Eagle Guardian STORY ONLY thread[{locked}]

One Hundred and Twenty Five

A mission was underway to rescue NATO embassy staffs taken prisoner by Gadhafi’s regime in Tripoli. Airstrikes had been underway against Libya for over a week, with much destruction being wrought on the African country despite the use of a small number of modern, Russian-made weapons systems. The utter weaknesses in training and doctrine of the Libyan Armed Forces had been fully exposed and then exploited as bombs rained down across the country. Threats to the over two hundred embassy personnel being held at Abu Salim Prison in the Libyan capital were ignored, with the airstrikes only increasing throughout the week as French, Spanish and Italian warplanes joined in the campaign.

JSOC had had little time to actively plan Operation Midnight Talon, but plans for similar scenarios had existed since the Tehran embassy siege in 1979, leaving the United States well-prepared for the mission. It was to involve aircraft and pilots from the 352nd Special Operations Wing, Delta Force, the 75th Ranger Regiment, and the Marine Raider Regiment. Over a thousand US military personnel were to be involved in total, including support units that would remain behind.

Permission had been secured from Cairo for the rescue force to stage in Egyptian territory. Italy, France and Spain had all been considered as potential staging grounds, but it was felt that this would be far too obvious. Instead, the US Air Force was to use the ‘back door’ to enter Libyan airspace from Egypt.

Midnight Talon was launched on the night of August 22nd, 2010.

Aboard MC-130J Combat Talon II aircraft flown by the 352nd Wing, the Delta operators, Rangers, and Marines were stoic. They had a mission to complete, and many were determined to do it, or die trying. Innocent people had been taken hostage, not only embassy staff members, but the spouses and children of those official personnel. The Libyans had no right to do this, and they had threatened to execute a number of the hostages. Reports of acts of torture and rape against the hostages had been confirmed by the CIA. There was going to be vengeance for that.

Spanish and American F/A-18s bombed targets across Libya, pounding the rubble into even smaller pieces as they moved to distract Libyan air defences from the low-flying Combat Talon’s over the eastern side of the country. Surface-to-air missile batteries in Libyan hands had had a few successes, but not many, given the capability of the systems. Abysmal training explained this, and allow the rescue force to fly safely to its drop zone directly above the capital city of Libya.

So began Midnight Talon.

A reinforced company of US Army Rangers, along with the command element of the rescue force, parachuted down onto Tripoli International Airport. Libyan resistance was significant, but not overwhelming. The Rangers knew that the success of Midnight Talon depended upon their ability to capture and defend the airport. If they should fail, the remaining elements would be massacred within the confines of Tripoli, with no escape route possible.

Armed with M-4 Carbines, Belgian-made FN SCAR rifles, and M-249 light machineguns, the Rangers overpowered enemy resistance with brutal determination. Machinegun nests, anti-aircraft guns, and the makeshift barracks at the airport were stormed, with grenades being used to clear out the buildings. Tripoli International Airport fell quickly, leaving fifty-six Libyan soldiers dead, along with four Rangers, one of whom would receive the Medal of Honour for his actions.* The Rangers quickly set up a perimeter around the airport to hold off further attacks.

Meanwhile, a full squadron, numbering seventy-five men, of Delta Force commandos made a similar parachute assault directly into a trio of fields that surrounded Abu Salim Prison. The major commanding the Delta unit quickly organised his men, and they knocked out the guard towers with light anti-tank weapons. High above, an AC-130 gunship aircraft blasted a hole in the prison walls with its 105mm gun, through which the assault element entered the prison compound.

One team, smaller than a platoon in numbers, laid down a mass of gunfire on the guards barracks. More men went into the mess hall, where a number of Libyan personnel were relaxing. They cut down any enemy guards they saw with accurate fire, while twenty-four other operators went into the prison wing itself. Guards were massacred as they tried to put up a fight. Many of the hostages were being held in a large, open hall, with little space being available throughout the prison.

Hearing the assault commencing against the prison, a number of hostages from various NATO countries, those serving as military attaches, advisors, or as security forces, attempted to overpower their guards. They’d been planning this for some time between themselves now, knowing they would have to act fast to protect the civilian embassy workers when the time came. The military hostages had conducted themselves with extreme dignity during their captivity. The highest ranking amongst them, a US Navy captain serving as attaché, had organised the military personnel from various countries into an escape committee. Efforts had been made to protect the civilian hostages when beatings were dished out, as well.

The dozen guards in the room were leapt on by people wearing the uniforms of the United States, France, Britain, Italy, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and many others…

Some were tackled successfully; others shot dead their attackers. Five hostages were killed during this brawl, but many more would likely have been executed before the Delta operators could arrive, had the hostages not acted in such a way. The fight was still ongoing as Delta Force men stormed into the hall, quickly identifying and gunning down the Libyan guards.

The hostages were gathered and a head-count was performed. Many of the military hostages chose to arm themselves with captured enemy weapons, as did several of the ‘spooks’ stationed at several of the embassies who had likewise been arrested.

Success was met in the storming of the airport and of the prison; four Rangers and three Delta Force commandos had been killed, along with five hostages…but the vast majority had now been secured. Only one more element of the mission had to fall into place…

A fourteen-man detachment of US Marines assigned to the Marine Raider Regiment had jumped into Tripoli alongside the Deltas. Their objective was to move on foot to a site within the city where an asset within Libya had attained a dozen coaches to move the hostages back from the prison to the airport. The Marines, however, were engaged by a Libyan militia patrol within the city as they moved to retrieve the vehicles. Two of their number were killed before they could break out of the ambush. The Marines reached the coaches (attained from, of all things, a travel agency), however, and began the drive to Abu Salim Prison. It took less than ten minutes, and circling AC-130s provided much needed air support.

The hostages were hurried aboard the vehicles, as Libyan troops moved towards the prison. During the drive one coach, loaded up with French diplomats and staff, was racked by gunfire from an RPK, killing nine civilians. Nevertheless, a valiant effort was made by the vehicles to reach the airport. With Libyan forces hot on their heels, the Deltas, Marines, and hostages made it to Tripoli International Airport. MC-130s had already landed, and the troops quickly began moving the civilian hostages out. Some of the military personnel freed from captivity volunteered to help secure a perimeter, even joining in the skirmishes with Libyan patrols at long-range.

The Libyans lacked the night-vision equipment of the Rangers, which allowed the outlying security teams to wipe out massing enemy units with concentrated and accurate machinegun, sniper, and mortar fire. As more and more hostages were flown out, the Rangers retreated into the airport, before finally everybody was aboard and ready to go.

Midnight Talon wasn’t over yet; as the last MC-130 took off, another aircraft, this one a Marine Corps C-130 aircraft, dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast, or MOAB, onto Tripoli International Airport. The facility was totally wrecked, left a smouldering, burning ruin by the largest non-nuclear weapon ever to be used in combat. It wasn’t just revenge; it was a statement to all others who might have been considered taking NATO personnel hostage anywhere in the world.

Despite the deaths of five hostages within the prison and nine more during the escape, a stunning two-hundred-thirty-seven of the two-hundred-fifty-one hostages had been bought out alive.




One Hundred and Twenty–Six

Operation Avenging Eagle continued. American B-2 Spirit bombers went back over Russia, striking deep into the heart of the Rodina once more. There were eight bombers tonight. As before, they flew from Whiteman AFB in Missouri, over the North Atlantic onto RAF Fairford in Britain. There they collected their payloads before they flew onwards on lone missions heading east. No massive cruise missile attack against air defences preceded them tonight. The bat-shaped, flying wing B-2s went in ‘silent’.

Two of the bombers headed for Nizhny Novgorod, the city known as Gorky through much of the Soviet period. The Germans had heavily-attacked military industrial targets here during World War Two but World War Three saw a different sort of attack. That difference was precision. The B-2s had all been given semi-official names by the US Air Force. First over Nizhny Novgorod was ‘Spirit of Texas’, an aircraft loaded with eighty guided bombs. The 500lb JDAMs fell upon two targets: the Sokol aviation plant and the nearby airfield associated with that factory. Sokol was still building MiGs for the Russian Air Force with those aircraft flown away from Sormovo Airfield. Not anymore, not after the Spirit of Texas had deposited her payload. It had been the NMZ facility – then known as the Gorky Machine-building Plant when the Luftwaffe had been bombing in the early Nineteen Forties – which the ‘Spirit of Kitty Hawk’ attacked. Half of its eighty bombs fell there with the rest reserved for the nearby Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard. At the former, artillery and SAM systems were manufactured; submarines were built at the latter, this far deep inside Russia and then transported by barge to the oceans. Neither NMZ nor Kransnoye Sormovo were destroyed completely even with such a large tonnage of bombs dropped almost perfectly, but like Sokol and its airfield, these places were put out of action for a long time to come.

Towards Moscow flew the ‘Spirit of Nebraska’ and the ‘Spirit of Oklahoma’. These bombers didn’t do what had been done in the first Avenging Eagle attacks a week ago and hit downtown Moscow but instead struck outside of it. Payloads of eighty 500lb bombs were used again where air facilities outside of Russia’s capital were bombed from high above. Kubinka Airbase was the first target. This was a military site where the Russian Air Force had its ‘technology demonstration centre’ based in peacetime. Aerial display teams flew from here and so did specialist aircraft on reconnaissance & intelligence missions. Those display teams – the Knights and the Swifts – had a wartime mission where their respective Su-27 Flankers and MiG-29 Fulcrums were undertaking fighter roles over the wider Moscow area. Bombs smashed into Kubinka from high above to knock it out of action. The second strike was against two of Moscow’s airports: Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo. Both were outside the city and not currently in use due to the war. Destroying them with forty (smallish) bombs a piece was impossible but causing a lot of destruction was easily doable. Why hit these airports which were playing no role in the war? Propaganda was the answer to that. Everyone in Moscow would know soon enough that they had been smashed up and the Americans were active with bombers around their city again.

The ‘Spirit of Indiana’ and the ‘Spirit of South Carolina’ attacked Lipetsk Airbase. This facility was referred to many as ‘Russia’s Nellis’: i.e. their equivalent of the US Air Force’s evaluation and training base out in Nevada. There were many different aircraft here in peacetime and now in war. Several advanced model tactical aircraft which had yet to reach full service with the Russian Air Force were at Lipetsk. These included pre-production models of the Su-34 Fullback strike-bomber as well as several variants of the Su-30 Flanker with these being either demonstrators or export models. The Americans believed that the Russians were going to use these all to somehow try to influence the air battles far to the west over the skies of Eastern Europe: good luck with that! Dropping only sixteen bombs apiece, but larger 2000lb JDAMs, the pair of B-2s aimed to stop that happening. Many of the aircraft were out in the open while others were in hardened shelters that had bombs dropped right atop of them. Massive explosions rocked the extensive Lipetsk facility with aircraft destroyed and personnel killed.

Engels Airbase was home to the Tu-160 Blackjack fleet of the preeminent strategic bombers for the Russian Air Force as well as many of their Tu-95MS Bears too. Of all of the Avenging Eagle strikes, this target was the furthest afield and therefore the most dangerous to go after. That danger not just being to the aircrews aboard the B-2s but because Engels was a strategic target: bombing it could look like the beginnings of a nuclear war. However, the decision was taken to hit it due to those bombers there being used in a non-nuclear role throughout this conventional conflict. A message would go out over the Washington to Moscow Hot-Line afterwards to ‘reassure’ the Russians of this. There were no shelters at Engels for the big aircraft on the ground though blast revetments were in-place: the Russians had put the effort into protecting this place against an air attack from the effects of bomb blasts. The Americans had a solution for that. Falling from both the ‘Spirit of Alaska’ and the ‘Spirit of Louisiana’ when each bomber was some distance away from the target instead of above it, were sixteen JSOW guide bombs apiece. As when used over Poland during Operation Dragon’s Fire to destroy a Russian tank division, those used over Russia flew towards Engels in the weapons-carrying role and then dispersed their sub-munitions payloads. Thousands upon thousands of explosive-tipped bomblets fell from the sky. The majority of aircraft beneath them weren’t going to be flying for some time now with many never again getting airborne: that included five of the Blackjacks which were eliminated alongside four more left with major damage.


