the first time since making that landing at Waddington, it took off from Groom Lake – Area 51 – in Nevada on a bright September morning. There were four aircrew aboard with two of those from the US Air Force but the other two members of the RAF. Red 11 was decorated with RAF markings and the legendary red, blue & white roundel after all.
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lordbyron
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Post by lordbyron on Apr 15, 2019 23:53:45 GMT
Good update; at least we know that there isn't a worldwide nuclear exchange ITTL...
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James G
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Post by James G on Apr 16, 2019 8:38:09 GMT
Good update; at least we know that there isn't a worldwide nuclear exchange ITTL... Thanks. Well there is that, yes. |
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forcon
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Post by forcon on Apr 16, 2019 18:46:45 GMT
One Hundred and Twenty Seven
NATO’s counteroffensive was set to begin very shortly indeed. The political and military specifics of this had already been addressed, and in his post Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General David Petraeus had been given in effect blanket authority to use everything short of tactical nuclear weapons – unless in a retaliatory capacity – to drive the Russian Army back over the border. There was to be no pursuit towards Moscow once NATO territory had been liberated, but Belarus was to be occupied and so too was Kaliningrad.
There were immense risks in attacking the later geographic location, a part of Russia and thus under Putin’s nuclear umbrella. Nevertheless, liberating the Baltic States was going to be a near impossible task unless the area was captured, with this task falling to the beaten-up 16th Mechanised Division of the Polish Land Forces, along with the two forward-deployed brigades of the Royal Netherlands Army that now fell under the command of I Allied Corps.
Meanwhile, further elements of I Corps, mainly American, British, and German heavy forces, would soon punch through the Suwalki Gap and drive into Lithuania, towards the Estonian coastline and St Petersburg. The US 4th Infantry Division and the British 1st Armoured Division would bear the brunt of the fighting here, reinforced by the 3rd Mechanised Division of the British Army and also by the Spanish Army’s ad hoc 1st Infantry Division command.
V Corps would be tasked to push into Belarus, capture Minsk, and then keep on moving until the Russian border was reached, with possible operations being authorised as far into Russia proper as Smolensk. American, Polish, French, and Italian troops were all in Poland under V Corps and preparing to move eastwards.
There was also to be an airborne assault using US & British Army forces, along the Daugava River. The objective of the counteroffensive was not only to drive Russian forces back to their own borders, but also to destroy as much of the Russian Army in the field as possible, thus rendering Moscow incapable of carrying out any similar actions for the foreseeable future.
Operation Eclipse continued apace, with its targets again switching to those of a more tactical nature. Belarus was bombed overnight by countless airplanes – F-16s, F/A-18s, Tornados & Eurofighter Typhoons predominantly – with huge damage inflicted on the small country. Lukashenko’s air force had been all but annihilated, with the defence of Belarusian airspace falling on the overburdened Russian Air Force, which had in itself already lost hundreds of aircraft in both the offensive and defensive roles.
Instead of striking bridges and railway nodes, tonight Eclipse targeted troop concentrations. Down to the regimental level, efforts were made to decapitate the highly-vulnerable Russian command-and-control structure, with headquarters and senior officers being targeted alike both in Belarus and in Poland. JDAMs fell on anything that gave off communications signals or otherwise indicated that it might be a headquarters or command asset, with no stone being left unturned.
Additional airstrikes also aimed to prevent the movement of the Thirty-Sixth Army to the frontlines also took place across Belarus. Less effort was put into destroying transport nodes themselves, with the majority of firepower being targeted towards enemy tanks and armoured vehicles that moved across the countryside, along with the fuel depots that supplied them. The darkness was alive with explosions, dancing fires and the wafting smell of cordite, gunpowder, and charred flesh.
With over four hundred thousand NATO troops about to begin the counteroffensive, Russian reinforcements couldn’t be allowed to get to the frontlines and again tip the balance in Moscow’s favour. Such a thing would destroy all confidence in European governments and possibly bring the fighting to an end on Putin’s terms…Or so was the train of thought at the time.
Special Forces units also assisted in the effort to deny Russian forces their command and control abilities. A trio of division-headquarters in northern Poland were attacked and successfully neutralised by Green Berets serving with the 10th Special Forces Group. Those Alpha Teams had all been behind Russian lines for some time now and all had suffered casualties, but remained combat effective despite the best efforts of the Russian Army to track them down. The targets hit by the Green Berets could have been struck by aircraft, but the decision was made for a ground assault, because valuable intelligence and prisoners could be snatched an extracted.
Indeed, one of the Green Beret units managed to abduct the operations officer with the 10th Tank Division, along with some of his staff, thus marking the first capture of a general officer by NATO thus far in the war. After completing this last task, the Green Berets were finally extracted by helicopters with the US Air Force’s Special Operations Command, bringing with them vital information, prisoners, and documentation that would have to be translated and/or decoded.
Other Special Forces units went into action behind the lines, taking a page from the book of the Spetsnaz in sewing chaos behind Russian lines. Members of the Special Air Service successfully knocked out a power station outside Minsk after the same facility had been fixed after an American airstrike, plunging the city into darkness. A German KSK sniper team shot dead a Belarusian general officer just outside Minsk, while Dutch and Belgian commandos destroyed numerous train-tracks with explosives, derailing several flatbeds carrying Russian armour to the west.
Up in the Baltic States, American SEALs and yet more Green Berets, along with members of the Special Boat Service and a myriad of other units were active, wreaking similar havoc, often working with local resistance organisations. Supply routes and headquarters were key targets; so too were SAM batteries and fuel depots. Enemy aircraft were shot down repeatedly by small commando or resistance teams using shoulder-fired missiles, causing a real threat behind Russian lines.
Efforts by the Russians to capture their elusive foes bred mixed results, with soldiers killed in great numbers on both sides. Commando units with excellent weapons and situated in good ambush positions were able to destroy enemy convoys and columns, killing dozens and rendering the supplies inside the vehicles useless before leaving. Despite this, efforts by huge numbers of troops, helicopters, and dogs, tracked down dozens of commandos as they tried desperately to evade. Few of the Special Forces troops would ever be captured alive, but those that did fall into the hands of the GRU faced a miserable fate.
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