Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

One Hundred and Eighty–Six

While different in the skies, on the ground when dealing with the right wing of the Russian ‘surprise’ offensive it had only been the Americans and the French involved. It was remarkably different when NATO addressed the left wing of the advance from out of the supposedly neutral Ukraine into Belarus by another field army. The Thirty–Fifth Army, with troops from the Russian Far East, was faced with aircraft from many air forces operating in skies which they completely dominated, and on the battlefield below there was a wide mix of different nationalities who engaged them too.

Combat forces from a total of eight different NATO countries met them inside southwestern Belarus; other countries had troops which remained back in Poland that didn’t make it to the battle in time and thus it could easily have been a dozen nations involved. Fighting off the Thirty–Fifth Army was a mixed force of twice the strength of the attacking Russians. They didn’t necessarily dig-in completely to establish fixed defensive positions though there was some of that at certain points. It was more of a case of a mobile battle being fought. General Mattis’ CJTF–East ordered selective units coming up from their long-term defensive mission on the Ukraine’s borders with Poland, Slovakia and Hungary – leaving others in-place – to join with some of the German-Dutch I Corps. That headquarters took control of the battle. The Americans provided the most in terms of numbers (a plurality, not a majority) with the Germans not far behind them. The Czechs, the Hungarians, the Italians, the Slovaks, the Slovenes and even the British had a contribution as well. They were all out to stop Operation Volk from being successful.

Those British troops, 3 PARA, was located just back from the Ukrainian-Belorussian border along with the US Army’s 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment when the two Russian field armies came over at dawn on September 8th. Much of the 11th Cav’ was further east, out ahead of the US V Corps, though part of it was in the German-Dutch I Corps sector along with those British Paras.

Russian tanks, armoured vehicles and thousands of troops moved over the border and those on the northern side of that dividing line were engaged in fighting them immediately. Bigger battles were to come, but there were these short and lethal clashes first. The elements of the training unit which had come from the Californian desert and those British soldiers who’d previously fought a devil of a fight in Copenhagen took part in ambushes to break up lead units. They had been told the exact routes which the Russians would take and fired off weapons against them to break up and disrupt the movement. Yet, there was silence from others alongside them as they didn’t conduct any ambushes but rather provided on the ground scouting to confirm what was already known. Not everyone knew where the super-secret intelligence on Russian intentions had come from nor was willing to fully trust it.

As the border fights raged, to slow down the pair of Russian motor rifle divisions entering Belarus, the German-Dutch I Corps started moving in its heavier forces. Lt.–General van Loon, a Royal Netherlands Army officer not currently commanding any of his fellow Dutchmen (Mattis and Petraeus had both backed his continued appointment despite some objectives from back in the Pentagon who wanted to put a US Army officer in charge), had his heavy units roll over the River Bug as they crossed from Poland into Belarus. Three divisions and three independent brigades went over. There was a brigade of Italians already moving in behind the 11th Cav’ & 3 PARA but this force dispatched by van Loon was sent to win the fight. They would be a surprise for the Russians indeed.


The Thirty–Fifth Army headed for Brest.

Retaking the city on the Belorussian side of the Bug wasn’t their objective but instead they were to get over the river and enter Poland near to it. There were all of those pontoon bridges which NATO had put up to cross the Bug to supply their V Corps fighting inside Belarus. That was what the 81st Guards & 270th Motor Rifle Divisions was here to do… unaware that NATO knew all about that and was using them themselves not for a mass of supply trucks but instead a mass of armour. Inside Belarus, the Russians took losses from fire from on the ground and from the skies. They drove onwards into the face of this. Losses mounted but they weren’t enough to stall the advance. One of the 81st Guards’ regiments was tasked to protect the flank to the north as everyone else swung away to the west. There was an unconnected fight already underway around Kobryń where the Italians were known to be fighting Russian Airborne Troops sent in ahead of Volk to provide a distraction effort. The whole of the Italian division was believed to be there. It wasn’t. Their Cavalry Brigade Pozzuolo del Friuli was in action as it linked up with retreating Americans and Britons. Opening fire from artillery was made first and then the Italians brought their Centauro tank destroyers into play. Russian infantry carriers supported by a battalion of tanks – BMP-2s and T-72s – took murderous fire from those Italian armoured vehicles. The Italian ambush caused the Russian regiment to halt. If it had been able to carry on regardless, charging head-on into that accurate fire, the Russians might have given the Italians real trouble but they stopped under higher orders as their parent division. No one knew what was going on. Who was firing on them? Why were those Italians there and not where they were supposed to be? Had the cat been let out of the bag early? As those questions were being asked, in came a mass of NATO air power.