Avenging Eagle #2 had seen all eight aircraft get into Russia but only seven would get out. After completing the Kubinka strike – one which was arguably the least important of them all and something that had nearly been vetoed –, the Spirit of Nebraska was shot down. This was the second loss of a B-2 during the war. This time it wasn’t a sophisticated SAM which killed a multi-billion dollar bomber but an old, Soviet-era interceptor. One of the Russian Air Force’s MiG-31 Foxhound aircraft was airborne and under the control of an AWACS aircraft. Detection had come when the Spirit of Nebraska opened its bomb-bay doors, losing its stealth for a few moments, and the MiG-31 had closed-in upon the Kubinka area. The AWACS and the interceptor’s own radar couldn’t locate the bomber and neither could the infrared search-&-track system (IRST) at first. However, the weather tonight was acting rather strange and allowed for a second detection to be gained using that IRST. Rapid-firing, the Russian pilot put all four of his R-73 short-range missiles into the sky. NATO called these the AA-11 Archer. Only one Archer struck home yet that was enough. A chunk of the starboard wing of the Spirit of Nebraska was blown of and flight control lost. The bomber was going down. The two aircrew ejected long before their B-2 crashed and, not long after dawn, they would be in Russian custody with an unpleasant time ahead of them. The wreckage of the Spirit of Nebraska would be shown on Russian TV: one of four bombers downed the night before apparently.

Killing that one bomber was a bit of luck. The Russians were unable to get anywhere near the other seven. NATO air attacks against the air defences both forward and increasingly further backwards meant that they were impotent to do so. Cruise missile strike after cruise missile strike had seen SAM-launchers, radars and command posts hit. Airfields from where interceptors flew had been hit with those aircraft either struck there or in the air by NATO fighters. That particular MiG-31 over Kubinka had been from a regiment (the 764th) recently transferred from its Urals base to Western Russia. Russian SAMs and aircraft had engaged many cruise missiles in the skies yet had failed to get at the distant aircraft which launched them with abundance. Intelligence summaries said that by now the Americans should be out of or almost out of such weapons unless they kept a reserve back: they’d fired so many and their supply wasn’t limitless! Such an assessment was correct but also incorrect too.

After the B-2s had dropped their bombs tonight and began their escape, their attack was no longer silent. Operation Eclipse sprung into action with yet another night of air strikes made far beyond the frontlines of the war. This was the eleventh night of these: there had been several one-night gaps rather than massive strikes every night. The US Air Force fired cruise missiles from B-52 bombers which came nowhere near Russian airspace and the US Navy launched Tomahawks from warships & submarines. Their NATO allies joined in too though, adding to the numbers of inbound weapons. The RAF with 617 Squadron flying Tornados from the UK out over the Baltic on solely Storm Shadow missions and French Armée de l'Air Mirage-2000Ns (who also had a nuclear role) with SCALPs & Apaches shot them off too; the Italians with their Tornados which had recently turned up in Poland were launching more SCALPs as well. On other nights, Eclipse had seen low-level air strikes made by manned aircraft going deep into enemy airspace though tonight it was just this cruise missile wave. There was no doubt that the munitions expenditure was high. After two plus weeks of war, it would be. Russian intelligence missed the major commitment of missiles being used by the British and French though – believing that they would fire far fewer than they did – and also misunderstood the Americans. Yes, they would keep some of theirs back for contingencies at a later date but not that many. This was especially true when US arms manufacturers had massive orders on their books to build more and more missiles. These couldn’t be manufactured overnight but it wasn’t going to take that long to build them, was it? The error made here was a classic intelligence failure than better people that the Russians had made about their opponents: assuming that the other side would do things just how you did it without regard to their own needs.

The missile strikes would go on for several hours, smashing up Russia and its armed forces as they did so. NATO’s armies preparing for a counteroffensive on quite the scale would be following those missiles in time.

One Hundred and Twenty Seven

NATO’s counteroffensive was set to begin very shortly indeed. The political and military specifics of this had already been addressed, and in his post Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General David Petraeus had been given in effect blanket authority to use everything short of tactical nuclear weapons – unless in a retaliatory capacity – to drive the Russian Army back over the border. There was to be no pursuit towards Moscow once NATO territory had been liberated, but Belarus was to be occupied and so too was Kaliningrad.

There were immense risks in attacking the later geographic location, a part of Russia and thus under Putin’s nuclear umbrella. Nevertheless, liberating the Baltic States was going to be a near impossible task unless the area was captured, with this task falling to the beaten-up 16th Mechanised Division of the Polish Land Forces, along with the two forward-deployed brigades of the Royal Netherlands Army that now fell under the command of I Allied Corps.

Meanwhile, further elements of I Corps, mainly American, British, and German heavy forces, would soon punch through the Suwalki Gap and drive into Lithuania, towards the Estonian coastline and St Petersburg. The US 4th Infantry Division and the British 1st Armoured Division would bear the brunt of the fighting here, reinforced by the 3rd Mechanised Division of the British Army and also by the Spanish Army’s ad hoc 1st Infantry Division command.

V Corps would be tasked to push into Belarus, capture Minsk, and then keep on moving until the Russian border was reached, with possible operations being authorised as far into Russia proper as Smolensk. American, Polish, French, and Italian troops were all in Poland under V Corps and preparing to move eastwards.

There was also to be an airborne assault using US & British Army forces, along the Daugava River. The objective of the counteroffensive was not only to drive Russian forces back to their own borders, but also to destroy as much of the Russian Army in the field as possible, thus rendering Moscow incapable of carrying out any similar actions for the foreseeable future.

Operation Eclipse continued apace, with its targets again switching to those of a more tactical nature. Belarus was bombed overnight by countless airplanes – F-16s, F/A-18s, Tornados & Eurofighter Typhoons predominantly – with huge damage inflicted on the small country. Lukashenko’s air force had been all but annihilated, with the defence of Belarusian airspace falling on the overburdened Russian Air Force, which had in itself already lost hundreds of aircraft in both the offensive and defensive roles.

Instead of striking bridges and railway nodes, tonight Eclipse targeted troop concentrations. Down to the regimental level, efforts were made to decapitate the highly-vulnerable Russian command-and-control structure, with headquarters and senior officers being targeted alike both in Belarus and in Poland. JDAMs fell on anything that gave off communications signals or otherwise indicated that it might be a headquarters or command asset, with no stone being left unturned.

Additional airstrikes also aimed to prevent the movement of the Thirty-Sixth Army to the frontlines also took place across Belarus. Less effort was put into destroying transport nodes themselves, with the majority of firepower being targeted towards enemy tanks and armoured vehicles that moved across the countryside, along with the fuel depots that supplied them. The darkness was alive with explosions, dancing fires and the wafting smell of cordite, gunpowder, and charred flesh.

With over four hundred thousand NATO troops about to begin the counteroffensive, Russian reinforcements couldn’t be allowed to get to the frontlines and again tip the balance in Moscow’s favour. Such a thing would destroy all confidence in European governments and possibly bring the fighting to an end on Putin’s terms…Or so was the train of thought at the time.

Special Forces units also assisted in the effort to deny Russian forces their command and control abilities. A trio of division-headquarters in northern Poland were attacked and successfully neutralised by Green Berets serving with the 10th Special Forces Group. Those Alpha Teams had all been behind Russian lines for some time now and all had suffered casualties, but remained combat effective despite the best efforts of the Russian Army to track them down. The targets hit by the Green Berets could have been struck by aircraft, but the decision was made for a ground assault, because valuable intelligence and prisoners could be snatched an extracted.

Indeed, one of the Green Beret units managed to abduct the operations officer with the 10th Tank Division, along with some of his staff, thus marking the first capture of a general officer by NATO thus far in the war. After completing this last task, the Green Berets were finally extracted by helicopters with the US Air Force’s Special Operations Command, bringing with them vital information, prisoners, and documentation that would have to be translated and/or decoded.

Other Special Forces units went into action behind the lines, taking a page from the book of the Spetsnaz in sewing chaos behind Russian lines. Members of the Special Air Service successfully knocked out a power station outside Minsk after the same facility had been fixed after an American airstrike, plunging the city into darkness. A German KSK sniper team shot dead a Belarusian general officer just outside Minsk, while Dutch and Belgian commandos destroyed numerous train-tracks with explosives, derailing several flatbeds carrying Russian armour to the west.

Up in the Baltic States, American SEALs and yet more Green Berets, along with members of the Special Boat Service and a myriad of other units were active, wreaking similar havoc, often working with local resistance organisations. Supply routes and headquarters were key targets; so too were SAM batteries and fuel depots. Enemy aircraft were shot down repeatedly by small commando or resistance teams using shoulder-fired missiles, causing a real threat behind Russian lines.

Efforts by the Russians to capture their elusive foes bred mixed results, with soldiers killed in great numbers on both sides. Commando units with excellent weapons and situated in good ambush positions were able to destroy enemy convoys and columns, killing dozens and rendering the supplies inside the vehicles useless before leaving. Despite this, efforts by huge numbers of troops, helicopters, and dogs, tracked down dozens of commandos as they tried desperately to evade. Few of the Special Forces troops would ever be captured alive, but those that did fall into the hands of the GRU faced a miserable fate.




One Hundred and Twenty–Eight

The US Navy hadn’t sent Task Force 20 across the North Atlantic with its two fleet carriers packed full of strike aircraft just to influence the air battle over the north of Norway. Influence – or more-correctly – win that air battle was just one objective for the flotilla built around the carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Enterprise. Two further elements of the orders for TF 20 were to eliminate Russian naval surface forces with their Northern Fleet and then take the air war to the Russians over the Kola Peninsula. Objective One had been achieved: American naval air power had done its worst and changed the face of the war on land. Now it was time for Objective Two.

The Russians had been baited by American propaganda to bringing their lone aircraft carrier back out into the open again. Active at the beginning of the war, when TF 20 had arrived the RFS Admiral Kuznetsov had been pulled back. It was in hiding, had said General Casey (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) at a Pentagon press conference, because the Northern Fleet was running scared. That was true: the admirals in command knew the chances of the survival of that ship were extremely low out in open water. The British had sunk their Kirov-class battle-cruiser RFS Pyotr Velikiy and they didn’t want to see the same fate befall the Kuznetsov. In Moscow, they wouldn’t accept that. As the centre-piece of a combined surface, air and subsurface flotilla, the successes of the war’s early days was ordered to be repeated. Then it had been the carrier USS Harry S. Truman which had been blown apart: now it would be these two further carriers.

That wasn’t to be the case today. The Americans (with help) got the Kuznetsov first.

