Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

Two Hundred

The regime of Bashar Assad in Syria hadn’t collapsed but his rule had taken a major hit when a coup d’état had been instigated by a group of senior military officers. They’d failed to kill him yet slain several important figures in his regime. Assad had lost Damascus to them: he’d barely escaped with his life and left many supporters behind. Those involved in that conspiracy against him had afterwards called themselves the Free Syrian Army. They claimed they were liberating Syria of his rule. They’d gone a long way in doing that and were in control of at least a quarter of the nation along with about a third of the surviving military. Assad had rallied supporters and if this was any other time, he would have managed to put the rebellion down. These weren’t usual times though. American and Israeli forces were on Syrian soil and there was too a complete collapse of order where neither his regime nor those hated traitors ruled out to the east near to the Iraqi border. An Islamic insurgency had cropped up there and they were fighting his remaining regime forces, the Free Syrian forces and anyone else in their way too.

Moving his government to the city of Homs, in the west of the country, Assad was unable to do anything substantial to continue the war against the Coalition. The rebels and the Islamists were who the focus was on when it came to the war now. The West seemed happy to keep things that way. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans had withdrawn from Syria, nor had the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon either where they were fighting Hezbollah, yet there were no longer active Coalition military missions beyond those of a self-defence nature taking place against Assad’s Syria. Negotiations broken via the Jordanians and Saudis had seen ‘an understanding’ reached by Free Syria and the Coalition as well. Damascus was no longer under siege and there were unofficial diplomatic missions opening in the Syrian capital. They were talking of implementing Western style Liberal Democracy there! Elsewhere though, the war continued. Assad’s forces were fighting the rebels in western Syria – they were pushing on Homs – while Free Syria was also fighting the Islamists in the east just as elements of Assad’s Syria was in places too. Reports had come to Assad that there were Coalition air strike in support of Free Syria ground forces taking part in that fight.

What had the world come to!?

Assad had no one who could help him. The Russians had been smashed apart here in Syria, elsewhere in the Middle East and in their homeland too. Iran promised fidelity in the fight against the West but refused to act openly. Palestinian forces previously allied to his regime, those not Hezbollah, were striking deals with the Coalition. Turkey was acting as if the last few months hadn’t happened and trying to make up with the West, thus now showing hostility to him. Assad had his army but they had suffered defeat and defections. There had been purges made as more traitors were discovered. With his forces pushed to the west and north of the country, Free Syria grew in strength elsewhere and was taking international legitimacy away. He had worries over the loyalty of his remaining forces as well as the concern that at some point soon, final collapse would come.

At a military compound outside of Homs, Assad took a break from the endless series of briefings covering the ongoing war during the evening of September 18th. He stepped outside. Bodyguards were everywhere and he was safe for assassination…

… or so it seemed.

His thoughts were still on revenge against those who had betrayed him yet before then he was still seeking to reverse the military situation here. He was considering and dismissing ideas aplenty. An idea struck him. This one he didn’t dismiss. He went back inside the compound: the fresh air had helped clear his head and genius had come. Assad almost skipped his way back to the briefing room!

The Americans had a B-2 Spirit in Syrian skies. Intelligence from the ground confirmed the presence of ‘target #1’ based upon an outdoor visual sighting made. From that stealth bomber, eighty JDAM 500lb bombs fell free. It was an overkill indeed but the job was done.

Whatever genius, war-winning idea Bashar Assad had had no longer meant anything for he – and most of his top remaining people too – was no more. The fate of Syria after today would no longer have the influence of Assad within it.


The second ongoing conflict in the Middle East as part of World War Three was the civil war in Libya. Here in the Gaddafi-led nation on the African shores of the Med., it had been a rebellion against the regime first and then the entry of invading armies rather than the other way around as seen in Syria. Gaddafi had lost much of his nation too and had enemies aplenty. No one had came close to toppling him though and while France had made a couple of efforts to kill him, those efforts hadn’t come close.

Libya’s armies had been beaten on the outskirts of Sirte and then the remains pushed back towards Misrata from where they had come. Egyptian tanks and infantry had in recent days taken the city and they were there working with locals who’d emerged declaring that they’d always been against Gaddafi. France, Italy, Portugal and Spain all had troops inside Libya like the Egyptians did but after Misrata, it was the strongest partner nation of the Coalition which took over the continuing offensive driving on towards Tripoli. American ground forces were now fighting west of Misrata around the towns of Mahjub and Zlitan. Those fighting were national guardsmen.

The 36th Infantry Division had been sent to Libya. Part of the wartime-established US I Corps with two other divisions, the 36th Infantry had been detached from that corps command which had been tasked under CENTCOM control to go to Iraq. The initial plan last month had been for the I Corps to go to Europe under SACEUR command like the US IX Corps had been yet violence throughout the Middle East had seen this change in plans. At the Pentagon, Defence Secretary Nunn had wanted American troops to take part in the fighting in Libya rather than leaving it all to allies. This wasn’t a matter of prestige but looking long-terming at Libya with the belief that there would be an Islamist presence here too. There were already signs of that in the east of the country, near Benghazi, but the United States had intelligence that suggested that Gaddafi had unwillingly already surrendered western parts of the country to them. When the time came to fight them, the Americans would be in a position to do so.

Major combat forces assigned to the 36th Infantry came from Texas and Mississippi though there were national guardsmen in supporting roles within the division from close to two dozen states as well as US Army Reserve sub-units as well. The 36th Infantry might have been a second-line unit but it was hardly incapable of this mission of fighting the Libyans. Serving men and women within had fought in recent years across the Middle East in multiple War on Terror engagements. This was different yet it wasn’t like they were going up against first-rate Russian heavy forces. They could handle the Libyans.

