James G
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Post by James G on Jun 6, 2019 19:24:33 GMT
One Hundred and Seventy Seven
That war-winning counterattack the Russians were set to launch wasn’t going to happen yet. Despite the requests of some in Putin’s inner circle, the troops needed weren’t place and NATO wasn’t in the right position either for offensive operations to commence. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t any fighting in Belarus, however. NATO forces were driving hard on Minsk, the Belarusian capital, against resistance that was of varying quality and quantity alike. Given its dire situation, Moscow was prepared to throw Lukashenko under the bus if need be. Putin saw his ally to the west as a chess piece, something that could be sacrificed in negotiations when the counteroffensive successfully cut off NATO’s V Corps and left the bulk of the American and French heavy forces encircled in enemy territory.
The Americans could be whittled down in negotiations if they were on the back foot, and so too could their European allies. Giving them Belarus would be enough to placate the Americans and satisfy their thirst for vengeance. Until the counterattack, however, the fight continued. In northern Belarus, the Polish 11th Armored Cavalry Division made a daring armoured thrust towards Lida with the intention of opening up the road to Minsk. The so-called ‘Lida Gap’ had been scouted out by NATO reconnaissance satellites and was seen both by Mattis and Petraeus as being the quickest route to the Belarusian capital.
The Poles went into the Lida Gap with their Leopard-2s and armoured fighting vehicles in the lead, smashing aside Belarusian forces that fought in opposition. The Battle of the Lida Gap was a major event, one that saw artillery and airpower utilised in support of the ground attack. American Apache gunships circled above the battlefield while a team of Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group carried out reconnaissance ahead of the main force. F-16s and A-10s in the air blew apart enemy troop concentrations on the ground and what followed as a massacre for the Belarusians. Equipped with light anti-tank weapons and some T-72s, the Polish ‘thunder runs’ broke the spirit of the defenders despite Lukashenko’s imposition of his ‘collective punishment’ policy for families of soldiers who were thought to be involved in treasonable activity.
The Americans hit the Lida Gap from the south, seizing the woodlands inside which additional enemy troopers were concealed as well as the highways needed for the Polish armour to swing southwards towards Minsk. The 101st Air Cavalry Division utilised its Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters to transport two full infantry brigade combat teams into the fray, escorted by AH-64D gunships and fighter cover as well. The Americans’ luck did not hold, however, despite the success of the Polish armoured formation to the north.
The low-flying helicopters were immensely vulnerable to troops equipped with even primitive anti-aircraft missiles. Using systems such as the SA-7 and SA-14, Belarusian troops belonging to commando forces engaged the choppers. ZSU-32 anti-aircraft guns utilised by an air defence regiment which had withdrawn with 1st Guards Tank Army assisted in the effort despite facing destruction at the hands of Hellfire missiles launched from the supporting gunships. American drone surveillance efforts had failed to ascertain the number of anti-aircraft weapons positioned north of the now-famed Lida Gap. No less than twelve helicopters were downed, including a pair of CH-47 Chinooks, each of which took fifty men down with them when they crashed and burned.
For almost the next six hours, helicopters landed and withdrew to pick up more troops. Losses mounted as the 101st Division cleared the woodlands against scattered but determined opposition. US Air Force warplanes dropped cluster munitions in the trees, setting off a colossal forest fire that would further detriment the war effort of both sides. The countryside was secured by nightfall despite the resistance faced by the Americans, nonetheless. Casualties stood at over two hundred dead on the part of the Americans. Somebody was going to pay for those mistakes, fairly or otherwise.
In central Belarus, V Corps heavy armoured forces, the best that NATO had, pushed on towards Minsk regardless of the events playing out to the north. The main goal for today was the capture of Baranovichi, and with it a major airbase located near to that small city. The 1st Armored Division had the task of accomplishing this, and it aimed to do so with minimal losses. However, contradictory orders came all the way from Lt.-General Ryan at corps HQ which demanded the Old Ironsides reach Baranovichi as soon as possible, countermanding the division commander’s casualty averse instructions. Lives were lost that day that didn’t need to be lost. 1st Armored Division could have approached with more caution and taken more time, but a full-scale attack on the city had been demanded of them.
Though the division had been bloodied during the fighting so far (its casualty numbers were the third largest of any US formation during the war) it remained a highly effective fighting force with experienced soldiers and good, modern equipment that functioned properly despite having been damaged in battle. T-80s from what remained of the 5th Guards Tank Division, a formation that had been devastated by the wrath of American airpower, tried to stop the US Army’s armoured onslaught. Local militiamen dug into Baranovichi itself to defend the city. The Americans fought their way through the remnants of the 5th Division – effectively an understrength regiment in all but name – and made it to the airfield before swinging into Baranovichi itself from two different directions along the P99 & P108 Highways.
The Americans’ M1A2 tanks were vulnerable here to missile fire, with three of those vehicles knocked out by the militiamen. This urban fighting was more akin to the combat some of those American soldiers, mainly NCOs and mid-grade field officers, had been a part of in Iraq during the occupation there. The militiamen in Belarus were better-armed and had some Russian advisors working within their ranks but they were dramatically less fanatical than the Americans’ opponents in Iraq had been.
