Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

I think NATO would have to break into Russia proper, get on Russian soil on the mainland, and start taking it apart before Russia would fall due to invasion. And I think there'd be nukes before then.
A post war Russia, if defeated, might collapse though. Then it might go down the Yugoslavia.



Many people will be calling for this: using their hearts not their heads on that.

There's plenty of opposition forces in Belarus (from the left and right) to create a new, functional, more democratic and western friendly, regime in Belarus.
What's the current Russia's capability of producing or repairing ships at this point in the war?

One Hundred and Forty

Back in Moscow, the Russian Security Council had made the decision that a counterattack was to be launched in eastern Poland. NATO’s armies were driving towards Belarus with their multinational force based upon the US V Corps and this presented the greatest danger, more than the Allied I Corps attacking northwards or the airborne units inside Latvia. That counterattack was planned and authorised at the top with the orders, which covered everything down to regimental level, then issued to their field commander. No input was sought from the headquarters of the Western Operational Command (WOC) nor anyone else. And this was supposed to be a good idea…? At the WOC, Lt.–General Chirkin should have done the decent thing and resigned. Several of his aides and senior staff expected that when Chirkin raged at the stupidity of this. This wasn’t Soviet Russia nor the Great Patriotic War: he wouldn’t have been shot for doing so. However, Chirkin, once his temper tantrum was complete, acknowledged the order and carried it out. He wasn’t a man of principle: he was someone who obeyed orders and only thought of his own secure personal future from doing as he was told and climbing the ladder to even more dizzying heights than he was already at.

The Second Guards Army made the counterattack. It moved from out of Belarus, where it had long been and had assigned units stripped from it to be sent elsewhere, linked-up with others already in Poland and then drove through the First Guards Tank Army sector. The Second Guards Army then hit the Americans. There were Poles, Frenchmen and Italians with the V Corps but the US Army was what the Russians threw their army against. Those forces rated the best in terms of capabilities were to be defeated first before the Second Guards Army would turn on everyone else. Deception was used in going forward and distractions provided elsewhere. The Americans were meant to be taken by surprise and suffer a tremendous defeat. NATO’s morale would thus collapse and the Rodina would celebrate victory. And so on. That was what Chirkin was told to bring about but not on his terms despite it all being the WOC’s responsibility. NATO saw the Russians coming. They didn’t have much warning but it was better than none. Being on the wrong end of Russian deception – their maskirovka – earlier in the month meant that a lot of heads had rolled (metaphorically) among NATO intelligence staffs & analysts. Everyone was on the look-out for another big surprise attack. The Second Guards Army was spotted when things that hadn’t made sense before made sense now. If the Russians had been smart and changed things around they might have achieved success. They hadn’t done so. On Mattis’ orders, measures were taken to not soak up or defeat the attack… but use it to NATO’s advantage instead.

The counterattack forces consisted of three Russian divisions and two brigades (one Belorussian, one Russian) as part of the Second Guards Army. One of the divisions, the 27th Motor Rifle, was fresh while the 2nd Guards Motor Rifle had seen combat before: the 5th Guards Tank was a shadow of its former self. The 34th Reserve Tank Brigade was a third-rate Belorussian unit though the Russian’s 74th Motor Rifle Brigade was – on paper – an excellent formation if too untested by battle. There were further Belorussian units ahead, several brigades of them, which the mass of armour passed through on the way into the fight. Ahead of this impressive attacking force, the Americans had just their 1st Armored & 1st Cavalry Divisions according to near-accurate Russian intelligence reports. However, alerted to the incoming storm, Mattis had cut the orders for the 3rd Cavalry Regiment to move into place while also authorised air tasking orders at a whole load of NATO air units. Russian forces were on the move, out in the open with their air defence net strung out and supposed to support them while they were going forward. They were exposed like this, a target of some magnitude.

A clash of titans commenced.

Two strong, well-organised and motivated opponents fought each other on the modern battlefield. One side emerged the clear winner, the other would become the devastated loser.

It would be the Americans which would claim victory afterwards. They couldn’t have done it on their own. First NATO air power and then both Poles moving in from the north, followed later by the Italians from the south – Berlusconi’s ‘Italian neutrality’ something everyone was trying to forget –, made the end result possible. Of course, popular culture history would have it as a win for the US Army and the impact of non-American forces would be only mentioned as secondary. The world isn’t always fair. As to the Russians, they suffered quite the defeat. NATO air power actually helped to make sure it wasn’t even worse. With so many aircraft in the sky, not all of the Second Guards Army could get forward into the maelstrom of fire unleashed against those that did. Hindsight on NATO’s part afterwards would consider the consequences had some of those aerial attacks been held back, if NATO had waited. But, at the time, with hundreds upon hundreds of tanks rolling forward along with hundreds more infantry carriers, along with all of those self-propelled guns, the attack was met with full force to stop it before then the order was given to start sweeping in from the flanks to trap as many enemy forces inside a pocket as possible. Italian tanks met with Polish tanks behind forward Russian & Belorussian troops cut off. It Was they, not the Americans, that closed that trap. Inside the formed pocket was the 5 GTD, the 27th MRD, that Belorussian reserve brigade and bits & pieces of other Belorussian units that had already been engaging the Americans. Most of the veteran Taman Guards didn’t make it to the battle and neither did the Russian motor rifle brigade too; moreover, Russia’s 85th Motor Rifle Division (engaging the 1st Cavalry already) weren’t caught in the trap.

