Shanghaied - 2ACW

76 – Eyes

4th Platoon, SEAL Team Five, had been on a winter training exercise up in the Alaskan wilderness when the UDI was made in Las Vegas to declare independence for the Democratic American Republic. Their home base down near San Diego at Coronado came under the control of the newly-established DAR Armed Forces along with other SEALs who were there at the time. 4th Platoon reaffirmed their allegiance to the United States of America though. There were fears for their families and concerns over friends but they kept their loyalty. The fourteen men and two women (the first female SEAL passed training in 2019 with the first serving woman SEAL beginning in ‘22) with the detached special forces unit who had remained in US service. They were held in Alaska ready to play their part in the Second American Civil War when called upon to do so. When that moment came, to be sent off to fight their fellow Americans, those who had turned their backs on the country, 4th Platoon followed their orders. They didn’t hesitate, didn’t desert nor question them as others did. By that point so much blood had already been spilt yet there was also a high motivation and sense of loyalty among them. Their assigned task was dangerous. It was one that ordinary men and women would baulk at. Not 4th Platoon. They made ‘the jump’ as per their orders. That jump meant leaping out of the side cargo door of a KC-46A Pegasus jet at an altitude of thirty-three thousand feet. They leapt out and quickly opened their parachutes. The HAHO jump – lesser-known than a HALO operation – meant that their parachutes deployed when they were high in the pitch black skies over the Pacific North-West. Back to Alaska that tanker/transport flew while they fell to earth. Their commander, a female lieutenant, led her SEALs towards the LZ. She kept them in order behind her as gravity pulled them down as the parachutes fought against that. The LZ was reached perfectly without any complications. 4th Platoon landed on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. On the ground, parachutes were buried and the SEALs moved off. They conducted a rapid night-time march using cover already selected by satellite shots of the area. Throughout the darkness, 4th Platoon went eastwards through forests and reached US Highway-101 long before dawn. That road ran across their line of advance and was being used – sparingly though – by DAR military traffic. At a carefully chosen moment, 4th Platoon crossed it and disappeared into cover on the other side. They hid during the short hours of daylight with half of team on watch and the other half sleeping. The rest was needed for there was another march once it got dark, again carrying heavy loads. That was completed as 4th Platoon went east until they found another pre-selected point, ahead of schedule too. An OP was soon set up. From that position, the SEALs had an uninterrupted view upon where the strategic missile submarine DARNS Nebraska, the one loaded with all of those nuclear-tipped Trident SLBMs, was located. A hide was created, where members of 4th Platoon would spent most of their time as there was no need for everyone to watch the submarine, and emergency escape routes were walked. A rally point was chosen to escape to in the event of an attack and a second one was also selected by the senior enlisted SEAL, a veteran of many overseas combat missions, as well. Where possible infiltration points for an enemy were reckoned to be, there were trip-wires laid attached to flash/bang grenades. Obbo spots to guard against any incoming attack were also assumed: they’d have eyes on anyone who came their way. 4th Platoon had themselves a mini-fortress in where they were but one which, if entered by an enemy, they would abandon with haste rather than make a fight of it. Killing the enemy wasn’t their mission. Watching that submarine partially submerged near to NS Bangor was. There in Washington the SEALs stayed until ordered to leave… or take action.

A pair of New Mexico Air National Guard CV-22B Ospreys flew a cargo of Green Berets in DAR service towards Texas. Those two tilt-rotors left Libby Army Airfield, next to Fort Huachuca, and crossed airspace inside Arizona and New Mexico first before going over the international border into Mexico before they came near the El Paso/Juarez area. The illegal crossing was made at night and at low altitude. It was one undetected by the Mexicans who would have responded if they had known. The pilots of the CV-22s knew what they were doing though in staying out of sight of anyone watching either with their eyes or on radar screens. Flight time inside Mexico was short before there was another border crossing made, that time into the United States. The Rio Grande was left behind as the aircraft weaved their way across the sky with the pilots using night-vision goggles to navigate rather than any active nor passive radar system. A broken down company of DAR Army Special Forces was split between the cargo holds of each of them and were alerted that the LZ was ahead upon approach to it. Moving from airplane fashion to that of a helicopter, the CV-22s came to a hover in an isolated spot on the west-facing side of the Quitman Mountains. The Green Berets departed with haste once touchdown occurred with the loadmasters closing up the rear ramps the moment that the last man was out. Those passengers, carrying weapons and supplies, were off on a raiding mission in Far West Texas where Interstate-10 ran as the MSR for the US III Corps. They were no longer the mission for the CV-22 crews: getting home safety was theirs after that drop off. Back towards the Rio Grande and Mexico the aircraft went. Entry was made once again undetected – by the Mexicans anyway – into that foreign country as a course was then set to head back to DAR air space. The pair of CV-22s were almost there when the shout was made that they were under attack. Missiles were in the sky, ones fired from US Air Force jets back in Texas skies. Those fighters were F-16s from the Air Force Reserve flying out of Laughlin AFB, far down the course of the Rio Grande past the Big Bend. An AWACS directed their fire upon the spotted DAR aircraft. Altitude was rapidly lost and the forward flying speed went to zero as the CV-22s hovered literally feet off the ground without going forward. They were in dead ground, blow the horizon in a godforsaken nameless patch of desert. They stayed there and the AMRAAMs fired at them didn’t come near. A group of people were spotted by the aircrew from one of the aircraft before they started flying again. There were men, women and children who came towards them. A few weapons were spotted but they weren’t considered hostile. A party of refugees/immigrants, one of the co-pilots suggested to his pilot, and he was right: the border area south of the DAR & United States was full of them. Back to the new country which they served the aircrews few afterwards, escaping any more hostile attention towards them. What became of the Special Forces team and the people they saw too, they would never know.