The result was the seizure of most of Baranovichi by the end of the day, albeit at considerable cost to the attackers. Nevertheless, over four hundred POWs were taken by the Americans, for a total of fifty-seven US Army deaths.
In southern Belarus, the French forces, with the US 1st Cavalry Division to the north, were advancing up along the Ukrainian border. Something was about to happen here that they did not yet know about, but in keeping with their orders, the Allied units, with the Italians covering their rear, drove on Pinsk against a mixed-bag of resistance efforts. Everything from professional troops with T-72s to roadside Improvised Explosive Devices planted by guerrillas harried the advancing troops. Even so, the advance couldn’t be stopped. Despite everything the Belarusians (and Russians too) threw at them, the two Allied divisions kept pushing onwards.
Airpower was the key to these successes, with most defences against this now rendered inoperable. Bombs devastated the countryside from numerous types of aircraft from all across Europe, including Slovakian and Polish MiG-29s built back in Russia herself.
One of the more prominent successes of the day was the rescue of over five hundred POWs from a camp north of Pinsk by members of the 10th Special Forces Group. The facility had been located by Belgian warplanes returning from a strike to the east, and then French Special Forces had been assigned to reconnoitre the location before those ‘Cowboy’ Americans showed up in their Osprey multipurpose aircraft and stormed the camp.
It looked like NATO had gotten the better of the days fighting across Belarus.
[/font][/font][/quote] CRACKING work there! Intense and brilliant. |
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jun 7, 2019 18:29:46 GMT
One Hundred and Seventy–Eight
In eastern Lithuania, the Allied I Corps continued its advance. The Neman River had been reached and crossed by lead units already. Further crossings were made as more of Lithuania was liberated. Russian and Belorussian troops attached to the shattered but still-functioning Twentieth Guards Army carried on fighting in some places yet elsewhere they surrendered. None of the latter were large scale. However, every time enemy forces laid down their arms, lives were saved: theirs, those of NATO forces and Lithuanian civilians. Around the city of Kaunas, Spanish troops moving to surround it with the belief that those inside would shut themselves in for a siege were shocked not at the sudden surrender instead but the numbers of the few available men who’d been ordered to do that yet instead choose to give up. Only three hundred odd Belorussians were there, all of whom laid down their arms. Kaunas was saved from a fight over it. As to those POWs, they were reservists with no mood among them to die here. There had been some violence before their surrender though. Almost a dozen Belorussian KGB officers – Belarus’ state security service had never changed its name after the fall of the Soviet Union – had been shot dead before the surrender. Curious, the Spanish on-scene commander asked the senior live captive why this had happened. He was told that they had been once more threatening the lives of family members of the soldiers back home and this time, enough had been enough. The decision was taken to kill those men after their communications were cut with the belief that no word would come as to what had happened in Lithuania.
Spanish troops with their 1st Infantry Division had to fight elsewhere though. They were alongside the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division on the northern side of the Neman. There were enemy troops encountered in multiple locations and while they were defeated each time they stood, it was no easy task to keep moving. Things were a little easier on the right-hand side of the corps’ advance. The two British divisions and another of Germans (each with multiple attachments from other countries) all drove towards the Belorussian border. On the way was the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. It remained in revolt against the Russian troops occupying it. They should have been pulled out long ago but orders from Moscow said that they had to stay: holding the Lithuanian capital had been important for propaganda purposes. Now the city was liberated fully. The German 1st Panzer Division had a brigade of Czech troops along with two of its own and there were also small numbers of Lithuanians brought along as advisers too. Contact was established with the rebels inside the city as well as the CIA advisers – officers from the Special Activities Division; men who had had an unpleasant time in Vilnius where losing two of their comrades – who aided their rebellion. Most of the fighting which the 1st Panzer undertook was outside of the city but there were still some inside too. Breaking the Russians, doing what the Lithuanians had been unable to do, came when tanks were used. Leopard-2 tanks blasted shells into the lower parts of several barricaded buildings to bring them down atop the men inside. At the sight of this, other Russians opted to run. They braved Lithuanian snipers and then encountered Czechs outside. A lase surrender was made, a trap to get away, and many Czech soldiers were slain. When reinforcements arrived, and those Russians involved were caught, the Czechs could have taken their revenge: others would have made excuses for them should they have. The Czechs didn’t though to their immense credit. They took prisoner those murderers. Elsewhere, the British 1st Armoured & 3rd Mechanised Divisions fought alongside Belgians and Canadians through the border region. Belorussian efforts to stop the approach of NATO forces close to their country – unawares that large parts of Belarus were already occupied – weren’t successful. They slowed down the NATO units attacking them but couldn’t stop them. The Lithuanian-Belorussian border would be first reached by British troops with the 7th Armoured Brigade and then not long afterwards elsewhere by men with the Canadian 5th Mechanized Brigade–Group too.
Russian troops had escaped in number from eastern Lithuania though. The Twentieth Guards Army was in disarray in many places but other bits were intact enough to withdraw. They faced air attacks and the Americans were moving to start a pursuit but for now they were running. They headed northwards deeper into Lithuania.