Once the pocket was formed, there was no way out. The Americans eased back some at the front after the Russians were stopped and there was a certainty that they had little anti-air capability left. In the skies above, some rather large aircraft appeared once the darkness of the late evening arrived. B-52s were above. It was time to seek some cover because Arc Light missions were underway. For weeks now, the US Air Force had been unable to use their B-52s this way. Enemy air defences had seen those bombers gathered in Britain and Spain used to fire cruise missiles and stand-off weapons instead of dropping bombs. There had been some opportunities to use them over Poland and in the past few days over Latvia when there were few SAM launchers ready to bring them down yet each time there were populated areas near to those who would face such a bombardment. The Poles and Latvians, let alone other NATO allies, wouldn’t allow for that. This evening though, trapped Russian forces who’d run out of most of their missiles were caught in a thinly-populated area and bunched-up. They would start digging-in soon. There were some particular no-go areas for falling bombs around certain small towns inside that pocket but the majority of the area was given the green light. Several dozen bombers came in escorted by fighters and opened their bomb-bay doors and also released those weapons carried on wing pylons.

Each B-52 could carry fifty-one 500lb or 750lb bombs ‘dumb’ bombs, or forty cluster bombs each loaded with two hundred submunitions.

A whole s***-load of high-explosive bombs fell towards the ground. Some were contact fused while others detonated in the sky. Calls of ‘Arc Light, Arc Light’ had gone out over American radio communications for their troops who had been pulled back – leading them to suspect this was coming – but men and women with the 1st Armored & 1st Cavalry, plus other units, still covered themselves as best as they could.

When the bombing was over with, the shooting started again. Further air attacks went in afterwards: slow and steady to fight around the edges of those trapped in the pocket and not hit as hard as those in the middle. Tomorrow, what was left of the Second Guards Army should hopefully be finished off… if there was any of it left after what it had just been on the receiving end of.


Putting all of that air power over eastern Poland meant that NATO had to strip it away from elsewhere for much of the day. They flew air missions over northern parts of the country and up into the Baltic States, but not as much as usual. The Russian Air Force – to say nothing of Belarus’ – had already taken a battering so its threat wasn’t that great. Try telling that to those on the ground who faced MiGs and Sukhois on attack runs! In the words of one Canadian officer on Petraeus’ air intelligence staff, the Russians had ‘gone guerrilla in the skies’. No big attacks were made with strike packages of multiple aircraft but pairs of, or even lone, aircraft were flying. They popped up here and there making deadly attacks.

The Allied I Corps was in the firing line of many of these. NATO fighters, the few available, got some and so did ground-based air defences: the latter being thin on the ground in number but with a wide variety of capable systems deployed. However, others got through. The Poles & Dutch pushing on Kaliningrad near the sea and also the British & Canadians in the Suwalki Gap attracted most of this attention. However, those in the middle, more British, Americans, Croats, Czechs, Dutch, Germans and Spaniards weren’t really targeted. They used that opportunity to make good progress going forward. The Twentieth Guards Army today did something that it hadn’t done before: properly withdraw. There was no back-and-forth movement to counterattack NATO units pushing forward but instead real retreats made. Large portions of Masuria were given up for good. This brought NATO forces closer to Kaliningrad yet allowed the Russians to shorten their lines and also better protect their flanks. It was sound military strategy and drawn up by the army commander, not those in Moscow. However, while pulling back made sense, this allowed NATO to get much closer to sovereign Russian soil than they were before.

Kaliningrad was today hit by further daylight air attacks though also naval shelling as well. With Russia’s Baltic Fleet long ago being defeated, for several days now NATO warships had been conducting their attacks up and down the coast line of the Baltic States. Kaliningrad had been attacked, but not as strongly as now. Earlier attacks elsewhere had drawn away aircraft to their destruction and allowed too for the submission of many of the coastal missile batteries in Kaliningrad. NATO warships came close enough to start shelling this little piece of Russia here on the Baltic. They hit Baltiysk to the west and then the northern shoreline. It looked like they were softening up improvised coastal defences for a possible amphibious landing and that impression was further given due to mine-clearing efforts made here like they had been off the coasts of Latvia and Lithuania too. Russia got some of its missiles out and hit several ships – nothing bigger than a corvette though – yet saw many of those missiles splashed in-flight. Further launches weren’t made. Missiles came back at them and there were also aircraft in the sky including Harriers from HMS Invincible targeting for them. The bigger air attacks, to hit Russian airbases inside Kaliningrad and then also the city of Kaliningrad itself, came from land-based aircraft flying from afar, not those tasked for 1 ATAF missions over eastern Poland. The Yantar Shipyard in Kaliningrad was one of those major targets and so too was Khrabrovo Airport: the former being rather an important piece of national infrastructure for Russia and the latter being made use of for military purposes including those ‘guerrilla’ air attacks.

