Eagle Guardian STORY ONLY thread[{locked}]

[James G]

Thirty-One

Intelligence reports being fed through to NATO headquarters from the alphabet soup of agencies operating within Russia were also transmitted back to national governments. However analysts tried to present what was happening in Russia, it was clear that what was truly occurring was a general mobilisation of the Russian Armed Forces. This could not be denied by even the most pacifistic members of NATO, as much as they wanted it not to be true. Satellite surveillance, electronic intelligence (ELINT) gathering, and human sources within Russia, most notably the asset that France’s DGSE had within the Ukrainian embassy, all showed the unavoidable truth of what was taking place. There were huge convoys travelling down roads across the vast Russian countryside, and military trains carrying tanks and armoured vehicles were shown to be going westwards, towards Russia’s borders with Latvia & Estonia as well as into Belarus. Over a million men were being called up to their duty stations, joined by the 300,000 reservists that Moscow had called to duty in the last few months, as the international situation deteriorated. The mobilisation of Russian forces put SACEUR in an incredibly difficult position, having few forces deployed further east than the Oder River. His troops in Latvia under the Baltic Mechanised Infantry Brigade wouldn’t last for long, and any additional NATO forces put into the Baltic region were sure to be cut off and wiped out as soon as war began. However, to not place forces in Estonia or Latvia would be a politically unviable option. Stavridis was an experienced officer with a well-trained staff present to advise him, and they could only conclude that Russia was mobilising because it truly did plan to go to war. Russia’s already fragile economy couldn’t sustain the pressure of a full-scale military mobilisation, and President Putin knew this full-well. He wouldn’t order such an economically strenuous action unless he was truly desperate.

NATO’s North Atlantic Council met in closed session two days after Moscow had begun to mobilise its military might. It would be nigh-on impossible for the whole alliance of nearly thirty members to agree to launch full-scale mobilisations of their own; Germany was hesitant, while Italy, Denmark, Holland, Spain, and Portugal would flat-out refuse to compromise their own economies by calling up all of their armed forces and reserves to meet the threat from the east. An extremely heated debate occurred in Brussels, with the Eastern Europeans screaming for military assistance. The US, Great Britain, and France were all prepared to begin major deployments despite the political risks of doing such a thing. In the UK, there was still a cross-aisle sense of national outrage over the downing of the airliner over Kaliningrad last week, and the funerals for those killed hadn’t even been held yet; Moscow’s decision to mobilise made headlines and lead to further anger directed at Russia from the British public. Prime Minister Cameron would have full domestic support from the majority of the Conservative & Labour parties in deploying the British Armed Forces. The situation was somewhat more delicate in Paris, but President Sarkozy, as someone who had been at the forefront of NATO’s effort to confront Russia over its behaviour since the summer of 2008, made it clear to his allies that should any NATO deployment take place, French forces would be fully authorised to participate in such a thing. In a decision that was contested by many members of the alliance, NATO finally agreed to deploy troops eastwards.

The three Baltic States, as well as Poland, Norway, and Romania all began to undertake full-scale military mobilisations. Every active-duty soldier, sailor and airman was called to duty, along with thousands of reservists, causing huge economic disruption to all six of those vulnerable countries. As was within his rights as the commander of NATO’s military forces, Admiral Stavridis ordered his forces from normal peacetime readiness to a ‘General Alert’ status. This was similar to the United States’ Defence Readiness Condition or DEFCON, with NATO forces taking a higher state of alert across the continent. Though this would be controversial, with the orders being issued through military channels and not taking into account the positions of individual countries, Stavridis and his staff deemed it as a necessary step to force Russia to back down, or, in that nightmare scenario where Russian tanks came rolling westwards, to ensure that NATO wasn’t taken by surprise and that the appropriate defensive actions had been taken.


The United States, France and Great Britain also began partial mobilisations, with the intention of deploying troops to Poland, the Baltic States, and Norway as soon as possible. The US, while it would begin to deploy forces, would not undertake a full-scale mobilisation in the same fashion that Russia was doing. However, large-numbers of active-duty troops, as well as reservists and National Guardsmen, were called up. Under Operation EAGLE GUARDIAN, over 450,000 US servicemen and women were slated to deploy to Europe. It would take time for all of these personnel to get across the immense Atlantic Ocean and into Europe, but the orders were issued by the Obama Administration to begin deploying US forces. Waiting any longer to initiate EAGLE GUARDIAN just wasn’t a possibility. Secretary of State Clinton advised the President that the US had to respect its security obligations. If American forces failed to deploy alongside troops from the rest of NATO, future allies would shy away from the supposed umbrella of protection offered by the United States. Furthermore, Defence Secretary Gates also recommended that Obama make the call. He cautioned that if it was left any longer, and Russia did invade the Baltic States or any other piece of NATO territory, it might be too late to deploy US troops to the region.

Admiral Stavridis was ordered to initiate EAGLE GUARDIAN. As planned, a NATO headquarters formation had to be set up in Eastern Europe at the Army-level, to command the huge number of troops that would soon begin to disembark. Combined Joint Task Force – East was the name of this formation, and its commander, General David Petraeus, was chosen from a handful of potential names. Petraeus had joined the US Army in the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, and thus had much knowledge of how the Pentagon would fight a ‘peer-level’ adversary such as Russia. He was also a multi-tour veteran of the Iraq War, having served in command of Allied forces there during previous years. Under NATO war plans, the headquarters of CJTF – East was to be set up in Krakow, Poland. The location was chosen for its geographic position specifically, being respectably close to the Belarusian border, but not close enough for a direct attack by land to be an immediate risk. Under his command, Petraeus would have the Polish and Baltic militaries, as well as two formations that would be moving into Poland from Germany. The first of these units was the US Army’s V Corps. The corps had been stationed in Germany since the end of World War Two, and had a mishmash of armoured and mechanised brigades under its direct command, as well as support units. The second was the British-led Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (AARC). Though the AARC didn’t have any combat units under its direct command during peacetime, it was soon to gain responsibility for the defence of northern Poland, while the US V Corps went south to the border with Belarus.

The Pentagon rapidly slated the US Army’s 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division for deployment to Eastern Europe. This division would be the first of many to arrive, acting as the “spearhead” of Operation EAGLE GUARDIAN. Over twelve thousand servicemen and women were being flown eastwards, landing at airports in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The Civil Reserve Air Fleet was called up by the Department of Defence, causing much chaos with civilian flights. However, the President deemed it to be a necessary step after some persuasion by Secretary Gates. In addition, thousands of C-5 & C-17 cargo planes from the US Air Force’ Military Airlift Command took part in the deployment. The 3rd Infantry Division would be followed by the 1st Armored & 1st Cavalry Divisions, as well as the 4th Infantry Division and the US Army’s airborne and air assault divisions. One brigade from the 82nd Airborne, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, was flown directly into Estonia to support that isolated NATO ally. Britain, meanwhile, began the deployment of its 1st Armoured Division into Poland under the AARC, which itself was commanded by Lieutenant-General Richard Shirreff. Numerous Polish formations went under British command as part of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps as well, with the Polish Land Forces not having any corps-level command of its own for its divisions to come under. France, another NATO country that was mobilising, contributed its 2nd Armored Brigade to the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, further helping to increase the firepower of that formation. Though they so far had not sent any ground forces, leaving major gaps that were meant to be filled by their units, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Canada, Spain & Portugal all contributed warplanes to the deployment, joining the US Air Force, the French Air Force, and the Royal Air Force in sending many of their fighters eastwards. Soon enough, those more reluctant NATO members would be dragged into the deployment by additional Russian actions, yet for now they neglected to carry out the same larger mobilisations as the greater NATO members had.

Norway was also a country to receive NATO reinforcements, with those units coming primarily from the United States & Great Britain, just as they would have done twenty-five years ago. The US 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which had long been tapped for the North Atlantic in the event of war, was flown directly to airfields around Norway. There was much prepositioned equipment, including tanks, ammunition, and armoured vehicles, ready and waiting in the Norwegian Fjords for the Marines to use. Quickly designated the Norway Air Land Marine Expeditionary brigade (NALMEB), the 2nd MEB was placed under Norwegian military command. Joining this American unit was the Royal Marines 3rd Commando Brigade, which shipped out directly from the United Kingdom to Norway. There were Russian forces facing them there across from Murmansk, and the number of troops poised along the Kola Peninsula was rapidly growing. Russian warships from the Pacific Fleet had already been moved round through the Arctic to reinforce the Northern Fleet, which now boasted a far better amphibious capability than NATO planners had originally estimated during the planning of EAGLE GUARDIAN.


One final aspect of EAGLE GUARDIAN that was considered by the governments of both the United States and Britain, but not yet activated, was the evacuation of civilian dependents, those married to or children of military personnel deployed in Germany & Italy. President Obama felt that it would be too disruptive at this juncture despite receiving advice from Gates to give the orders. Prime Minister Cameron made the same decision, deciding that a general evacuation of thousands of civilians from mainland Europe would at this point be unnecessary, especially as this was not the Cold War where dependents living in Germany would otherwise find themselves on the frontlines. With what would soon happen, the reluctance of NATOs more pacifistic members would soon change and they too would join in the deployment of troops to Eastern Europe, while Obama and Cameron would be forces to change their minds and begin full-scale evacuations of their citizens from the continent.





Thirty–Two

Harrier Harman was only the acting leader of the Labour Party yet at this time was the official Leader of the Opposition. This put the long-serving MP in the spotlight where while many of her colleagues were competing for the party leadership to replace Gordon Brown, she spoke for the Labour Party. Harman was involved in a delicate balancing act where those five candidates were seeking their mandate for election in the coming September and her actions now shouldn’t influence that vote. Four of the five candidates were among her interim shadow cabinet while the other was a long-standing friend of hers. Events abroad nor domestic political matters should have impacted upon hustings nor schedules debates. They did though. The leading candidate was David Miliband who retained his foreign affairs brief and this brought him media attention where he was still clued-in to the personalities involved. Diane Abbot – Harman’s friend – had lost one of her constituents, someone she personally knew too, in the shooting down of the Ryanair jet on its way to Estonia. Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and the other Miliband brother Ed all gave media interviews as well on the subject of Russia and the increasingly tense situation. When questioned, all of the candidates spoke of their desire to not see military conflict erupt in the Baltic… nor anywhere else too. The latter came to questions put to them on the campaign trail where concerns were expressed that a war would see Britain itself come under attack. There was reassurance given that it wouldn’t come to that. Harman, Miliband and other Labour figures – yet not the rest of the candidate in the leadership race – were spoken to by Prime Minister Cameron when he authorised turning the speculative Operation Rookery into a real military deployment by the British Armed Forces as part of the NATO-wide Eagle Guardian. The cross-party support was sought and gained here though, if necessary, Cameron and his government were going to do this even in the face of hostility from Labour. That support came because Eagle Guardian was only a deterrent. It wasn’t about moving forces to fight a war but rather to stop a war. Supporting what the government was doing here was regarded as the right thing to do. Others didn’t see it that way. Many other Labour MPs expressed their displeasure. Support for Russia wasn’t there but what there was instead was disquiet at the ‘military adventurism’ on show. Defenders of the current leadership stated that there was no transition to war measures being implemented nor any nuclear preparations: the actions of the government which they were giving their supporting were to defend both allies abroad and the country at home from what was clearly a hostile Russia.

This internal disagreement within the Labour Party made it into the pages of several newspapers and was commented upon with the television & radio news yet it was considered a side issue to what else was going on. Many in the media were talking about war, not deterrence. A couple of the tabloids printed eye-catching graphics showing hypothetical war plans with attacks made on Russia proper, Kaliningrad and Belarus depicted. Former military officers provided commentary on what would happen, some going into detail. The general theme here was of what would be done in response to a Russian attack where with wonder weapons, NATO forces, those of Britain included, would hit back. A lot of this was a load of baloney and rather impractical. However, some of it wasn’t. Liam Fox invited editors from two newspapers to the MOD when the defence secretary enquired politely that they cease printing such things. He asked too where they had got such information: the editors wouldn’t reveal their sources and between them they silently agreed that what they had printed was rather close to reality if this reaction had come from the MOD. There would be no more of what they were doing, they agreed with Fox, though in exchange they each got concessions from him in the form of better access elsewhere from the MOD. There were already journalists from the press pool sent to be embedded with British military units deploying abroad to Poland and Norway as well as to sea yet these two publications would receive further reporting access exclusive to their newspapers for stopping what they were doing. This was a scandal just waiting to low up in Fox’s face in the future. Another newspaper presented several pieces in the last week of July where they investigated the presence in the UK at this time of so many Russian nationals. There were those exiles within the country yet still many businessmen and other private individuals plus also some media teams from Russia too. Questions were asked as to when these people were going to be asked to leave the country or ‘locked up’. Such an expressed position, one reinforced by several politicians too sharing the outrage, saw dismay from others who made accusations that this was all an effort to whip up hysteria over a Russian threat that wasn’t really there. In the following days after this had all been dismissed as scare-mongering, the British state showed that it was taking this threat seriously though.


