Shanghaied - 2ACW

So now they're killing political opponents. When the DAR leadership finds out and starts responding in kind...where would it stop?

Not that this sort of thing hasn't been done before, but against fellow Americans, even in a civil war; has Pandora's Box been unleashed and no one knows it?

107 – Returns

Ahead of the civil war starting, and then in its early stages, military personnel across America had not just sought to sabotage military aircraft but also flown many of them out of the country when they deserted their posts. Most of those flights were made by lone pilots or two aircrew yet there had been several instances of many personnel aboard. The Democratic American Republic and United States of America had lost dozens of aircraft that way. Neighbouring countries were neutral in the fight and they had a legal obligation to intern such military equipment until the conflict was resolved. President Roberts had been willing to see that happen but President Mitchell was in no mood to copy that approach. He piled the pressure on for a return of as many of them as possible. Aircrew were a different matter because for them to be handed back over would be too much for other countries to be able to do when faced with domestic legal complications, but Mitchell wanted the aircraft back. He had the State Department work to see the return of US military equipment – the DAR ones too because there was no recognition in DC of that regime – back home. Canada was the first to agree. Mitchell put America’s northern neighbour under immense pressure over that leading to the prime minister worrying about her own position in the long-run. Ottawa caved in though and agreed to see combat and non-combat aircraft returned to the United States. Those that had been flown into Canada with weapons attached were stripped of those munitions but back to the United States went all sorts of aircraft after American pilots arrived to fly them across the border. In Bermuda, a trio of US Navy aircraft were there after aircrews flew them to that island out in the Atlantic with the wish for them not to be used against fellow Americans. Mitchell himself worked on the British PM to see them returned and London acceded to that. Bermuda was an overseas territory of the UK with many self-governing powers making it near autonomous but not when it came to defence affairs. There were military aircraft in The Bahamas which SecState Renzi arranged for the return of too: among them was an F-22, flown by a pilot from Florida to Grand Bahama Airport. Back the F-22 went along with others.

There were countries which refused to do such a thing though. Another F-22, that one having been in Poland at the time, had ended up in Sweden. Sweden wouldn’t agree to send it – plus an A-10 which had come from a US Air Force detachment in Lithuania as well – back no matter what Renzi said. Austria had an F-35 on its soil and its foreign minister defied Renzi as well while following the example set by Sweden of quoting international law. It was made clear from Stockholm and Vienna that the moment the conflict was over, those jets would go back to the United States, and there too would be the continuing policy of not recognising the illegal Las Vegas regime, but they wouldn’t do what was demanded of them in making an immediate return. On the ground at Santiago de Cuba airbase in the south of Cuba was an F-15 which had been flown by a Florida Air National Guard pilot towards Guantanamo Bay when under the mistaken belief that the garrison there had ‘gone over’ to the DAR. Throughout January 2029, there had been rumours like that about all sorts of military bases and even on one mad occasion a widely-accepted foolish notion that the entire state of New York had seceded to join the DAR too! No such thing had happened and the pilot had realised the mistake at the last minute. He’d flown unarmed and had decided to try to make it to Haiti instead but Cuban Sukhoi-35s had forced him to land in their territory or otherwise be shot down. Cuba wasn’t returning the F-15 during or after the end of the fighting in America. Mexico had a good number of military aircraft, plus helicopters too, which had flown into the country: especially ones with DAR markings. A-10s, F-15s, F-16s, FA-18s and F-35s were in Mexico with several of them having made hard-landings. Mexican military forces had taken control of them while treating the aircrews as ‘guests’… but who were interned like their aircraft were as per international law. As Las Vegas had done, when DC requested the return of those jets – both sides asking for all of them no matter what the identifying markings – there came a refusal from Mexico City to play ball on that matter no matter what was promised or threatened.