Other Allied I Corps elements were in Kaliningrad and pushing to reach western Lithuania from there. Once more, the Neman River was a physical barrier which would have to be crossed before that could be achieved. Moreover, while Russian resistance inside Kaliningrad was weak, it was still present. They’d lost but still they fought thus delaying the progress northwards here. The Poles, the Dutch and the Croats pushed onwards. They had received recent reinforcements. Another Dutch brigade – the 13th Mechanised, taken from the German-Dutch I Corps (leaving it with no troops from the Netherlands under command) – had arrived as well as the Franco-German Brigade which had moved down from Denmark. They were needed in Kaliningrad. Forward progress with the advance onward was stalled. Air power was available with lesser restrictions on the deployment of the heaviest of weapons that was seen over in Lithuania, but there was still the need for much NATO air attention to be focused there. In Kaliningrad, despite being bombed from the air, the Russians were able to force NATO troops to pay a heavy price for what they were taking. American special operations took place while that was going on. Their Rangers conducted smaller missions than before yet carried on trying to secure as many caches of WMDs either still in-place or on the move. Things went very well with a few operations but also badly wrong with others.
A significant distance away from where the I Corps was fighting, there were still NATO forces in Latvia. The US XVIII Airborne Corps – multinational in components now – was engaged in fighting still through this further Baltic nation. Their overall mission since they had arrived in Latvia had been to block the Daugava River so the Twentieth Guards Army would first see its supply lines cut and then have any line of retreat through Latvia blocked too. The Russians had been uncooperative. They’d bypassed the blocking positions to try to move supplies forward despite the NATO presence on the ground and its control of the skies. They’d sent troops to overcome the XVIII Corps and while that had failed, this had kept those along the Daugava busy. Now, the Twentieth Guards Army was retreating northwards out of Lithuania. There was room for them to enter Belarus – northeast of where the I Corps was fighting in eastern Lithuania – to avoid the XVIII Corps but it wasn’t much space in terms of width. In addition, the communications links ran northwards.
With the recent reinforcements, the XVIII Corps had finally secured its position stretching down the Daugava. Militia volunteers had been near wiped out and attempts by Russian paratroopers and airmobile troops, as well as Belorussian tanks, to do the same to them had failed. The Americans with their 82nd Airborne Division were fighting outside of Riga and aiming to do what the Germans had just done to their south and liberate an occupied capital of a NATO country. The British, Belgians and Canadians (like in Lithuania, initial circumstances but later logistical concerns brought them together in joint efforts) were undertaking missions away from their secured area to hit enemy forces far outside. Belgian paratroopers with their Light Brigade, attached to the British 6th Airmobile Division, had even gone down into Lithuania when raiding from far Daugavpils. As the Russians now made their withdrawal from southern parts of Lithuania and looked certain to fall back through Latvia, those Belgians out in forward exposed positions weren’t pulled back. They were reinforced instead. Daugavpils and downstream along the river were left in the hands of those many British TA troops which had arrived while the 6th Airmobile (including its Canadian tanks) set itself up on favourable ground near to and also along the Latvian-Lithuanian border. There was also the US 7th Infantry Division. Stood up last month on German soil and brought in recent days into Latvia to join the XVIII Corps, they too went towards blocking positions forward from the Daugava. The narrow Nemunėlis River was on the same border that the 6th Airmobile was on and that waterway had a good road running behind it allowing for lateral communications.
Both NATO formations were tasked to fight there against the Twentieth Guards Army should it come this way as feared it might and then fall back to the Daugava if need be. The 82nd Airborne had taken Lielvārde Airbase on the way to closing in upon Riga. From there, NATO combat aircraft were flying to support those on the ground. The XVIII Corps retained its mission to hold the line. The commander of CJTF–East, General Mattis, had been instructed by SACEUR to have the corps commander understand that this was the priority. Petraeus still was under pressure from the politicians to have Riga taken as soon as possible but they had been made to understand the bigger picture here. If what was left of the Twentieth Guards Army did come through Latvia and didn’t go eastwards, either before or afterwards, it would keep going northwards. Estonia was where Operation Baltic Arrow was due to eventually see both the I & XVIII Corps go to and it would be far easier to do that without the Russians being able to withdraw to there. Catching them in Lithuania or directing them away from Latvia was the immediate goal but Petraeus would do all that could be done to have them held on the Daugava if need be. Riga was a political goal and a distraction would could be indulged for now but not if the remains of that Russian field army came into Latvia.
While suspected, it was unknown if the Russians were going to withdraw to Latvia. NATO was right to be concerned that that was due to happen for their orders were to fall back northwards, not eastwards. The Daugava would be a position fought for.
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forcon
Lieutenant Commander
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Post by forcon on Jun 8, 2019 18:06:51 GMT
One Hundred and Seventy Nine
Russian forces on Sakhalin had surrendered en masse after weeks of severe fighting. Casualties there had been horrendous after the fighting that had gone on all over the island. What had been planned as a fast victory with minimal losses had turned into one of the bloodiest and longest-lasting engagements of World War III. The objectives of seizing Sakhalin had been firstly to capture Russian oil-production facilities and secondly to seize territory which could be used further down the line in negotiations for the return of NATO territory that remained under Russian occupation.
Resistance had been steadfast despite the overwhelming odds against the Russian Armed Forces.
They were fighting for their homeland on Sakhalin even if it wasn’t physically connected to the Russian mainland. Allied ground forces had pushed inland despite the resistance they had faced. First US Marines and then Army troops along with Australian soldiers had fought in this bloody battle against the 33rd Motorised Rifle Division which had seen that formation not just destroyed but totally obliterated with less than three thousand of its members surviving to the moment that they surrendered.