V Corps received more of support from above in unleashing a torrent of destruction upon their opponents yet that didn’t mean that the German-Dutch I Corps were left out. NATO jets flew in and bombed the Russians repeatedly. A wide area of the Belorussian countryside was the target for all of this, nowhere near to any major population center. SAMs and anti-aircraft shells were lofted skywards, sometimes getting hits in, but what the Thirty–Fifth Army needed was aircraft of their own. There weren’t any that could reach the fight in the face of NATO control of the skies for hundreds of miles around. Certain Russian units pushed onwards through all of this. Their commanders refused to sit still and die. If they closed with enemy forces, NATO would ease off for fear of friendly fire. Others didn’t move though. It didn’t matter what the Russians did. NATO ground forces weren’t yet here and in the meantime they had a free-fire zone where static or moving opponents were blasted to bits regardless of what they were doing.

By midday, NATO got its many heavy units into the fight.


Not everything went as planned with van Loon’s counterattack. Interference on the border and then the massive series of air strikes caused the Russians to differ from their pre-attack detailed plans, the ones which had been passed to NATO via French intelligence activities as the machinations of the FSB director. Some of the fighting erupted earlier than foreseen with the Russians out of place. This was especially true with elements of the 270th Motor Rifle who were closer to the Bug than believed. Czech and German troops with the 13th Panzergrenadier Division (an untested unit which had spent a month in Hungary and Slovakia) met them in battle. Despite the tactical surprise, these NATO troops emerged victorious from their meeting engagements. It slowed them down though and losses were taken. With the majority of the rest of the German-Dutch I Corps, this wasn’t the case. Sent in first were the US 3rd Infantry & German 10th Panzer Divisions (the latter including a brigade of Slovenes). Each of these formations had fought before in Poland, taking major losses there in stopping the first Russian invasion of their ally. Replacements had been absorbed and the divisions brought back up to strength. This didn’t mean they were what they once were though.

Yet the opponents which they all faced were seeing war for the first time. This wasn’t a battle which either Russian division nor their thousands of men should ever have been in. They were though. War came to them in the Belorussian countryside and it was horrible. NATO had larger forces and thorough air cover. The Americans, Czechs, Germans and Slovenes tore into them. It was a fight as big as the one taking place over at Mazyr which the V Corps was in. Moreover, van Loon eventually sent more of his troops into the fight. The main attack with his three divisions was joined by that trio of brigades which had come over afterwards from Poland too. The Slovakian 2nd Mechanised Brigade linked up with the Italians to keep the Russians from attempting an escape to the north. A secondary move to keep the Thirty–Fifth Army where they were and unable to get away was made along the Ukrainian-Belorussian border. Staying just on the northern side of the border line, the US 116th Cavalry Brigade (national guardsmen who had long been in Poland on the Ukrainian border) was followed by the Hungarian 25th Infantry Brigade. They shot up anyone in their way that had crossed over and while doing so mainly engaged rear area units behind the combat troops being taken apart by the rest of the German-Dutch I Corps. Some fire, from Russian units, not Ukrainians, came across the dividing line. It was returned though with care taken to engage only Russian attackers. This brought up serious issues over what to do with the Russians left back over in the Ukraine who hadn’t made it across. The Americans and Hungarians set about blocking the border yet would remain under intermittent fire for a long time after the main battle happening behind them ceased.

The Thirty–Fifth Army was trapped.

No all-round defence was able to take place and there were columns of American and German tanks which had driven hard forward to make deep penetrations. By the time night fell, much of the 270th Motor Rifle ceased to exist as a fighting force and the 81st Guards wasn’t in a much better state. The closeness between friendly and enemy forces on the battlefield did effect NATO air operations but not as much as the Russians would have hoped. They could still bring it into play and use it just as effectively in the darkness of night as well as they had in daytime. The field army’s commander was dead and so too was one of his divisional commanders. NATO were breaking the Russians up into smaller pieces as penetrating units linked up with others.


Another field army was lost. With the Thirty–Fifth Army it wasn’t official until the following morning as this one didn’t die as fast as the Forty–Ninth Army did, but, in the end, that delay didn’t matter. Those troops were gone. Large-scale surrenders would take place and there were even shooting incidents where certain officers were shot by men who refused to keep fighting and just wanted to bring this hell to an end.