Attention given to Kaliningrad to feint the intention of making an amphibious assault there close behind the frontlines was done to aid the US XVIII Corps inside Latvia. Those NATO forces there were still very far away from where the Allied I Corps was. They were also still under extreme pressure. Fighting continued down the valley of the Daugava River. Around Jēkabpils, the Americans had it better than their allies to the south of them. That didn’t mean it was easy though. Russian Airborne Troops had withdrawn back towards Riga but not all the way. They continued to launch small-scale attacks against the outposts of the 82nd Airborne Division. The 76th Guards Air Assault Division wasn’t finished despite taking a beating yesterday. There were ‘terrorists’ to deal with too. Foreign militia units of ethnic Russians or Russian-speakers remained active Latvia. Different types of fighting had to be done against each yet the end result was all the same: dead bodies and the screams of the wounded. The 82nd Airborne managed to keep their opponents away from Jēkabpils Airport. This was becoming an even bigger airhead than foreseen due to the problems downstream that their allies were having. It was through the open airhead that the majority of the Canadian 1st Mechanized Brigade–Group came in today. Their Leopard-2 heavy tanks with Lord Strathcona’s Horse were soon moving southwards to join up with the British and Belgians ahead of much of the rest of their parent brigade. A-10s which had made Jēkabpils home, not just transiting through like those tanks, also flew southwards too. The British-led 6th Airmobile Division was once more in trouble down near Daugavpils.

The airport there remained closed and inside the city the militia had taken over and were undertaking quite the orgy of violence. Both of those serious issues paled in comparison to what else was going on. Belorussian tanks had shown up. There was almost a full battalion of them alongside a reinforced battalion of mechanised infantry – independent reserve units attached together in an ad hoc regiment also with some self-propelled artillery – which moved against Daugavpils to do what paratroopers had failed to do yesterday and beat back NATO here. The T-80s that the Belarussians had sliced through the light Scimitar armoured vehicles operated by the Household Cavalry Regiment and killed more British soldiers at infantry outposts. The Belgians suffered too when those tanks supported enemy infantry which attacked their own men. The 6th Airmobile, who’d been on a high after yesterday’s victory, were forced to pull back. They got closer and closer to Daugavpils. Missile teams with man-portable anti-tank weapons – the Belgians using MILANs and the British firing Javelins – scored some excellent kills but found that Belorussians refused to play dumb. They opened fire with their supporting artillery and scattered fiery death around them. By the evening, the Canadians arrived and there had already been action by those American A-10s. The attack had stalled and the Belarussians had failed to reach neither the airport nor the city. They were close by though and digging-in. They remained an unbeaten opponent, likely to start moving again at first light. Reorganization needed to occur within the 6th Airmobile as to its dispositions and for more Canadians to arrive than just their tanks.

Daugavpils Airport remained closed due to enemy action. It was no longer due to roving missilemen with man-portable SAMs – some Russian soldiers, other irregulars – running embarrassing rings around the British but from rockets firing from out of the city and then also distant attacks (coming from inside Belarus) using short-range ballistic missiles. OTR-21s, SS-21 Scarabs to NATO, smashed into the airport doing more damage than that harassing fire from rockets. Transport aircraft couldn’t make use of it. This put extra pressure upon Jēkabpils Airport where the Americans were. The XVIII Corps needed another airhead. The command also needed more men too. Supporting forces were flowing into Jēkabpils as well as those Canadian combat units yet there was still the desire for further troops to come here. None were at the minute assigned to either the XVIII Corps nor even its higher headquarters with Mattis’ CJTF–East who didn’t have a mission that they couldn’t be pulled away from. However, British TA troops remained in western Poland at staging camps where they had formed the 2nd Infantry Division. This was a light unit intended to be assigned where needed when it was needed: XVIII Corps commander, Lt.–General Helmick wanted them if he could have them. Moreover, at the same time, he was also eying another mission-free division. Activated at Vilseck in Bavaria two weeks ago (rather than back home in the United States) was the 7th Infantry Division. Thousands of reservists, officers and enlisted soldiers, combat troops and supporting personnel, had been sent to Germany to create this light unit in-the-field. There were still attachments needing to be made and the British 2nd Infantry was at a higher state of readiness though the US 7th Infantry was what Helmick at his field headquarters in Jēkabpils wanted sent to him if he had the choice. Would Petraeus, who was keeping both formations under SACEUR’s personal command, release either of them, or maybe both (!) to the XVIII Corps?

Oh boy... Destroying strategic targets with conventional weapons is a dangerous game...

I've been silently following this for the last few weeks after you posted a link on the 'other' site! Great writing both of you. The Russians really are screwed in the long run - considering how much legacy equipment they were using, now that much of it has been destroyed in battle they either have to loose that capability or spend vast amounts of money they don't have replacing it.

Also been able to finish reading the now finished Soviet Domination. Thank!