That number included all of the wounded who would become POWs as well as those soldiers who were still in fighting condition.
Thousands of enemy POWs as well as wounded Allied troops were flown first to ships out in the ocean and then onwards to Hawaii, Seattle, and Australia for treatment or holding. Prisoners of War were to be sorted through as evidence of war crimes was searched for and the identities of the perpetrators uncovered. Unlike in Europe, the Russians had fought largely in accordance with international law because few prisoners had been taken by them and thus abuse of POWs was rare, while Sakhalin was populated by Russian civilians meaning that the armed forces were hesitant to utilise heavy weapons in urban areas.
There was still resistance across the island when the Russian military laid down its arms. Resistance groups had formed in the countryside and in the suburbs alike, manned by a mixture of isolated troops, FSB & MVD personnel, and even armed civilians.
Roadside bombs, sniper attacks, and ambushes were carried out in abundance by these cut-off pockets who were not officially a part of the 33rd Motorised Division and so hadn’t been ordered to surrender when that formation had finally caved.
One particular group of fighters, a platoon of teenage cadets led by their sergeant, a former naval infantryman, would become a particular thorn in the side of the occupying forces. Eventually, a film would be produced about the exploits of those boys and girls in opposing the Coalition occupation of their island.
Velichayshiy Iz Nas, or ‘The Greatest of Us’ would become a hit around the world, with the film portraying the horrors of the fighting on Sakhalin and the misguided patriotism of those involved – arguably on both sides – rather than being a pure action film. Similarly, the Australian film ‘I Was Only 19,’ which paid homage to an earlier song of the same name, also went out of its way to showcase the human side of the war.
Allied commanders in the Far East, led by the victorious Lt.-General Joseph Dunford, argued for a slackening of the air campaign against the Russian Far East. Targets there had been all but destroyed and those aircraft being used needed to be repaired. Pilots needed time to recuperate just like the ground troops below.
Many in Washington had been dismayed and surprised to see this attitude from commanders who were supposed to have been hard-chargers and hawks, but those on the ground had witnessed and led the fighting here rather than those at home.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jun 8, 2019 19:25:43 GMT
Love the Russian version of Red Dawn!
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jun 9, 2019 18:33:10 GMT
One Hundred and Eighty
The secret meetings in Moscow among members of Putin’s inner circle continued.
Where it had first just been Gerasimov and Shoygu before Bortnikov joined them, there was now a fourth member who attended their conversations. Joining the C-in-C of the ground forces, the minister for emergency situations and the director of the FSB was now the head of Russian relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Lebedev, so long a trusted siloviki who owed everything to Putin, joined with the others in private talks.
They told each other that they weren’t plotting to oust Putin. Whether any of them truly meant that was up for debate. However, they stuck to that approach. It was the actions of the president’s advisers who they stated they were opposed to. Putin would make better decisions if it wasn’t them he listened to but instead this secret gathering of like-minded individuals. As before, the anger that these co-conspirators had was for members of the Security Council such as Kozak (the foreign minister), Makarov (the armed forces C-in-C), Patrushev (head of the Security Council) and Shlyakhturov (GRU chief). They had led Putin astray.
Students of history might note the historical connotations here with self-declared patriots trying to rid their king of those who gave bad advice, to be replaced by themselves, while absolving their God-like leaders of any blame. Again, whether any of them really meant what they said on this matter was up for debate. It was what they justified their actions with to each other when meeting though.
Lebedev joined with them due to the inability of himself to get the Security Council to listen to him when it came to what he believed was the disaster starring Russia in the face with regard to Russia’s allies in Central Asia. Those countries had been dragged into a war supposedly to defend Tajikistan but they wanted nothing to do with anything more than that. NATO and the Coalition was attacking them and Moscow would provide no help nor listen to their leaders when it came to working towards a way out of it for them. Lebedev found those who listened to him, were willing to agree with the solutions to this issue which he posed. Patrushev had shut him out of bringing that to the Security Council. He found others willing to listen.
The further issues remained among the others whom he was now meeting with. The war was being lost now they all agreed, and all because the wrong people had been listened to. Gerasimov and Shoygu had been cut out of the decision-making process and while Bortnikov retained his voice there, he found himself increasingly isolated too. The instructions which he was given to carry out were ones which he was now only following when he decided they were necessary. On other matters, he was opting to not carry them out as ordered yet lying to the Security Council with regards to outcomes. When running this past those colleagues of his, that made this a conspiracy and them all co-conspirators. Such would be the labels that Bortnikov’s FSB would give to any gathering like this that they discovered. Of course, he saw it differently.
What was their conspiracy about though? What outcome did it foresee? Were they going to act?
The meetings together as a three then a four came alongside smaller meetings of just the two of them. That two were Bortnikov and Gerasimov. The spymaster and the general had even more private discussions. Ideas as to how to get rid of the advisers around Putin were considered: the majority of those involved bring a violent end to such people with Bortnikov looking to rid the Security Council of Shlyakhturov and Makarov being the target of Gerasimov’s ire.
A cynic might say that the focus was on these two as they represented the biggest threats to their own personal ambitions.