On the evening of July 26th, a Monday rush-hour, MI-5 had several nationwide police forces conduct multiple operations to arrest Russian nationals across Britain. These took place across London, through the Home Counties, in South Yorkshire and up in Central Scotland too. Armed officers joined more than a few of the simultaneous raids which took place to round up a total of twenty-one people. It was a big operation and one where problems cropped up when doing so much at once.

Those arrested were all suspected SVR operatives in Britain operating under nonofficial cover. MI-5 acted on information from the fatal shooting of DC Jones, what Chapman had given and the investigation into Zatuliveter’s connection to that earlier detained Russian. The evidence in some cases wasn’t that firm – which was why this had taken so long to do – but political instructions were to see this done regardless. Several lone individuals were detained along with people connected to both of the competing exile groups as well. Wrong information led to the arrest of an innocent man in Sheffield while on the A229 main road which ran over Blue Bell Hill in Kent, there was the (non-fatal) shooting of one of the persons sought when he produced a gun during a forced traffic stop. Mobile phone camera footage of the Blue Bell Hill incident was something that was shown on the television news later that night. Another target for arrest jumped out of a window to his death and this would lead to many uncomfortable questions for the Met. Police afterwards about what ‘really happened’ there. MI-5 had done well though. They smashed the SVR’s presence in the UK. Those who escaped the operation were going to be on their own from now on without support of what was a large and extensive network of spies. In addition to the arrests, a total of eight Russian accredited diplomats at the Russian Embassy – half of those left operating there as part of a skeleton staff – were declared persona non grata. They were given forty-eight hours to leave the country. At British ports of entry, immigration officers were issued instructions to start denying Russian nationals, or suspected Russian nationals using passports from other countries, entry to Britain without explanation. Immigration Minister Damian Green, following instructions from his boss Theresa May on this, was the face of this measure and it was one sure to bring political flak.

At 10 Downing Street, within the Home Office along Marsham Street and inside Thames House, there was much back-patting at all that they had done overall.


The next morning, over at the MOD, an officer of Russia’s GRU had his own success and would get a medal for what he did instead of a pat on the back. This undercover agent was in the secure building on Whitehall when a civil servant there came downstairs and handed to him several documents before retuning to his desk upstairs. A great sum of money had already been paid to this man who had just betrayed his country and he did so only for that reason. The GRU officer walked out of the door, past the security, and hailed one of London’s ubiquitous black taxis afterwards: his destination was Heathrow Airport. The documents had been copied from those in the possession of a senior aide to Fox. That individual, Adam Werritty, a trusted friend of Fox though who didn’t have the necessary security clearance to have those documents yet had them regardless, had no idea of what occurred as he still retained the originals. The GRU beat the SVR to the punch in getting a-hold of NATO’s Eagle Guardian plans – also Britain’s Operation Rookery planning too – and without anyone knowing about it. These covered more than the wartime deployments underway. They consisted of so much of NATO’s planning for wartime operations too beyond the initial deployment should the shooting start: command arrangements, unit dispersion, supply points… everything really.

The head of the GRU, General Shlyakhturov, was looking to rub the face of his rival Fradkov in his success that the GRU had had over the SVR here. Later, but only much later, that civil servant would be caught and face a treason trial: Werritty would be in some hot water too yet Fox would avoid that for a different reason. That was all in the future though, for now the GRU officer reached Heathrow and left the UK on a Finnair flight for Helsinki using his forged Finnish passport. He flew out of Britain with a goldmine in his briefcase without anyone behind him having the slightest idea what he had taken from right out of the MOD in the most-daring of fashions.

[James G]

Thirty-Three

Since the middle of July when that airliner was blown out of the sky over Kaliningrad, President Obama had found himself undergoing daily briefings from the National Security Council relating to the crisis with Russia. Present in those meetings, which took place in the White House’ below-ground situation room, were the President himself, Secretary of State Clinton & Secretary of Defence Gates, National Security Advisor James Jones, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen. With the notable exception of Emmanuel, those people had been pushing the President to upgrade the Pentagon’s Defence Readiness Condition in light of recent events. The decision to do so was a political one rather than being a strictly military matter, as Mullen would have preferred. In theory, Robert Gates, as Secretary of Defence, could have issued those orders. That was what had been done on 9/11, when Gates’ predecessor was out of touch with President Bush. Now, however, the situation was a lot more complex and there were the political ramifications of taking the US Military to a defensive alert level not reached since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Gates didn’t feel that it was really his place to order a DEFCON increase even as armed conflict with Russia moved from being a possibility to becoming an apparent inevitability. Debates took place about how raising the DEFCON level would look in the media and what Moscow might make of it. Rahm Emmanuel tried repeatedly to persuade Obama to back away from that course of action, believing that not only would it provoke the Russians, but it would also cost Obama the next election. Offering a contrary opinion, Jim Jones, himself a former Marine Corps officer, asked Obama how it would look if Russia did launch a ‘pre-emptive’ war against NATO and American soldiers died because they hadn’t been allowed to prepare for such a thing properly. After several days of heated debates, the hawks won out. On July 29th, the Department of Defence ordered US forces to DEFCON 3. This was not a worldwide measure that would affect the entire US military, but rather the instructions to take a higher state of alert were given to commands that would find themselves in the immediate conflict zone if and when war did break out. Specifically and operationally, this meant that US European Command (EUCOM) would increase to DEFCON 3, along with the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which controlled America’s vast nuclear arsenal.

The post of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) was a joint billet, with the officer holding that command also being in charge of EUCOM. Admiral James Stavridis had been preparing himself mentally for war for several months now. Since mid-2009, even, before Medvedev’s demise in Putin’s coup d’état, NATO’s military leadership had been studying the possibility of Russia launching a war of aggression in the Baltic region in an effort to extract economic concessions from NATO. With the initiating of Operation EAGLE GUARDIAN, NATO forces across Europe were already mobilising, and a herculean effort was underway to lift thousands of American servicemen and women to Europe by sea and by air. Airports in Germany, Holland, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Great Britain were overflowing with thousands of ugly grey jets laden with troops, while on the East Coast of America, a series of convoys were preparing to put to sea carrying the men and equipment of the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division, which was slated to arrive in Rotterdam in about a weeks’ time. The long-expected move to DEFCON 3 allowed Stavridis to take far more appropriate – and also intrusive – force protection measures. He could coordinate these measures through the US Army European Command headquarters at Stuttgart in Germany and through CJTF – East in Krakow. US Military facilities across Europe went into lockdown, with the fear that Russian commandos could otherwise infiltrate the bases undercover. The number of security patrols was doubled with orders being issued that intruders were to be shot dead after a single warning. US Air Force fighter jets based in Europe – there were F-16 Fighting Falcons in Germany & Italy, and F-15 Eagles and Strike Eagles in England – began flying an increasing amount of combat air patrols over the Baltic Sea and over the border between Poland and Belarus, working with the Polish Air Force to do so. Alternate command posts were staffed and airborne command & control aircraft readied for operations. Technically, the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet fell under Stavridis’ command. However, that formidable force effectively acted as a command all of its own, having ships based in Spain and Italy and patrolling out in the Mediterranean Sea. The Sixth Fleet went to DEFCON 3 also when Obama finally issued those orders. The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) was in the process of moving through the Suez Canal into the Med, having completed a tour supporting ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many thousands of sailors, eager to return home, were suddenly told they would instead be going to the Mediterranean in case war broke out with Russia. Aboard the Stennis and her escorts – a cruiser, three destroyers, one frigate, and two attack submarines – crews made numerous practices for what to do in the event of air or submarine attack against them as they steamed northwards out of the Suez and then westwards to link up with vessels of the Spanish & French navies. Like US Army and Air Force facilities in Europe, the Sixth Fleet’s coastal facilities went into similar lockdowns. Heavily-armed military policemen, working alongside local security forces, undertook constant patrols around navy bases and port facilities to ensure that no sabotage could take place throughout those last days of peace.

Back home in the United States, Strategic Command moved to DEFCON 3. For Commander-in-Chief, Strategic Command (CINC-STRAT), this would involve some similar measures to the ones being taken in Europe, but also some activities that many would consider to be far more extreme. In his position as CINC-STRAT, US Air Force General Kevin Chilton commanded virtually the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States. Chilton was a vastly experienced officer and a former astronaut who knew his job well. However, it would have been a sobering experience for any man, to suddenly find oneself ordered to prepare for the possibility of fighting an all-out nuclear war, a war where the goal would be to destroy the enemy for a longer period than the enemy could destroy you. Though the Defence Intelligence Agency doubted that Moscow would open a war with the use of nuclear weapons, it was thought of as a realistic possibility that a major war between NATO and Russia would at some point escalate into a nuclear exchange, with that being almost impossible to control and probably leading to the total destruction of all the major world powers. Everyone would do everything in their power to avoid that nightmare scenario, but nevertheless General Chilton was ordered to prepare his forces to destroy Mother Russia in the event that it did. His plans entailed the use of over two thousand nuclear warheads against military bases, industrial centres, and cities, across Russia and it was estimated that it would cost the lives of over fifty million Russians, virtually all of whom would be innocent civilians.


In order to avoid a nuclear war, Chilton reasoned, he had to look as though he could win one.

Chilton’s most potent force were the fourteen Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines of the US Navy which fell under his command. Each of these submarines carried on average, 192 nuclear warheads mounted on twenty-four Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Under peacetime readiness levels, there would be at least five of those submarines on patrol around the Atlantic and Pacific, their locations such a closely-guarded secret that even their own crews wouldn’t know it exactly. Any one of the Ohio-class submarines could destroy a nation and inflict millions of casualties. When STRATCOM went up to DEFCON 3, another three such submarines were surged from naval bases in Hawaii, Washington, and Georgia. Other boats would be flushed from their bases as soon as they were ready, but some of the remaining submarines were undergoing repairs or refits, or didn’t have the correct crew assembled and so were unable to take to the seas just yet. Over the last few days of July, though, the US Navy’s component of the nuclear ‘triad’ was prepared to fight and ‘win’ a nuclear war, if necessary by striking first. In addition to the submarines, General Chilton commanded the US Air Force ground-based nuclear missile silos and crews. Roughly three hundred Minuteman-III ICBMs were scattered across the states of Wyoming, North Dakota, and Montana. More vulnerable to a first strike as fixed, non-mobile targets always were, the ICBM crews found themselves ordered to target their missiles towards Russia for the first time since the 1990s, when Presidents’ Clinton and Yeltsin had retargeted their missiles away from cities in each-others homeland. The final component of the nuclear triad was the US Air Force bomber force, which was under the authority of Global Strike Command, itself a subordinate of Strategic Command. The US Air Force had a vast array of firepower when it came to strategic nuclear bombers; there were ancient, but still capable, B-52H heavy bombers, capable of carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles or gravity bombs, and also conventional warheads, as well as B-2A ‘Spirit’ stealth bombers which could in theory slip through Russian air defences when the call came for them to do so. The B-1B ‘Lancer’ supersonic bombers of the US Air Force had been modified to prevent them from carrying nuclear warheads under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) a decade earlier. Those nuclear-capable B-52H & B-2A bombers, along with dozens of tankers and support aircraft, were dispersed from their regular airbases in Missouri, Louisiana, and North & South Dakota, and sent to alternate dispersal airfields. The bombers were made ready to scramble into the air at a moment’s notice, flying from a variety of different airfields and civilian airports.