Even if Mitchell had gotten his way and got a return of every single military aircraft which had been flown to foreign territory, it wouldn’t have been a decisive factor in the conflict with the secessionists in the West. Having them would help the air war of course. Yet the point was about politics. Strong-arming Canada’s prime minister was something that Roberts hadn’t done due to the deceased 49th President’s belief that that was counter-productive in the long-run when Canada was co-operating in so many other ways with the effort to liberate a good portion of the country from what was regarded as a criminal regime. Still, Mitchell did it. Renzi had asked him why that was the case before he put the State Department to work. All he had told her was that it was ‘necessary’. That was it. Mitchell was showing strength and a change of attitude in what he expected foreign countries to do to support the efforts of the restoration of federal control over his country. The regime in Cuba was never anticipated to do as instructed and the Mexicans wouldn’t either but Mitchell demanded, successfully, that allies came on-side. His view was that for decades the United States had defended its allies and in return, at America’s time of need, it was calling in the favours long ago given out. The British PM had accepted the reasoning of the 50th President and made sure that the Bermudian authorities fully cooperated. Up in Canada though, once it became public knowledge, the opposition and the media brought the prime minister and her government under fire. There was no support for the DAR in any of that nor any wish to see a weakened United States. Instead, the claim was made that Canada should be following international law. Moreover, there was an opportunity to strike blows against the prime minister from those who wished to see her government toppled. The outcry in Canada was something that Renzi made Mitchell aware of in the aftermath but he told his Secretary of State that he believed the government in Ottawa could weather the storm. He also once more told her that seeing those aircraft returned was necessary. Renzi had no sway with Mitchell, something she came to fully understand with regards to the issue over the return of military aircraft previously impounded in Canada. She was left thinking that her time at the State Department would last beyond the end of the civil war.


In the second week of February, ships arriving from Europe laden with military equipment and stores arrived in ports along the Eastern Seaboard and down along the Gulf Coast too. The airlift was by that point coming to an end. Troops rather than cargo were being flown across the North Atlantic and that was far easier. What came by sea was what couldn’t be sent by air (a few exceptions aside) due to its bulk and weight. The ships involved had been loaded in a manner to speed the build-up of reinforcing US forces taking the war to the DAR with everything arranged on the American end of their voyages to make it all work. Every item sent was loaded into a computer system so that it was expected where it arrived and could be sent onwards from there to where it was needed. That included M-1A3 tanks & M-2A4 infantry fighting vehicles, M-9 combat earthmovers & M-1150 armoured engineering vehicles, and pallets of ammunition & disposal stores. Warehouses across Europe had been emptied of what remained in them after the deployment of US forces into Eastern Europe with the latter having been returned home too. There were trucks on the ships, plenty of them, along with trailers. Towed artillery pieces came by sea back home. So too did bulky communications gear and bridging equipment. Shells, bullets and missiles were on pallets and there were also tents, shovels & chemical warfare suits. Heavy machine guns, man-portable rocket launchers and anti-armour mines were stacked high as well. The US Army wasn’t the only uniformed service which had military equipment and stores in Europe. The US Air Force had flown home its combat aircraft and some equipment but they shipped home a lot more equipment as well as stores. In addition, the US Marines emptied their warehouses across the continent and even the caverns in Norway of all that was in them to be sent via those ships making the North Atlantic run.

On February 10th, a convoy of ships involved in the ‘REFORGER in reverse’ (as named by SecDef Ferdinand) arrived at the Port of Houston in Texas. There were five ships laden with weapons and stores to be used in the fight to finish off the Democratic American Republic. Two of those ships had come from ports in the north of Italy and the other three had been loaded in Rotterdam. They had linked up before entering the Florida Straits and gone through there to Texas while escorted by a US Navy warship. Cuba wasn’t really a concern which required the escort – though not ignored – when instead the issue was that of a DAR air or missile strike during the final stages of their voyages. The Gulf of Mexico was a long way from DAR-controlled territory yet certainly not out of their reach: they had struck the East Coast several days beforehand and also hit targets in East Texas and Louisiana. USS Ted Stevens was that escort, one of the shiny new Arleigh Burke-class Flight III missile-destroyers fitted with the very best air defence system available. Before entering Galveston Bay, the unarmed cargo ships left behind the Ted Stevens. The warship remained close by though. The two Fast Sealift Ships (huge ships) went to the Baypoint & Barbours Cut Terminals while the other three vessels were taken by local pilots into additional terminals. Houston was a major seaport and everything was ready for the arrival of those ships to send their cargoes onwards with speed yet to the correct location. USS Pollux, one of the Fast Sealift Ships, and having provided more than fifty years of service, was just being positioned at the quayside at Barbours Cut when the call came of a missile attack.