A detachment of men and women – Battlefield Airmen the US Air Force called them; that would need a change – were inside Arizona on a combat mission. They were from the Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Special Tactics Squadron and bellied-up near to Laguna Army Airfield, an outlying part of the Yuma Proving Ground. Organised as a Flight, several of them had real combat experience from fights overseas in the Middle East ahead of the mission into the DAR which they were sent on. Laguna, just like MCAS Yuma nearby, was a base of operations for DAR air activity. The airfield had been attacked several times ahead of their arrival by cruise missiles yet they were deployed after an air drop from a MC-130H Combat Talon to guide-in further strikes from on the ground. Eyes were wanted to be on the target due to, what they told ahead of deployment, some sort of weapon being used against missile navigation systems to limit the effectiveness of them. The Battlefield Airmen had the assigned tasks of Combat Controllers and Special Reconnaissance for the Laguna mission. They had security duties and the illuminating of particular targets for US Air Force strike aircraft. Laguna was a big place. In peacetime, it wasn’t home to any aircraft nor helicopters though there were plentiful facilities to allow them to operate. DAR engineers, RED HORSE units who had defected from the US Air Force, had been busy expanding upon what was at the airfield to allow for the sustained operations of both a squadron of MQ-9A drones and a flight of F-16s to fly combat missions out of the place. The Battlefield Airmen moved through the mountains – so much exposed open ground! – from location to location. They stayed out of sight away from security personnel on the ground and the small, hand-held observation drones deployed in a low-flying fashion to aid that security. None of what they did was easy. It was necessary though. Exactly where the targeted aircraft, plus the combat engineers too, were positioned when Laguna was attacked was what the Battlefield Airmen did. Those F-16s and combat drones were targeted while on the ground and so too were those who would repair damage to the facilities when the place was attacked. Laguna was attacked on two occasions with the Battlefield Airmen pinpointing exactly where the bombs were to fall when US Air Force F-35s got through DAR air defences and successfully hit the place. They were preparing for a third incoming raid, one which was an hour out, when several of them were spotted from above. Like locusts, those small drones detected Battlefield Airmen and relayed back what was being observed to the reaction team of the security force. The particular was drone was shot down and so was a second one which moved in: one of the Battlefield Airmen was a cracking shot with his rifle. The whole detachment had to move and weren’t able to direct a third air strike. They avoided a firefight with enemy security troops and lived to fight another day but in doing so had to flee some distance away from Laguna.

An ad hoc team of Washington Army National Guard commandos detached from the 19th Special Forces Group ran counter-guerrilla tasks in northern Idaho. They spent most of their time chasing shadows. An elusive enemy was sought by them, members of the Patriotic Corps militia who had fled from Spokane back over the state line when the secessionists in that city were defeated and instead took their fight to rural Idaho. Intelligence-driven missions led the commando team in their hunt. Governor Winkelman, the Republican who had joined those Democrats as a full member of the Council of Thirteen, had re-established himself back in Boise and won over many of his state’s people. Idahoans weren’t necessarily pro-DAR but there were an increasing number who trusted that Winkelman had done the right thing in leaving the United States when he explained it as he did. That was a minority of the people though those he had brought on-side were aiding the war effort. All of the troubles which had beset Idaho throughout the Years of Lead had been blamed upon out of control armed militia, most of them from out-of-state. Winkelman had pleaded with his state’s citizens to help bring them under control and end their activities. Tip-offs came to the state military authorities who assigned the commando team who had come across from Washington to follow those leads. It seemed to those involved in the hunt for guerrillas that they were being lied to. Here and there they were send, finding nothing almost every time. On several occasions, they either walked into an ambush against them or came close to doing so. Strict orders were for them to not kill civilians unless in self-defence. There was a lot of temptation to disobey the orders when it was clear who was behind the attempts to kill them were civilians with guns who opted at the right moment to lower them and not fire: if they hadn’t, the commando team could have justifiably shot them. Eyes were on the national guardsmen at all times. There were civilians who followed them about and contacted guerrillas. One of them came too close to an ongoing operation for comfort: he was recognised from being near to a previous attempted ambush against the commando team. Detained under martial law powers, he was only secured after a fist fight where he took on three members of the commando team and was only brought down by being whacked on the back of the head with a rifle butt by a fourth. He said he was a retired US Army Ranger but one of the commando team was that himself and the suspected guerrilla’s answers on his service didn’t hold up to questioning. He’d been a soldier, just not a Ranger. The man was American yet expressed hatred towards both the DAR and the United States too. He only gave them that, rather than any real answers as to what he was up to and who he working with. One of the national guardsmen wanted to ‘question’ him using various means to elicit information. Permission was refused and he had to be handed over to representatives from the Idaho Military Department. Sometime later, the commando team was told he had escaped custody. They knew that they would be seeing him again and hoped that when they did, he’d have a gun, open fire & they could shoot him.