If the United States was going to be forced by Moscow’s actions to fight a nuclear war, General Chilton was determined to use his forces to take out as much of Russia’s nuclear arsenal as possible before it could be utilised, thus savings many lives and perhaps even ensuring that the United States could survive as a functioning world power in that doomsday scenario. His actions in preparing STRATCOM for nuclear war were mirrored in Russia as that country prepared itself for war. Russia’s Bear, Blackjack & Backfire bombers were similarly moved to alternate dispersal sites along with their tankers, while Russia’s huge array of mobile ICBMs were sent out from their garrisons with orders to disperse into the wilderness and ride out a potential American first strike; Russia’s Navy was sending its nuclear-missile submarines to see in numbers not seen since the Cold War, with those vessels in many cases detected and shadowed by the US Navy and the Royal Navy.

The summer air was thick, absolutely choked with tension. Nerves around the world were frayed as the great powers were being driven towards war – towards World War III.




Thirty–Four

The Russian leadership decided to go to war.

There were many expressed reasons among the members of the Security Council as to why this had to be done but there was only one real reason. The truth was that, bravado aside, they were terrified of the consequences of not doing so.


Fradkov had presented to them the latest ‘highlights’ of the intercepted emails from the America secretary of state. Writing to one of her closest aides who remained back in Washington while she herself was flying to Brussels, Clinton mentioned the DEFCON Three decision and then explained the message which she aimed to present on behalf of her country as NATO foreign ministers assembled in the Belgian capital. Fradkov paraphrased what she said when he told Putin and the others that she was to tell them that the NATO military deployment would stop Russian from launching a war to unite its people behind a wave of patriotic fervour. Thus, within Russia a revolt would occur afterwards and, finally, a colour revolution would be seen. That was one which the West must be prepared to support yet not get caught in doing so. Moreover, coming from the SVR’s Chappaqua Connection, another email sent from her Blackberry while she was en-route, the secretary of state said that should the worse happen – i.e. a complete collapse of order across Russia – the United States, alone if necessary but preferably joined but its NATO allies, should move into Russia to restore order less the country descend into a civil war. Fradkov stated that Clinton was speaking for the Obama Administration here and not just herself. Whether the SVR director lied here was debateable. He certainly embellished and provided an interpretation as he saw things in the long-winded comments, but he wasn’t making this up. This had all been written and intercepted… but it was how he spun it for this audience which mattered. He presented this to his colleagues who had long ‘known’ that this was the American’s intentions. Now he gave the evidence of their aim to topple the Russian leadership and rape Russia afterwards by sending in troops. There was a smile on his face as he told the Security Council this. He had hit the goldmine and waited for the congratulations to come for doing so well. Alas, his news was followed by something else straight away by another member of this ultimate decision-making body that made his secondary. Fate wasn’t being kind to him!

General Shlyakhturov informed the Security Council of the GRU’s success (doing what the SVR had failed to do he didn’t have to say) in getting a-hold of NATO war plans. The SVR objected to what its rival had their hands on in stating that that was only half of what should have been gotten – there must be offensive plans as well as defensive ones, surely? – and expressed concerns over it all being a British deception where they had supplied the GRU was false information. Shlyakhturov stood by his information with the defence minister and the generals stating that they believed that the information as accurate and saying that it was incredibly valuable while offering ‘no opinion’ on whether there was more that could have been stolen from the West here. As with the SVR’s great success with the contents of information gained from the Chappaqua Connection, where the GRU had the Eagle Guardian (and Rookery) war plans, the Security Council was rather underwhelmed in the opinion of Shlyakhturov when he presented these. They asked about other matters, issues where their current concerns were in the form of ongoing NATO military deployments rather than giving him all the congratulations he believed he deserved for masterminding this brilliant operation.

The head of the GRU had one of his senior aides tell these men just what they feared they would hear. NATO was moving many more of their military forces around than what had already been seen deploying into Eastern Europe. The Americans, even with troops tied up in both Afghanistan and Iraq, were preparing to move others (many of those from units resting post-deployment to the middle East or standing up ready to go to that region) in great number: between three and five further US Army divisions, and two more of US Marines as well, had received deployment orders. British, French and other NATO countries with divisions of troops were having those readied too for reinforcement of those already assigned to Eagle Guardian. There were large numbers of NATO combat aircraft deploying into Poland with others, especially American ones including their F-22 Raptors, soon to join them there or if politics allowed into neighbouring countries such as the Czech Republic, Denmark and Germany. Across in southern England, a wing of B-52 bombers was arriving with reports of a second wing to follow. There were four US Navy aircraft carriers at-sea or soon to be within the coming days. The Americans would have one each in the North Atlantic, another in the Pacific, a third in the Med. and a fourth one in the Arabian Sea where (using Pakistani and the Afghan airspace) its jets could threaten Russia from the south. The Royal Navy had cancelled its Exercise Auriga wargames planned for September and also cut other peacetime deployments all to mass as many ships as possible; the French were doing just the same including getting their aircraft carrier with all of its combat aircraft to sea as well. None of these military forces, even if at the moment not on Russia’s borders, could be dismissed as unthreatening. They were all either moving directly towards those frontiers or getting ready to encircle Russia from every available position that NATO – led by the Americans here… as always – could do so.

Discussing these deployments, the Security Council concluded that clearly the West was getting ready for war. The council’s chair spoke on this issue. Gravely, Patrushev affirmed his belief that NATO was soon about to start psychologically preparing its people for war – maybe its government were already – using this ‘defensive’ terminology when their intent was only to attack. The best defence was only always to attack first, wasn’t it? Ivanov agreed with his colleague on this and then there came the others chiming in quickly enough all in support. There was no voice of dissent raised in the unanimous fear. Putin waited until all of the Security Council members had had their say. He asked Patrushev to have the room cleared of only the senior people. That was done with haste. The president then addressed those who remained with him.

War it must be then. Russia was soon to be attacked and the West would ‘find a way’ to do this either by creating another one of their provocations with an aircraft or encouraging more internal disturbances leading to an invasion through hybrid means. This couldn’t be allowed to occur. The only way to stop it, the only way to save the Rodina from this – cough themselves cough – was to strike first. He asked Kozak what allies of Russia would stand with them at this time? The foreign minister stated that the support that they had now from many global nations who were opposed to the will of the West would be maintained in war: America’s many enemies would all actively support Russia. Of Ivanov, Putin enquired as to whether the West was still divided: his prime minister, and trusted colleague, stated that there was much division especially in Europe with the Greek financial crisis but more so a fear of conflict, would keep many smaller but geographically important NATO countries out of the war. Fradkov piped up and explained that that division could be increased with some schemes that the SVR had in development. The president turned to his defence minister and queried whether Operation Slava was still viable. The current war plan for a defensive-offensive war would bring success, Zubkov affirmed. How long before it could be put into action? Ten days came the reply. Ten days was a long time Bortnikov and Patrushev both cautioned: could things be done quicker, could the timetable be accelerated? Zubkov addressed his president rather than the other two when he said the Russian Armed Forces needed ten days. A week, even nine or eight days, just wasn’t long enough. Shoygu gave an important input here where he suggested that these ten days could be spent well. The West could be given distractions during that time to take their eye somewhat off the ball. Putin asked whether the GRU could provide those distractions. With quite the eagerness, ahead of Fradkov whose mouth opened to speak up to offer the SVR to do that instead, Shlyakhturov assured his president that the GRU could do just that. There were some things already planned and only needing a green light to go ahead: these were prepared to hamper a NATO attack on Russia.

Patrushev then closed the meeting of Russia’s leadership. Kozak was sent to Minsk and the others set to their own tasks. Putin’s parting words were to remind them that the next ten days would be those which would ensure that the Rodina could be saved. He pulled Shlyakhturov aside as everyone else parted ways and enquired over these distractions. The president was told what they were and was informed that it was to be the start of something called ‘the overture’. Shlyakhturov said that these were perfect, fool-proof plans with complete security around them and utter deniability. Putin would wait and see if that was the case before believing that yet they were going to go ahead regardless.


In the twenty-four hours after the Security Council decision, a trio of mass-casualty tragic events rocked Europe. Two of them were the work of the GRU; the third was a coincidence and a real accident, not a staged one as the other two were. There were more planned GRU staged incidents which were supposed to occur in the following days.

In the North Sea, a Norwegian oil rig was the scene of a fantastic explosion. This occurred below the water where drilling was underway. The platform was rocked from side-to-side and it was fast unstable. It looked like a build-up of pressure, when there were so many safety measures in-place to if not stop then detect that, had occurred. Following on from this, seemingly related, several fires began and took a-hold of the platform. Evacuation measures began but the fire was so fast and there was another underwater blast. Part of the platform collapsed. It was meant to be strengthened to stop that occurring. There were dozens killed and many more trapped. Norwegian rescue efforts were rapidly under way and they called upon help from European neighbours. There were many trapped workers aboard the oil rig who needed saving from a terrible fate if not pulled away from this scene of chaos.

Down in Germany, there was a collision between a passenger train and a freight train. The former was an Intercity Line-5 train on a link which ran from Berlin to the Ruhr and onwards to Basel; the latter was laden with heavy machinery. The crash of one headfirst into the other, when all safety systems were there to stop them being anywhere near each other and certainly not able to possibly collide, occurred between Hannover and Braunschweig. The railway line ran through an area of woodland known as the Hamelerwald and occurred in the darkness. There were dead and injured all over the place. Emergency services converged upon the crash site from across Germany. As was the case with the Norway oil rig fire, governments were distracted and military assistance was sought (for search and rescue roles) due to these events. Yet, with this train crash being on-land, even in a small forest, there was plenty of evidence left laying around of this so-called accident: more than could be found in the sea off Norway.

Over in Warsaw, one the city’s hotels went up in flames. There were many people trapped who needed rescuing and this big event occurred where there was much media access. Poland’s emergency services reacted fast. Quickly, all evidence pointed to faulty electrical wiring which had recently been marked as hazardous but ignored on cost grounds. The accident here though became suspected to be what the oil rig fire and the train crash were: deliberate acts. In the words of the Polish foreign minister when speaking to his colleagues in Brussels, it was a case of ‘once is bad luck, twice is coincidence but three times is enemy action’. Through no fault of his own, Shlyakhturov’s clever scheme was about to fast unravel. It probably would have quickly even without the hotel fire yet that really didn’t help.

Moscow’s state terrorism was soon going to be exposed for what it was.

[James G]

Thirty-Five

The remainder of NATO – with the exceptions of Greece, Turkey & Italy - mobilised on August 1st when the actions committed by Russia were fully exposed for the world to see. It hadn’t taken much for Western intelligence services to figure out that the latest series of disasters were deliberate actions that had been carried out on Moscow’s behalf.

The scenes that took place in the countryside of northern Germany in those following days were ones of chaos. Thirty-seven people had died in the tragic incident, a direct result of actions undertaken by the GRU at the behest of the Kremlin. Amateur and professional footage of ambulances carrying away the wounded and of investigators scouring the remains of the wreckage were shown across Western television news channels, with this incident in Germany gaining far more attention than the equally tragic destruction of the Norwegian oil rig in the North Sea. . The whole thing had been meant to look like an accident, a misfortunate which would distract Germany away from the ongoing international crisis, but this was not to be. There was no evidence of a signal failure anywhere along the routes taken by either train, nor was there any evidence of human error amongst the train drivers which would have caused the incident. The specifics of how such an incident could have been caused were debatable, but almost immediately after the incident, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service – similar to the FBI – the BND, began investigating the train crash as a possible terrorist incident. They were soon able to match the faces of several individuals who had been caught by surveillance cameras near the site of the crash to footage taken at Stuttgart International Airport of group of military-aged men entering Germany via a commercial flight from Kiev. Those individuals had been questioned upon their arrival in Germany at customs & immigration, and they stated that they were members of a Ukrainian rock-band arriving to tour Western Europe; their unlikely cover story had worked and they had been granted access to Germany.

Members of Germany’s GSG-9 police special operations unit raided a suspected safe-house near Munich where the perpetrators of the assault were believed to have gone to ground. A number of personnel from the BND were also present as the raid took place, but the heavily-armed GSG-9 men went in first, expecting the Russians to put up a fight. As expected, the trio of men inside the house fired back with submachine guns at the assault team, leading to two deaths amongst the German police assaulters. All three of the suspected Russian commandos were killed in the assault, leaving Allied intelligence services with no live prisoners to interrogate. Nonetheless, numerous Russian-made firearms and explosive devices were discovered when the location was searched along with large sums of cash and several false passports that the BND believed to have been issued by Russian intelligence. Russia had been behind the train incident and the lives lost were on the hands of the GRU; this was something that the German security establishment was utterly convinced of and so they felt confident enough to present their evidence to the rest of NATO through Brussels.