The US Air Force had an E-3G Sentry on AWACS duty flying over South Texas with the mission of watching for DAR air and missile strikes coming in from the west making use of Mexican airspace. Mexico had been unable to stop previous strikes – and also US incursions going the other way too which DC denied when complaints were made – and military facilities in Texas had been hit hard before there was a dedicated early warning platform in-place to give timely warning. Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from either Arizona or New Mexico were detected going over the Rio Grande in the area around Eagle Pass and entering the skies over Texas. There were many places to which they could have gone with no guarantee that the Port of Houston was at the top of the DAR’s targeting list. Nonetheless, after recent bitter experience of not doing so, the warning went out far and wide. The AWACS directed air defences towards those missiles spotted, and was on the look out for more, while the Ted Stevens moved in closer than it had been. The SPY-6 radar was powered up. That system was far more powerful than previous AEGIS systems on US Navy warships. The electromagnetic radiation was quite something. Across Houston, civilian cell phone and wireless internet services were cut out as an indirect result. The US Navy would never do such a thing so close to a major population centre in peacetime and, in addition, the DAR Navy had been reluctant to do that in wartime near to Honolulu costing them much. However, the defence of those ships and the port facilities trumped the disruption to civilian communications and the inevitable political backlash from that.

Tomahawks heading for other targets in Texas, towards Fort Sam Houston and Kelly Annex inside San Antonio, were left to the US Air Force while the Ted Stevens took on those racing for Houston’s seaport. Nineteen were identified as inbound. The US Navy warship could handle them almost with ease. It’s air defence system was designed to defeat a hypersonic missile attack of more than a hundred missiles using AI to take evasive action. Less than twenty subsonic Tomahawks manoeuvring about on a pre-planned flight path, not one driven by the desire to escape being shot down, were dead meat. From out of the vertical launch missile tubes on the destroyer’s foredeck, SM-6 missiles went up. They raced across the evening sky and were guided into the Tomahawks long before they reached Houston itself. Missile-on-missile kills were made north and west of the city with plenty of time to spare. When the distant AWACS confirmed no more Tomahawks were inbound, the massive radar was powered down. The Ted Stevens had achieved nineteen kills and remained on-station to undertake any more. Meanwhile, the Pollux, her sister-ship USNS Antares and the three other smaller cargo-laden vessels began unloading what they had returned home from Europe. There was a lot to do. Texan politicians, including Governor Garner, would have much to say about what happened with the effects upon communications in Houston, but at least they didn’t have their port facilities at the state’s largest ship facility blow to bits. That was something that they should have been pleased with because it wasn’t just military cargo which went through the Port of Houston. Still… they had a moan.

"Gotcha."

One less psycho on the streets, one less headache for the feds to worry about...unless Reed somehow escapes...?

Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of psychos to go around for both sides...

He isn't going nowhere apart from an even darker, deeper black hole.
A pyscho, yes, but a motivated one with massive connections



Ah, his motivation would be nothing like that. He and the AIA are only interested in killing 'big government', whether that be in DC or Vegas.


The American Insurgent Army is a death cult and Reed would willingly take a bullet first before 'selling out'. Reed did the most-recent high-profile attacks against the then DHS Secretary, the killing inside Congress and trying to get the then president but before that, other AIA attacks were just as horrendous. They killed 100 people plus the Dems VP candidate in the Omaha Bombing and slaughtered FBI agents investigating them when raiding at a field office before (the killers there) blew themselves up. They've gone after family members of politicians and government officials too.

None of their previous success, prior of Reed losing his gun partner at Camp David and him getting caught in Virginia, has been through luck though. Military and Intelligence people have secretly supported them. That is who the Gov now wants to know about: who gave them all the info and opened the doors - literally in the attack on Congress - to achieve all that they did. The names of Reed's comrades and controllers will be what the investigators want. To get it out of him, they will have to torture him.