Alpha Teams from the 5th Special Forces Group had been inserted across the Rockies’ passes in Colorado, far from where the Main Front of the fighting was. ODA 5126 was one of them, a detachment of Green Berets with extensive experience of combat on distant shores. They witnessed the effect of the Glow-worm computer virus up close and personal without being told anything about it. Cruise missiles which were supposed to have closed access through the mountains for the DAR Army spread across central & eastern Colorado weren’t shut. The weather and all the snow made things extremely difficult for resupply efforts for those fighting the US Army’s VII & XVIII Corps but was still possible with the transportation links not blasted to ruin. When ODA 5126 was sent in, their mission to report from on the ground on what they saw and hinder enemy engineers trying to repair all the damage that the cruise missiles were meant to have done. The Alpha Team’s commander was lost in an accident during the air drop to get them in. That was bad luck. There was more of that when a DAR Army AH-72C Lakota helicopter spotted them soon after landing. It fired on them and that was returned using a Stinger missile to bring it down. There was a rush to depart from the LZ for ODA 5162 with the fear that the crew from the Lakota had gotten a warning message out after having eyes on them like they had. The passes through the mountains where US Highway-24 wound its way away from Colorado Springs weren’t blocked as they were supposed to be. The Green Berets moved to fulfil that requirement by using explosives to create rockfalls in selected places and then attack military vehicles to use them to block the route elsewhere. When the enemy – Colorado national guardsmen – showed up to investigate, they were sniped at while ODA 5126 was on the move. The bad luck went away. No one came close to them, not even when the DAR Army tried using low-flying drones with fancy tech onboard to search for them. Eventually, US Army paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division showed up. There had been helicopters air-lifted into the captured Peterson AFB and they were used alongside captured DAR ones to ferry paratroopers up into the mountains. A cautious link-up was made between the Green Berets and paratroopers with worries that it was the enemy instead of friends. That went off without a hitch though. Once relieved from where they were, ODA 5126 didn’t go home. They had secondary tasks and moved off deeper into the Rockies. The mountains were full of the enemy. Where possible, they would try not to directly fight them and instead carry on with the armed reconnaissance task set for them at other places of interest yet that didn’t mean that the Green Berets would walk away from one. They had raiding to do as well as scouting, all to draw as many of DAR forces as possible away from the Main Front as possible to allow the war to be won as they were sent to Colorado to do.

3rd Squad were Rangers from the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Their base at Fort Lewis had been taken by the DAR when that new country’s military leader personally persuaded the leadership there to either defect or walk away their positions rather than fight against fellow Americans. 3rd Squad had had its own defectors, then and also when they were sent off to fight against their countrymen. Other Rangers had stayed though. They did their duty to a country who they swore an oath to serve… forgetting the previous one to the United States. First to Utah they were sent with a mission to aid the establishment of DAR rule there. That meant being part of the unopposed takeover of Hill AFB. Utah was a crazy place where the Rangers didn’t enjoy being. The ‘people power’ there was something which they saw first-hand the meaning of. Things like that weren’t what the DAR president nor her government had spoken of nor what General Fuller had said that DAR stood for. Their sergeant, a true believer in the American Democratic Republic, had lost his faith after Utah. He kept that to himself and 3rd Squad together as a unit but his heart was no longer in it. Along with those in the small unit closest to him, a plan of action was formed: he knew that the others would go along with it in the end… because they would have no choice. The chance to act came when 3rd Squad was sent to Wyoming. They were tasked with an Obbo mission near to Cheyenne watching the interstate & railroad links which went through there: their eyes were meant to be on the significant traffic going through Cheyenne. It was meant to be reconnaissance first and then, later on when reinforced, an assault was meant to take place against the rear areas of the 10th Mountain Division’s supply lines as that US Army units moved down from Wyoming into Colorado. Using off-road vehicles, 3rd Squad crossed the new border from out of Utah into Wyoming and went towards Cheyenne. Their sergeant waited until they were deep inside ‘enemy territory’ before he told his men that he was breaking his second oath of service and upholding his first. 3rd Squad was to re-defect, to go back to US service. No one objected openly. If there had been a fight, those who quit the DAR cause were prepared to do that but there was no one who wanted to do that. The nearest US Army position was sought with it found to be manned by national guardsmen with the 38th Infantry Division instead. Care, much care, was taken to make contact without a firefight. 3rd Squad went into the custody of a military police unit and were taken to US Army Counterintelligence. They’d gone back to where they belonged and would have to deal with the consequences of what they had first done before the change of loyalty. They thought it was worth it though.