A number of NATO foreign ministers and secretaries, including US Secretary of State Clinton, were in Brussels, flitting about between NATO’s civilian headquarters and its military counterpart, SHAPE. Their presence was part of a last-ditch effort to bring the world back from the brink of war. Numerous meetings had taken place between representatives from almost all NATO countries along with military and intelligence personnel. The US, Britain, France, Poland and the Baltic States were trying to bring the Germans and the smaller European states to understand that war was now highly likely, in order to get them to mobilise and send their forces eastwards as the larger NATO allies had already started doing.

German intelligence officers briefed the remaining members of the alliance on what they knew about the train crash. Back in Berlin, military chiefs of staff were advising Chancellor Merkel and her cabinet on the military steps that could be taken in response; Germany had started a full-scale mobilisation shortly after the train crash, following in the footsteps of Poland, France and the United Kingdom. Soon, German forces would join their allies in large numbers in Poland to reinforce them further, with the first German Army unit to arrive being the 1st Airmobile Brigade, which was rapidly placed under the command of the US Army’s V Corps, stationed along the Polish border with Belarus. Norway, a country which bordered Russia and subsequently had been in the process of mobilising for several days now, also sent a delegation of military and intelligence officers to Brussels to brief NATO’s political representatives on what they had uncovered while investigating the explosion on their North Sea oil rig. Their evidence was somewhat less damning that what the Germans had shown, but it was still highly suspicious, with a patrol aircraft noting the presence of a Russian submarine in the area of the oil rig less than an hour before the devastating explosion, a submarine which could have carried frogmen carrying explosives. The explosives which had caused the eruption in the first place couldn’t be traced back to the GRU, but the fact that bomb residue had been found at all was damning enough, proving that whatever had happened out there had been a deliberate action and not a horribly coincidental accident. As the nation was already mobilising for war, there was little more that could be done by Oslo except for an increase in security patrols around oil rigs as well as around potential strategic targets around Norway. In an controversial measure, the Norwegian security forces also began detaining suspected Russian infiltrators and collaborators, operating under the authority of Cold War-era emergency protocols meant to defend the country from behind-the-lines attacks.

The reluctant governments of Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and many others, followed suit.

There was no more will to resist what was now seen as inevitable; war was coming and it was better to be prepared. This sentiment was echoed in the United Kingdom when the British government had mobilised its Armed Forces several days prior. Already, roads and railways across Central Europe were flooded with military traffic; virtually all German and Polish airports became military supply hubs with thousands of civilian flights being cancelled. As far as the eye could see, military vehicles trundled down every highway heading eastwards, including massive trucks built to carry tanks and armoured vehicles to the battlefield. Adding to the chaos was the suspension of most American civilian flights as the Civil Reserve Air Fleet was called up. Now, tens of thousands of Allied troops from the more reluctant European nations were also en route to Eastern Europe to join General Petraeus’ Combined Joint Task Force – East, which by now was effectively an Army-level formation, as NATO had planned during previous exercises where this scenario had been practiced. Those watching felt that the world was falling apart around them; this was all supposed to have ended when the wall came down. There wasn’t meant to be the threat of nuclear war dangling over their heads, not now in the Twenty-First Century.





Thirty–Six

Back in 2004, the Blair-led Labour government had brought in the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA). This replaced much of the emergency powers and civil defence acts previously in-place from the Cold War. It had been controversial in its drafting with comments made that should it be brought into force, Britain overnight would become a totalitarian state; its defenders pointed to the guarantees within, such as ensuring that the powers couldn’t overturn the Human Rights Act, which would see to it that that could never happen. The CCA was said to be needed to prepare Britain for 21st Century threats of terrorism and such like. Passed by Parliament, the Act was on the statue book. To come into force, for a sitting government to make use of the many powers within, the CCA needed either Royal Assent from the Monarch via an order-in-council or, in dire emergency, a Minister of the Crown could do that: the former was preferred but the latter was possible.

In the late afternoon of Friday 30th July, the Act came into force. Britain truly prepared for war with this.


All through that day, starting in the early hours and continuing without break, there had been high-level meetings ongoing within the heart of London. These took place in Downing Street and among the ministerial buildings along & near Whitehall as well as across at Buckingham Palace too. News coming in from Germany and Norway of the Russian state terror attacks, then what was being discussed over in Brussels where both NATO and EU foreign ministers and officials were, were a focus of these London meetings though there was also something else going on. The top tier of the British government met in the Cabinet Office building – in the COBRA room – following two violent events which had taken place on British soil the night beforehand. First there had been two deaths at Heathrow Airport where a pair of civilian security guards had been murdered – one had his throat slit; the other shot with a poison-laced bullet (that poison an unknown and lethal substance) – and then there had been a shooting incident out in Gloucestershire near the GCHQ complex where British soldiers had opened fired on a man and killed him. A terror attack on Britain’s biggest airport had been averted by the second of those two guards who raised the alert on time but it had only been luck which had seen that. The other event had been an intelligence-led operation conducted by MI-5 where they were supported by the SAS yet problems had cropped up and the man they were following had gotten free of their surveillance and rushed towards the vital facility which was GCHQ Cheltenham with a vehicle which (correctly) was suspected of containing a bomb. These were Russian attacks. The evidence was there for this, especially with the second attempted attack and the defusing of that bomb. That terrorist in question – believed to be a GRU agent – had arrived in Britain after coming in on a Serbian passport: he’d flown from Belgrade to Amsterdam then on to Dublin before finally ending up at the small Bristol Airport. He’d gotten through Dutch, Irish and then British airport security but gone to a suspected Russian safehouse – one which was hours away from being raided anyway – in Bath to pick up that vehicle. After his shooting a couple of miles short of his target, there’d been that raid on the residential property where others were meant to be yet they had unexplainably disappeared. MI-5 had waited too long and the SAS had no one to nab for them. This whole thing was a mess. The Irish authorities had another man, someone who’d flown to Dublin alongside the supposed Serbian, in their custody because they – not the Dutch who’d let him pass – hadn’t suspected his passport was fake. This man was due to fly to Liverpool but was now being held by the Irish. Flight records showed the two men as travelling together before splitting up and the Irish were being cooperative in holding the man (they had legitimate reason to) but there was no indication of what this man had been planning to do after reaching Britain’s shores coming in through Ireland. As had been the case with the watch on the house in Bristol, the failed watch it must be said for the men inside got away, there were other operations ongoing up and down the country where the authorities had surveillance upon people and properties. Police support for MI-5 was there in most cases; the presence of SAS troopers (in plain clothes but armed to the teeth) was supposed to be for the most-dangerous of threats. Following the Bristol-Cheltenham incident, and the news from Dublin, other raids were authorised. Dawn saw most of these commence where doors were broken down and people arrested: those detainees had passports denoting them as citizens from several countries though all were suspected to be Russians. Five arrests were made while two others sought were shot and killed in exchanges of fire; COBRA had issued the authorisation after the other incidents. The ministers and officials in London where COBRA was meeting were given fragmentary news, issued to them as it came in, and there wasn’t much good in that. At two of the incidents, each where the suspects were killed, there was evidence there that these were certainly Russians due to weapons and equipment seized. With the others in custody, it quickly started to look like the intelligence was faulty and these people were innocent. They were taken away for questioning but nothing looked promising with that. Questions were asked as to how could these apparent multiple mistakes have been made? Had someone set these people up to be watched – using many resources – for the motive of hiding what they were up to elsewhere? The now three deaths of these actual Russians wasn’t something which they were happy to hear at COBRA. Dead men can tell no tales. There had already been the issue in recent days with those men who had been killed by the Germans in Munich rather than captured alive for questioning. Unfortunate diplomatic comments had already been made in recent days coming from Italy’s prime minister about this, which had led to a Berlin-Rome diplomatic spat, and it was something raised among critics here in Britain too. Now a trio of Russians had been killed in Britain. It would be said by some that that was mightily suspicious, wasn’t it? Such people had gone out shooting though and the military teams had had no choice but… there were those who would make trouble from this.

These incidents led to more meetings and decisions being taken. Russian activities like this on British soil were clearly a prelude to attacks such had been seen in Germany and Norway. The country had been lucky so far: that luck wasn’t going to hold. Prime Minister Cameron met with his full Cabinet and then also the Leader of the Opposition. He spoke on the phone to allies abroad from Obama to Sarkozy to Merkel. He attended a military briefing giving the latest news on military preparations observed with Russia’s conventional forces. The decision was made by the afternoon. There were objections, many of them worthy points raised though, unfortunately, a few petty ones too, but there was no other option. War couldn’t be averted with Russia hell-bent on conflict. Thus, the country now needed to be more ready than it already was to face that. He went to see the Queen and then came back to Downing Street again. It was a quarter after three when the Civil Contingencies Act came into force though no announcement was made yet. Time was needed to get things moving: many things had to be done first by the government acting in secret to get ahead of the curve. It was five o’clock before that announcement occurred. Cameron spoke live to the nation from outside Downing Street and told the country that security measures which were going to effect everyday life were now in effect. He explained things as best as he could, striking an even tone of strength but regret, and urged people not to panic. What was being done was to protect the country and the people. Both Clegg and Harman made separate speeches within the hour afterwards (the latter making a big deal out of Parliament being recalled to meet the coming Monday), the Mayor of London made an improvised bombastic speech and Buckingham Palace put out a statement that the Queen would be speaking to the country tomorrow in another live broadcast.


Britain didn’t turn into a totalitarian state.

There were all those powers which the government could use though chose not to do so, not at this time anyway. The CCA was drafted to be flexible in its use. Cameron wasn’t that sort of politician either… plus one day he did hope to be re-elected! Fudges were made, some things weren’t done which with later hindsight they should have been. A lot of the half-measures which were put into place were due to the desire not to utterly collapse the economy. That was going to take a big hit regardless of what was done but national economic suicide wasn’t wanted. There were some civil liberties concerns which saw a few things scaled back too. This was where much of the later regret would come.

The CCA covered many transition to war factors and these were those which were quickly going to have a major impact on the lives of many ordinary people. Airlines, ferry companies and the Channel Tunnel came under state control with the Department of Transport and the MOD but also other government departments empowered to make use of them for the public good. A lot of people were about to have their holidays cancelled – it was summer and the school holidays had just started! – and others were going to end up temporarily stuck. Transportation issues elsewhere across the country were going to be affected too with airports, ports and railways impacted. Internal passenger rail services weren’t cancelled and the roads weren’t shut but the knock-on effects were fast going to be immense: far beyond expectations. There would be petrol rationing as well: the chaos there was also something to be fast occurring as people didn’t listen to the ‘don’t panic’ message. Telecommunications out of the country were also going to be restricted and so too international mail services. Schools and universities were already closed for the holidays so the issues there weren’t what they would have been at other times of the year though there would be no gathering of spectators at public events for sports, music or other events. Those would be exposed targets for hostile action. The Department of Health began instructing hospitals that they were to cancel non-urgent appointments and prepare for casualties. Moving significant sums of money out of the country or making big withdrawals from banks were to be stopped from occurring.

The government put this information out over the airwaves that night with newspapers instructed to print more the coming day. Broadcasters weren’t going to come under direct censorship though the Department of Culture, Media & Sport reserved the powers to see this done. The non-restrictions here where there were CCA powers were typical of the measured approach which Cameron wanted to see done and what he had domestic political support for. There was no dusk-to-dawn curfew nationwide. Civilian conscription wasn’t taking place. Blackouts weren’t about to happen and businesses weren’t about to be nationalised en masse. What was being done wasn’t all that could have been done here.


However, out of the public eye there were things being done where CCA powers were used for Cold War era recognised forms that this modern legislation replaced. More arrests were made nationwide and these weren’t made public. Foreign nationals – especially Russians and those from Russian-friendly nations (the former USSR countries) – were detained in large numbers. The most dangerous ones were to be kept in detention long term though the idea was that most would be released from custody on ‘control orders’. There was confidence at the top in Whitehall that this would work yet others in the know decried this as a sop to soft politicians which was bound to go wrong. There would be those who were correct on this issue and those who were wrong: time would tell on that. Other arrests targeted domestic extremists on the left and the right. Of note, a businessman named Arron Banks and his Russian-born wife, the latter whose naturalisation had a connection to the MP Mike Hancock, were both detained. These detentions would look very political with hindsight and came alongside others which were seen as being a case of politics rather than national security: the government would be later accused of misusing CCA powers.