The Russian Army had other men in uniform. There were men fighting in Lithuania, elsewhere in Belarus, in the Caucasus Mountains and in Tajikistan. Small forces remained in the Russian Far East, looking seawards, and there were reservists already in-place in the Kola with ever-so-slow mobilisations occurring elsewhere ready to send them to the battlefields.

However, Russia was out of trained and well-equipped units to send into battle anymore. The cupboard was now officially bare after Volk’s failure. Unless those in Lithuania could escape, they were finished. Those others in Belarus had barely a few days fight left in them: the road to Moscow was open after that! Major issues with reserves failing to turn out and then the state of equipment pulled from storage meant that no hope could be put in them to stop NATO now doing what it wanted with its own armies. Those were armies which had taken serious losses but carried on fighting and also had incoming American reinforcements too.

In Moscow, far from the battlefields of Belarus, one senior figure celebrated. Arguably, Bortnikov was responsible for all of those deaths which had just occurred. He was certainly responsible for the shocking defeat which Volk turned out to be. He celebrated because now, finally, he would approach others and they would listen to him when he would explain that the war was lost. Well… that was what he hoped would happen anyway.

The west is really in a pickle here. They have beaten Russia on the battlefield, but because of Russia’s strategic weapons, the west can’t push for a full defeat and unconditional surrender. At least with that option, the west could truly impress upon the Russians that Russia was in the wrong. The west also can’t be too lenient given the number of men the war cost. The lenient peace sees all of the politicians thrown out, but Russia that might not yearn for a round 2. No, the likely path is a painful middle peace which sets up Russia for revanchism that can only be fueled by Russia acting as a tool of the Chinese, further heightening tensions between the west and China.

A good analysis there.
No happy endings have been foreseen to this by Forcon and I. Occupying Moscow, enforcing democracy Western style and de-arming Russia are just too much.
Especially since Russia has been using ethnic issues for gain throughout this war too.




I'd forgotten about the Caucasus. While it is the US II Corps, I could still see it unofficially being seen as an Allied II Corps because of the Georgians even if they aren't fully in the set-up.
Allied III Corps?

One Hundred and Eighty Seven

NATO’s response to the Russian’s use of Ukrainian soil to mount the disastrous Operation Volk was swift but far from uncompromising. This was not the first time the Ukrainians had allowed Russian forces to cross their borders, and by now Brussels was growing frustrated.

A response was needed, but the Alliance wanted to keep Ukraine out of the war and avoid fighting on yet another front, especially with the end now in sight in Belarus.

Political games played in Brussels meant that there was a varying degree of enthusiasm regarding the large-scale use of force against Kiev. The government there had no interest in getting involved in what it saw as a losing fight, and yet, it also shared a large border with Russia and was, obviously, well within range of potential ‘nuclear persuasion’ should Putin become desperate enough to take that course of action.

Whatever happened, Kiev was in an awkward position with no way to avoid a NATO counterstrike and little in the way of defences against Russia if it chose to side with NATO and shut down those Russian supply lines running through Ukrainian soil.

Nervously, members of the Ukrainian government and military awaited the inevitable. It came on the night of September 9th, in the form of the US Air Force’s heavy and medium strike aircraft. Operation Rolling Storm involved B-1B bombers with the 28th Bomb Squadron, along with F-15Es from bases in southern England; those strike planes were escorted by F-15C Eagles, the air superiority variant of the F-15.

AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapons or JSOWs, the same systems that had been used to obliterate a whole armoured division of the Russian Army, again struck Russian forces. Launched from the Lancer bombers over Belarusian airspace, the two-dozen JSOWs obliterated Russian air defence batteries – SA-15 Tors mainly – and hit the few surviving command centres operated by the Russians before the B-1s withdrew.

Ukrainian air defences saw these JSOWs entering their airspace but nothing could be done to stop them. Two AGM-154s passed the Russian supply routes…

…Bound straight for Kiev. Those two excellently-targeted (the US Air Force attaché at the embassy in Kiev had gotten the correct targeting information back to the Pentagon) missiles obliterated the Ukrainian Defence Ministry building as a show of force.

Dozens of Ukrainians, civil servants and military aids alike, died with the Defence Ministry as it collapsed to the ground. This part of the operation was not supported by many European governments, including, for the first time since the outbreak of World War III, the governments of Britain and France. It was seen as an unnecessary escalation with major risks of drawing Ukraine into the war.