With an aircraft carrier, Russia had a physical symbol that it was a world naval power. Warships and submarines were great evidence of that but nothing said power like a carrier. Yet, going back into battle, the Kuznetsov only had half of her air wing. At-sea accidents (there had been a lot of flying time) and enemy action had seen the loss of many of her Sukhoi-33 Flanker strike-fighters. Joining her recently were some more aircraft that were sent to make up the numbers. These were Sukhoi-25 Frogfoots, which were armed trainers. Eighteen aircraft were thus the air wing for the Russian carrier with eight of them being extremely unsuitable for the task set for them. Alongside the carrier were half a dozen major warships. There was a missile-cruiser and five destroyers also heading westwards and into battle. Submarines were below the waves to provide protection for those above but also scout ahead. Land-based aircraft provided by both the Russian Air Force & Naval Aviation were present as well. It was an impressive assembly of military might. However, the opposition they faced…

TF 20 put over a hundred aircraft in the sky. Hornets and Super Hornets were rolled for both fighter and strike missions. There were AWACS and electronic combat too. This huge air armada were directed towards the Russians went they rounded the North Cape and re-entered the Norwegian Sea. The aircraft started firing missiles. They shot off air-to-air missiles against the Flankers coming from the Kuznetsov and also land-based MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors which had been sent to defend the carrier below. Russian aircraft managed to get some of the American jets yet it was an unfair fight. It wasn’t just the numerical advantage that TF 20 had but also that AWACS support – the two carriers had ten operational E-2 Hawkeyes flying from them meaning that several could be up at all moments and loses could be replaced – with them. The Russian fighters didn’t stand a chance. Their patrols were ambushed and shot down. Then the Americans started launching anti-radar and anti-ship missiles. Northern Fleet warships came under fire. The last-surviving Sovremenny-class missile-destroyer left, RFS Admiral Ushakov, supported the missile-cruiser RFS Marshal Ustinov in returning fire. The two of them put many SAMs into the sky to try to take down these enemy missiles. Using their radars to direct their SAMs meant that anti-radar missiles homed in upon them though. The Americans got some of them through. Detonating just short of impact using a proximity fuse, radars aboard those two warships were showered with specifically-designed shrapnel. Following those HARMs came Harpoons and SLAMs too. TF 20’s carriers had yesterday had their magazines refilled when several replenishment ships had arrived. Those war stocks aboard would be running low again after today with the ordnance either striking home or being blown out of the sky by defensive firing. Nonetheless, there still was another resupply on its way.

The Ushakov was knocked out of action first and not long afterwards so was the Ustinov. Each was heavily-damaged after countless hits against them and their own magazines were empty. More than a hundred SA-N-6 Grumble and SA-N-12 Gadfly SAMs had been launched. The cruiser had killed a grand total of five aircraft for all of that effort while the destroyer hadn’t successfully hit a single one. There were four Udaloy-class anti-submarine-destroyers as well that were targeted by the Americans. These had SAMs with them as well, SA-N-9 Gauntlet missiles with less of a range. Two US Navy aircraft were brought down by them, plus a Frogfoot in a friendly fire incident, but in the main they were fired at inbound missiles. RFS Vice-Admiral Kulakov and RFS Admiral Levchenko were both left burning once the missile strike was over with: the other two were shot-up but could still fight. However, like the air defence ships, they were out of missiles.

Then the second wave of US Navy aircraft showed up.


The last of the Flankers from the Kuznetsov were shot down and so too were a couple of the Frogfoots. The carrier’s escorts had self-defence missiles & guns in combined systems as she did but there was also quite the impressive arsenal of more Gauntlet missiles aboard the Kuznetsov: almost two hundred of them. Anti-radar missiles lanced towards the carrier to knock out her guidance systems, mixed in with anti-ship missiles too. The Americans came from all directions and with both high-level and low-level attacks. They had electronic jamming support and fighter cover. There was just one target which they were focused on with a determination to kill.

Over twenty missiles hit the Kuznetsov before her defences finally fell silent. She was a ruin at this point, no good for anything but scrap. The American strike aircraft flew back to their carriers and a rearmament commenced along with a crew change. Back the US Navy came once again. Maybe at this point it was nothing short of murder, maybe…

TF 20 put another fifty missiles into the carrier and a pair of support ships next to her. It was an overkill of epic proportions.

Explosions took place down the length of the Kuznetsov and fire engulfed her. She went up in flames. Her island superstructure collapsed in a burning, twisted lump of metal. Her watertight integrity held though. The ship was still afloat. That couldn’t last for very long when the weather got to her and there was no ability to keep back the sea conditions, yet when the American third wave flew away, they left behind a destroyed target but one which was still afloat. A fourth wave was being considered.

The US Navy wanted to be the ones to put that vessel on the sea floor rather than wait for the weather. They would have their prize stolen from them though.

The Norwegian submarine HNoMS Uredd made a return. There were seven torpedoes left aboard this little boat (she’d set sail with fourteen before the war and made good use of the other seven) and five of those remaining ones were fired: two would be kept for the journey back to base at Haakonsvern. Northern Fleet anti-submarine efforts had taken quite the hit with all of those burning and shot-up ships above and the Uredd also avoided the two submarines assigned to protect them too. Three torpedoes were fired at the Kuznetsov. The carrier’s back was broken. She started to take on massive amounts of seawater from the underwater holes torn in her and the weight of that saw her keel snap. The carrier would go down by the stern before the US Navy could return with their jets once more. The Uredd wasn’t finished. Shots were lined-up against the Ustinov. Hoping to sink her too, the Norwegians fired against that cruiser as well. Neither would hit her though and instead one went after a decoy and the other blew the bow off the one of the Russian support ships. Frustrated, the Uredd headed home. It had been an excellent day regardless of missing the Ustinov.

Those support ships first targeted by TF 20 and then that Norwegian submarine were a supply ship and a repair ship. Both were armed and at sea in a war zone. They were legitimate targets. However, at the time they were attacked, with one left a burning wreck and the other taken by the sea, each was taking on evacuated crew members from the Kuznetsov. Hundreds had been killed but there were others who were being rescued with many of them wounded. In later years, this would be an issue with some calling it murder but others arguing that it was no such thing. This was war and these things happen.


It was several hours later before TF 20 put its fourth strike package in the sky. There had been a delay as the air wings from the Eisenhower and the Enterprise were prepared for a major fighter mission should the Russians bring out their Backfire missile-bombers as (faulty) intelligence said they were about to. However, that was something dismissed with new (accurate) information and they went back out on a naval strike mission once more.

The Ustinov and the destroyers were targeted.

Hornets and Super Hornets were all over the skies again. Land-based Flankers – Sukhoi-27s with the Russian Air Force’s 9th Fighter Regiment – had been reported lifting off by SEALs who were outside their Kola airbase and that information came alongside the radar images from the AWACS aircraft. There weren’t that many of these Flankers and they had come off worse for wear when fighting TF 20’s jets in previous days over Norway. They managed to get a few kills in, taking down a trio of Hornets, but lost twice that number of their own. What had they achieved in stopping the destruction of the last of the Northern Fleet’s surface force? Nothing at all.

Russian warships were hit again by incoming missiles. Their own magazines were now empty and the Americans were relentless. The Kulakov, the Levchenko and the Ushakov were already in a bad way and were finished off with dozens of missiles. Fires would take them both. It was the same with the two other destroyers: RFS Admiral Chabanenko and RFS Admiral Kharlamov. Both of these had previously been left damaged in engagements in previous weeks with the Uredd firing torpedoes at them in hit-&-run attacks but now the US Navy set each of them alight from bow-to-stern with missiles.

The Ustinov made a run for home. Aircraft fly faster than ships, and missiles fly even faster. HARMs, Harpoons and SLAMs all hit the cruiser again. Like the other warships, she caught fire too. Quite the conflagration took a-hold…

…and then there was an almighty explosion. The Ustinov carried large anti-ship missiles of her own – carrier-killers who hadn’t been given guidance towards a carrier – and the warhead on one of them detonated. Bits and pieces of the cruiser were blown everywhere. The last of the Northern Fleet’s major warships was gone in the blink of an eye.

Less than a dozen American aircraft had been shot down and another couple were lost in accidents today (the US Navy was running high-tempo operations and mistakes were made). That was the scale of their own losses. In exchange, TF 20 and the Norwegians too eliminated a carrier, a cruiser and five destroyers. Russia’s Northern Fleet was gone and thus Objective Two had been completed.

Objective Three with the Kola Peninsula facing tactical air power would be coming soon enough.

One Hundred and Thirty One

Like their companions to the south, I Corps went on the offensive at dawn, as part of what NATO officially called Operation Baltic Arrow. The combined NATO corps was actually dramatically over strength, contrary to GRU predictions, with six full-strength NATO divisions and numerous separate brigades under its command.

Pushing up past the Vistula River and into Elblag, the Polish 16th Mechanised Division hit their long-time opponents in the 1st Guards Motorised Rifle Division head-on. The Polish Leopard-2s were able to overwhelm numerous Russian positions throughout the day, but losses were heavier than expected. The Poles had been in combat with the Russians since day one, but had been reinforced on their southern flank by two brigades from the Royal Netherlands Army. The Dutch 43rd Mechanised Brigade fought with Belarusian units covering the stretches of highway between Elblag and Ostroda, pushing them back throughout the day in numerous skirmishes, during which the Dutch performed excellently. Similarly, the 11th Airmobile Brigade was finally sent into battle. Using Black Hawk helicopters borrowed from the combat aviation brigade of the US 4th Infantry Division, the 11th Airmobile sent two battalions of infantrymen into the woodlands just south of Ostroda, with the intention of securing the south-to-north highway links. This part of the operation saw the Dutch landing in the middle of a traversing Belarusian mechanised battalion. With intense air and artillery support, the Dutch air assault troops were able to overpower their opponents despite the presence of BTRs & BMP-2s in the area, capturing the battalion headquarters and many staff officers who could provide valuable intelligence.

The British Army’s 1st Armoured Division attacked into the areas it had only recently withdrawn from at great cost, with vengeance on their minds. The British division was now also in charge of the Belgian Land Component’s Medium Brigade, which had been attached to reinforce the 1st Armoured after it had taken severe losses while holding off the Russian offensive last week. Many of those casualties had been replaced by reservists from Britain and troops plucked from units that would not yet be deploying for combat duties. Guards units being used for security duties around London, for example, had sent many of their NCOs and junior officers to the 1st Armoured Division to replace casualties, thus leaving the British capital protected by a less-organised force in the (vanishingly unlikely) event of an airborne coup de main by Russia. With their pathway cleared by the Dutch air assault, the 1st Armoured Division pushed on past Ostroda, bound for its first objective of Olsztyn. Resistance was met at the brigade level from Russian units under the command of the 10th Guards Tank Division. The British had been fighting them from the onset, and now the intelligence corps was growing evermore confident in its abilities to predict Russian movements. The 1st Armoured Division, supported by the Stryker fighting vehicles of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, pushed along Highway 16 towards Olsztyn, overpowering all of the resistance in its path, although not for lack of casualties. By the end of the day’s fighting, over two hundred British and Belgian soldiers had been killed, but Olsztyn was on the horizon as night fell.

Further south was the relatively-fresh 4th Infantry Division, United States Army, with its shiny new M1A2s & Bradleys fresh from stockpiling warehouses. With its two ‘leg’ infantry brigades in reserve, the 4th Infantry Division sent its two leading armored brigade combat teams to attack Olsztyn from the southwest, while British forces cut through resistance further north. Unfortunately, the Americans did not, as they had expected, slice through a weak Belarusian defence like a knife through butter, but rather than ran into a withdrawing Russian armoured regiment from the 10th Guards Division. The 4th Infantry Division’s 1st & 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team’s ended up in a brutal fight throughout the day as the Russians fell back, trading space for time. Belarusian forces were also involved in that fight, pulling back slowly towards Suwalki and that area where NATO was headed for. The presence of AH-64D gunships and A-10 strike aircraft eventually persuaded the Russians to fall back, leaving rear-guards in place and resulting in several battalion-sized pockets of Belarusian troops being formed.