Security measures nationwide meant that the military was called upon to support the police. There were SAS soldiers and other special forces personnel who would now act openly. So many of Britain’s soldiers were being sent overseas yet those who remained behind – a lot of reservists among them who were recalled to uniform – were to stay to help with national security. There wouldn’t be soldiers patrolling ordinary streets as if this was now a police state yet important infrastructure would have a military presence. The middle of the country’s capital city would have that too with both regular men from the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry as well as TA soldiers (the London Regiment) present. They were meant to be there only to support the police in public order duties if things got very far out of hand. Their main job was to free up officers from guarding tasks and also provide a stronger anti-terror force than the police could. Royalty, politicians and government buildings were going to be guarded by soldiers now. Given increased powers, plus with their numbers bolstered, the Met. Police faced a challenge the next morning where they stopped the gathering of crowds for a pre-planned but now-cancelled peace march. The Stop the War Coalition, supported by the Socialist Workers Party and other groups, had previously applied for and been granted permission to hold a march for Saturday 31st. This wasn’t going to be allowed to happen under CCA measures and official cancellation had already been announced. Still some people tried to come. They wanted to protest against military deployments and any possible war. These weren’t people supporting Russia: they just didn’t want a war. The police did well yet they did fail to get a-hold of many troublemakers in the end. Those people would be back. The impact of the CCA was going to drive a lot of people to do many crazy things in the coming weeks and months: chief among them fighting the authorities.

British military dependants abroad were finally brought home from mainland Europe and the Foreign Office also announced that British civilians overseas would be aided in returning home. There was going to be an almighty mess with the latter with transport problems and bureaucratic cock-ups aplenty taking place there; other Britons chose to stay overseas too even when their host countries wanted them to go. While this was going on, people coming to the UK, others remained flying out. Military personnel were on the move as Britain’s military commitment to support its NATO allies continued. The British Army had its 3rd Mechanised Division was being formed ready to deploy to Poland. This would take some time to achieve yet when it did move, during the coming week, it would also be joined by a Canadian brigade attachment too. Instead of those Canadians, there could have been a reinforcement of the unit by significant numbers of TA troops forming battalions and thus a brigade but the MOD chose not to go down that route. Men and women from Britain’s Territorial Army were instead undergoing refresher training nationwide after being mobilised following the shooting down of that Ryanair passenger jet. The better-trained and already organised Canadians would go with the 3rd Division in their place. At three military airbases in southern and eastern parts of England where the Americans had a significant foot-print, the US Army sent some soldiers to aid them. RAF Fairford, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall had other soldiers flying through them but these men came to deploy to protect each. Three batteries of the four attached to the battalion which was the 3rd of the 2nd Air Defence Artillery Regiment (the other battery being sent to a base in the Netherlands) arrived complete with equipment. That equipment was their Patriot PAC-3 missiles. There were eighteen mobile launchers for these missiles now spread across the countryside – away from the actual bases themselves – where they would provide defence against air and missile attack from hidden dispersed positions. The Patriot had a mixed combat record though the US Army had sent them here to aid the US Air Force. There had been a request made from Fox where the defence secretary had personally asked his counterpart in Washington if another battery could be spared to provide coverage for London; Gates had turned him down on this matter. There wasn’t the spare capacity to go around. The MOD was providing much support in terms of securing ease of basing for this dispersed set up (among woodland and on hill tops, often on private property, the launchers plus gear to allow them to function was located) but the Americans just couldn’t help there with providing coverage over London. As to the 3-2 ADA and its Patriots guarding military sites, they were going to see combat use next month.

[James G]

Thirty-Seven

Turkey was not preparing to go to war with Russia like the rest of NATO was.

The country was mobilising because Russia was preparing to go to war with NATO and such a war would likely be fought in part around Turkey’s borders, but the government of President Abdullah Gul was opposed to the Turkish Armed Forces actually taking part in this conflict. Turkey was a country that had a troubled relationship with the rest of NATO, and itself was not technically on the North Atlantic. The relationship between Turkey and the United States had been on a downward spiral since the end of the Cold War, and that had only been made worse by the incident back in May when Israeli commandos had stormed several ships carrying humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip, killing several Turkish charity workers in the process; when the United States had indicated its support for Israel with a silence that spoke volumes in Ankara, Turkey had been enraged. A series of as-yet undiscovered ‘active measures’ undertaken by Russia’s SVR only made that worse, causing protests outside the NATO airbase at Incirlik in Turkey.


There were many individuals within the Turkish Armed Forces who resented President Gul’s reluctance to support NATO.

Turkey benefited from membership to that alliance as much as she gave. Another factor in causing dissent within the Turkish military was the slide towards Islamism that was taking place, and the breaking apart of secular government.

Throughout the end of July, Turkish military officers, led by the Chief of the General Staff, General İlker Başbuğ, began plotting an attempt to remove President Gul and his supporters in Parliament from their positions. Turkey was no stranger to military interventions of this sort, with numerous coups having taken place during the Cold War and even during the 1990s. The government had not been particularly worried about the prospect of a military takeover, however, having viewed such things as part of the past and not likely in the future.

Years earlier, several purges of the officer corps had taken place with potentially mutinous soldiers imprisoned or cashiered. From within the Armed Forces though, dissent was rising as several senior officers moved to oust President Gul from office and ensure the continuation of a secular, non-religious government, the type of government which had ruled Turkey since the end of the Second World War and ensured a stable relationship between Turkey and the United States as well as other NATO allies. Several meetings between Turkish military officers and American liaison personnel had taken place at Incirlik Airbase over the previous couple of days, though there was little information available as to what conversations had transpired during these meetings.

On the evening of August 1st, 2010, the Turkish Armed Forces moved to take control of the country and establish their own form of government.

It began when Brigadier General Zekai Aksakallı, a senior figure within the Turkish Special Forces community and an officer that was ardently opposed to the coup, was shot dead by commandos of the Turkish Special Forces. Those elite soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes and carried submachine guns, appearing on a pair of motorcycles outside the Turkish Ministry of National Defence in Ankara. They cut down Aksakalli in a storm of automatic gunfire and then sped off into the night away from terrified onlookers. With the killing of Aksakalli, the coup was on.


General İlker Başbuğ made radio contact with officers loyal to him in several different areas of the country, using secure networks to do so. F-4 Phantom strike fighters of the Turkish Air Force scrambled to provide air cover for the plotters, taking up positions above Ankara as a no-fly zone was hastily declared. Those warplanes had flown from Eskişehir Airbase, the base commander of which was loyal to General Başbuğ. Troops from the Turkish Land Forces’ IV Corps moved in around Ankara to secure vital areas of the Turkish capital. Troops from 1st Commando Brigade flew in by helicopter, landing at the Ministry of National Defence and gunning down several security guards who tried to resist.

More operators attempted to seize President Gul at his residence on the outskirts of the city; Gul was able to escape, with this being made possible by the rapid efforts of his security staff after they were tipped off by Turkish Air Force major stationed at the Ministry of National Defence. More soldiers, belonging to 28th Mechanized Infantry Brigade and 2nd Commando Brigade, moved in by armoured vehicles and trucks to secure more sites around Ankara. They took the Parliament building and Ankara-Esenboğa International Airport, rapidly seizing control of much of the country’s infrastructure. More soldiers from the II Corps moved to secure bridges over the Bosporus Strait, cutting off Istanbul from the remainder of Turkey. Initially, it appeared as the putsch was going smoothly.

It would not be long before things fell apart.

President Gul’s security guards took him to Merzifon Airbase, a facility whose commander remained loyal to his government and opposed to the conspiracy. There, he was able to set up a call with Turkish Radio & Television Corporation, sending out the message that he was alive and well at a ‘secure location’. Thousands quickly took to the streets to protest the coup. Soldiers stationed on the Bosporus Bridge fired on civilians, killing twenty-three people, before they themselves came under attack by troops from the Turkish Land Forces’ III Corps, whose commander over in Istanbul was on the fence with regards to who he would support until President Gul’s television address reached his headquarters. His troops went forwards along with local police officers and civilians, forcing the surrender of the troops stationed on the bridge.

At Merzifon Airbase, President Gul and loyalist military officers began plotting a counter-coup as the tables rapidly turned with the recapture of the Bosporus. Briefly, it looked as though Turkey would descend into civil war, but this was to be avoided. F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets took off from Gul’s location, quickly entering the airspace over Ankara and shooting down a trio of the outdated F-4s flown by pro-coup pilots. Moving rapidly across the countryside, troops from the pro-Gul IX Corps, based further east near the Georgian border, launched an operation to retake the Turkish capital city and restore President Gul’s government. They met heavy resistance on the outskirts of the city from 2nd Commando Brigade, with a battle taking place that left forty-five pro-coup troops dead along with sixteen loyalist soldiers and officers. The anti-Gul forces withdrew from the outskirts of the city, harassed by rioting civilians and police officers as they moved, with loyalist civilians trying to block their escape.

Members of 1st Commando Brigade, stationed around the Ministry of National Defence and the Parliament building, were overwhelmed by mechanized infantry of the loyalist 25th Mechanized Brigade and forced to lay down their arms. Troops and police stormed the Ministry of National Defence and arrested those personnel who had been involved in the treasonous conspiracy. They were treated brutally, cuffed and thrown to the ground before being repeatedly beaten; a particularly dire future awaited them. The last remaining pro-coup forces were from the IV Corps of the Turkish Land Forces. They withdrew to Ankara-Esenboğa International Airport, where they believed they could mount a strong enough defence to buy time for a second attempt to be made to remove President Gul. This was not to be though; 4th Armored Brigade attacked the putschist’ stronghold, using M-60 main battle tanks and covered by attack helicopters. After only an hour of fighting, the airport was back under the control of loyalist forces, and the coup was put down.

President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan were horrified by what had happened.


Thorough investigations were ordered immediately after the plot was subdued, and within days, thousands of military officers, intelligence personnel, parliamentarians and academics were arrested for the part they had played in the conspiracy.

Moscow saw an opportunity here to drive Turkey yet further away from NATO. President Gul was requested for a meeting with the Russian ambassador and agreed to such a thing, with the ambassador informing Gul that Russian operatives had proof that the CIA had taken part in the planning of the coup against him. Sure enough, the ambassador offered photographs of meetings between American military officers at Incirlik Airbase and several Turkish officers who were currently in custody following the fighting. Under interrogation, some of those prisoners did talk of meetings involving American personnel which covered the possibility of a coup to bring Turkey back to NATO. The ambassador also presented Gul with a doctored recording of a telephone conversation between General Başbuğ and the American military liaison in Ankara; this piece of evidence was fabricated, but it was a very good fake, and the photographs and confessions already proven to the enraged Gul that this plot against him was the work of the United States, whose motive had been to ensure that Turkey would fight alongside NATO if and when war broke out.





Thirty–Eight

The first several days of August saw the opening of armed attacks occurring in Estonia and Latvia – not in Lithuania though – where Russian separatists struck at the government and authorities there. These were orchestrated by Russia and in fact supported on the ground too by their operatives. The lie told was that these were oppressed locals striking blows for freedom: the reality was that this was all part of the last stage of pre-conflict tension coming from the Kremlin. Failure had come with the overture acts across the rest of Europe yet the schedule remained for everything else. In many ways, these actions undertaken in two of the three Baltic States weren’t that unexpected. The governments in Tallinn and Riga were expecting this to occur though were taken aback by the scale of it all and successes had when they had believed that they were more prepared than they ultimately were to defend against these. NATO’s senior leadership wasn’t surprised either. Such a thing had been anticipated and it was something mentioned three times the week beforehand as soon to occur when Obama was delivered his Presidential Daily Briefing by the US Intelligence Community. The Russians were certain to do this, he was told, to provide them with an excuse to move in to ‘restore order’ and ‘protect ethnic Russians’. They would also see this commence in spite of last month’s obstruction of their preparations when the CIA had seized one of the major weapons suppliers to these groups in that snatch mission in Prague. Once the attacks happened, later than projected, it was apparent that the delay had come from the disruption caused with the Prague operation. What hadn’t been mentioned to Obama, nor what anyone else had thought would happen, was that the Russians would send their own people into the fight and that they too would target NATO forces on the ground as well.