110 – Blow for blow

After the air clashes between Polish and Russian air forces which had resulted in the loss of a trio of aircraft over the Gulf of Finland and then the Gdansk Bay, NATO aircraft deployed into Eastern Europe didn’t fly up close to Russia’s borders. There were flights maintained over Poland, the Baltic States and the eastern reaches of the Baltic, but no aggressive forward flights almost touching Russian airspace. British, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish jets, even US Navy ones from the USS George H. W. Bush in the carrier’s last days before it departed European waters, kept their distance. There was no desire for another ‘accident’ to occur. Air sovereignty missions focused on just that and not pushing the envelope. The Poles did the opposite. They put their jets right up against the Russia frontier east of the Baltic States and all around the Kaliningrad exclave too. NATO partners called repeatedly upon the Poles to back off, to not give the Russians another excuse to open fire. Poland’s president saw things the other way though. Supported by allies in the Baltics as well as further south (the Hungarians and Romanians especially), there was a facing down of the threats from the Kremlin for retaliation if Russia’s borders were breached. Public and private warnings came out of Moscow of what would happen. The war fears in Europe were stoked by those but the Poles carried on. Another accident, a third deadly incident, was feared and those worries came to fruition.

Polish F-35 White Eagles with their 40th Tactical Squadron crossed into the skies above Kaliningrad from out of Lithuania as they flew home from a NATO air sovereignty mission. Just to the west of the Suwalki Gap – where there were Canadian and French troops below at such a military strategic point between Poland and the Baltics – a flight of four White Eagles ‘cut the corner’. Their intrusion was only minor and also short but they went through Russian airspace rather than going around it. From down below, in a hidden location which NATO reconnaissance efforts hadn’t detected it, an air defence battery opened fire. A Buk-M3 system (NATO codename: SA-17 Grizzly) put half a dozen missiles into the sky. Three of them struck Polish jets while the White Eagles were back inside friendly airspace. Two of the White Eagles were brought down with the third damaged and the fourth escaping unscathed. The Grizzly shut down and was quickly on the move – shoot and scoot it was – but within less than twenty minutes, missiles were inbound upon the missile launcher. Poland’s president gave the instruction for a return fire following established protocol to do that if Polish aircraft were fired upon: NATO partners were informed only after the event. The Poles tracked the underway Grizzly themselves using a stand-off reconnaissance drone and from that PrSM missiles fired form their own mobile ground launcher slammed home. The PrSM was an updated version of the ATACMS system both of which were American-supplied weapons in Polish hands. Russian camouflage techniques and electronic jamming attempts were good, but not enough to defeat that attack. Not just the offending launcher but two additional vehicles in support of the Grizzly launcher was taken out as well. They were all on the move and still eliminated.

That attack took side inside the Kaliningrad Oblast, somewhere the President Makarov had been passionate reminding the whole world about was an integral part of the Rodina.

Several hours later, NATO leaders, President Mitchell in DC too, were meeting remotely to discuss the situation, and that included listening to tirades from Warsaw about Polish sovereignty needing to be defended less the Russian Bear make a dash for the Rhine, when Makarov responded. He launched a significant missile attack upon Poland. Short-range ballistic missiles – firing on depressed trajectories – came out of Kaliningrad and Russia proper to smash into Polish military targets. Locations where there was the presence of military personnel from other countries weren’t touched: it was just Polish-only ones. All across Poland, there were huge blasts when Iskander missiles slammed into radar stations, command centres and rear-area supply dumps. Twenty-four launches were ordered by the Kremlin though only twenty-two made it off the ground. Of those, one more had a ‘bad launch’ and blew up a few hundred feet up. The other twenty-one struck Poland though. They were fast, devilishly so, and on the low altitude they took, the Iskanders went right under Polish and NATO anti-missile defences. It was all over so quick. Those distant leaders of Poland’s allies barely knew what was happening before the attack was done with and Makarov was sending out messages to the governments in Berlin, London and Paris as well as DC. He stressed that the attack was retaliatory for the missile attack against the Rodina and would only be repeated if Poland once more opened fire attacking his nation.

Get your allies to back off, was the message, before things get even worse.