Delta Force staged for a mission in Cheyenne. 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (the Tier One Special Mission Unit’s long name) were sent to a forward staging post there in Wyoming ready to undertake a combat mission deep inside the Rockies. Delta were briefed upon that mission when at the small city’s airport, which had been serving as a forward airfield for A-10C tank-busters flying missions also down in Colorado. Personnel from the Intelligence Support Activity – ISA, the US Army’s clandestine human intelligence service full of ‘operators’ – told them that they had some of their people on the ground near to the resort of Aspen. Those guys, who had a handful of Green Berets with them for security, had eyes on the resort’s airport. They were waiting on a plane to arrive. That aircraft was meant to be, if the top secret intelligence was to be believed, carrying General Fuller himself. The DAR Armed Forces’ chief was supposed to be paying a visit to his Colorado Corps rear HQ located in Pitkin Country close to where Aspen was. Fuller would take a helicopter flight there, meet with that general trying to stop Colorado being liberated, and then go back to Aspen afterwards to re-board his plane. Delta Force was to capture him when he returned from that visit, before he could fly back out of Colorado. The ISA briefers explained that shooting down Fuller aboard his aircraft or in the helicopter, or also blowing him up at wherever that corps HQ was, wasn’t what the Pentagon wanted. He was to be captured. They were to do that in conjunction with those on the ground there. Several times, the message that he wasn’t to be killed no matter what was repeated. Anyone he was with including his security detachment and aides were fair game but not Fuller. Back in DC, they wanted him alive for intelligence and propaganda purposes. Delta were told that there would be three MH-47G Chinooks from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment with them. A trio of heavy-lift helicopters like those was more than was needed for the mission but were being sent due to the weather conditions as there was back-up needed facing the risk of conditions. If needed, some of the A-10s from Cheyenne were going to be airborne as well. Get him out alive, the comment at the end of the briefing came, without a scratch on him. Delta waited for the go order and prepared to board the helicopters. They were psyched up. The waiting went on for a long time. When it finally looked like they were about to get that desired go order, they were told to stand down. Fuller had changed his travel plans. The mission was off. Delta didn’t go into action that night and had gone all the way to Cheyenne for nothing. They weren’t told why as the ISA kept that to themselves.

Marine Raiders had served in World War Two and were re-established in 2006 for the War on Terror. First known as the Marine Special Operations Regiment, the designation had been later changed to the Marine Raider Regiment. The marines were commando-trained and undertook worldwide missions. Both the 1st & 3rd Battalions from the regiment had gone over to the DAR when that new country’s armed forces were formed. They were California-based and it hadn’t been an easy process, not by a long shot. The commander of the 3rd Battalion lost his life in the transfer of service. There were many desertions and a full-blown mutiny in response. The DAR Marine Corps needed the Marine Raiders to see action though and so sent them off to fight even without many loyalty issues resolved. 1st Battalion went to New Mexico to support the 1st Marine Division. It was employed in various roles when broken down into fourteen-marine detachments known as Marine Special Operations Teams. Those MSOTs were all over the battlefield which New Mexico became when their fellow marines, those serving with the 2nd Marine Division from out of the East Coast, entered that state to liberate the West. Marine Raiders in US Marine Corps service were present, those from the 2nd Battalion. The task for those serving with the 1st Battalion wasn’t to engage in frontline fights but rather serve in the rear both sides of where the moving frontline was. At first, they fought against enemy insertion of commandos into the DAR rear and struck behind the lines over near Texas too when US forces crossed the new border. One of the MSOT detachments fought with US Green Berets ahead of an assault against Kirtland AFB and another detachment pursued others fleeing from a raid on DAR military convoys going up and down Interstate-25. Those MSOTs sent east attacked an artillery battery supporting the 2nd Marine Division and also a forward airhead for helicopters established inside New Mexico for national guardsmen with the 28th Infantry Division. The MSOTs were mobile. They were used all over the place, sent from mission to mission. It was a fire brigade role for them and they engaged in infantry fights as well as the front-lines moved deeper into New Mexico. Their special skills were increasingly put to use there rather than in the direct action special forces role than what they were trained for. It was a waste of capability in that regard yet the 1st Marine Division and the New Mexico Corps needed them for what they ended up doing. The weight of numbers was on the side of US forces and there was urgency at the front-lines of that fight more than what could be justified for sending the MSOTs into the rear areas either side. Those behind the Twentieth Century reformation of the Marine Raiders would have been left aghast at first the defection of so many of them to an illegal country established on United States soil and then how the 1st Battalion was used as it was in the end. But, as marines did when serving the governments in DC and Las Vegas, those MSOTs fought well again and again. There was a lot of talk before seeing action about not wanting to fight brothers-in-arms, when it came to looking fellow Americans in the eyes on the battlefield, yet they did what they were ordered to do and fought.

78 – Panic

The DAR Air Force gave the mission of raiding military targets in the Dallas–Fort Worth area to the 56th Fighter Wing, a training unit fulfilling a wartime combat role, who passed that down to the 308th Fighter Squadron with its F-35A Lightnings. That squadron had been detached from its parent wing at Luke AFB and had moved down to Davis-Monthan AFB also in Arizona ahead of the fighting starting. It was likewise a peacetime training unit yet the aircraft in service were used by pilots from overseas NATO allies as part of a joint training effort. The Belgians, Danes, Dutch and Norwegians had been sent home while their aircraft – which did legally belong to them – had a repaint over their markings. A solid blue roundel with a horizontal white stripe through the middle adorned the tail with the letters ‘DARAF’ printed below in red. Hi-Fi Flight, six of the F-35s, were given the task of the first raid, one which took place in daylight. They took off from Davis-Monthan – going up above AMARG where aircraft of military value were still being removed from to be put into service – carrying a heavy war-load but little fuel. A tanker met them in the skies of southern Arizona where the thirsty strike-fighters guzzled fuel. They then raced westwards, heading low into New Mexico where the fight to retain the independence of the Democratic American Republic raged on the ground but also in the skies. Hi-Fi Flight stayed away from the ongoing air engagements and out of the coverage of ground-based air defences supporting the US Army’s III Corps who were pushing to cross the Rio Grande: attacking them was someone else’s fight. Texan skies were soon entered when Hi-Fi Flight was diverted away from US Air Force fighters looking for intruders. The spareness of much of Far West Texas was overflown first before the F-35s went low above West Texas. They flashed over Interstate-20 with several of the pilots disappointed to see much military traffic on that freeway. Again, that fight was for someone else. Avoiding populated areas and known military sites on the way to the targets for their raid was done by Hi-Fi Flight. Check-points were met with turns made as the selected route was followed. The F-35s then approached the two cities, and the suburban ‘infill’ between them, from the south. Two pilots took their aircraft into a climb with their mission being immediate fighter support while the other four aircraft within Hi-Fi Flight broke into two pairs while remaining low. Of the six pilots, four of them were women. There were full-time US Air Force pilots among them who had defected to the DAR Air Force as well as reservists who had answered the call to serve the west rather than the United States. One of the female pilots was a reservist who had flown airliners until a few weeks beforehand and like one of the men who’d defected too, she was an Easterner who believed in the real democracy which the DAR promised to bring: she wasn’t fighting for her home state but an idea. Bombing their fellow brothers- & sisters-in-arms below them had never been part of that promise when the DAR had been formed yet they had signed up to fight to defend what had been formed and regarded the mission which took them so far into Texas, like the others which they had flown, to be unpleasant yet necessary.