Gun and bomb attacks were made in parts of Estonia and Latvia where there were large minority or even small majority Russian-speaking populations within each country. Claims of responsibility were made by previous unheard-of groups supposed fighting for freedom. A barrage of internal and external propaganda came with this. What was important though was the perceived chaos that could be shown to be occurring in these regions which a-joining or were near to Russia itself. This was an operation undertaken by the FSB, not the GRU or the SVR. Back in Moscow, Bortnikov had pointed to the ‘failures’ made by the two other organisations and wormed his way into getting approval for Russian domestic intelligence agency to strike abroad. This action on what was supposed to be the turf of the others was all about the major internal rivalry between the three – the FSB being the most powerful of them all yet without complete dominance – though sold to the Russian Security Council as a smart move. The FSB had the necessary experience for this and would be acting within communities of Russian speakers just outside Russia’s borders. Moreover, the FSB long had intelligence ties within the two nations, which included ethnic Russians but also native Estonians & Latvians who would betray their own country, to exploit here. Bortnikov had gotten his way and been authorised to see this done. Northern and north-eastern parts of Estonia as well as the central belt of Latvia (from Riga on the Baltic coast following the course of the Daugava through the middle of the country all the way to the Russian border) saw a multitude of deadly attacks. FSB officers directed attacks by local terrorists – or freedom fighters if one chose to believe the propaganda – against the authorities and selected military sites. On a few occasions, the FSB itself used its own men to take a direct role though that was the exception rather than the rule. Where the FSB had its own men used in force, and exclusively too, was when they struck against the NATO military presence which could be found in Latvia. Both the multinational Baltic Mechanised Brigade and also the US Army’s Green Berets were targeted.

Dutch and German troops with the German-led battalion-sized battle group (there were Slovenians there too yet who didn’t come under fire) were shelled with mortars when in their dispersed staging area within the Latvian countryside. Large-calibre projectiles were fired from several directions and were well-aimed. An immediate move by an on-alert reaction force to move out and engage the attackers was cut down by IEDs and then machine gun fire. Some of these men had fought in Afghanistan when part of their country’s commitment to ISAF and faced similar attacks from the Taliban though nothing this deadly and nor from an attacker which fast vanished into the countryside. There were four men dead, fifteen injured and a lot more rather shook up at what they had suddenly faced. Bortnikov had confidently assured his colleagues that afterwards these troops would go out on the rampage using maximum force to hunt down their attackers and that could be exploited: the Germans are on the march like it is 1941 again! Alas, instead it was Latvian soldiers themselves who tried to hunt down those attackers – to no avail – while the NATO soldiers left their encampment for a secondary site. What the FSB had hoped to see where the situation on the ground could be further inflamed wasn’t here. Tactically, they had done very well. It was only politics which failed them.

Hitting the Green Berets with the 10th Special Forces Group (10 SFG) was done the following day. A different FSB team was used here, men who had combat experience of bloody counter-insurgency work in the Caucasus. These men weren’t paramilitaries nor were they soldiers: they were just killers. Aided by local intelligence, they struck at the field base camp for a company of the 10 SFG. Here, the company support elements – the B Team – was located which supported the six A Teams further out aiding Latvian preparations for war. One A Team, ODA0125, was back at the base camp and the FSB weren’t expecting their presence. An attempt at covert entry to kill support personnel and kidnap prisoners for interrogation was detected in the nick of time. A furious fire fight occurred. Both sides lost men who ended up dead and prisoner. Following the Russian pull-out, they took the company XO, an experienced captain, with them (wounded but dragged away) but left two of their own dead men behind. The Americans were left with a live captive – his FSB colleagues thought he was dead – but had three of their people killed. The prisoners that each side had in their custody afterwards weren’t going to face a nice time in custody. Each would be pressed for information. Not knowing that they had left a man alive who could talk, the Russians didn’t hunt for him initially. A few days later, the FSB was tipped off by a local traitor high up in the Latvian Armed Forces but by then it was too late to find their man. As to the Americans, they knew at once that the Russians had one of theirs. They threw everything that they had at finding him. Back in Washington, Obama and Gates were personally briefed on the hunt for the Green Beret held. He and his kidnappers couldn’t be found though. It was understood that all knowledge in his head was being drained from him but nothing could be done to stop that.


Away from the violence seen in the Baltic States, Russian preparations for war commenced. This moved to an advanced stage now. There was a lot of effort to conceal what was going on with camouflage and deception, as well as all of the distractions offered elsewhere, yet it was impossible to hide everything. There was a belief that so much of what was being done was being successfully hidden… but how could Russia be sure that that was the case?

The Russian Navy put its ships to sea. Many submarines were already out, with more following, but the beginning of August saw the four fleets of the Russian Navy start to deploy surface vessels. The Northern, Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific Fleets each significantly increased their at-sea presence where coastal screening forces were now joined by larger vessels. Battle groups were formed. These didn’t yet move too far away from the bases from which they had deployed. What they did instead was to concentrate. This couldn’t be hidden from NATO surveillance though the Russians hoped that as the West’s many intelligence-gathering assets focused on the big ships, the majority of the missing submarines wouldn’t be noted as being absent from port. Even if they were, if the deception efforts failed, NATO could hardly be expected to get a track on them this early or maybe never at all. The submarines joined others already at sea and set off towards their designated wartime operational areas. As to the surface fleets which assembled close to Russian shores, these were covered by land-based air power. The Cold War era force of hundreds of missile-carrying bombers had been much reduced though there were still some of those available. Furthermore, both the Baltic Fleet and the Black Sea Fleet had support from tactical aircraft flying from land and these were capable aircraft. To aid in the distraction effort in the Baltic where Russian submarines were moving about in far-shallower waters than they would have liked to have operated in, several flights of these tactical aircraft assigned to the Baltic Fleet (from Russian Naval Aviation yet also Russian Air Force unit on temporary tasking) upped the scale of air operations against NATO warships in the Baltic. NATO had increased its number of vessels and brought many together in tactical formations. Russian Su-24s and Su-27s – Fencers and Flankers – made mock attacks at low-level and swarmed right among the flotillas. They practically dared NATO to open fire on them. Radio messages came from below warning them off while sailors reported being able to read aircraft markings from some of these aircraft due to how close they came. Only when NATO fighters showed up, drawn away from other missions, did the Russians pull away. Other flights undertaken by Flankers, coming from Kaliningrad yet also the St. Petersburg area, made unfriendly interceptions of NATO maritime surveillance aircraft. These were out looking for the submarines that the Russians wanted NATO to stay away from. The high-profile intimidation of surface ships masked the more-important effort to scaring away the unarmed submarine-hunters.

Back on land, the mass of Russian and Belorussian armoured forces were on the borders of the Baltic States and Poland. NATO intelligence summaries of these read like it was the Cold War again with ‘guards tanks divisions’ and ‘guards motor rifle brigades’ aplenty. Russian camouflage measures – the infamous maskirovka – hid some of what was there but nowhere near enough. It was just impossible to do with satellites looking down from space but also reconnaissance aircraft back over the border in NATO airspace which aimed their detection systems eastwards. Games were played by the Russians where they used disinformation in the electronic sphere and also on the ground physically to not allow NATO to get an accurate read on what they had ready. The best thing to do would be for NATO not to know they were there but in the absence of that, they tried their best to confuse their opponents. Reports were filed from subordinates up the chain of command to superiors stating that this was all working and NATO knew nothing true. As was the case elsewhere, the truth was that the Russians couldn’t be sure if this was all working. Regardless, they sill tried hard to achieve their aim.

Among the ongoing maskirovka, specialist Russian and Belorussian forces were busy making their own preparations for when this massed force soon moved forward into battle. Electronic warfare teams were fine-turning their equipment ready to use these in an offensive fashion when the shooting started. There was a belief that a lot of success would come with these in disrupting NATO tactical and strategic communications but also exploiting what could be gained from those not jammed and left active instead by listening in. Air defence and tactical missiles units had mobile equipment like their electronic warfare counterparts. Launchers for SAMs and SSMs would be moving forward behind the combat elements into battle. They would stay on the move while the war was fought. These offensive elements (the SAMs would be used in that role primarily with less emphasis on any form of static defence; the SSMs were pure offensive weapons) of the attacking force waited to turn their weapons loose. Their time to do that was coming.

Soon.

[James G]

Thirty-Nine

There were three NATO countries that were specifically and pointedly not mobilising for war in the same capacity as the rest of the Alliance. While NATO forces across the continent had gone on alert and been sent eastwards against the looming threat posed by Russia, the governments of Italy, Greece, and Turkey remained staunchly neutral in the crisis, determined not to get involved in the oncoming conflict. There were a variety of reasons for this across all three nations’, with the principle one being domestic opposition to the idea of a major war in Europe. There had been disagreements with Turkey that were far more blatant, with that country withdrawing its military personnel from NATO assignments following the failed coup d’état against President Gul.

Greece was wracked by financial crisis, and the government of Prime Minister George Papandreou couldn’t face the possibility of being forced to fight a war against Russia, a war in which his own country would be on the frontlines and would almost certainly fall victim to attack from the air or even to an amphibious assault along the coast, opening up the Bosporus for Russian warships to traverse through. Greece was pointedly not deploying its own relatively large military alongside its NATO allies. The threat of attacks directly against Hellenic soil was simply too much for the government to allow, and combined with Greece’s economically ruinous state, Papandreou’s government wasn’t willing to take the country to war. Of course, it didn’t help that Germany had refused to grant Greece an emergency loan earlier in 2010; many would see Greece’s refusal to stand alongside her allies as an act of revenge for the failure of the rest of Europe to come to Greece’s aid financially. Personnel from Russia’s SVR quietly talked with Greek officials throughout those final days of peace, ensuring that Papandreou was aware that a neutral Greece would not face any military action from Russia; neutrality was all that was required to avoid the bombing of Greek cities by Russian warplanes.

Italy faced a rather different form of bullying from Russia’s intelligence services.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the head of government of Italy, had always held a fairly warm relationship with President Vladimir Putin. Berlusconi was also scandal-ridden politician with a long and sordid history. There were allegations of corruption and bribery against him when it came to several business projects, and on numerous occasions the Italian Prime Minister had been accused of holding wild sex parties involving prostitutes and illegal narcotics. However, there was little to no evidence of these events that could ever lead to criminal prosecution for Berlusconi himself. However, the SVR new of one particular dirty little secret which would change that fact. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service had been searching for such damning Kompromat against western politicians in general since the end of the Georgia War of 2008, and in the case of Berlusconi they had been more successful than had ever been anticipated.

The SVR had uncovered that the Italian Prime Minister had been involved in the sexual abuse of a child. A teenage Moroccan girl who worked as a prostitute in Italy had been found to have attended a ‘party’ at Berlusconi’s villa, where a bizarre sex ritual had been performed. Sex offenders in general are viewed in a particularly negative light in the prison system and for a man of Berlusconi’s stature, the public humiliation of this all coming to light and the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence was too horrifying a thought to contemplate.

Moscow’s ambassador to Italy, after being briefed by personnel from the SVR, paid a visit to the Italian Prime Minister. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the two men were left alone and the ambassador got to work. He was himself truly a diplomat and not a spy, but in his tenure as a civil servant he had worked with people from the SVR & GRU and new how to behave when conducting operations such as these. The ambassador told Berlusconi that it was in Italy’s best interest to remain neutral. Berlusconi was shown plans for missile attacks against Milan and Rome, and informed that should any ‘hypothetical’ conflict escalate into nuclear war, Italy would definitely be a target for nuclear annihilation if it joined in the fighting. The ambassador then coyly told Berlusconi what the SVR new about his numerous encounters with the aforementioned Moroccan girl. Moscow’s representative was wonderfully skilful in his hinting towards Berlusconi at his knowledge of the scandal and about the ‘friends’ Moscow could make in the Italian media or the police were this information to fall into the hands of someone outside Berlusconi’s inner circle of entrusted people.

The release of information such as that would ruin Berlusconi’s life. He would face impeachment, imprisonment and public humiliation that would last for the remainder of his life. Again, the ambassador told Berlusconi that it was in Italy’s best interests to remain neutral. No Italian Military forces were mobilised beyond preparatory steps in those last days of peace in Europe. Berlusconi wasn’t going to take Italy to war with Russia, but he did vow that Italy would defend its own airspace and waters from attack. NATO forces weren’t asked to leave Italy and there was confusion at SHAPE as to what this would mean when war did break out and how that would be dealt with.