The Russian strike could have been a nuclear one. If those Iskanders had been fired on a ‘traditional’ flight path, going up into orbit and then back down again, the attack would have looked that way even if it wasn’t. That was why the missile attack was done in the manner it was though with the depressed trajectories and NATO leaders only finding out after the fact. That really didn’t give much comfort! For the Russians to do that with a conventional attack meant that it could be done with a nuclear one too. The expensive and controversial missile shield in Eastern Europe was shown to be useless. The Russians just worked around it. The long-term implications of all of that were quite real in the strategic sense yet there was a rush on in the aftermath to deal with the pressing matter at-hand: stopping the Poles from making a counter-strike. Closest to him on a personal level of all the leaders in Western Europe was Britain’s PM. He practically begged for there to be no return fire made. The whole thing could explode if Poland carried on with the blow for blow exchanges and drag Europe into World War Three. It was no easy feat, and saw further security guarantees made backed up by troop deployments – this was 2029, not 1939, and Warsaw wasn’t about to be left hanging out alone like it had been ninety years beforehand – from London made unilaterally to stop Poland blasting Kaliningrad with every missile and bomb it could get its hands on. But it worked. There was no further missile exchange. Not everyone was happy at that though, especially Poland’s closest allies in Eastern Europe. They watched Russia blast Poland like that and Western Europe stop a counterstrike. Concerns were raised that if the same happened to them, would the fears in Berlin, London & Paris of a bigger conflict see them sacrificed? It had always been said that that would never happen yet they witnessed what Russia had done to Poland – the attack was out of all proportion – in terror.


The private diplomacy of Britain’s PM had saved the day. He had done one heck of a job in getting the Poles to hold their fire. A counter-counter reply to that would have come if he had failed and there was a lot of congratulations from foreign allies and domestic supporters. That video call he’d made to Warsaw was one which had been recorded. The Prime Minister didn’t want the public to see it. National security was the given reason why it couldn’t be, yet he had rather embarrassed himself with how he had behaved. Some of the things he had said didn’t gel at all with his strongman image: he told his chief-of-staff that he looked like a ‘little girl balling her eyes out’. An edited cut of the recording, sexed up in Moscow, was later released anonymously. In the UK, the government used pre-existing national security legislation to stop any mention of the video in the media, let alone the footage being broadcast. Rumours on the internet turned to seemingly everyone talking about it yet, regardless of that, there was a clampdown on the recording. Even using VPM proxies, it was unable to be seen by anyone in the UK even when attempts were made to share it on social media sites in a disguised fashion. AI-driven electronic silencing shut down sharing of the footage. Across the EU and elsewhere, the recording went out but not in the UK. Criticism came from opposition politicians of national security concerns being exploited to protect the ego of the PM and there were allegations that the country was getting more authoritarian every day.

While that drama swirled, a more significant diplomatic dispute erupted as part of the fallout between Polish and Russian military clashes. The EU’s president spoke with Makarov afterwards. Their conversation was private and not something which the Kremlin leaked to the mocking world. In Warsaw, the Polish president went a bit nuts when he heard one side of the story and didn’t believe the other. He accused the German woman who led the EU of selling out Poland to the Kremlin: once more, Berlin and Moscow were conspiring against his country. There would be no surrender of Poland’s right to defend itself again! Interventions from Berlin with the chancellor there got nowhere and neither could either London, the French nor Brussels solve the dispute. As far as Warsaw understood what had been discussed in a meeting which they weren’t aware of until long after the fact, the EU’s president promised to intervene directly to stop the Polish air missions encroaching into Russian airspace and to ensuring that Poland was well aware it didn’t have European support for any further acts of ‘aggression’. Poland’s leader publicly told her to back off and affirmed Polish sovereignty. Moreover, the whole thing was NATO business and not an EU matter. Britain’s PM took Warsaw’s side when Brussels hit back – as everyone expected to be done when there was a goal to score away on EU territory – to make matters only worse. While Mitchell tried to keep clear, Canada’s PM was drawn in as well where she criticised the EU leadership for stepping outside its boundaries and making private agreements with Moscow at a time when the independence of Eastern European countries was threatened. Those nations were the Baltics which, like Poland, were members of both the EU and NATO. What they wanted was all the protection that they could get and instead of remaining on-side with Warsaw, there was an embracing of all efforts, from anyone who could do so, to see a situation where Russian tanks wouldn’t be rolling into their countries.

The whole thing became one giant diplomatic mess. All the parties involved – west of the Russian border that was – wanted the same thing: unity against the Moscow menace. What they did was argue among themselves with some seeking one-upmanship in that. Makarov could only smile in the Kremlin at it all. He knew that things would be different if the Americans stepped in…

...but they were having their own little civil war away from the devastating divisive diplomatic spat taking place between allies.