No agreement was made on whether to yet give fatal ‘accidents’ to either man. There was still a bigger desire, above personal hatred, to do more than just that. The two of them still wanted something more. Killing those men didn’t solve the ultimate issue of the war being lost like it was. That was something that those on the Security Council wouldn’t admit but the four of them opposed to the advice being given to Putin on those grounds were sure of. The bad advice was causing the war to be lost.
NATO had its armies in Latvia and Lithuania. Kaliningrad was almost overrun and lost for good. They were marching through Belarus. Over the Kola, the American’s aircraft were active daily. Sakhalin and the South Kuriles were in Coalition hands. Central Asia was threatened with an invasion, even if it was a smaller one than seen elsewhere. US bombers had once more struck at strategic targets deep throughout Russia. There were no longer any allies of use with Libya & Syria soon to be doomed while Transnistria already lost and Belarus being conquered. Every military move made had been reversed. Intelligence efforts abroad had failed.
NATO was closing the noose around Russia’s neck.
The conspirators were informed about Operation Volk: Russia’s upcoming counteroffensive to catch NATO unawares and attack through the neutral Ukraine into Belarus. Even Lebedev was told of this officially because the Ukraine was a member of the CIS and there needed to be wheels greased. None of the believed that it would succeed in beating back the invasion they saw preceding onwards eventually to Moscow.
Bortnikov saw an opportunity arise from this. It was one he kept to himself. His co-conspirators would never have agreed to what he dreamed up in what he personally regarded as true act of genius.
There was an active FSB investigation which he was aware of, one taking place in the heart of Moscow. He had been briefed on it and now he took a personal interest in the case. The suspected spy wouldn’t be detained and disposed of, he informed the senior officer on the case: no, that wasn’t to be. Instead, Bortnikov had more information passed to him. It was all a plot, Bortnikov explained, to trap more spies. He personally selected what was to be revealed and assured his subordinate that it was something signed off on by the Security Council.
Who was that foreign spy? It was the Ukrainian military attaché.
Bortnikov thus betrayed the Volk counteroffensive. He believed it was the right thing to do. He took action that the others wouldn’t agree with to NATO to now do his dirty work for him. Once it played out, that would begin the process of seeing Putin’s advisers fall. Common sense could then break out and this disastrous war ended.
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oldbleep
Petty Officer 2nd Class
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Post by oldbleep on Jun 9, 2019 22:59:09 GMT
"Oh! What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice To Deceive"
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raunchel
Commander
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Post by raunchel on Jun 10, 2019 8:42:03 GMT
And the eternal problem of dictatorships without a driving ideology surfaces again: unbridled ambition by those who believe that they'll get away with it.
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forcon
Lieutenant Commander
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Post by forcon on Jun 10, 2019 18:24:54 GMT
One Hundred and Eighty One
Some weeks ago, American Tomahawk cruise missiles had struck what was thought to be a command and control facility for Russian forces. It would transpire that the complex had instead been a 'defensive' biological research complex housing samples of the deadliest diseases known to man. Illnesses such as plague, anthrax, smallpox and others were stored there. When the building was destroyed most of those samples had burned with it and yet there had been a leak of a sample of the Marburg Virus, specifically a Soviet-designed species known as Variant U.
From the now destroyed facility Variant U had spread into parts of St Petersburg and into Belarus and the Baltic States with troops using transport facilities in those places spreading the illness as they went.
Harsh, some might say extreme, quarantine measures had been enacted against those infected and throughout Russia's second city. To the immense relief of many but also somewhat surprisingly, there was much success met in containing the outbreak with martial law already in effect.
Nevertheless, hundreds fell victim to Marburg, a disease which had no known cure or vaccine. About all that could be done for those infected was the administration of morphine for the pain. As those drugs ran out with the influx of war casualties medical staff turned to heroin as a painkiller for their patients. Worse was the fact that since Variant U attacked the blood vessels, eventually painkillers became useless for the victims of the disease.
Even with all of these horrific scenes, doctors and nurses, urged on by the gun barrels of the police and MVD, kept the vast majority of patients isolated until they died, at which point the bodies were disposed of with extreme caution.
Soldiers on the frontline, however, had fewer resources to combat the spread of the infection. When men began to fall ill they were hastily quarantined but in combat soldiers often shared food, hot drinks and water, and cigarettes. Even a contagion with a relatively low (in comparison with the flu for example) infection rate spread like wildfire amongst many units until the use of NBC equipment and other precautionary measures was ordered.
The only saving grace was that due to the nature of warfare, most troops only ever talked to or socialise with members of their own companies, preventing the disease from spreading as fast as it could have in peacetime.
NATO troops began falling ill as well when enemy personnel who happened to be infected fell into captivity.
Behind-the-scenes communication between Western governments and figures in Russia's intelligence community meant that the Coalition was aware of the nature of the outbreak and that CBRN defensive measures were immediately imposed with significant effect despite the fact that the wearing of gas masks and NBC equipment drastically reduced the combat capabilities of Allied units as well as Russian ones.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jun 10, 2019 20:00:07 GMT
One Hundred and Eighty One
Some weeks ago, American Tomahawk cruise missiles had struck what was thought to be a command and control facility for Russian forces. It would transpire that the complex had instead been a 'defensive' biological research complex housing samples of the deadliest diseases known to man. Illnesses such as plague, anthrax, smallpox and others were stored there. When the building was destroyed most of those samples had burned with it and yet there had been a leak of a sample of the Marburg Virus, specifically a Soviet-designed species known as Variant U.