Italian military officers and spooks committed treason on August 4th.

Their actions were thoroughly illegal but also thoroughly justified. When it had been announced the previous day that the Italian Armed Forces wouldn’t be deploying with their NATO allies, there had been fury amongst senior military personnel. They didn’t want a war, of course, but Italy was obligated by treaty to fight one if and when Russia attacked the Baltic States, and for this commitment to be ignored by Berlusconi was an outrage to them. There would be no military coup like what had taken place in Russia, and no tanks would take to the streets to overthrow the government, but officers in the Italian Armed Forces acted against the law nonetheless in resisting Berlusconi’s orders.

Italy’s military and civilian intelligence organisations began investigating possible links between Berlusconi and the Kremlin; in addition to this, senior military officers assigned to the NATO headquarters began informing their American and British counterparts that it was suspected by Italian intelligence that Berlusconi was colluding with Moscow, be that willingly or through some form of coercion. Contacts were sought in Parliament between senior soldiers and parliamentarians who respected Italy’s NATO obligations as evidence to bring down Berlusconi was sought. It was all being done very discretely with nobody having any desire to be caught and face prosecution themselves, but the Central Intelligence Agency offered all the help it could give in bringing Italy back to the NATO alliance and having that country’s armed forces fight against Russia as war loomed.

Turkey was the third and final NATO country to refuse its obligations. This was because President Gul believed that the CIA had played a part in orchestrating the failed coup attempt that had occured days ago. Roundups of military officers whose involvement was suspected were still ongoing, and from what the SVR was telling their Turkish counterparts it seemed as though the United States had sought to overthrow President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan to put a new, more amiable government into power and ensure that Turkey fought against Russia. President Gul had no intention of bringing his country into a war against Russia, whose intelligence services were performing a very useful role to Turkey by informing them about American operations going on there. Turkey had decided to expel NATO forces from Incirlik Airbase on its soil, marking the effective end of its membership of the alliance. As well as declaring that Turkey would not deploy forces northwards into Europe, President Gul announced that Turkey was closing the Bosporus to any military warships – NATO or otherwise - until further notice. This would prevent NATO warships from entering the Black Sea and engaging Russian forces there, which could prove to be disastrous in a military campaign.

The US Sixth Fleet had been preparing to send more warships into that enclosed area of water to reinforce the NATO shipping already present, but without the ability to do that it was likely that NATO could lose its entire fleet there to Russian land-based airpower and submarine attacks.

There were fierce debates amongst the Sixth Fleet’s headquarters staff. The Sixth Fleet was undoubtedly the NATO formation most affected by the refusal of Turkey, Greece, and Italy to honour their treaty obligations. Vice Admiral Harry Harris, Sixth Fleet commander, was deeply troubled by what was going on. Without access to the Black Sea he couldn’t reinforce his isolated task force there, and with the Italians staying neutral he was missing a good chunk of the land-based air cover as well as a good number of anti-submarine warfare vessels that would otherwise be supporting him. With no other option, Harris ordered the Stennis carrier strike group to head eastwards towards the Bosporus and take up position there, not entering the Strait.

If and when war came, Harris could order his surface forces to go through the Bosporus, if necessary fighting their way through Turkish forces to get there; that situation was not considered likely, but the prospect of Turkish forces resisting NATO entry into the Black Sea was something that Sixth Fleet had to at least contemplate. For now, Sixth Fleet moved to its pre-war positions in the Eastern Mediterranean, ready to strike when the time came.

And it was coming.




Forty

According to Russian state media, the Baltic States were in a situation of chaos. Towns and cities were burning, there was gunfire everywhere and a full-scale genocide was going on where ‘native Russians’ were being slaughtered by the governments of those countries, aided by NATO in this too. The stories coming out of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were horrible to hear for any Russian at home or aboard. All of those poor people were helpless there in the face of these massacres of the innocents! Pleas were heard from purported victims of what was happened where they begged the Rodina to come and save them. Naturally, this was all a lie. For such events as these to be taking place in the Baltic States was a wholly preposterous idea. When footage of what Russian television was showing was seen in the West, on the face of it this was something to laugh at. That wasn’t what was happening and it certainly wasn’t being done with NATO troops! Yet, it was no laughing matter. This was what was being broadcast to the Russian people. While not dumb and foolish enough to believe everything that their government would tell them, it was all that those in Russia saw. They heard no criticism of this story. The evidence presented to them of these so-called states of chaos might not have been overwhelming yet nothing came to counter that narrative. Only one story was told and many believed what they were told on that. Those who didn’t, and there were many of them too, had nothing to use in arguments with their enraged countrymen to disprove these assertions which were all over the media. Enough anger rose within Russia to make the whole effort worth it. The people were told that others were demanding that action be taken and were asked themselves whether they wanted action taken too. From across Russia, the answer that was portrayed here to everyone else was that all Russians wanted to see this stopped and they should join in too. Playing with public emotions like this where rage was whipped up was dangerous for any government as these things can easily spin out of control. In the Kremlin, the Russian leadership believed that they could control the anger and keep it directed where it needed to be.

Lies were being told in the Russian media but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t violence taking place inside Estonia and Latvia among areas where ethnic Russians lived. There had been shootings. There had been explosions. People had been killed. However, none of it was on the scale as depicted back over in Russia and what was occurring was pretty much the opposite of the story being told. It wasn’t the authorities in these two small nations attacking innocent civilians but rather groups of Kremlin-created militia, supported by professional state terrorists, who were committing these acts of violence. They targeted Estonian and Latvian government forces when acting as freedom fighters though then played the agent provocateur role by donning the necessary uniforms to give off the lie that they were acting for those. When in that secondary role, mostly carried out by the FSB men not the locals, the false flag terror attacks targeted ethnic Russians. The attackers had a lot in their favour with good intelligence, support from traitors (many of whom didn’t understand their role in what they were doing), access to weaponry and motivation. What they didn’t have though was neither the element of surprise, the numbers nor free movement. Estonia and Latvia were locked down. A huge internal security effort was underway and it suffocated the movement of the attackers as well as their ability to deliver any real significant blows to either country more than many unnecessary deaths. Security forces returned fire on attackers where they encountered them on the defence. Moreover, sweeps were conducted through identified vulnerable areas to take on their enemy before they could strike at fixed points.

What came from all of this was a great loss of life. Dozens upon dozens were killed over the course of several days. Latvia was harder hit than Estonia was – Lithuania remained unaffected – in all of this. Chaos and anarchy, as the Russian media said it was, wasn’t there yet the situation couldn’t be dismissed. The penetration into these countries of Russian proxies and even some of their own men (another live FSB prisoner was taken to add to the one that the Americans had to prove this) showed how exposed each was. Months of getting ready for this hadn’t stopped what had come. From Tallinn and Riga, requests were made by the two governments for their NATO allies to give further support than they already were to stop more attacks coming. They’d thought their borders were secure from infiltration and they were prepared to cut down attempts at violence within yet been wrong there. There was some evidence that the attackers had taken grievous losses and blown their load leaving them unable to keep this up but that couldn’t be assured. Further acts of violence, stronger than before and this time using more Russian rather than locals, could occur though. Tallinn and Riga could have been wrong in thinking they had had as much success as they had: the couldn’t take the chance here. What was asked for was for fighting men – special forces preferably – to enter the battle to add to the aerial coverage, intelligence aid and the already present troop commitment given to Estonia and Latvia. The requests were made all the way to the top of NATO. These pleas were discussed at the highest level. Out of politeness, the rest of NATO talked over the matter though had no intention of sending more men. To deploy them into the region was to send them to their doom because the Baltic States were near-surrounded by Russian and Belorussian forces. Should they move in, anyone on the ground would be trapped. NATO still hoped that last ditch efforts at diplomacy and Putin reconsidering would stop conflict occurring: putting soldiers into Estonia and Latvia wasn’t going to do any good on that note.


The ‘China tip’ came from Australia.

An officer with the Australian SIS – pretty much similar to Britain’s MI-6 rather than the American CIA – was being worked by a Chinese counterpart in Beijing though the Australian was trying to turn his contact instead. The complicated game of spies between these two men was interrupted when the Russians came to town. The Australian SIS couldn’t get access to the discussions through their contact though the Americans were informed through the Five Eyes agreement that the Russian foreign minister was in Beijing meeting with the Chinese leadership and the topic at hand was to ensure Chinese neutrality in a conflict between Russia and the West. The CIA took over trying to uncover what was going on though the initial involvement of the Australia’s intelligence service would have some interesting after-effects down the line in the form of the entry to Australia to fight alongside its traditional allies in the coming conflict. That was for later though. For now, the CIA sent its own people to do all that they could to listen in on the Chinese-Russian talks. Back home, there were discussions in Washington as to whether active interference could be made to sabotage relations between Beijing and Moscow. It was (correctly) hypothesised that Russia wouldn’t go to war without having to worry about the Chinese stabbing them in the back. If it looked like the Chinese might then maybe…

Alas, that wasn’t to be. Kozak arrived in Beijing to seal an already struck deal. Russia had left things late with regards to China but not that late. The Chinese had been approached nearly a week beforehand – straight after the Russian Security Council made the decision to go to war – with a request from the Kremlin for Chinese neutrality. It had been dressed up in diplomatic terms so as to not cause offence to the notoriously picky Chinese leadership, but that was the gist of it. Beijing had urged Moscow to consider what they were getting into: in other words, are you out of your minds!? The Russian position had been explained. China had still urged Russia to sort this out diplomatically and even make overt threats to the West if necessary but stated that they believed that war was the worst thing that could be done. The Kremlin hadn’t listened to that advice and reaffirmed the determination – even when China offered to act as an honest broker in Russia-NATO talks – for war. In the end, exasperated at the turn of events, the Chinese let the Russians know that what occurred was to be none of their concern as long as their own interests weren’t threatened. Russia said that it wouldn’t put those in danger. Chinese neutrality, no stab in the back coming from Russia’s eastern neighbour, was thus ensured. Compared to the problems Russia was having with other allies (and Kozak had promised a lot on what he couldn’t now deliver) this was seen as a great success.

The ink was barely dry on the agreement struck in Beijing when Zubkov started issuing orders for a military redeployment of Russian military forces from the eastern side of the giant country which was Russia across to the western side. There had already been the transfer of some forces in the preceding months, though in these last days of peace there came a larger movement. None were going to be in-place by the time the shooting started but there was a hurry to get them westwards as soon as possible. Too much hurry was employed and accidents occurred. A major one of these was a derailment of a freight train in western Siberia: that freight being ammunition. From barracks near the town of Aleysk and on the way to the city of Novosibirsk, going up the Turkestan-Siberia Railway to join the Trans-Siberian Railway, a mass of ammunition for a deploying motor rifle division was being moved. Like vehicles and other equipment, the ammunition was being moved ahead of the fighting men along a very busy railroad. Human error caused the accident but organisational mismanagement was responsible for the unsafe packaging and inadequate safe loading of the ammunition. One explosion led to another to another… and so on. The whole load carried on the train – bullet, shells, rockets and missiles – eventually went up. There was devastation for miles around across the harsh Siberian landscape.

The explosions late on August 4th were seen from above. American satellites above Russia with the DSP programme detected the blasts. There were only a few moments of concern from those monitoring the feed looking for missile launches because the detection systems, despite the intensity of the blasts, correctly summarised these as not being the heat of missile launches but rather explosions on the ground. Once that was out of the way, American attention remained though. The Aleysk garrison was well known about and so was the rail link from there onwards. Now a different sort of attention was now paid here. Other satellites with difference equipment were tasked to sweep over Russian military sites through Siberia and across the wider Russian Far East. Similar sights to what was being seen at Aleysk – not the train crash scene but the military base – were observed at these. Russian military forces, ground and air, were on the move. Analysis summarised that a trio of combat divisions (about 40% of what was left east of the Urals in terms of regular Russian combat formations) were on the move but alongside them, and of greater importance, was all of the combat support and service support assets underway too. There were brigades of artillery, rockets, SAMs and combat engineers and well as transport, signal and logistics units. They were all on the move. They were all heading westwards.