111 – Across the Rio Grande

Where the Poles used PrSMs (Precision Strike Missiles) against Russian soil, with ATACMS missiles also waiting in the wings, US forces fighting on their own soil used only a limited number of them when the long-awaited offensive across the Rio Grande got underway come February 14th. Just had been the case with airborne cruise missiles, those tactical missiles for ground use had guidance ‘issues’. The problem had approached slowly but surely for the US Army in the same manner as it had done for the US Air Force and the US Navy with their long-range stand-off weapons. The computer virus Glow-worm continued to wreak havoc, affecting what US forces could use in combat against those who had unleashed it against them. The Pentagon continued to throw every effort at trying to reverse the damage while keeping the matter top secret. The NSA had said again and again that there was no kill switch and also denied – in the face of clear evidence that it was the case – that the DAR Armed Forces had managed to successfully stop it affecting their own systems. As far as those at the Defence Department were concerned, they had to find that magic solution themselves and the way to do that was to ignore the NSA and focus on what the Democratic American Republic had done to protect themselves. Their defences would be copied. SecDef Ferdinand privately believed that the NSA didn’t want a solution to be found because they wanted to show that Glow-worm was so effective and that would allow praise to fall upon them for designing such a weapon. It was meant to be used against foreign adversaries though. Project SPEEDWAGON was the name of the Pentagon effort to beat Glow-worm and there were a lot of hopes for success there. Ferdinand and the Joint Chiefs feared that if SPEEDWAGON failed, within months nothing would work properly when it came to America’s military arsenal… including its nuclear weapons-carrying munitions.

On Valentine’s Day – the six year anniversary of the death of the 46th President – the Rio Grande where it ran through New Mexico was crossed. Both the III Corps and the VII Corps under the command of US Army North went over into the western half of New Mexico with the XVIII Airborne Corps waiting behind them to strike when Lt.–General Lambert believed a breakthrough was in-sight. Without an abundance of missiles, air strikes and a mass of artillery was used instead. There were free-fire zones west of the course of the river due to the emptiness of the terrain with no civilians about. Immense explosions tore apart targeted areas. Aircraft zoomed in dropping bombs and firing unguided rockets at low altitude while up above them others unleashed their heavier payloads. Howitzers and multiple-barrelled rocket launchers fired near and far from where the no man’s land had run, aiming to strike enemy forces positioned in the rear. The actual river was no serious impediment to a prepared military force ready to cross it due to its narrowness and shallow state. In certain places, there weren’t any good spots to go across but in the main, the Rio Grande was a terrain feature, not an obstacle. ARNORTH forces lined up to go across it following the barrage of supporting fire underway. Assault parties of infantry went over first followed by combat engineers to get crossing points underway. The bombing and shelling moved ahead of them once they were on the other side. However, a couple of foolish mistakes saw friendly fire fall upon US troops from US weapons. It could have been far worse than it was and so much care was taken to avoid any more than the little that there was. Nonetheless, that mattered nought to those killed and maimed by their own side.

The western side of the river wasn’t properly defended as a forward position by the DAR. Special forces recon teams sent forward by ARNORTH had reported what air and satellite observation had shown with regard to that. Green Berets and Marine Recon teams spend their time ahead of the massive crossing engaging DAR commandos instead. That was something new, something unwelcome too. Special forces rarely fought special forces on the battlefield – it was preferred to engage the unweary and minimally-trained – unless the situation was particularly special. It was that in western New Mexico. The DAR had forward elements there for their own observation with orders to stay in cover while the weight of the ARNORTH attack passed them by before emerging and targeting weaker units in the rear afterwards. The ‘stay behind’ mission that they had there was something that Lambert knew all about. That was why after the two terrible winter storms, Ted and then Ulysses, had had spent almost a week having New Mexico across the Rio Grande blasted to pieces and then increased the scale of the unleashing of tremendous amounts of firepower when his heavy forces moved forwards. The final massive strikes using all of that ordnance was targeted where reports were that the DAR special forces might be as well as hitting forward ‘regular’ elements of the DAR’s New Mexico Corps behind them. He made sure that AFNORTH, providing his air cover, filled the skies with jets laden with anti-armour cluster bombs too – ‘smart’ versions of them, nothing ‘dumb’ – when there were F-16s and F-35s sent seeking enemy tanks. The worry in Lambert was that just as the crossing began, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (what was left of it anyway) would begin moving out of cover and charge straight for the main crossing points to make a spoiling attack towards the bridgeheads. That unit had been used in similar fashion in eastern New Mexico at the end of January and there were signals intercepts to suggest that it would be employed in the same manner again. Even defeated in the effort as it surely would be, Lambert’s concerns were strong: the M-1A3 tanks fielded could run wild if they got the chance and cause great destruction to exposed units. That didn’t happen though and those aircraft sent forward loaded with such weaponry soon jettisoned those war-loads of theirs when they came under attack.