NAS Fort Worth was struck first. Two of the F-35s swooped in from seemingly out of nowhere to those on the ground below them. Bombs fell from underneath the two aircraft, dropped with near-perfect accuracy. A big target, destroying NAS Fort Worth in one pass was impossible even for the impressive war-load that the Hi-Fi Flight aircraft carried. The focus was hitting what was important there and doing enough damage to justify the mission. That was the runway, the flight ramp and the adjacent Air Force Plant 4. Holes were ripped deep into the tarmac while on the flight ramp there was death & destruction caused around military transport aircraft parked there unloading supplies & people. As to that third target located at NAS Fort Worth, Lockheed Martin built F-35s (including the ones flown by Hi-Fi Flight) there in that US Government-owned building. Bombs smashed into it bringing quite the violent sudden halt to production. The other two F-35s on the strike part of the raid attacked the Grand Prairie Reserve Base at nearby Hensley Field. That was closer to Dallas and like the first target, sat on the edge of a lake in the middle of an extensive urban area. Bombs were dropped upon the runway and the flight ramp. It too was full of military transport aircraft supporting the war effort raging up in New Mexico with Grand Prairie being a rear-area airhead for supplies flowing in from across the country before they were moved closer to the front-lines. There had been combat aircraft based at Grand Prairie as there had been at NAS Fort Worth when the fighting had started though those had moved closer to the action a day before the air raid. The targets found at each site were still legitimate military ones though, even that aircraft manufacturing plant. Half a dozen C-17s and C-130s were knocked out of the war at Grand Prairie: the wreckage of those once fine aircraft, plus the holes ripped in the runways, would take some time to clear away and allow for flight operations to once more continue.

No fighters challenged the two F-35s which had gone high. Once all the bombs had fallen from those on the attack, that pair dropped down low as Hi-Fi Flight departed the Dallas–Fort Worth area at speed. They went north first before making a turn to the west. Behind them they left chaos on the ground yet no one chased them. Across North Texas went Hi-Fi Flight on the way to New Mexico. They once more avoided enemy forces on the ground – US II Marine Expeditionary Force elements – and also the US Air Force which had fighters up looking for them. The Rio Grande was sighted by the flight leader and the approach of the F-35s drew fire when they were to the south of Albuquerque. That was friendly fire: DAR Marines fired on them with damage done to one of the aircraft. It wasn’t thought to be fatal for aircraft nor polit but was not something welcome at all. Those below had seen aircraft coming from the east and ignored the fact that they were in a safe travel lane! The same tanker from which Hi-Fi Flight had refuelled form on the way out met them on the way home, though on that second occasion in New Mexico skies. After that top-up of their tanks, Hi-Fi Flight flew all the last leg of their journey back to Davis-Monthan. Close to there, when the landing gear was retracted on that battle-damaged F-35, the scale of that became apparent. The gear wouldn’t fully go down. The pilot, that female airline pilot who came from Tennessee yet fought as a reservist for the DAR air Force, made the error of believing she would make a safe landing. She died in the attempt when crashing just off the runway. Before they reached home, Moonie Flight went out of that Arizona airbase when the 308th Squadron sent some more requisitioned foreign aircraft back once again to the same general area as where Hi-Fi Flight had gone. Hitting different targets than had already been struck at was the mission for Moonie Flight and those pilots knew that the US Air Force would be better prepared a second time around. Still, eastwards off to a fight they flew. As to what happened in Dallas–Fort Worth when it was attacked from their air, even in such a targeted fashion against military sites, the panic anticipated by the DAR military higher-ups was correct. El Paso had previously seen civil unrest in the aftermath of air and missile activity there – that Texan city was right up against the DAR border – and doing the same thing once again elsewhere in Texas was desired. Hitting military targets was the priority and what the pilots were told when they were sent out but to have that be followed with panic that would tax the civilian authorities, leading to them calling up military assistance, was left unsaid yet well understood too. So many people in Dallas–Fort Worth had seen the jets in the clear daytime skies above them. They had watched those F-35s strike with impunity and get away Scot-free too. That could only be a good thing for the DAR cause those senior people who wore the new uniforms issued for their new air force believed.