From the now destroyed facility Variant U had spread into parts of St Petersburg and into Belarus and the Baltic States with troops using transport facilities in those places spreading the illness as they went.
Harsh, some might say extreme, quarantine measures had been enacted against those infected and throughout Russia's second city. To the immense relief of many but also somewhat surprisingly, there was much success met in containing the outbreak with martial law already in effect.
Nevertheless, hundreds fell victim to Marburg, a disease which had no known cure or vaccine. About all that could be done for those infected was the administration of morphine for the pain. As those drugs ran out with the influx of war casualties medical staff turned to heroin as a painkiller for their patients. Worse was the fact that since Variant U attacked the blood vessels, eventually painkillers became useless for the victims of the disease.
Even with all of these horrific scenes, doctors and nurses, urged on by the gun barrels of the police and MVD, kept the vast majority of patients isolated until they died, at which point the bodies were disposed of with extreme caution.
Soldiers on the frontline, however, had fewer resources to combat the spread of the infection. When men began to fall ill they were hastily quarantined but in combat soldiers often shared food, hot drinks and water, and cigarettes. Even a contagion with a relatively low (in comparison with the flu for example) infection rate spread like wildfire amongst many units until the use of NBC equipment and other precautionary measures was ordered.
The only saving grace was that due to the nature of warfare, most troops only ever talked to or socialise with members of their own companies, preventing the disease from spreading as fast as it could have in peacetime.
NATO troops began falling ill as well when enemy personnel who happened to be infected fell into captivity.
Behind-the-scenes communication between Western governments and figures in Russia's intelligence community meant that the Coalition was aware of the nature of the outbreak and that CBRN defensive measures were immediately imposed with significant effect despite the fact that the wearing of gas masks and NBC equipment drastically reduced the combat capabilities of Allied units as well as Russian ones. [/font][/font][/quote] NBC suits will always be a pain on combat operations. It's summer too, which can only make conditions for those wearing them only worse. |
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jun 11, 2019 19:13:49 GMT
"Oh! What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice To Deceive" He's planning a very dangerous game with that. I'll explain more of that in Thursday's update too. And the eternal problem of dictatorships without a driving ideology surfaces again: unbridled ambition by those who believe that they'll get away with it. Ambition is what it is all about... plus he thinks he is being very clever. |
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,833
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Post by James G on Jun 11, 2019 19:15:34 GMT
One Hundred and Eighty–Two
The trio of Spetsnaz strike teams which had struck at targets within the Continental United States (CONUS: the Lower 48) during August had all been wiped out in the end. Those super soldiers from Russia had on each occasion met their end either at their targets – Tinker AFB in Oklahoma and Creech AFB in Nevada – or in the case of those who assassinated Obama in Washington, before they could flee the country. They had killed many people and caused a lot of destruction. Murdering the US President (as well as so many high-ranking Obama Administration figures) had been damaging too. However, when added all up, the real value was little. America got a new president, the US Air Force was still flying E-3 Sentrys and the Americans had their drones flying overseas. Back in Moscow, they had underestimated how much could be achieved by their Spetsnaz operations. A significant blow was made against the plans for further missions too when the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted their own operations first into Mexico and then down further south into Latin America. Crippling the United States’ war effort by causing distractions at home had failed.
What the Americans hadn’t been able to do though was to go after the supporting network inside CONUS. They unleashed an orgy of violence against it close to America’s borders but not inside the country. The GRU still many of had its ‘facilitating agents’ alive. These were long-term sleepers. A couple had been lost when JSOC elements operating with Task Force Hunter had taken out the Obama kill team but the majority had evaded detection. These were the people who had been in the country for years. They lived under false identities with no interest attracted to them. They pretended to be either foreign nationals from third party countries or naturalised citizens from them: none of those countries included Russia nor any of its traditional allies. They had spent their time inside the United States gathering intelligence, storing weapons and securing support for the one day when war would come. If asked and should they have been honest, none would have thought that that day would come for them to put all of those plans into action. One of them got cold feet and had decided to approach the Americans. Should he have managed to do so, the impact would have been quite something. Alas, his controlling officer, who had met with him and briefed him ahead of the war on what was coming, had detected something wrong when delivering that news. He saw the rejection in his subordinate’s face and caught what he was sure was an immediate decision being made to act against this. He could have been wrong but a voice inside his head had told him something was very wrong. A purported Bulgarian national residing in Virginia had disappeared from the face of the earth hours later. His body would be discovered years later and the connection even then not made.
If things had gone the other way, if the controlling agent hadn’t smelled an immediate rat…
The Americans knew that these facilitating agents existed.