Meanwhile, the British Army’s second division, the 3rd Mechanised, was moving towards the Suwalki Gap. The 3rd Division was on the border between I Corps & V Corps, being the southernmost formation in the former unit. Reinforced by Canadian regulars from the 2nd Mechanised Brigade Group, the British commander was confident of his division’s success. They had fought the Russians to a standstill before using various tactics and weaponry, but not it was time to go on the offensive. He had every right to be confident, it would turn out. The British Challenger-2s and Warrior IFVs met with Belarusian T-72s belonging to the 120th Guards Brigade. Although the Belarusians had performed surprisingly well during the initial offensive, they had become badly attrited during the fighting and were suffering under a stream of air attacks by the Allies. They could ultimately do little to stop the British advance, with the 3rd Division’s leading brigade making contact with a Green Beret outfit operation just outside of Elk before nightfall, before the 3rd Division was forced to briefly halt its advance for several hours while the I Corps units further north reconstituted and prepared for a secondary push.

Those pockets of Belarusian troops caught behind NATO lines proved to be a tougher fight than could have been expected. The Spanish had formed an ad hoc divisional command, the 1st Infantry Division, and that unit was being used as a second-line formation by I Corps for this exact purpose of mopping up pockets of resistance, alongside the German 1st Panzer Division. Casualties for them throughout the day would be appalling, as many Belarusian units fought disturbingly hard. Efforts by NATO intelligence staff would soon discover that President Lukashenko had himself ordered the punishment of the families of withdrawing soldiers, in something that seemed to be a throwback to the days of Stalin. A trio of battalion-sized pockets were cleared out by Spanish troops belonging to the 6th Parachute & 12th Mechanised Brigades. Casualties numbered in the hundreds, with numerous M113s lost as well as a few Leopard-2s. Shaken by the ferocity of the fight, the Spanish nonetheless kept up the pace of the rest of I Corps advance; they weren’t going to be left behind.

Overall, I Allied Corps had performed excellently. General Shirreff had made all the right decisions as a corps commander and had broken through the Russian lines, seized major road intersections and other pieces of vital transport infrastructure, and reached the outskirts of two major townships. Both General Mattis at CJTF-East and General Petraeus at SHAPE had secretly hoped for more to be achieved, with Olsztyn and Elk liberated before tomorrow, but that wasn’t going to happen. Despite I Corps best efforts, a push into those two towns was considered to be impossible until first night on the 25th, when I Corps’ less successful formations could bring themselves back together and continue the offensive.

Further to the east, an even more daring mission was underway as part of Operation Baltic Arrow. NATO’s objectives did not solely include the liberation of the Baltic States and the removal of the Lukashenko regime, but also the total destruction of the Russian Army in the field, or at least the destruction of as much of the army as possible. This meant that the Russians couldn’t be allowed to have a clear line of retreat from Kaliningrad and Lithuania into Russia proper. No, instead they had to be cut off. This was to be done with a parachute jump onto the banks of the Daugava River. XVIII Airborne Corps had covertly formed up in Poland over the past few weeks, with the US 82nd Airborne Division and the British 16th Air Assault Brigade taking the lead. Joining them from the rear would soon be the Belgian Light Brigade and the 1st Canadian Mechanised Brigade Group.

On the night of August 24th, before the ground offensive began, the 1st, 3rd, & 4th Brigade Combat Teams of the 82nd Airborne Division jumped from a swarm of C-130s and C-17s onto the eastern side of the Daugava River, landing between Dunava and Jekabpils. Casualties from the airdrop were predictably immense, with the paratroopers landing on a variety of positions occupied by Belarusian reservist troops. The 82nd Airborne was able to seize its positions, however, against a surprised enemy force. Casualties were sustained by the dozen, but hundreds of enemy troops were killed throughout the night, and by the time the first NATO tanks were rolling eastwards, the 82nd Airborne was dug in on the eastern side of the river. The bridges had been rigged with explosives to prevent the crossing of major enemy armoured formations, and anti-tank missiles had been brought in by the dozen.

Meanwhile, the 2nd & 4th Battalions of the Parachute Regiment jumped onto Daugavpils itself. The 4th Battalion, a reservist unit, landed in the fields to the east of Latvia’s second city, overpowering equally surprised resistance from pro-Russian militias formed from the local population with the support of intense airstrikes. The 2nd Battalion, veterans of Copenhagen, seized Daugavpils International Airport against determined enemy defensive efforts. Fighting at the airport was intense, but the British paratroopers gained the upper hand as a scratch force of men, led by a Major Daniel Jarvis (Military Medal), gathered together and stormed an enemy defensive position by the terminal building, captured a pair of Shilka anti-aircraft batteries that were being used against troops on the ground instead of their intended targets. Immediately after the airport was announced to be secure, RAF and USAF C-17s began ferrying in the remainder of the 16th Brigade, with troops from the Royal Irish Regiment and the Ghurkha’s landing at the battle-damaged airstrip and moving quickly to the banks of the river on the southern flank of the 82nd Airborne. Throughout the day, an intensive effort was made to move the Belgian Light Brigade into Daugavpils by air, followed by some elements of the 1st Canadian Mechanised Brigade Group, which fell under the command of the newly-formed British 6th Airmobile Division.

The question remained; could they hold out?




One Hundred and Thirty–Two

During Operation Midnight Talon, when the Americans rescued embassy personnel from Tripoli, a group of just-freed French diplomats had been attacked during the escape. One of those coaches ‘liberated’ from a travel agency by a CIA operative had been raked by fire from a light machine gun. All of those killed aboard were French diplomatic personnel, embassy staff and family members; several US Marines with them were injured along with further French nationals too. Those bodies of those killed just short of getting out of Libya, along a further Frenchman slain at Abu Salim prison where he had attacked the guards, were all returned to France afterwards. President Sarkozy had been there at Vélizy–Villacoublay airbase when their bodies arrived home. France had suffered thousands of casualties in this war already: others hadn’t received this treatment. This was different though and as Sarkozy personally became involved.

Surviving French nationals who made it home from Libya had quite the horrific tales to tell of their treatment in captivity. The DGSE – along with the Americans too – had already intercepted internal Libyan communications about how the hostages were being treated. Now that was confirmed. There were some hostages who were going to need long-term, maybe permanent, medical care concerning their injuries visible but also unseen. Before Midnight Talon, Gaddafi had made those statements on Al Jazeera about how Sarkozy had solicited funds from him to buy the 2007 French presidential election. This had been repeated again afterwards with Libya’s leader, but also his eldest son too, making those claims. Saif Gaddafi had been busy in his father’s stead in recent days. It wasn’t just Sarkozy whom he caused trouble for with things that he said but his activities in previous years where he had been in London was currently causing a public relations nightmare for one of the UK’s most prestigious universities about donations and backroom deals. The Colonel and his eldest – his probable heir – had refused to learn their lesson from all that had so far happened with Libya’s involvement in this war. They had abused France repeatedly and Sarkozy pushed for the matter to be ‘resolved’.

The resolution that Sarkozy wanted was to force the end of the Gaddafi regime.

There was support within NATO and the Coalition for this yet few countries were prepared to throw everything needed at such a task. The Russians had only recently been stopped in Poland and now they were being pushed back. The priority was to liberate occupied areas of Poland and then too free the Baltic States. Libya had been bombed repeatedly and the embassy hostages rescued. Ukrainian-flagged ships were no longer going to Libya as Russian proxies either (several had gone into neutral Malta) so Libya stood alone. Wasn’t what had been done with Libya enough already? It wasn’t for France and thus it wouldn’t be for those who Sarkozy already had on-side. He managed too to arm-twist several other national leaders into his line of thinking as stories of treatment in captivity came from their own freed captives plus also Libyan activities following Midnight Talon. Aided by Russian intelligence intercepts, Libya had been made aware that that rescue was launched from Egypt. What had Libya done in response? Ordered border shelling and also launched a couple of tactical ballistic missiles against Egypt. Libya’s own troops had come off worse in those cross-border clashes and the missiles had fallen harmlessly into the desert. An attack had been made on Italy too. Libyan aircraft had formed up over Tripolitania in a strike package – a wild mix of aircraft – and headed northwards towards Sicily. Alerted by an AWACS over that Italian island, French and Italian fighters had met them above the waters of the Mediterranean. It had not been a fair fight. Sixteen Libyan aircraft went down with no NATO losses despite later claims from Tripoli of two dozen air-to-air kills… they had most certainly not bombed Italian airbases to ruins either. Libya, Sarkozy had said, with agreements now from Frattini in Rome and Zapatero in Madrid, needed to be invaded with the Gaddafi regime deposed.

America, Britain, Germany and others said that they were unable to provide the necessary forces to help achieve that. France, Italy and Spain had a commitment themselves to Poland and their allies wanted them to improve upon that. However, Sarkozy was going to get his way. The huge build-up of forces from those three Southern European countries, plus also Portugal alongside them and maybe Egypt if the United States was willing to give the necessary nod of the head, continued. They were all planning to invade. Egypt was important in this but so too were the Americans. While Sarkozy was going against what Biden wanted, he still had managed to not alienate the American president. Israel wanted the lone US Navy aircraft carrier in the Med., the USS John C. Stennis, to turn its attention toward Syria but for now it stayed off Libyan waters, away to the northeast rather than between Libya and Sicily where the French-led carrier group (their own plus those smaller Harrier-carriers of Italy & Spain) was. This was big win when it came to keeping American focus on Libya rather than letting them turn that elsewhere. Moreover, when it came to dealings with Cairo, Egypt remained an American ally and it was Washington, not Paris, that was going to have to bring that country into the orbit of the Coalition.

The military build-up was going to take some time complete. It wasn’t just about moving men or ships but transporting supplies and creating a logistical network. A command set-up was something already done with France at the top of that. This was currently based at Istres–Le Tubé Airbase in the South of France. An objective needed to be agreed upon more than just deposing the Gaddafi regime. This was something which was going to take time too if the operation wasn’t to go wrong once ashore. It was all going to take a while but there was now an ongoing effort to go into Libya with Coalition troops and not leave until the country was no longer led by someone who had gone out of his way to make so many enemies, including the vengeful current president of France.


Outside of Damascus, Assad had his armies attack the Israelis. The Syrians outnumbered their opponents significantly. Tank, infantry carriers and dismounted riflemen all moved forward. The aim was to break the blockade of the city and deliver quite the propaganda blow. It should have worked. On paper, the Syrians had the firepower and that numerical advantage. What the Syrians didn’t have through was operational secrecy nor air cover. The Israelis knew exactly what was coming due to intercepting enemy communications. As the Syrians started to move, springing what they believed to be an ambush of quite some magnitude, forward-based Israeli troops took a step-back to allow the Syrians to hit a lot of thin air. From above, once the Syrians were moving, in swept Israeli aircraft. Moreover, the Israelis brought the Americans with their air power into play too. Off in distant Transnistria, there remained some fighting in Tiraspol – an embarrassment to the Coalition that was – but elsewhere that country had been overcome. The Ukraine had been ‘behaving’ somewhat and while the threat from them wasn’t gone, it wasn’t what it had been before Operation Crowbar had been launched against the Russians in the Crimea. This had allowed the transfer to occur of two-thirds of the American Air National Guard squadrons in Romania to fly from the British airbase in Cyprus. NATO Forces Romania controlled two squadrons of F-16s and one of A-10s. The latter stayed while the former flew to RAF Akrotiri. However, those F-16s were on temporary duty when it came to their Cyprus deployment. CJTF–East (under SACEUR) wouldn’t let them go on a permanent basis to CENTCOM – which was responsible for the fighting in Syria – and retained the right to recall them at any time for possible operations over the Ukraine or even to move them further northwards. This was a bureaucratic mess. In the meantime, they saw action though above Syria in hitting Assad’s army.

The stunning victory which was supposed to happen outside Damascus didn’t. The blockade of the city wasn’t lifted. Israel still controlled all major approaches – though gaps were left for civilians to leave; which they did – and also airports and airbases. Syrian propaganda said that Assad was there and personally holding back the Israeli attempt to take the city… he most certainly wasn’t.