It was night-time when the US Air Force put several squadrons of air power into the south of Arizona, behind the front-lines in a deep strike of their own. The 48th Fighter Wing – also known as the Statue of Liberty Wing in a uniquely authorised dual name – had a home-base in the UK yet had been deployed to Poland before the urgent recall home to fight fellow Americans. Fielding four combat squadrons, two with ageing yet potent F-15E Strike Eagles and two more with F-35s, the 48th Fighter Wing had moved to Sheppard AFB in Texas, close to Oklahoma. Training units from there had moved out and civilian air traffic which shared the four runways for flights to Wichita Falls Airport were absent. The Tenth Air Force (a reserve headquarters) was the higher command for US air units spread across Oklahoma and Texas engaging the DAR: they issued the orders for the multi-squadron deep strike into Arizona. The targets were many and spread from the New Mexico state line almost as far west as California. There was fighter support and also assistance from electronic warfare units on-hand as well. CSAR was available for rescuing downed pilots who made it most of the way back as well.

Davis-Monthan AFB was among one of the many DAR air facilities struck. F-15Es hit there, dropping bombs atop of aircraft parked within hastily-constructed concrete revetments. The runway and facilities were hit too. Laguna Army Airfield, Libby Army Airfield, Luke AFB, Tucson ANGB and MCAS Yuma were bombed as the 48th Fighter Wing went after the sites from where the DAR Air Force was flying its jets across Arizona. There was pre-mission targetting from satellite images as well as computer stored layouts of each: they were US Armed Force properties ahead of the DAR being formed and nothing there was unknown apart from recent defences. In addition, there were spotters on the ground too. Reports from aircrews afterwards spoke of great success. They’d dropped their bombs exactly where they were supposed to and claimed that they had laid waste to a good chunk of the enemy air force caught on the ground there. Hitting those half dozen air facilities was the task of the F-15Es: the F-35s went after a different target set. Bombs from those aircraft were joined by short-range missiles launched against smaller military targets in the form of fuel units supporting the ground war raging in New Mexico. Aviation & vehicle fuel was in great need for those engaged in combating United States forces aiming to liberate the West. Much of that was moved by fuel tankers travelling by road either long-haul or by making shorter trips from transfer point to transfer point. The latter moved about with the DAR Armed Forces keeping them under concealment. Where they were suspected to be within Arizona, the 48th Fighter Wing went after them. In addition, there were also sections of pipelines being laid. It was faster and more efficient to move fuel that way. There was no one giant pipeline running above ground throughout Arizona to make for an easy target, but all sorts of connecting sections linked by tankers. The terminals and waypoints were where the F-35s went after rather than sections of the pipelines unless those went over natural obstacles such as rivers and gorges. Doing all that at night made it more difficult than if the air strikes had been made in daylight. The targets had to be found and confirmed for what they were. The darkness offered concealment though and that was much needed because the 48th Fighter Wing faced strong opposition in its opening mass attack.

Going towards the targets, engaging them and on the return home, the 48th Fighter Wing lost five aircraft. They were ‘lucky’ to suffer such ‘minor’ casualties due to the opposition. It could have been far worse. A further pair of aircraft which weren’t lost to enemy action didn’t make it back to Sheppard and instead diverted to nearer friendly bases. They would be out of action for some time, adding to the overall negative score to see seven aircraft in total which did not get back to that airbase within sight of the Red River on the mission return. Two of the F-15Es on the way to hit Tucson ANGB – close to Davis-Monthan and sharing the runway with the civilian airport – were blasted out of the sky by distant AMRAAM missile hits fired from unseen DAR F-16s. One targeted 48th Fighter Wing aircraft exploded in mid-air while the other crashed into the side of Mica Mountain outside of Tucson. Two of the aircrew aboard the first F-15E died in that airborne explosion while the other pair in the second aircraft ejected to be later captured by DAR forces. Striking at a hidden fuel site near to Casa Grande, where Interstate-8 & I-10 combined and fuel trucks ran aplenty, a SM-6 ground-launched missile fired from a long way off hit that aircraft undertaking that task: his wingman saw a ‘chute but the pilot was never found despite the Casa Grande region not being in the middle of any sort of real wilderness. On the way home, going through enemy-held territory in New Mexico, two more F-35s were hit by AMRAAMs. F-22A Raptors launched them with the unseen killers claiming two kills. One pilot skilfully made sure his doomed aircraft didn’t crash into the El Paso urban area (nor Juarez across the river in Mexico either) before bailing out and ending up among US Army troops there. The other tried to land his shot-up F-35 at Biggs Army Airfield yet failed: he died in a fiery wreckage in the desert a little way off and within yards of the New Mexico state line / DAR border. When in Poland, the 48th Fighter Wing had been held ready to conduct deep, semi-strategic air strikes against Russia should it attack NATO in the Baltics. Losses had been expected in that endeavour which they weren’t called upon to undertake. Those happened when at home though, the first time that (as a whole) the 48th Fighter Wing had ever been in the United States after being formed overseas in the 1950s. It was a costly first mission. Success had been had though and there were afterwards more bomb runs to undertake for the formation.

80 – Who will speak for the West?

Who will speak for the West?

The ‘West’ being the people residing in the Democratic American Republic that was. Various politicians and public figures sought to be the person to answer that question where they would be the one to speak on behalf of those out West, and the only one to do so too with all other voices silenced. They appointed themselves as those who had the interests of the people out there within that illegally-formed country best at heart. In Washington DC, they made a lot of noise and fought it out to be that one voice.