From the captives they had taken in the fights against the Spetsnaz, questioning brought forth mentions of people not either dead or in custody. Huge effort was expended in building a complete picture of all of the bits of information known. Intelligence agencies – most of the alphabet soup of organisations – worked to put this together. Despite instructions from above to cut it out, there remained much inter-agency rivalry while it was ongoing. Not everyone wanted to share their toys nor liked playing in the same sandbox as others. Still, the intelligence was put together to start identifying those GRU people missing. This was helped by the removal of so many peacetime restrictions on their operations. Attorney General Eric Holder once more protested to President Biden about some of the things done on this note but to no avail. Holder considered handing in his resignation yet opted to wait until the war was over – whenever that might be or at least wait until the New Year if the conflict hadn’t ended by that point – to resign. Other lower-ranking people in political and legal positions who were aware of what they considered gross violations of the Constitution when it came down to domestic intelligence & military activities did leave their posts either voluntarily or after being asked to. The president had legal cover for his actions in authorising what was done and proceeded with them.
In West Texas, an armed raid by JSOC personnel on a rural property when intelligence suggested that the sleeper agents behind the Tinker attack could be found there occurred. Over a hundred people were involved: military and civilian. A married couple caught claimed innocence at first. They were naturalised citizens, originally natives of Poland they said, and had no idea what this was all about. FBI forensic science investigators who’d picked up their trail first in Oklahoma and was all over the Texas property soon showed this to be nothing but a lie. They were as guilty as sin and there was evidence to prove it. In peacetime, if this couple were ordinary spies, there would have been a media circus and also courtroom legal drama. America was at war though. The pair of them weren’t held in Texas but instead got a free flight to Cuba. When in Guantanamo Bay, they could be questioned by means illegal to do inside the United States especially to people who had a claim (even one which was ultimately fraudulent) to be a legal citizen.
Then there were those GRU officers involved in the massacre of US Air Force personnel – and some from the RAF too – at Creech.
JSOC had already conducted an unsuccessful raid in the Greater Los Angeles area to locate the three facilitating agents who’d been involved in hitting drone operators in Nevada. Green Berets attached to Task Force Hunter had followed a trail to California which had shown much promise. They’d gone in quietly…
…without realising an unseen civilian had filmed them from an elevated view and uploaded the footage onto youtube. Admiral McRaven – someone being rather favoured by the Biden Administration – had been rather mad at that.
The trail hadn’t gone completely cold though. Once more, forensics had been key. Those being sought had been at the house in Chino Hills, it was just that they were not at home when an army of American special operations personnel arrived to pay a house call. Physical evidence was all over the property. It was incredibly difficult to get rid of DNA. Many criminals in jail had found that out to their cost. Other criminals had still gotten away with things in the face of DNA proof due to the irregularities of justice systems but those hunting the GRU in California weren’t looking to build a case that had to hold its own against some clever lawyer. The Russians had been there and Americans knew it.
The trail had gone cold but it wasn’t dead. A new breath of warm air was now blown into it during early September. Task Force Hunter returned to Los Angeles. They got a tip off from a concerned citizen which first went through the FBI and was then shared with the wider Intelligence Community after an initial bureaucratic hold-up. Squabbles still occurred among civilian spooks – the CIA (operating on American soil), the FBI and the NSA – and the military intelligence officers too which even someone like McRaven couldn’t overcome but there was something here to follow. The breadcrumbs let to another married couple with Eastern European roots and a houseguest of theirs also from that part of the world too. The use of identities claiming these people were from NATO countries was assumed by the Americans to be a ploy to cause investigators to hesitate for fear of upsetting wartime allies. Well… that wasn’t going to work here. Should these foreign visitors supposedly from Romania and Hungary be innocent, any problems on that note would be smoothed over by diplomats.
Anyway, the new intelligence led the Americans to a house in Torrance, south of Los Angeles. They were getting set up when, in two vehicles, the three ‘Eastern Europeans’ all left the house in a hurry. Something spooked them and they made a dash for it. Not ready and undermanned, the Americans didn’t open fire on them in the middle of the street during daytime. It was FBI people present and McRaven would afterwards relieve one of his military subordinates for not being on-scene right with the FBI at the time. As to those two vehicles, they went to the Del Amo Fashion Centre. This retail mall had once been made famous in an iconic film. It was full of civilians, more than had been on the street outside that house. The Eastern Europeans / GRU sleepers conducted a change of vehicles there and tried to flee. One of them didn’t make it. There was a call of ‘gun, gun, gun!’ when she turned around fast upon one of the FBI men. He got his weapon out long before Green Berets could pour out of their van. Two shots rang out. The woman dropped down dead. Civilian witnesses screamed and ran; others took out their mobile phones to record what was going on. If this woman had been an innocent foreign national, things might have gotten rather complicated… She wasn’t though. She’d been removing a sub-machine guns from an oversized handbag: if the FBI man hadn’t shot her, she would have sent dozens of bullets in every direction.
Killing the Russians wasn’t wanted. The desire was to capture them alive to interrogate them. Using vehicles and soon a helicopter, the two others were soon picked up using separate vehicles to get away from that mall. Whether the Russians knew the woman was dead, the Americans didn’t know. What they wanted to do was to trap them in a good location and force them to give up when they were faced with many men armed with guns. They weren’t Spetsnaz, they wouldn’t fight to the end.