With the air defences destroyed from a stand-off range, the Strike Eagle’s began to pummel those supply routes with JDAMs. Russian troops tried to seek shelter from the storm but found little protection in their slit trenches as death rained down from above.

AH-64D Apache gunships also took part, scouting out enemy trucks filled with supplies and destroying them with Hydra rockets. By the end of the first night of Operation Rolling Storm, Russia’s fragile southern logistical train had been shattered, with almost nothing left. The only Allied losses had been a pair of Apache gunships, with both Ukrainian air defences and Russian tactical anti-aircraft systems failing to bring down an F-15 or even one of the prized Lancer bombers.

The attacks rocked the Ukrainian government; they had not expected strikes of these proportions no matter what their crime had been. Ukraine had avoided joining the war on the side of Putin specifically to prevent attacks on its own soil but all hopes of doing so now died along with hundreds of Ukrainian servicemen and over a dozen civilians. Camera footage of a large fire roaring in Kiev quickly made its way onto social media.

The people of Ukraine were split on who was to blame. Many saw NATO as the aggressor here, but countless more saw this as being the fault of Russia’s recklessness and by default, the actions of their own government in Kiev.

How this war ends is going to be interesting. I think the authors are going to have fun giving it a satisfactory end.

A little piece of information regarding the JSOW,
The USAF terminated production of JSOW in FY 2005, leaving the USN and USMC as the only U.S. services obtaining new JSOWs.
I imagine they have war stocks and production was increased to cover the USAF use of JSOW in this conflict.

One Hundred and Eighty–Eight

Only an utter fool would have believed that Russia hadn’t been betrayed.

Someone had purposely given away the secret which was Operation Volk and all of its component details too. No one in Moscow could see any other way that what had happened had without treason. NATO had known when and where the attack came, more than just knowing of its existence. The understood the strength of the forces involved and what they planned to do. They had enough time to marshal and then conceal a counterattack force to annihilate the Thirty–Fifth & Forty–Ninth Armies on the battlefields of Belarus. It could be argued that there was a chance that NATO had managed to intercept & then interpret signalling and maybe too they got lucky with their overhead reconnaissance. Maybe… However, even with that, that didn’t explain what had occurred on September 8th with everything that occurred.

No, someone had stabbed the Rodina in the back before then twisting the knife in too.

It was FSB Director Bortnikov who gave this impassioned summary to the Russian Security Council. He affirmed his intention to find out who that it was and personally see that they suffer for their foul treachery. Patrushev had been intending to give a similar speech himself and both General’s Makarov and Shlyakhturov had comments to give as well, which would have been even more dramatic. Alas, the traitor himself took all of the limelight. Bortnikov asked for permission from Putin to have the FSB lead the enquiry into finding the source of the treason and delivering punishment. This stirred comment from others, Shlyakhturov especially. The GRU headed wanted to do this himself: it was the responsibility of his organisation to identity any military intelligence leak. He found himself turned on by several figures – rivals uniting – where it was said that the responsibility of the GRU had been to stop leaks. They’d failed in this, General Gerasimov declared, and why should they now be charged with uncovering their own mistake?

The bickering had become all too common among meetings of the group though things went rather far in the aftermath of the failure of Volk. No one present was willing to see this ‘moved past’. A resolution was sought when the traitor that Bortnikov declared there was should face extreme punishment. It took some time for the council’s head Patrushev to bring some order and stop the open accusations of failure & incompetence. Once it finally stopped, Putin addressed them all. He chastised several figures for what had been said and then addressed the matter at hand. He turned the responsibility for finding the leak over to the FSB, stripping away that task from the GRU.

Poker-faced Bortnikov showed no sign of the inner relief he had.

What was to be done now, Putin asked them rhetorically. He had his top-tier ministers, his senior generals and his spymasters before him. At their last meeting, they had all agreed that launching Volk was going to win the war for Russia. The attack had failed – failed being an understatement of quite some magnitude – so what was next?

There wasn’t a rush to give an answer to this. There was silence instead.

Putin repeated his demand for the Security Council to provide a solution.

Patrushev suggested that the meeting be reconvened tomorrow. They should all meet again after going away to consider the matter. Putin didn’t look too impressed at this in the eyes of some of the others. He had seemingly perked up when his loyal ally spoke then appeared to be disappointed when there came only talk of delay. However, the president agreed to that. The foreign minister, Kozak, started to say something afterwards about working to sew disunity among NATO countries but without anything concrete there, Patrushev urged him to wait until tomorrow.