Among the frontrunners for that much-coveted position were Tommy Dunbar, Samantha Leach & Mary Beth Sheldon. The first was the Arizona senator who hadn’t done what others from the states out West had and not boycotted Congress nor joined the government of the DAR. The two women were the US Secretary of State under President Walsh (she had been one of the two key people who tried to get rid of him in his last days in office) who was also Arizona-born, and the other was a California congresswoman. They were all Democrats who spent much time calling their fellow Western politicians ‘Jacobeans’ – rather than Democrats – as well as the term ‘traitors’ which the Republicans were using extensively. From the three of them there came continuous defence of the people out West and reminders to anyone who would listen that none of the people in those states which had left the union which was the United States had voted for that secession. In addition, there was no democracy practised in the Democratic American Republic: they each added that to their many public comments. Dunbar, Leach & Sheldon again and again sought to stop the demonisation which they believed they heard of all Westerners by repeating these cold hard facts. There was a lot of that demonisation going on for the trio, all trying to make as much noise as individually possible rather than fully co-operating, to openly oppose. The West fought back against the attempt to liberate those states and that brought about significant bad feeling. The former Governor of California, the registered Independent Julio Marti-Rivera, tried to coordinate a united front of Western politicians who had remained loyal to the United States and sought to do all that could be done to speak up for the people out there. Marti-Rivera didn’t have the success which he wanted though. That trio were all too egotistic and they also didn’t like the idea of uniting too with Republican voices speaking for the people of the West which he had brought onboard in his fledgling coalition.

Terrence Darby and Vic Groves were two high-profile Republicans from the West who made their presence felt. The former was a Washington state congressman and the latter served as the Governor of Utah. Darby had been in DC when his state’s democracy was assailed with the armed removal of the sitting governor and then the secession. From Utah, flying out of Hill AFB where he had first ran to, Groves had fled in fear of his life. The two of them had constituents back home who they reminded everyone of had been forced against their will into that new country, and then put on the front-lines of a war. A good media performer, Darby worked with Marti-Rivera’s coalition. Groves was brash and not a team player. He blamed ‘out-of-state anarchists’ for all of Utah’s woes… ignoring the fact that it was Utahans themselves, albeit a minority, who took control of his state to hand it over to DAR control. He had all sorts of names for those involved with DAR and ‘interesting’ ideas as to how to punish them. Most of those invoked execution. The much noise that the two of them made was along similar lines to those trio of high-profile Democrats where they demanded that all Westerners not be blamed for the actions of a few. They also fought back against the demonisation of the people back where they had come from. The politicians, officials and senior military people involved in the DAR on the other side of the civil war which had torn the United States in two were those who deserved all the blame and punishment, the two of them told the media at every opportunity, and not the vast majority of law-abiding, true Americans in their home states who had had no choice in what had happened.

Someone else who made their presence felt in DC when claiming to speak on behalf of the West was Nicholas Toomey. His approach, his position on the DAR, was different from the others. He’d served in the White House as Deputy Chief-of-Staff to the 46th President before going back to his native Nevada first before travelling abroad. Overseas when the DAR was formed, Toomey expressed support for that new country and the democracy promised within when he returned to the United States. He didn’t go out to Las Vegas nor anywhere else in the West though. Instead, Toomey defended the DAR when in DC. He stayed just inside the law when he did so, coming extremely close yet never stepping over the line. His defence was of the democracy in the new constitution and how that served the people of the West. Toomey called repeatedly for an end to the civil war so that the democracy could flourish… and people would stop dying as well. Such public behaviour brought about threats to his life and also attempts to catch him out and get him to say something too much when he made all of his public appearances. It had been in Germany where he had been when Maria Arreola Rodriguez declared unilateral independence and his sister had stayed there when her brother had flown back to the United States. Jessica Toomey was a Chicago native and had served under the 47th President as her Ambassador to the EU. Brother and sister had stayed in Europe afterwards through the Walsh presidency when the 48th President had no need for Jessica’s services. Speaking in Berlin, Brussels, Rome and then Vienna, the multi-lingual Jessica put the case repeatedly for the DAR to European audiences. She went much further than her brother did, stepping right over the line into what was clear treason. Her assertion was that she was a citizen of the DAR though, no longer one of the United States. Jessica told Europeans again and again of all of the wonders of democracy in the DAR and how the people there were having a war waged against them when they had just wanted to express their freedom to leave the illiberal, failed nation which was the United States. She asked for support from Europeans for her new country and questioned how they could deny that when they claimed to stand for democracy too.


Outside of the DAR, Americans in the rest of the divided country were witnesses to extensive media coverage of the war being waged. There were videos, photographs and testimonies of the fighting going on where it effected the people of the West. Millions upon millions were aghast at their fellow Americans being killed and wanted that to stop. However, that didn’t translate into any real anti-war movement that gained any traction early on in the Second American Civil War. The cause was seen as right, even if terrible, by Americans outside of the DAR due to all that the DAR did before the shooting started. Then, as the war ‘came home’ to the rest of the divided country, the efforts by determined activists to try and create a significant movement in opposition to the conflict fell flat. The DAR lashed out like it did, fighting back against the war being waged against them. There were air attacks, missile strikes and commando raids made outside of the West. Following the US Air Force strike on Las Vegas, the carefully-targeted one to demolish the DAR Parliament, there was a return firing made of ARRWs back. The DAR Air Force had far fewer of those hypersonic guide missiles with speeds to make the eyes water yet used some of their limited stockpile to hit a trio of military targets far from the West. Fort Knox in Kentucky, Robins AFB in Georgia and Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio might not have been high on the ordinary person’s imaginary target list for a strategic missile attack. They were vital targets for the DAR war effort though because of the extensive use being made of them by the US Armed Forces to keep the war going away from just soldiers, tanks & aircraft at the front-lines. They were each deep inside the eastern portion of the United States. Minister for Defence & Security Eleanor Rawlings announced those missile attacks in public just like she told the world of how the DAR Air Force had bombed US Air Force bomber bases in response to the first attacks against her country. She also threatened to strike Washington itself – no precise targets given – if Las Vegas was struck at again. As was the case with the president to whom Rawlings served under, who the majority of Americans had voted for in the November 2028 election, she became one of the key faces of the West in the minds of the American public. Rawlings was attacking the United States and represented that DAR for those outside of it when they thought of the people within. Empathy, compassion and understanding for their fellow Americans went out of the window the military attacks made and the boastfulness of it all.