It was near to the Port of Los Angeles at Long Beach where that happened. Alerted, Homeland Security agents shut off all access to the site as vehicles carrying Russian spies approached. Long Beach was a secure area due to wartime activity there including the recent shipping overseas of much of the California Army National Guard. No matter what was wanted with the intention of taking these suspected spies in for questioning, that wasn’t going to be done at such an important place. It was in San Pedro where the final act of this drama played out. Individually, two vehicles were stopped. One was forced off the road to crash into a cemetery wall and the other was stopped using stingers on the pavement to shred its tyres: the latter came to a stop in a car park outside a convenience store. In full combat gear, outnumbering their quarry significantly and surely outgunning them too, the Green Berets were all around both vehicles. The stunned and shocked drivers were dragged out. FBI officers and LAPD liaisons kept back while the suspected spies were searched, cuffed, hooded and then thrown into JSOC-operated vehicles. Once they were taken away, then further forensic work could be done.
Neither of these two spies played the game that their comrades in Texas had done. They told no lies about who they weren’t. Information was handed over to those who questioned them while first in California and then afterwards when they reached Cuba. Each thought too that their other comrade, the woman killed in that mall car park, was talking as well (the Americans fed that perception) and this helped get more information out of them.
The Russians caught in San Pedro spilled their guts.
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forcon
Lieutenant Commander
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Post by forcon on Jun 12, 2019 10:40:37 GMT
One Hundred and Eighty Three
American commanders were beginning to regret their bold decision to open up another front in the Caucuses. Tbilisi, still vengeful after the Georgian defeat back in 2008, had sent its forces into a meat grinder of prepared Russian defences several days ago. United States Marines and had gone in with them, along with Green Beret reservist units, and success had been met but at a far higher cost in terms of both men and material than had been anticipated.
The Russians’ 58th Army had gradually been forced to cede the occupied Georgian territory seized two years ago as US and Georgian troops pushed those Russians northwards away from Tbilisi.
B-52 bombers had aided in this effort while warplanes from Romanian and Bulgarian airfields had put their efforts into destroying Russian air defence batteries in the region. The airfields at Krasnodar and Krymsk were hit by the combined might of the US and Italian Air Forces, the former with their B-1Bs and F-15Es and the latter using Tornado strike aircraft specially outfitted for defence suppression duties. Russian airpower over the Caucuses was effectively neutralised by the continuation or air operations against their bases, as well as against supply hubs for fuel and weaponry, which left those aircraft that were able to take off with little in the way of advanced missiles.
Even so, casualties on the ground were exceedingly heavy as the Americans and Georgians pushed onwards. American officers began to wonder if those US troops that had gone to Syria to support the Israeli invasion could have been better utilised in Georgia, but it was too late for that now. One thing that did improve the Americans morale was the arrival of the reactivated 194th Armored Brigade Combat Team along with the 197th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
Those two formations had been active as training units for armoured and infantry officers and enlisted personnel up until several weeks ago. Now, their slots had been filled out by a mixture of personnel, which included training staff, troops brought back into service who had left the US Army within the past twenty-four months and who did not need retraining, recruits from the two armour and infantry schools who had seen their training advanced as a result of the outbreak of World War III, and reservist personnel who had been assigned to the two brigades as they were called up.
For command and control purposes, a new divisional headquarters was stood up to command the US Army’s two brigade combat teams’ in Georgia; the 9th Infantry Division.
The 9th Infantry Division, alongside the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, the 509th Airborne Combat Team (men plucked from the US Army’s airborne & Ranger schools) and the 20th Special Forces Group found itself designated as II Corps. A small formation numbering fewer than thirty thousand men, II Corps made a renewed offensive effort against the 58th Army.
SS-26 Iskander missiles further delayed the American resupply efforts by targeting the major Georgian airports and airbases being used as supply hubs. It took the better part of a week for the reorganisation efforts to occur, but once they did the results were noticeable.
With NATO air superiority all but total, the Russians could only utilise a small number of Mi-24 & Mi-28 attack helicopters, which themselves were quickly shot down by American and Romanian fighter aircraft after making several attack runs against the Americans.
The ground offensive carried on as the hastily-formed II Corps took over from the Georgian Army. Armed with main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, the 9th Division and the Marines pushed up along the coast and down the major highways which linked the mountain passes to Tbilisi, drawing the Russian occupiers away from the centre of the country before crossing into the two rogue provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Tskhinvali, the capital of the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia, became the target of the untested 509th Combat Team. Using helicopters, a mixture of American Black Hawks and Georgian Hueys and Mi-8s, the Americans along with Georgian Special Forces operatives hit the city in a daring air assault, against resistance from pro-Russian militia units equipped with small-arms and a number of older BTR fighting vehicles and even some T-62 tanks supplied by Moscow.
Tskhinvali fell over the course of a two day engagement which saw the city devastated. The fortunes of II Corps and the Georgian Army had changed dramatically after the Americans had reorganised their forces with the ad hoc corps and divisional commands.
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crackpot
Petty Officer 1st Class
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Post by crackpot on Jun 12, 2019 10:58:23 GMT
Good morning, indeed. Just what I needed with my cup of coffee.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jun 13, 2019 6:06:38 GMT
Where are those Russian troops who should have held everywhere south of the Caucasus Mountains?
We'll find out tonight.
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forcon
Lieutenant Commander
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Post by forcon on Jun 13, 2019 19:12:10 GMT
Where are those Russian troops who should have held everywhere south of the Caucasus Mountains? We'll find out tonight. Grab your popcorn, guys! |
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