Mahjub and Zlitan were won by the national guardsmen.

At the same time, the French were also active where they fought much further inland. They engaged Libyan forces at the crossroads town of Bani Walid. The victory was won a significant distance away from Tripoli, far away to the south, but it was just as important as the fighting which the Americans were involved in along the coast. Tripoli was where the combined forces of America, Egypt and France were eventually going and beginning the process of making sure that when the time came there would be no escape from there for Gaddafi & his forces was underway. Current projections among Coalition planners foresaw a fight for Tripoli beginning at the end of the month. It was certain to be the defining battle of the War in Libya.


Assad’s death and strategic defeats for Gaddafi’s in Libya were important events. They would set in motions events in the Middle East which would play out for years to come with the impact due to fall upon millions.

However, all of that paled in comparison to what occurred on September 18th 2010 when Russian President Putin unilaterally took quite the drastic step to try to avert the course of the wider war.

great job so far. Cliffhanger.....can not wait for the Monday Update.

Well that’s ominous

Two Hundred and One

A single SS-18 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or ICBM, emerged from a hardened underground silo located on the grounds of Kartaly Missile Field. The orders to the Strategic Rocket Forces for the use of a single strategic nuclear weapon had bene issued this morning, as dawn broke on over Moscow on September 18th. There had been few objections to the ICBM launch order from President Putin; this was because senior figures in the Russian defence establishment had been absent when they were issued.

Putin had vowed in his last meeting that something would be done. Now that something had occurred. He had given a great deal of thought since the beginning of the NATO counteroffensive to the use of nuclear weapons, in both the tactical and strategic sense. Chemical weapons had been used with the Belarusians technically being the ones to deploy them and there were stockpiles of biological agents that could be turned to if the situation called for it.

For the Russian President, it had not been an easy decision to make. When he had made the decision back in July to go to war, Putin had foreseen angry mobs baying for his blood outside of the Kremlin while rebellious military units seized control of the country supported by NATO airpower, after which Russia would be dismembered and her memory condemned to the ashes of history. He had gone to war – willingly started World War III – to prevent that very situation, and now it looked as though something worse was about to happen.

Russia’s armies had been defeated and Russian territory abroad had been occupied before American soldiers had arrived on the soil of the Russian Federation in that offensive from Belarus into Smolensk. Half a million NATO troops were advancing on the Russian border and more were crossing the Atlantic behind them; was NATO planning to drive to Moscow, to depose Putin for itself rather than relying on Russia’s disenfranchised populous?
Yes, Putin decided.

The answer was yes.

This was something to which there could be only one response. Russia’s final option, or rather, Russia’s 4,500 final options, were readied in hardened or road-mobile missile silos, aboard bombers, and in the launch tubes of submarines beneath the Arctic Ocean. Now there was only one option to save the Rodina.

The SS-18 was tracked by Ballistic Missile Early Warning Stations, or BMEWS, at Flylingdales on the northern coast of England and at Thule Air Force Base in Greenland.

A single message was relayed, in code, of course, from President Biden to Strategic Command’s bombers, submarines, and ICBMs. The message ordered USAF B-2 and B-52 bombers to their fail-safe/fail-deadly points above the Arctic Circle, while submarines and missile control centres retargeted their missiles from random coordinates in the world’s oceans (in case of an accidental or terrorist launch) to cities and military bases in the Russian Federation.

Putin had been warned not once but twice that further WMD use, or any sort, would be responded to disproportionately. By the time USAF and Royal Canadian Air Force personnel sheltering deep underground at Cheyenne Mountain, the NORAD headquarters located outside of Colorado Springs, had plotted the approximate course of the Russian ICBM, America’s nuclear forces were ready to strike back.
Where did the missile impact? Not Washington or New York, not London, Berlin, Warsaw or Paris…

It detonated 30,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, the closest land mass being the Faroe Islands. The 25 megaton nuclear device, the largest in any nation’s arsenal, killed not a single person. Several Danish civilians on the Faroe Islands were temporarily blinded by the blast when they stared directly at it, and a few eve received serious but not life threatening sunburns. Nobody, however, died.
This had been exactly the plan.

From Scotland, Norway, and Denmark, the massive fireball was visible.

How could NATO possibly respond to this nuclear demonstration?


(Transcript of Emergency Action Message from STRATCOM to its forces)

Message Authentication Phrase: DAMOCLES//DAMOCLES
SKYKING SKYKING DO NOT ANSWER
SKYKING SKYKING DO NOT ANSWER
SKYKING SKYKING DO NOT ANSWER
SKYKING SKYKING DO NOT ANSWER
SKYKING SKYKING DO NOT ANSWER
Message Follows:
STRATCOM forces to DEFCON 1. Go//no go codes expected imminently. NCA has devolved launch authority to STRATCOM. Prepare for further orders to launch nuclear strike on Russian Federation targets. WARPLAN SIOP-09-1A. Good luck and give ‘em hell
Message Ends.

I'd do a map tonight. Nothing fancy - they are hard to make!- but I shall make one of the frontlines in Eastern Europe.

It's no problem to do. I just have to allocate 30mins of my busy life.
Thank you for reading.
We are both writing side stories at the same time as this one too in case you are interested.
Mine is a British focused military/political look at fighting a zombie conflict based on the World War Z scenario (though I am taking liberties with the canon): alternate-timelines.proboards.com/thread/2703/fanfic-operation-drypool-fall-britain
Forcon is writing a very modern and hot-topical US-Iran War: alternate-timelines.proboards.com/thread/2757/duel-desert-holiday-tehran-redux