While war raged in the West, there were domestic terrorist incidents within the United States as had been witnessed throughout the Years of Lead. The secession in the West hadn’t been something to bring them to an end: Western independence wasn’t a long-term thing nor a cause of the many social ills. The bombing of an abortion clinic in Massachusetts nor the shooting of an obnoxious ‘comedian’ in Minnesota were related to the immense partisan divide in the country where political violence was rampant. Incidents like those were tied to the civil war though with blame from dishonest sections of the media claiming that the unseen hand of the DAR had something to do with them. When an accidental explosion occurred at an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, there was reporting that that too was was work of those who had forcefully broken away from the rest of the country. A huge fire raged in the aftermath of the blast which claimed almost a dozen lives from one of the many drilling operations providing fuel for the US war effort against the DAR. It was said that the DAR had done that when it was clear that it certainly wasn’t anything of the sort. The people of the West were blamed for that like so much else that they had nothing to do with. Violence was seen in DC. The whole city was supposed to be a fortress yet there were a pair of especially high-profile attacks made there in Washington a week into the term of President Roberts. Fort McNair was bombed with that facility being the headquarters of the Military District of Washington and an administrative post rather than a garrison. No responsibility was claimed for the blast there within the confines of the District of Columbia which killed seven service-personnel. Hours after that attack, Senator Dunbar was gunned down in the street. He’d made a speech in the US Senate and had afterwards travelled to CNN’s DC Bureau Office a few blocks away to do an interview to talk about his worries about people back in his native Arizona. When he exited a vehicle along with bodyguards provided by the Secret Service – there had been threats against him for being a Westerner, even one so strongly opposed to the DAR –, two gunmen armed with M-16 assault rifles murdered him, three agents and also an innocent bystander when firing rapidly in broad daylight. They fled the scene and successfully escaped a city which had been in military lockdown for most of the month. His murder was blamed on the DAR in the public imagination yet that was false. It was to do with the American Insurgent Army and Dunbar’s Senate role in investigating them and who was behind them. That news was ‘less sexy’ for much of the media as opposed to wild, inaccurate claims that there was DAR involvement.

Jennifer Webb returned to Colorado the day that the first US Army troops entered the state of which she was the lieutenant-governor. She’d fled for her life – chased out by gunshots – ahead of secession led by Governor Rowan. Webb’s return wasn’t to the state capital Denver at first (nor Colorado Springs where the 82nd Airborne Division was either) because that large city was still in ‘enemy’ hands. She went to the small city of Holyoke… a town really despite its official status as a city. National guardsmen from Virginia serving with the 29th Infantry Division had taken it, plus its little airport, for the United States and thus liberated Holyoke and the Coloradoans who lived there. A speech was made in Holyoke by Webb where she declared herself to be Colorado’s legitimate governor rather than Rowan. She looked forward to the liberation of the rest of the state including Denver from what she declared to be an occupation by traitors to not just the United States but the people of Colorado too. In something not cleared with the Roberts Administration, the Pentagon nor anyone else back in DC, Webb followed up those remarks by declaring that Colorado wouldn’t be under any sort of martial law once liberated. There would be legal civilian rule in her state, Webb told the few Coloradoans who turned out as well as the rest of the nation through the media coverage which she got with her statement. Her argument was that democracy had to be returned to Colorado and that meant civilian rule, not by the military. There would be re-run of what had happened in the Deep South in the aftermath of liberation from the rule of the Confederacy during the First American Civil War. Webb came out and said what a lot of people had been thinking but had not gone public with in such a manner as she had. She did so knowing that no one in DC had at that point taken the decision as to how to treat liberated areas of the West and the people there once US military forces moved in. It was something that aggravated many yet she was targeting her audience in Colorado rather than elsewhere. More than just her personal quest for power, which she believed was rightfully hers, to Webb it was only right that the people of the West were treated just like all other Americans and had civilian democracy returned to them. She didn’t want to see martial law or anything like that. Of course, her being on the ground there in Colorado gave her more legitimacy as someone to speak for the West too over those who remained back in Washington. Her speech in Holyoke propelled Webb to the forefront of the race to be the lone voice speaking for the people who lived out in the DAR.

Back in Colorado next with the ground war and the Liberation of Denver.

I have an update for that pencilled in for either update 83 or 84: late this weekend.
On paper, it is that. Yet, the truth is different. What isn't happening is blamed on wartime conditions and DC aggression.

I decided to generate the roundel of the DARAF. Link on my DeviantArt: www.deviantart.com/godemperorgillan/art/DARAF-roundel-875114162