Promises had been made from AFNORTH that the skies across New Mexico as well as across into Arizona and up into Colorado would be free of the DAR Air Force. To stop them getting jets up, the US Air Force was joined by large numbers of Air National Guard and US Marine Corps aircraft. Long-range SAMs – not at that point affected by Glow-worm – were made use of extensively as well, many of their launchers having recently returned from Europe. Airbases were targeted for attack and roving fighter patrols were sent deep into DAR airspace on fighter sweeps. That all happened but those promises couldn’t be fulfilled. The DAR Air Force took to the skies and defended them. They engaged US aircraft and also made dashes towards the crossing points over the Rio Grande. Jets of all types from the two sides went down in multi-million dollar right-offs as a consequence. Dozens of air kills were made in the daylight clashes while others limped home with combat damage. Rather than tanks making it to the crossing sites, on several occasions the DAR got aircraft on attack missions through. They dropped bombs and fired tactical missiles into ARNORTH forces which had crossed and were waiting to as well. It cost them dear and overall didn’t bring the crossing to a stop, but they put a hurting on Lambert’s forces. DAR cruise missiles came in afterwards and they were unaffected by guidance problems. With near pinpoint accuracy, devastating blasts rippled down the river from north as far as Albuquerque down to Las Cruces in the south. The display of firepower was nowhere near as strong as that which the US employed but it did have accuracy and was where it was needed.

The reorganised VII Corps put the 35th Infantry Division across the Rio Grande in its corps’ operational area. Those national guardsmen had fought in Colorado and not had the best of times yet the unit was in good shape. DAR air strikes hit mainly the engineers supporting them along with some of the national guardsmen going over. The latter were from the 1/65 INF out of Puerto Rico. It was quite the baptism of fire for them. Yet, like their forefathers who’d served in the same unit in previous wars fighting for the United States, they did handle themselves well in the face of what came their way. Texan national guardsmen down with the 36th Infantry Division in the III Corps’ sector didn’t. There was a lot of panic and unprofessionalism when those with several infantry units were hit like they were. Already elements of that division’s 71st Airborne Brigade had faced DAR air strikes, back near Holloman AFB in January, and not come off good from them. That was repeated when going over the Rio Grande.

Lambert wasn’t going to be deterred. From his forward headquarters, a mobile column moving through the Sandia Mountains, he issued firm instructions for his forces to keep going once the worst of the air and missile attacks were over with. He’d expected opposition on the ground, not from above, but was willing to accept losses rather than stop. Callous he might be called: a butcher others might say. The ARNORTH commander, charged with leading the ground war to liberate the West, was neither. Those losses – human lives – upset him but he put that out of his mind and had everyone else do the same. The only reason that the DAR used so much firepower along the river line was because they were weak behind it. He wanted to get his heavy ground units in among theirs to defeat them and that meant that the Rio Grande must be crossed even when that was so strongly opposed. Off in distant Las Vegas, Lambert had been told that those there had tried to instil a ‘no surrender’ attitude in their military commanders and see that trickle down to those on the front-lines. He considered that to be a load of bull. Faced with what he was about to through at the New Mexico Corps once his own forces fully assembled went tearing across the west of New Mexico and into Arizona, Lambert could only see hands thrown up as weapons were dropped. The US Army doing its thing, making a full-on mechanised attack in multi-corps fashion, with all supporting arms playing their role too, was considered by Lambert to be unstoppable.

Over the Rio Grande the US Army North started to go with their destination being the Pacific shore.


End of Part Five

How would the U.S. Space Force be like in this 2ACW? They are only 10 years old since activation at this period.