American forces under CENTCOM command and taking part in Operation David’s Shield fought today like the Israelis did against the Syrians. They were operating to the southeast of the Golan Heights, near to Nawa and the Syrian-Jordanian border. US Army troops with the 173rd Airborne Brigade (from Italy and which SACEUR now wanted back if there was to be an American ground presence in Libya: another spat was happening here) and the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division fought alongside US Marines. There had been the addition of Marine Reservists – 1/24 Marines to join the regulars with 3/8 Marines – as the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit became the 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigade but David’s Shield was still limited when it came to its own organic air cover. There were AV-8B Harriers flying from two amphibious assault ships off the Israeli coastline who were making refueling stops inside Israel but they weren’t yet stationed on land. Israel and the United States couldn’t agree as to terms relating to their deployment. And they called this David’s Shield…? The solution to that, decided elsewhere among politicians, was that the US Marines would fight for an airbase to use inside Syria for themselves. The US Army wanted that air cover they could get from the US Marines basing Harriers here – they too were far from happy at the Israeli’s attitude to ‘foreign forces’ on their soil and also the SACEUR–CENTCOM disputes – so helped fight for that airbase. Fighting off Syrian attacks here came secondary now when it came to securing an American airbase. It was madness! There would be post-war recriminations about this, many were sure, but a lot of people were already covering their behinds too. What those on the ground fighting in Syria didn’t know was that at the same time as idiots were acting this way, there were some cooler heads at work back home. Currently in the Indian Ocean after clearing the Malacca Straits was the USS Ronald Reagan. Unavailable at the start of the war for Pacific duties due to a delayed (it was on then off throughout the earlier part of the year) stand-down for maintenance, the Reagan had departed California and shot across the Central Pacific: the carrier was assigned to CENTCOM. When she reached the Red Sea, after completing a transit unofficially being deemed ‘Operation Cowboy’, it would be launching air strikes over Syria after flying through both Israeli and Jordanian (they were going to keep quiet about this when it happened) air space. The Reagan was going at full speed but it was still going to take some time for her to arrive there. A suggestion had been mooted that maybe Syria could be attacked from Iraq. There were American forces in Iraq, were there not?, and aircraft too. Those aircraft had already been nearly all moved to Afghanistan though. There was also an insurgency raging throughout Iraq and it was one which several people back home feared that could spread across the border into Syria following American action. Washington was seeking not to see Syria become another Iraq while at the same time aiding in the blasting of that regime to bits, thus weakening that state. This certainly wasn’t something many could understand but it was what they wanted back there at home. In the meantime, Americans died in Syria where they fought what really was someone else’s war.

Talking of complicated conflicts, Israeli forces were in Lebanon too. Now that was becoming a bloodbath! Hezbollah, aided by Iranians who officially weren’t there, engaged Israeli troops inside Lebanon. The fighting went on and on. Those taking part had different ideas what it was all about and considered it important… but it wasn’t. Lebanon was nothing more than yet another sideshow.

One Hundred and Thirty Five

Operation Noble Sword continued into its second day on August 25th, with that American-led counteroffensive being launched perpendicular to the British-led offensive further north. V Corps’ embattled commander, Lt.-General Mike Ryan, was confident of his likely success as his forces went east towards the border between Poland and Belarus. Some of his units had taken particularly immense casualties yesterday during the offensive when Russian forces had put up a stiff fight, but all of Ryan’s divisions were still in fighting order by the time dawn came the following day.

Particularly impressive had been the ability of the Poles to repel Russian forces from a major area of NATO territory in the north, bordering on the corps boundary. Fighting continued the next day as the 11th Armoured Cavalry Division again pushing into the 3rd Motorised Rifle Division once again.

For the Russians, this had become a fate in which land would be traded for time. Fortunately for Moscow, it was currently Polish land being given up as opposed to Russian, but if NATO’s counteroffensive continued at the same speed it was doing already then there was likely to be a major threat to mainland Russia, especially with the amphibious operation on Sakhalin occurring.

The US Army’s 1st Armored Division would face more intense fighting than the Poles, and, ironically, this would occur at a Polish settlement on the banks of the Wizna River which had only recently been fought over between the Russians and the 3rd Infantry Division as well as German reinforcements.

Now a fourth unit was about to fight for Wizna, the 1st Armored Division. The fantasy amongst certain officers within that American division that Russia would be a pushover had been killed by the intensity of yesterday’s fighting, with hundreds upon hundreds of men killed and dozens of vehicles knocked out. What was effectively a scratch force of Russian and Belarusian armoured and mechanised regiments, defended the pathways towards the Narew River through a nearby ecological park.

Those same Russian and Belarusian units, four of them in total, had been in combat yesterday, likewise fighting against the 1st Armored as they were now. This meant that men on both sides were exhausted and their equipment damaged, but it also meant that they were battle-hardened against one another. At a more strategic level, American intelligence staff with the divisional headquarters were gettign a clearer picture of likely enemy actions not just by doctrine but by the decisions made by enemy brigade and battalion commanders in yesterday's fighting.

Environmental damage was immense as modern weapons systems went into battle against one another, and casualties naturally were heavy. The 1st Guards Tank Army was falling back at a much more rapid pace than had been anticipated by Russian commanders, but at a slower and less consistent pace than NATO had expected.

The 1st Armored Division, bloodied somewhat but still in good order, retook Wizna and seized a bridgehead back over the other side of the Narew. Only a week ago, American, German, and Dutch troops had fought Russian soldiers and tanks, going to their deaths by the thousands for the sake of this Godforsaken little Polish town. Tanks and armoured vehicles, covered by Apache helicopter gunships and A-10 warplanes, charged forwards to the banks of the Narew, almost disregarding casualties in an effort to reach that river before nightfall!

The commander of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team was killed by Russian artillery, but had this not occurred he most certainly would have been relieved of his command for the slaughter.

Nevertheless, by the time night fell, the Americans had a combined-arms battalion of M1A2s & M2A2s across the Narew through the use of numerous pontoon bridges, with far more troops soon to be following.

V Corps’ other American heavy division, the 1st Cavalry, fought to the south of that battle on the Narew. Yesterday, the 1st Cavalry Division had made surprisingly little progress in pushing back Russian forces across occupied areas of Poland. That heavy division, a premier formation with many veteran officers and NCOs had seen its armoured spearheads blunted by intense Russian resistance on the ground and also in the air as well when the Russians sent their few remaining ground attack aircraft into battle.

Today, however, the 1st Cavalry Division was to have better luck, striking out eastwards with the French to their south and other Americans to the north. They pushed up through Polish territory occupied by the 85th Motorised Rifle Division.

Though the American advance had been significantly slowed yesterday by Russian efforts, today, the 1st Cavalry was able to make much better progress after a full night of airstrikes and artillery bombardments had softened up the Russian lines.

Preparing to withdraw already, the 85th Division managed to hasten the process and escape a myriad of traps and encirclements set up for them.

French forces under their wartime Division Rapiere formation continued to perform excellently, with the assistance of the Polish 12th Division. Now also supported by freshly-arrived Italian troops, armoured, mechanised, and airmobile, Division Rapiere pushed up through its sector of south-eastern Poland when faced with Belarusian units and several Russian formations separated from their parent units at the battalion level. Typically, it was the Russians who inflicted the most casualties, bloodying the French and causing the occasional hold-up in the advance as casualties were evacuated and damages repaired.

The Belarusian tanks and armoured vehicles could offer almost nothing in opposition to the French Leclerc main battle tanks, whereas the Russians with their T-90s & T-72s seemed to have greater effect. The Belarusian troops, knowing the safety of their families was in grave danger, fought back with more motivation than the Russians, but their lack of modern tanks and the lesser number of air defence batteries available to them meant NATO warplanes had easy pickings throughout the day.

NATO units were able to inflict punishing casualties on the Russians and bring the days fighting to a successful end.




One Hundred and Thirty–Six

The 82nd Airborne Division came to Latvia for a fight. There was no expectation that their time spent here would be easy. The intention for their operations, as was the case with the rest of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, was that they would engage Russian and Belorussian forces throughout their rear due to where they landed. This would mean conducting an all-round defence at the same time as expanding their area of operations. Strong counterattacks, from all directions, were anticipated. This wouldn’t be anything like fighting Iraqi insurgents or the Afghan Taliban – the division’s recent combat experience – in any way. Those the Americans would fight along the Daugava River were a far different opponent: one far more formidable.

That really got doing during the second day that the 82nd Airborne was on the ground in the enemy’s rear areas. Russian Airborne Troops attacked them. The 76th Guards Air Assault Division had the mission of securing both Estonia and Latvia from a NATO counter-invasion though had focused on preparing for a Baltic-launched amphibious assault. In Russian eyes, that had been opened already by the strong commando raids up and down the coast. Instead, the 82nd Airborne arrived by air. NATO had deceived them with the coastal raids. One brigade of that American elite formation had been beaten on the war’s opening day when caught by surprise inside Estonia. Regular troops from the Russian Army’s 138th Motor Rifle Brigade had achieved that victory (they were in Poland now) but the 76th Guards had fought Estonians and Latvians already. The Americans held no fear for them. A two-pronged assault was launched against those who had landed near to Jēkabpils. The 23rd & 234th Regiments – each Guards units – moved forward overnight in their armoured vehicles and also by trucks to make their attacks at dawn. They thought they hadn’t been spotted but they were mistaken. American intelligence assets spotted the move and the 82nd Airborne reacted accordingly. The fight was tough and bloody. Each side suffered grave losses and saw combat plans fall to pieces in part when the shooting started. Each also brought in strong fire support for their engaged paratroopers. The Russians had a lot of tracked vehicles – BMDs and variants of those and other airmobile platforms – which mounted weapons; they also had artillery in the form of heavy guns and mortars. The Americans had tanks. From the beat-up 170th Infantry Brigade which had been moved to the rear back in Poland, two companies of M-1A2 Abrams had come to Latvia. The move had taken up a lot of lift on transports to fly them in, but their presence paid off. The Russians didn’t expect them. The 82nd Airborne had its own artillery as well as Apache helicopters plus short-range reconnaissance drones. The 234th Regiment’s attack was blunted and a bloody standstill caused. The strike by the 23rd Regiment saw them turned back. Then the Americans counterattacked. They had three brigades and used that third one to move forward in between the two Russian regiments. This advance was led by one of those tank companies with the Abrams’ blasting open the Russians and causing panic in their lines. The advance didn’t move as far forward as planned but it was good enough. The Russians were hurt where the flanks of each regiment were hit. They started to fall back. From the divisional commander came orders for the 76th Guards to withdraw. They would regroup and try again at a later date… once they could address the issue of those tanks too.

The attack on Jēkabpils had failed. The Americans remained holding this small city and its crossings over the river. They had their airhead intact too. That was where the 23rd Regiment had been heading for before so many of its BMD-2s & BTR-Ds were blown up by Javelin missiles and over a hundred paratroopers left dead. It sat to the north of the city and was once a Soviet airbase during the Cold War occupation of Latvia as part of the Soviet Union. Since then it had been near abandoned. US Air Force Red Horse airfield engineers had been on the ground quickly after it was taken. They worked to improve what was here and make it suitable for sustained operations. C-17 and C-130s had been making landings and take-offs but the airbase needed major work. That was underway while fighting had been nearby and then moved away. There were Latvian military officers with the Americans there and elsewhere. Attached to the 82nd Airborne were some of the few men stationed outside the country when it fell (not many due to the then situation) and they had come to Jēkabpils. One of them had been detained before leaving by the CIA who suspected he was a Russian spy and that had caused some issues. Just because he had Russian heritage, he was a traitor…? The others were present to aid the establishment of the freedom of part of their homeland. They went into Jēkabpils itself and other areas where there was danger from ‘locals’. Those locals weren’t true Latvians, the attached liaison officers told the Americans, but traitors. It was they who made the city a dangerous place on its second day back under NATO control. Sniping and explosions occurred. Attacked at their front by Russian paratroopers and now in their rear by ‘terrorists’, the 82nd Airborne responded to the Jēkabpils attacks with a lot of force. They didn’t want to lose the city for they knew that the 76th Guards would return. A battalion of Albanian troops – Albania had joined NATO last year – came straight from the airbase and into Jēkabpils as well several companies of American paratroopers: for both, this their first fight of the war. Efforts were made not to cause civilian losses and not to destroy too much of the city, but both happened. The Battle of Jēkabpils would be something long remembered in Latvian history.