The usually so decisive – and proud of that – Security Council had demurred on even talking about making a decision on anything. The situation was unprecedented. The shock from what had just happened in Belarus had thrown (almost) them all out of sorts.


Much later that day, Bortnikov returned to the Kremlin to see Putin. The president was soon to leave the building for the evening – he didn’t sleep here due to NATO favouring bombing raids over Moscow in the dead of night – but he had time for the FSB spymaster. Putin wanted an update on how the progress was going in identifying who was responsible for the shocking leak of wartime secrets to NATO. Bortnikov feigned frustration at his agency’s efforts to not discover who was responsible but assured his president that in the hours since instructed to act, he had his people busy. It would be within the GRU where the traitor would be found, he said. The FSB was currently working on a list of who knew enough about Volk before then looking for who could have been talking to the West. He could offer no more at this early stage, he continued, but Putin could rest assured that the FSB would find the traitor in the end.

Then he asked for, and received permission to, speak candidly.

Bortnikov stated that he believed that now might be the time to see if there was a way to end the war. Putin told him to continue his line of thinking: keep speaking candidly. The response was that twice now, military moves had been made to bring the West to the negotiating table. The first attempt had come after Russia’s armies ceased their advance in Poland and a second was due to be done after Volk was meant to succeed. Clearly, there was no plan now to make that effort again but Bortnikov suggested that they do so. Despite the stunning victory achieved on the battlefield, NATO would be hurting just as bad as Russia in terms of casualties. All of those small countries involved would have taken grave losses like the larger ones. This was the right moment, he believed, to have another go rather than cancel plans to do so.

No.

Putin refused to do so. They would win this war and end it on Russia’s terms. He stated that he intended to allow the West to think they got better terms that they did but it would be Russia which would dictate what they were. Moreover, now wasn’t the time to make that effort. Russia had just lost a major battle and couldn’t now approach the West. There had to be another way to go about things, Putin ended the conversation & meeting by saying, and going on the knees to NATO wasn’t it.


Bortnikov had a further meeting afterwards, this time with those whom he had previously been having secret talks with. Gerasimov, Lebedev and Shoygu were there and this time Bortnikov brought Zubkov along as well. The defence minister, someone whom Gerasimov had worked with Makarov in the past to neuter the influence he should have had, was now brought into the conspiracy with the others. Bortnikov had smoothed over the Gerasimov-Zubkov issues before bringing the two men together. Blaming Makarov for all of that drama was one factor in his success in that; the other was making sure that the defence minister was more focused on his hatred for the GRU head that one of his senior generals. Bortnikov had convinced Zubkov – like he was trying to with Putin – that the leak that had seen the Russian Army suffer such a grave defeat was down to Shlyakhturov.

As they met in an FSB-secured location, NATO air attacks were being made against the Ukraine. They wouldn’t discover this until afterwards with aides of both Gerasimov and Zubkov unable to locate both men to inform them of this.

None of those whom the FSB Director met with knew what he had done in selling out Russia in the manner like he had done. Maybe he could have made Lebedev and Shoygu understand his reasoning… but Gerasimov nor Zubkov would have reacted strongly at once and wouldn’t be talked around no matter what. Bortnikov, eager to show them his own cleverness, had enough sense to keep Schum! He told them instead that he was looking forwards to uncovering the traitor and seeing them get their just deserts. This meeting wasn’t about that though. He told them about his meeting with Putin.

Throwing his hands up in despair, once more today giving an Oscar-winning performance, he told them that Putin had stonewalled him. That wasn’t true. Telling the truth, admitting that his attempts at winning him around like he said he would be able to do beforehand, wasn’t what Bortnikov would own up to. He had thought that he would be able to do that but had been remarkably wrong. Thus, he lied and stated that the president wouldn’t even allow him to broach the subject of seeking an end to this war now. That was what all these co-conspirators of his wanted: an end to the fighting, the death and the destruction. They all saw themselves as patriots and after Bortnikov’s ‘revelation’, now as the only sensible people in positions of power in Moscow.

Bortnikov continued his charade. He said that Putin wasn’t the same man as he had once been. He himself had believed that he had been the only man who could save Russia and that was why he stood with him to end the disastrous rule of Medvedev. It was why he had gone to him again today.

But… he was wrong. Putin could no longer lead effectively. Once more, the question was asked of Russia’s leaders (though this time to a far smaller audience) as to what do we do now?

He will be developing further plans.
This has all the ingredients for such a thing as we saw in post-WW2 Germany, yes.