It was the same downstream at Daugavpils. NATO control over the large city (Latvia’s second largest behind Riga) was near non-existent. The Belgians brought in couldn’t control Daugavpils in the few numbers they had. The FSB had delivered guns to ethnic Russians there like they had up at Jēkabpils but also sent Cossacks and other volunteers from across the Rodina – and elsewhere too; many ethnic Russians from the Ukraine had volunteered to come to the Baltic States as well – to fight as auxiliary security units. Most had been busy molesting the local population before NATO paratroopers arrived. Man-to-man, Belgian infantry had the upper hand but there were so many of those armed men now acting as guerillas through Daugavpils. There was fighting to be had outside of the city for those Belgians who the British wanted to aid them so they were forced to abandon much of it for now. The Belgians with their Light Brigade were waiting on reinforcements, who were due to arrive any time soon, and they would go into the city eventually to restore order, just not today. Attached Latvian military officers with the Belgians were rather upset because they feared for civilians left at the mercy of those with guns inside but there was nothing to be done. NATO troops who’d come here were needed outside.

Daugavpils International Airport wasn’t any such thing. It had that title but that wasn’t the case. Like outside Jēkabpils, there was a former Soviet airbase here in mediocre condition. The Latvian Government had long wanted to turn it into an international airport but had lacked funding. It was now an international airbase. After being taken by British soldiers with the 16th Air Assault Brigade (the victors of the Battle of Copenhagen), the airhead established outside Daugavpils had been where the multinational 6th Airmobile Division was stood up. Doing so in the field was rather an important propaganda issue for NATO though one which many though was madness. Led by a Briton, both Belgium and Canada had a brigade of their own men assigned while there were also further NATO attachments in combat support & service support roles. Still forming, the 6th Airmobile was also fighting. Belorussians had first been encountered along with locals… before those locals were correctly identified as foreign militia instead. That intelligence failure there had come alongside the debacle when it came to misunderstanding enemy strength and capabilities. The militia were effective. They closed the airhead that NATO had here. Those volunteers – all of whom had previous military experience – used mortars and also shoulder-mounted SAMs to do this. Explosive projectiles lanced into the airport grounds and caused deaths and injuries while also hitting a couple of aircraft. One particular mortar round slammed into a field hospital (this was an accident; NATO fire had hit a Russian field hospital yesterday by accident too) established to deal with the injured from that shelling but also fighting. NATO, Russian and civilian casualties were being treated there at the time. The effects were horrendous. A ‘pool’ reporter sent by the Ministry of Defence back in London, who worked for The Daily Telegraph but was to share his stories with other publications, was on-hand to witness the aftereffects of that one incident. His story, and pictures from his partnered photographer, would go global. As to the missilemen, armed hunts took place to find them and kill them. They went to ground though and avoided the RAF Regiment men (from II Squadron, a parachute-trained unit) after them. The British were twice duped into thinking that the threat was gone. The first time saw damage done to an RAF Hercules C4 when taking off after unloading cargo and taking out wounded. The second time, five hours later and following an all-clear where this time it was said that the danger was gone for certain, a C-17 came into land. This wasn’t a British one but instead a Canadian one. It was bringing in light armoured vehicles as well as soldiers with plans for it and others to ferry in Leopard-2 tanks that the Canadians had. Up came a SAM. The aircraft was hit and the pilot made quite the heroic effort to land. He did but he then lost control once on the ground. The C-17 went off the runway and crashed. A fire started and then there was an explosion. Close to a hundred lives were lost. Daugavpils was CLOSED after that. Gurkhas joined the hunt for more of those men with missiles – the RAF Regiment squadron commander receiving quite the dressing down – but until then only airdrops could be made.

More men and especially heavy gear were needed for the fighting raging outside Daugavpils. The British had fast taken control of a large area and established outposts. They knew that the Russians could come to try to take back control here. That wasn’t wrong. Russian Airborne Troops moved against the 6th Airmobile as well as they did the Americans to the northwest. Arriving by trucks rather than an airlift which their commander would have preferred, was the 345th Guards Airborne Regiment. This independent non-divisional unit had been reformed earlier in the year with the name of a formation that had a well-regarded history of combat in Soviet service. The 345th Regiment came down from St. Petersburg – away from duties enforcing the curfew to stop the spread of that biological virus – and went into battle today. There were only a few armoured vehicles with them but they were used well in the fight that the Russians went into. Multiple attacks were made against British outposts and those were pushed back. Para units were ordered to fall back and concentrate. Fighting withdrawals were made and in the fog of war, sometimes things went wrong with those leading to men being cut off. Apache gunships in Army Air Corps service (a few of them had come to Latvia and they weren’t flying from the targeted airbase) were brought in to rescue some rifle sections. They did well in tearing into the Russians though faced strong missile fire in return. Two of them were lost when engaged by the 345th Regiment. The British fell back towards Daugavpils. They had the room to do so and the ground to give up but it wasn’t great for morale to do this. However, at Dunski the Russians were finally stopped. This village was at a crossroads east of the city where several roads converged: there was a railway line plus also a bend in the Daugava River nearby. 1 Royal Irish, 2 Para, 4 Para and two Belgian battalions fought here as whole units while there were attached companies of Canadian soldiers from parts of several battalions not yet fully here in Latvia. The Russians were outnumbered two-to-one and caught in a pre-planned trap. In the middle of a thunderstorm, complete with a summer downpour like no other, the 345th Regiment was brought to a firm stop. The fight was run by junior officers, senior sergeants and experienced NCOs. It was an infantry battle, and while there was external fire support, it was mainly between soldiers on foot. For almost an hour it raged, each side giving it all, the 345th Regiment fighting better than Naval Infantry men had done in Denmark when the British were there, but in the end the Russians gave in. They’d taken losses close to a third of their number. There was no way through and this was a battle lost. Sensibly, their regimental commander pulled his men out. He did so while using his radio. A Belgian electronic reconnaissance team had waited for this and fixed his position after a long wait. From back closer to Daugavpils, a whole battery of previously-silent Belgian LG1 guns suddenly fired: they’d been kept out of the fight which Royal Horse Artillery guns had joined earlier. High-explosive 105mm shells descended upon a patch of woodland and that Russian colonel, plus much of his battle staff, was left dead. Patience had paid off here and the results in the aftermath would be there. The Russian withdrawal was haphazard and one thus contested as the 6th Airmobile took the opportunity to tear apart as much of them as they could before finally halting once darkness came. There’d be more fighting on other days, but for today, outside Daugavpils it was over.

Inside the city, as night came, the violence increased though. Things were about to get rather crazy in there.


Up in northeastern Poland, the Allied I Corps continued fighting the Russian’s Twentieth Guards Army. Operation Baltic Arrow was in some ways looking like Operation Baltic Crawl. It was still early on and not all of those assigned NATO forces had yet to get going. Generals Mattis and Petraeus weren’t voicing displeasure with their subordinate corps commander here though like a few other voices within NATO were. CJTF–East’s commander and SACEUR both saw progress being made. They knew the strength of the opposition. Baltic Arrow would soon enough live up to its name. The Russians had had over a week to dig in and get ready to hold off the liberation of Polish soil. They were retreating and losing forces as they failed to do so. The I Corps would be in Kaliningrad soon enough then on their way – over the Daugava where the XVIII Corps was – to Tallinn on the Gulf of Finland.

As said, the Twentieth Guards Army couldn’t stop the ongoing NATO advance. All of the I Corps was now involved included the Croats now alongside all the other nationalities in this large NATO operational command. Masuria – this region once the southern part of Germany’s East Prussia – was being overrun. From Minsk, President Lukashenko had issued the order that any withdrawal of Belorussian troops would be met with punishment on the family of the officer involved. This Stalinist idiocy hadn’t gone down well with the Russians. They’d cut off Belorussian independent communications in response so that there was no more of that political interference. The ability to retreat, and then counterattack, was needed to keep the Twentieth Guards Army (a third of it with Belorussian components) in the fight. Lukashenko could rage all he wanted but he would do that to Moscow and have no more role in this fight! The I Corps found that they were able to retake Polish territory but they had to fight for it several times. Back and forth the frontlines moved through the day as the Russians & Belorussians conducted quite the effective defence in places, especially in the middle. However, on the flanks, there were significant areas liberated and for good.

The British 3rd Mechanised Division continued to push for the Suwalki Gap. At the beginning of the war, that access way from Poland to Lithuania had been shut by a joint Russian-Belorussian move east-west. The terrain favoured north-south movement though, as had been found then and again now. With an attached Canadian brigade – not here to make up the numbers nor play any second-line supporting role – that was reached. Canadian tanks with the Royal Canadian Dragoons reached the Polish-Lithuanian border. At once they were furiously counterattacked by Belorussian tanks with their 120th Guards Mechanised Brigade and needed immediate air and ground support, but they held on here. British troops moved up in support behind them while guarding their inner flank were Croatian troops seeing battle for the first time and doing well. Pushing onwards into Lithuania looked possible from afar though it wasn’t going to be something done anytime soon as the Russians moved in heavy guns and also used what air power they had to really hurt the 3rd Mechanised Division. Whilst this was happening, Belorussians nearly cut off by the forward dash withdrew and strengthened their position despite all that the Croats threw their way to stop that.

There was another big advance forward over near the Baltic Sea. The Dutch covered the inside flank for the Polish 16th Mechanised Division as it raced towards Kaliningrad. They aimed to reach Braniewo, the last Polish town before the border of that Russian exclave, but just couldn’t quite get there. Belorussian reservists with their 19th Tank Brigade came to rescue the Russian’s 1st Guards Motor Rifle Division at the crucial time and threaten the Poles’ flank despite Dutch efforts to stop that. Orders came from I Corps for a tactical withdrawal in the face of this and it was done. The Poles weren’t happy but they’d gone too far with not enough width and the Dutch had taken too many losses too quickly to stop a projected disaster in the making. In falling back, the Poles found that the Russians were unable to maintain their chase though and so – with permission – they then stopped. Braniewo remained beyond them but they’d only gone half way back to where they’d started from and still had taken plenty of territory.

Other Brits (with Belgians supporting them), the Americans, the Germans (with some Czechs attached) and the Spanish all fought through Masuria. They were spread through the middle and had a torrid time on the attack when facing the Russians turning on them in the middle of pulling back. Two heavy divisions, the 10th Guards Tank aided by the 4th Guards Tank, plus also the 138th Brigade, might have been outnumbered but they put up quite the fight. They had no intention of falling back without making NATO pay. There were Poles here among these other I Corps NATO units, men attached as liaisons like those Latvians with the XVIII Corps. They witnessed their country being blown apart but their mission was focused on that regained land. There were people here who’d been under foreign occupation. Russian occupation measures hadn’t been that severe and there hadn’t been strong resistance either. There were no mass graves to find. People needed food and medical care though. Clean water was something else required as well. Getting that forward into this battle-zone was impossible so the Poles started organizing the evacuation of the people they found to where that help was further south. So many of these civilians had refused to leave the other week when the war came to their towns and villages but they left now. Where the Poles were unable to go into was Olsztyn. That large town was now behind the lines after the Americans had cut off a retreat from Russian forces out of there. What was left of a regiment had barricaded themselves in there when blocking access routes. Surrenders were called for and met with impolite remarks. The Russians were waiting for a counterattack to come link-up with them. That was now impossible… but that didn’t stop the Twentieth Guards Army sending messages saying it was coming. The Poles estimated that there were at least thirty thousand people trapped in there. I Corps’ intelligence staff said that that was a generous estimate. It could be fifty thousand civilians. Their fate would be decided in the coming days.

One Hundred and Thirty Nine

Unlike Belarus or the occupied Baltic States, Sakhalin was a part of Russia, and had been so for generations. The Russian homeland was under attack, as far as Moscow was concerned, even if Vladivostok or Petropavlovsk had not yet been assaulted by United States Marines. Fierce debates had taken place within the Russian high command over the past day over whether or not nuclear weapons should be employed to prevent the ongoing American amphibious operation.

Though many wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons against the American beachhead or against their amphibious vessels, that idea was shut down ‘for the time being’. Such an attack would surely trigger an American response in kind, which would lead to a nuclear exchange which would destroy the Rodina just as surely, if not more so, than an invasion by the Americans.

On the island of Sakhalin itself, the beleaguered 33rd Motorised Rifle Division continued to put up a spirited defence as US and Australian forces continued their advance. Allied airpower was slowly breaking the Russian defenders, but it was the Marines on the ground who had to dig out enemy troops from foxholes and bunkers. Australian soldiers and a small number of British Gurkhas joined in this fight, fighting with bayonets and rifle butts as Russian positions were cleared out along the two major highways that lead to Nogliki.

Counterattacks were made from isolated woodlands by dismounted Russian infantry, repeatedly fought off by Coalition troops with heavy losses. Naval gunfire provided a supplement to the Allied units on Sakhalin, which lacked heavy artillery of their own. Time and time again, Russian troops were forced back, but only after leaving scores of American or Australian soldiers or marines dead in their wake. By the time the 1st Marine Division was outside Nogliki, Lt.-General Dunford was looking at over a thousand dead from his ground forces alone.

To the dismay of the US Marines, it was Australian soldiers with the 1st Battalion or the Royal Australian Regiment who reached Nogliki International Airport. A small facility not befitting such a name, the airfield would still allow for the deployment of the 25th Infantry Division by air. It was meant to have been captured yesterday but the Marines had been delayed in their efforts by stiff enemy resistance, meaning that the airport fell today to the Australians. A final victory was won for the Russians when the officer commanding the troops defending the airport called in artillery which cratered the runway and caused dozens of casualties amongst the attacking troops.

Despite the ferocious fight going on on Sakhalin, Moscow knew that the island was falling. Coalition troops outnumbered the defenders and had attained near total air superiority over not only the island but also in the surrounding airspace.

If Sakhalin was to remain in Russian hands, it would have to be reinforced immediately. This would be a difficult task with US and Australian warships crawling over the Sea of Okhotsk, seeking to box in the Russian Pacific Fleet. That once powerful force had already been reduced to a mere handful of destroyers and frigates after several engagements on the war’s third and fourth days had seen its flagship cruiser and several smaller vessels sunk by American air attacks.

Against three American carrier battle groups, the idea of a Russian victory was…optimistic…at best.

Nevertheless, Sakhalin couldn’t be allowed to fall. Reinforcements had to be sent, and they had to be sent at once.

The Russian Pacific Fleet was ordered to begin deploying its two naval infantry brigades aboard a fleet of hastily-assembled merchant ships. Army troops from a smattering of motorised rifle regiments with the Far Eastern Military District that were amphibiously qualified followed suit, with a total force of nearly 12,000 men deploying by boat, while more infantrymen were hustled aboard Il-76 transport planes. Satellite surveillance quickly identified the Russian move.

F/A-18s scrambled from the decks of the three US Navy carriers. Australian Hornets followed suit from South Korea, joined by their old F-111s. The aircraft were armed with Harpoon anti-shipping missiles as well as anti-aircraft missiles for self-defence.

The initial defence put up by Russian surface-to-air missiles was impressive, more so than expected. Destroyers and frigates launched their SAMs in large numbers and managed to shoot down four US Navy Super Hornets, as well as one Australian F/A-18 and another RAAF F-111. That was all they could do, however.

Strike aircraft launched their Harpoons en masse, targeting first the escorting warships and then the transports. From destroyers to corvettes, Russian ships sank en masse as they were hit time and time again by Harpoon missiles. The use of three carrier air wings meant three waves of attack; an initial one to soak up the anti-aircraft missiles, and then another to hit the escorting warships, followed by a third and final wave against the merchant vessels.

Joining in this massacre were five submarines, three nuclear-powered American boats and two Australian Collins-class submarines. HMAS Rankin, the Australian vessel, managed to sink not just a destroyer but two corvettes and a merchant ship as well, marking her out as the most successful of all five submarines in the region. Every one of those submarines would score at least one ‘kill’, however, as the battle that marked the end of the Russian Pacific Fleet raged on.

American air and submarine commanders began reporting their successes back to the Seventh Fleet.

Thirty-two Russian ships, including naval vessels and merchant ships pressed into military service, had been sunk. Only four had escapade back to Vladivostok. 9,000 men had died in the fiery waters off of Sakhalin, and it still wasn’t over yet. The Il-76 transport planes carrying nearly 2,000 additional soldiers bound for Sakhalin were ambushed by F/A-18s. With few escorting fighters, the result was a massacre when no fewer than ten Il-76s were blown out of the sky by AMRAAM missiles for only a single American fighter lost to a Russian MiG.

For the Russians on Sakhalin, the game was up, even if they did not yet know it. Over 10,000 men were dead for only a couple of dozen Allied casualties, and Russia’s Pacific Fleet had ceased to exist.




One Hundred and Forty

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

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

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

A clash of titans commenced.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

One Hundred and Forty Three

Under heavy air and artillery support, NATO ground forces continued their eastwards advance towards Belarus and the Baltic States. On the southern side of that advance, the American-led V Corps moved to exploit the successes which had occurred yesterday when the 2nd Guards Army had been smashed by US armoured formations and B-52 bombers high above the battlefield.

That Russian formation, once numbering nearly forty thousand men, had seen thousands of its personnel killed and hundreds of its vehicles destroyed in the B-52 strike yesterday after Polish and Italian forces had closed a tight trap preventing the corps’ escape. There was little fighting spirit left amongst many of the soldiers themselves, but as Soviet-style threats to the family members of those who surrendered started to be issued, resistance continued.

While the US 1st Armored and 1st Cavalry Divisions’, and the French Division Rapiere, pushed on, making the final leg of the journey to the Belarusian border, Italian and Polish troops who could now consider themselves veterans after yesterday’s fighting kept up the pressure on the encircled Russian 2nd Guards Army. They were joined by a surviving armoured brigade from the US 3rd Infantry Division which had long-since been pulled off of the line after suffering tremendous casualties earlier on in the conflict.

A combination of tanks and air assault troops was used to push inwards against the outer perimeter of the 2nd Guards Army, with numerous objectives being captured throughout the day as the pocket effectively closed in on itself. From the north, the beleaguered American formation scrounged together from the 3rd Infantry Division again went into action, having replaced many of its casualties and some of its equipment. The Russians found themselves pulling back into a tighter and tighter circle throughout the day as Italian forces hit them from the south.

B-52s & A-10s went to work from above, this time using more precise guided weaponry to take out a multitude of targets from above.

At 2230 hours local time, the commander of the 2nd Guards Army asked Lt.-General Ryan, the commander of V Corps, for terms of surrender. Nearly twenty thousand men, Russian and Belarusian alike, would be marched into captivity in Germany because of the collapse of the Russians’ position here. It was an incredible accomplishment for V Corps, leaving little in their way as three leading NATO divisions, consisting of American and French troops with first-line training and equipment, marched on to the Belarusian border.

Minsk would be their next objective.

Similarly, in northern Poland, the multinational I Allied Corps moved further across Masuria towards Kaliningrad and the Suwalki Gap. Yesterday, their opponents with the 20th Guards Army had given much ground in a retreat that was more organised than the usual chaos. Allied troops on both the northern and southern flanks of the corps’ boundaries had come under repeated air attack throughout the day and had also faced artillery strikes, but few engagements had taken place on the ground apart from scattered rear-guard actions.

Today that would change for several Allied units.

The Polish 16th Mechanised Division and the pair of Dutch brigades, one mechanised and one airmobile, besides them made excellent progress as they pushed towards Kaliningrad. That enclave had suffered dramatically as death was rained down on it from above throughout yesterday and over the course of the night. Warplanes and ships alike had taken part in this, and the defence infrastructure of the region was collapsing. The 1st Motorised Rifle Division, the ad hoc Russian formation which had fought here right along the Polish coastline since day one, was now a bloodied and beaten unit.

Once numbering over ten thousand strong, fewer than half that number of troops remained combat effective. Many, many of them were dead, but others wounded or captured as well. Badly outnumbered by the Polish and Dutch heavy forces, the remnants of the 1st Division could only make a slow withdrawal, costing the attackers greatly with plenty of promising young lives lost but with little gained beyond several highway intersections and stretches of woodland. The 13th Airmobile Brigade, a Dutch formation, again utilised American and British helicopter support in making numerous assaults behind enemy lines and wreaking havoc in the Russian rears, much as Russian doctrine called for their own paratroopers to do.

Meanwhile, in the centre of I Corps’ advance was the US 4th Infantry Division and the Spanish 1st Infantry Division. There were plenty of other troops, Czechs, Croats, and Germans behind them, but the Americans and the Spanish led the charge. The Spanish 1st Division was initially meant to be held back to clear out pockets, but Lt.-General Shirreff viewed this as a waste of resources. The Spanish troops, and their Portuguese attachments, were well-armed with main battle tanks and had seen combat several days ago when they had dealt swiftly and efficiently with Belarusian pockets.

The 4th Infantry Division again sent its tanks and Bradleys out in the lead, with infantry using trucks and helicopters in support. Short work was made of numerous BMPs & BTRs by the Abrams’ 120mm cannons, but when T-72s appeared in the distance, accompanied by an artillery strike, losses mounted. Nevertheless, the main push by the 4th Infantry Division was effective enough to overcome this resistance. More air support was granted to I Corps than had been given yesterday, which worked as a ‘force multiplier’ and assisted greatly in the advance.

Similarly to the Americans, the Spanish 1st Infantry Division faced a tough fight up against a regiment of paratroopers detached from the 98th Guards Division, protecting a series of villages on the western outskirts of the Suwalki Gap which the Spanish troops had been tasked with capturing. Leopard-2 tanks in the hands of Spanish Army crews proved effective when it came to dealing with the paratroopers’ BMDs, but as the fighting became hand-to-hand in numerous villages, losses were heavy. M-113s used by Spanish mechanised units were far inferior in armament to the BMDs, with the battle thus seeing many of them knocked out. ATGMs were utilised with devastating effect, but as German Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters arrived at the scene of the battle, the Russians begrudgingly fell back.

The XVIII Airborne Corps in Latvia, while surrounded, was in a reasonable position.

Efforts made yesterday to fly in the remainder of the 1st Canadian Mechanised Brigade-Group had seen much success, with their tanks finally getting into the fight and granting the 6th Airmobile Division the firepower it needed to maintain the airhead around Daugavpils. The situation yesterday had been particularly dire for the 6th Airmobile Division; the Belarusians had attacked with their tanks and the airport had been closed for a significant time period. However, overnight, airstrikes had slowed the Belarusian assault, knocking out many of their T-80s; the Canadian Leopard-2s now involved in the fight proved to be far more effective weapons systems than the British Scimitars with the Household Cavalry Regiment, scoring hits alongside dismounted missile teams, enough to halt the attempted counterattack. Apache gunships of the British Army Air Corps operated from Daugavpils, also inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy despite the loss of four of their number to surface-to-air missiles.

Attacks throughout the day occurred against the whole corps, with many of these being insurgent-style strikes made by militiamen, either Russians or pro-Russians from outside of the Rodina itself. NATO troops were able to hold their own and maintain the gains that they had made so far, but couldn’t advance much further out beyond that against the opposition they faced.




One Hundred and Forty–Four

John Kerry was sworn in as the nation’s forty-eighth vice president late in the evening of August 27th: three weeks to the day since Obama had been assassinated and Biden elevated to the presidency. The bitterness of the nomination process and then the voting was something quite extraordinary. So was the timescale though. In the three previous cases of a vacancy to the office which Kerry filled, there had been gaps of fourteen months, two months & four months respectively where the United States didn’t have a vice president. With utmost haste, and high political drama, in 2010 it took such a short space of time to fill that role with someone new. The country was at war, one which could very possibly go to the nuclear stage in the minds of many, and the vacancy in such an important position wasn’t one which it was thought could be left open… especially since it had been created by the opening attack of the ongoing war. Not everyone agreed with that line of thinking, that being that it was an urgent priority to fill the position with such haste. There were those who were opposed to Kerry too yet the main point of contention in Washington among those who fought such a battle as they did around this issue was the matter of the speed of the process. Shortcuts had been made and things rushed. Pressure had been put in Congress to hurry along hearings and then move to a series of votes which culminated in first the Senate and then the House voting aye. In the Senate, the result of the vote was sixty-five to thirty with three abstentions (and two vacant seats). In the House, it went three hundred & twelve for, one hundred & sixteen against, with nine more representatives not voting. An attempt to delay both votes had been made by a series of legal challenges filed aiming to get the Supreme Court to intervene though those were for the time being unsuccessful. Despite Kerry’s swearing-in, efforts would continue along the line of trying to declare that his accession to the vice presidency was unconstitutional. This matter wasn’t going away.

A few days before the two votes and then the short ceremony where Kerry took the oath of office, there had been the belief among Biden and his top people in the White House that they were looking at another week of the Congressional delay. However, outside intervention had come. The scandal known as ‘Cash from Russians’ had erupted. The whole matter was more contentious than the Kerry confirmation. It came about due to the voluntary exiling of themselves by several rich Russian nationals – their infamous oligarchs – to the West starting last year. Many went to Western Europe but others had come to the United States. Money from several of these people had found its way into the campaign war-chests of politicians nationwide at the state and federal level. These donations were overt with some but covert with others. They were buying influence for various reasons and their money was accepted. Then Russia had gone to war with the United States, attacking America on its home soil as its opening move. A stalled Department of Justice investigation received renewed vigour now when there was ‘new evidence’ (the validity of that was much disputed) that several of these exiles were actually still allied to the Kremlin, thus seeking to subvert the war effort in America through complicated and nefarious schemes. Grand juries had been convened to hear evidence and indictments produced. FBI raids had then taken place in the full glare of the media. This shook both parties, the Democrats and the Republicans alike, and, depending upon the spin taken by particular elements of the media, each party was hurt worse than the other in this. Blame, deflection and denials were thrown about everywhere. Cash from Russians became bigger than it was. It moved away from the corruption issue, which was what it was all about, into something else entirely. Politicians of all stripes used it as an excuse to fulfil their own agendas. It stung badly several figures and organisations opposed to the Kerry confirmation, something that no one had seen coming. A couple of senators and representatives and also the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association (NRA) came out really badly from Cash from Russians. The NRA had back in 2004 been behind a lot of the anti-Kerry movement when he had run for president then and was caught up now in this scandal while attempting to once against forestall his confirmation to the vice presidency. That lobbying arm of theirs – the Institute for Legislative Action – had their national offices raided looking into donations from rich Russians. As to the members of Congress involved, the ducked and dived the barrage of incoming fire that came their way.

A loudmouth billionaire based in New York, someone who the year before had taken to Twitter, fired off several cutting tweets about ‘Democrats taking money from Russia’: this caused quite the stir, as intended, and would be the start of something big there. It was both parties who were caught up in this though.

Aiming to take the pressure of themselves and colleagues, several members of Congress reversed – no, reconsidered – their positions on the Kerry matter and this led to the votes occurring when they did. Regardless, the investigations continued unabated. The political careers of many, and the personal liberty of some, were going to be curtailed when all was said and done with this matter.


Wartime censorship was something that wasn’t being enforced in the traditional manner across America in this war. It would have been impossible to achieve if tried. The growth of mass media, plus the internet, just made the concept of censorship when it came to information about the ongoing conflict a foolish notion. The principle of the ‘people have a right to know’ and the contrasting view of ‘sharing of information aids the enemy’ both had their place in the modern era. Getting the right balance there was the trick.

It was something that there was currently a marked failure to do.

Self-censorship by media organisation was being tried but these were profit-driven companies. They had to make money. Providing news was what they were in the business of doing and they did so. Judgements calls were made within them on what was a secret and what wasn’t… though some people just didn’t give a damn as they aimed for the latest scoop for their own careers. Information came out of them that the US Government didn’t want revealed. It was broadcast to the American people yet rapidly went around the world straight away. There were those who wrapped themselves in patriotism when revealing things that they did; others declared that they were acting responsibly for the good of the American people yet couldn’t engage in the ‘flag-wrapping and jingoism’ of others. Critical analysis of the war was made where actions taken by their government was broadcast and printed. Intervention from the Federal Communications Commission came again and again though that was all over the place.

Leaks occurred across the internet. There was more deliberate intent to expose damaging information on this platform that through the traditional forms of media. Lack of proper regulation here was telling. The FBI did intervene at times and there were efforts by ‘other Government agencies’ as well in this arena. Websites were shut down, often with pressure brought to bear on internet service providers. People wanted to share information though. They wanted to tell others what they knew and expose what they saw as injustices, failings or just for attention. This was a war that their country was involved in like no other due to the attacks made against America. Putting things on the internet, whether it be true or false (a lot more of the latter than the former), was what countless Americans decided that they would do. The consequences for many of them would be quite severe in the long run. Had they not heard of the Patriot Act?

The leaks had an impact politically across the United States, especially when there was political drama around some of the things revealed. Examples of this were plentiful. There was the matter of the USS New York. This was an amphibious assault ship with the US Navy which had been involved in getting US Marines ashore in the Russian Far East as part of Operation Eastern Gamble. She’d been lost in action. The details of her loss weren’t properly revealed, nor had many lives were taken too, just the destruction of a ship which contained steel taken from the Ground Zero disaster area. This caused a stir and it was an emotional matter for many Americans, hence why it became a political issue. The Pentagon was furious that the news had come out that the ship had been lost for it told the Russians something that they didn’t know. Yes, it was only one ship of many, but it was information which they regarded as benefitting the enemy. To those who made a big deal out of the loss of the New York, what they cared about was that steel taken from what had once been the Twin Towers. The fate of missing American nationals – civilians, not military personnel – was something else where information on that was leaked. There were Americans who’d been in the Baltic States and Belarus who remained unaccounted for. Russia had made that big show out of releasing Americans from out of their own country, using Turkey as a conduit for propaganda purposes, but there were others elsewhere in territory under the control of them and their allies. Diplomats, business travellers, tourists and students were missing. The numbers of them and speculation on their fate were leaked. This became quite the issue, causing another political drama, and causing questions to be asked that the US Government didn’t have the answers to give, let alone want to provide. Footage of American soldiers in action of home soil emerged on the YouTube platform. They were in the wider Los Angles area and looking for the Spetsnaz team who’d struck in Nevada with intelligence information that they were in California now. Civilian police units were with them but these were soldiers who were caught on camera with where they were operating identified. The images came down from YouTube but it had already been downloaded by some and was then shared elsewhere. Those who supported the release of this footage were those who were opposed to what they deemed the unconstitutional use of military force on national soil despite the legal decisions that had been taken on that matter that Washington said made it all constitutional. Putting this all out there told Russia much though and it was argued that it could only help those Russian special forces continue to evade capture and therefore strike elsewhere.

There were many, many secrets that weren’t being revealed though. The US Government was managing to keep many other things under wraps. The assortment of intelligence agencies with all of their acronyms – far too many had made it into popular culture in recent years for their liking though – were busy making sure that the war that they were fighting, just the same as those fighting men & women on the frontlines were, was something that they had the upper hand in. Where they could stamp hard on leaks, they did. The Pentagon too was throwing much attention at doing the same. Most military operations were taking place overseas and thus out of sight away from home. Embedded journalists were controlled and through the territories of members of the Coalition were the war was being fought, there were more restrictive measures employed against the media than were being done at home. Of more relevance to the Russians should they have known, of more value than the fate of a lone ship lost in battle or the hunt for Spetsnaz in California, was what was happening with the Army National Guard (ARNG). Much of the Air National Guard had gone overseas already, yet the United States was now preparing to deploy the ARNG too. Fully-federalised at the beginning of the war, elements were to remain at home in support of national security operations though a tremendous portion was beginning now to be deployed beyond America. Six full combat divisions were readying to go to Europe and another was tasked for a deployment to East Asia. None of this was something publicly available. Sure, Russia could speculate that this was likely, though they weren’t getting any leaked intelligence on that note. The logistics of this were going to mean that this wasn’t going to happen overnight when it came to their deployment, then also supplying them, but the process started today. The 29th Infantry Division would be the first to go to Europe followed by others soon enough.

Could Russia stop this? No.


While the Pentagon kept schtum on this matter, at a press conference Defence Secretary Nunn and Chairman Casey both chose today to make announcements concerning the opening of military tribunals concerning Russian war criminals in captivity. These were those other Spetsnaz in custody: the Obama assassination team. Those which had survived the successful hunting down of the then-president’s killers were to be tried for grave breaches of international law concerning the conduct of warfare. The announcement concerned the charges laid though details were absent on venue and other matters. The Biden Administration, through Nunn and Casey, were making a big show of this.

The Spetsnaz weren’t being charged for the killing of Obama. Nor were they going to be tried as war criminals for launching their attacks while not in uniform either.

There had been the wide belief that this was to be the case and it came as a surprise to many that neither of those acts were deemed by the Pentagon to be war crimes. They weren’t though. The public might have been clamouring for such a thing and some rather strong statements had been made by political figures calling for that to be done yet those acts weren’t something that such prisoners could be successfully prosecuted for. Legally, they hadn’t committed a war crime on either occasion: not to internationally-agreed statues that both the United States and Russia had long ago signed up to.

Instead, they were to be tried for other acts. The taking of hostages and using poison-tipped bullets broke both the Geneva and Hague conventions on the laws of war. Those hostages had included civilians while the poison was a still untreatable chemical substance which had also been seen elsewhere worldwide in other Spetsnaz attacks too. These were serious crimes committed by these prisoners. The question was asked of Nunn whether the United States would be seeking the death penalty for the accused. He turned that over to Casey who stated in the affirmative that that was to be the case.

Within hours of this, Moscow released a statement. There were American and other Coalition prisoners in their custody. These POWs were to be charged with war crimes related to the acts of indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, committing acts of murder against captives taken in ‘terrorist-related’ special forces operations and also the use of chemical weapons too (White Phosphorus) with the intention of killing lawful combatants. Russia would too be seeking the death penalty in their own military tribunals against those accused in their custody.

Tit for tat continued.


End of Part Six