[James G]

Forty-One – Interlude One: The tension in the air


1930 Local Time, August 6th
Four miles west of the Russian-Estonian border

And there’s me, in my slouch hat, with my SLR and greens/God help me, I was only 19

Captain Jack Hastings, United States Army, sat on his sleeping bag, his back slumped against a tree. The Estonian woodland in which he and his men were positioned lay directly opposite the Russian border, and the men of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 325th Parachute Infantry Regiment had a direct view of the highway down which Russian tanks were soon to come swarming. He was chewing tobacco – a habit which he had kicked after his second tour in Afghanistan and only slipped back into last week – as he wrote a note to his wife. Sandy was back home in Georgia, sitting in their apartment outside Fort Bragg and waiting for news from her husband. She was a teacher, meaning that there was little work for her to do, as the schools had closed up for the summer. Hastings reasoned that the schools probably would have closed anyway due to the crisis.

Moments before Jack had left leaving he’d talked to her about spending her summer tutoring kids from school; she’d been outwardly receptive, but he suspected she was just trying to put on a brave face before Hastings left. This wasn’t the first time he had deployed; there had been two gruelling trips to Afghanistan, once as a platoon commander and then again as a staff officer attached to the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force, which commanded NATO troops in that war-torn Asian country.

He’d been returned to the airborne back in June as the crisis with Russia worsened. Things had changed since Afghanistan; this time, the threat briefings and field exercises were focused on countering a so-called ‘peer-level’ threat, an enemy with tanks and artillery and helicopters, rather than an opponent who hid amongst civilians and popped his head up to shoot you in the back. Captain Hastings still didn’t know which one was the worse type of enemy to be facing.

“Evening, sir,” a confident voice, one that commanded attention, said beside him. First Sergeant Tanner, the senior non-com in Charlie Company, appeared. Tanner had nearly two decades of experience in the 82nd, having fought in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and both Gulf Wars. He still had shrapnel from a Serb mortar lodged in his thigh to prove that.

“Master Sergeant,” he greeted, looking up from his notepad and nodding curtly. There were to be no salutes exchanged this close to the border; Russian snipers, or more likely ethnic Russians living in Estonia and supported by Russian advisors, could use them to identify officers as targets.

There had already been attacks by Russian and Russian-backed elements on NATO forces in Estonia and Latvia, with some of those strikes leading to a significant number of casualties. Members of the US Army’s 10th Special Forces Group were mounting armed patrols along the regions of both Estonia and Latvia that bordered Russia or Belarus, working with forces from both of those Baltic countries to do so.

“How was the border, sir?” Tanner queried.

Earlier that day, Captain Hastings had accompanied one of those twelve-man ‘Alpha Teams’ surveying the Russian border just north of the town of Narva, which was located right on the borderline. They’d hidden on in woodlands much similar to those his company was dug into now, watching tanks and armoured vehicles moving into pre-attack positions while supplies of ammunition and fuel were delivered by huge Gaz trucks. Though Hastings and his Special Forces companions had been on the Estonian side of the border, they’d been able to witness all of this taking place to the east with their binoculars. What he had seen told him that the Russians would inevitably come storming over the border towards Hastings and his men.

“We saw what expected to see, top.” The patrol had reported what they had witnessed up to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team’s tactical operations centre to the west, and that information had been passed back down to officers and NCOs at company level. Tanner knew what had been spotted along the border; he was asking what his company commander specifically made of it. Hastings continued. “At least a brigade is coming to come towards us, probably under heavy air and arty support.” The company first sergeant new that already from his various briefings in past couple of days, but he hadn’t seen what had been on the other side of that border for himself, unlike Captain Hastings.

“And the Russians now how to use it,” Tanner answered, “not like Saddam’s boys.”

“I don’t like how isolated we are either. Any reinforcements have to fight their way through the Baltics or come to us by sea.” Hastings, as a company commander, had a general idea of the military situation around Eastern Europe, but to know much more than he did was way above his paygrade. He had no idea how NATO planned to reinforce his cut-off brigade.

He suddenly began to feel very isolated indeed. His men were good soldiers; virtually everyone above the rank of specialist was a veteran of at least one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, with some of the NCOs having as many as four or five. The privates were green, eighteen and nineteen year-olds, many of whom were fresh out of airborne school; they were still tough as one could be without having fired a shot in action before. They were well dug-in, with the whole 1/325th PIR being positioned in these difficult-to-navigate woodlands in a network of dugouts and slit trenches, with machine guns and light anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons pointed directly towards the border. The captain presumed the Russians would send dismounted forces to clear the woodlands while sending their armour down the highway that ran through the forest. What he feared most was their helicopters. Much of the NATO airpower being moved into Eastern Europe as the alliance mobilised was going to Poland, Denmark or the Czech Republic, with little being sent into the Baltic States for fear of those aircraft being destroyed on the ground or being shot down by long-range surface-to-air missiles just over the Russian and Belarusian borders.

Attack helicopters would be a lethal foe for infantry, even infantry armed with anti-aircraft missiles; he’d witnessed just how effective the US Army’s AH-64D Apache gunships had been against the Taliban back in Afghanistan, and the prospect of being on the receiving end of something similar sent shivers down his spine. He smiled darkly to himself as Tanner moved down the line, talking to the squads of infantry in their foxholes.

The Russians were the least of his worries, he realised. Sandy was going to kill him when she found out he’d started using that old bad habit again.

*

2125 Local Time, August 6th,
South East London

Our little group has always been/And always will, until the end

“You think it’s going to kick off?” Alex asked, slurring his words slightly as he raised his fifth Pabst Blue Ribbon to his mouth and took a swig from the can.

Riley nodded morbidly. His own hands were clasped around a bottle of the cheapest wine he could find in the dodgy off-licence.

“Yeah, I do. I mean, we studied history…You know what it was like 1914, the July Crisis and all. This is just like that. Maybe worse.” There were five of them gathered below a clear summer sky in the park in what was supposed to have been a celebration of Alex’s eighteenth birthday. The whole shindig had turned out to be a rather morbid affair. They were all old enough to understand what was happening.

Emily looked up. She sat leaning against the support-pole of the park’s swing-set. “My dad’s thinking of taking me and mum to my aunt’s place in Wales. Might be safer and all if…if…”

They all knew what the ‘if’ was in reference too. Somebody tried to crack a joke, but it sailed flatly over the group of friends. A dark, nervous silence fell. The tension in the summer air was thick enough to choke on. The news had been a constant cycle of bulletins about the catastrophic conflict that seemed inevitable now. First there had come the footage of British soldiers, many of them not much older than kids themselves, boarding and disembarking from flights to Europe, and then there had been the testing of the BBC’s emergency radio channels. “The time has now come to make sure that you and your family are ready in case an air attack happens. This does not mean that war is bound to come…" Riley could have quoted the whole speech by now.

“I’m going to join the Army,” Alex finally said. “You know, if and when the war starts.”

Riley looked taken aback, betrayed even. “I thought we were going to do that together?”

“Well, if it starts before you’re eighteen, there’s no way in hell your parents would let you sign up.” He took another drink. “I just don’t want to have to say I watched it all on television, you know?”

A pair of aircraft roared overhead, appearing as but distant dots in the sunset to the west. They had to be military, Riley reasoned; all commercial flights had been stopped a few days ago as Britain prepared for war, and the two jets were flying so fast and so low that they couldn’t have been airliners anyway. It was yet another sombre reminder of just how bad things had gotten. Most of the kids’ parents had stopped going to work within the last few days, and yesterday Riley and his mother had spent hours in the supermarket stocking up on tinned food.

Not that it would make much difference; Riley could see the London skyline from where he lived.

“I get it.”

“Look, why are we just moping around about all this?” Somebody else interjected drunkenly. “There’s nothing we can do. If we all get nuked, then we’re dead; we might as well life to the fullest until then!”

“By living life to the fullest, you mean getting drunk in a park, right?” Emily responded snarkily.

“Well yeah, isn’t that what we always do though?” The drunk kid replied. “I mean…I always wanted to travel.”

“Travel where?” She replied.

“Somewhere safe. I dunno, the Sudan maybe?”

“Funny.”

Again they were quite. The few minutes of clear, empty silence were interrupted by bursts of police sirens and then by the sound of a lighter clicking as Riley lit another B&H.

Emily finally blurted, “It’s not fucking fair.”

“What do you mean?” Alex replied.

“You know what I mean.” She took one long, painful gulp from her own drink. “I want to go to uni and get a job and get a house and get married and have kids and a dog that annoys me. I…I don’t want to die, you know, if the worst happens, and I don’t want my friends to die. You know, all they have to do is fucking walk away! Just back down! But…”

Riley had seen his friends nervous about exams and dates, and he’d seen them fight or argue; he hadn’t seen them truly scared before. Not like this.

*

2304 Local Time, August 6th
Somewhere in the Baltic Sea

Lightning flashes across the sky/East to West, do or die

Nastoychivyy was a beast of a warship. Bristling with weapons, she was a Project 956 destroyer, a Sovremenny-class vessel as NATO would call her. Captain Second Rank Dmitri Mikhailovich Golovko, her commanding officer, had nearly twenty years’ experience at sea. He had begun his service during the darkest days of the Russian Navy, serving aboard as a surface warfare officer aboard a frigate that was barely afloat before transferring to the Russian Navy’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov.

After that, Golovko’s career had taken him on numerous staff and liaison tours and then for a time he’d been a military attaché – in the employ of the GRU, of course – in Vienna. He had finally gotten his first command when he had been assigned to captain the destroyer Nastoychivyy late last year. Numerous officers were being dismissed for corruption and incompetence back then as all branches of the Russian Armed Forces sought to turn themselves into a more modern, effective fighting force.

Even with the countless missiles and guns at his disposal, Captain Golovko doubted his ability to complete this particular mission. He stood on the bridge of his vessel, looking proudly at the young men seated around him, totally focused on their individual tasks.

Golovko and his executive officer had opened their sealed written orders an hour earlier. Golovko’s warship was one of three escorting several more landing ships loaded with naval infantry, and just southeast of their location were six NATO warships.

There was a Royal Navy frigate, an American destroyer, a pair of Polish frigates and a German frigate, and another destroyer, this one also belonging to the Germans. Reports from Kaliningrad also reported the probable deployment of a trio of German and Polish diesel-electric submarines somewhere in the Baltic Sea, as well as land-based airpower to the north, west, and south, from Norway, Denmark and Germany respectively. Those NATO warplanes were outnumbered by what Russia had in Kaliningrad and Belarus and around St Petersburg though. Golovko was to coordinate his actions with the Air Force and Naval Aviation Fencers as they hit out at NATO shipping.

For the sake of his crew, and for the thousands of Marines crammed aboard the landing ships steaming towards their target, he uttered a series of silent prayers, hoping against hope that the shock of the initial strike would be enough to knock the NATO warships off of their guard, to ‘rock them back on their heels’, as his instructors at the Kuznetsov Naval Academy would have said, spouting endless theories and philosophies about the nature of fighting a war such as this one.

Back when Golovko had been training, the wall had only just fallen, and the Russian Navy was focused on anything but competing with the US Navy. Only after the Georgia War had Golovko seen training scenarios switch suddenly to the prospect of fighting against the Americans and their lapdogs. During his time in Austria acting under the command of the GRU, Golovko had faced some mildly nerve-wracking moments as he took part in intelligence operations; though he had diplomatic immunity, his official title was as a desk officer at the Russian embassy and not an intelligence officer. There had been no real risk to his safety there though, and like all of his men he had never seen combat.

Though he had great faith in their ability to fight as bravely and as boldly as the Rodina demanded of them, and although his warship was a greatly sophisticated and well-armed one, Golovko doubted that he or his crew would survive the next week. There was simply too much NATO firepower in his way for his task to be accomplished without losses.

Soon, very, very soon, the time would come to carry out the orders pre-drafted back in St Petersburg, and Nastoychivyy, her captain, and her crew of men – boys, really – in their teens and twenties would be at war.




Forty–Two

The headquarters of the French DGSE is located in Paris’ 20th Arrondissement, on the western side of the city. It is oft referred to as ‘la piscine’: the swimming pool, after a noted national aquatic centre right nearby. For the past two weeks, the home base of France’s national foreign intelligence service had been guarded soldiers escorting the usual armed policemen. The street outside was closed to vehicle traffic and pedestrian access was restricted. On the afternoon of August 6th, a Russian national got through all of that security and walked up to the main entrance. He could have been carrying a gun or a bomb and would have been undetected in doing so when getting this far. He carried neither though.

Instead, he came here to defect to France.


The surprised internal guards let him into the main lobby – their many weapons were pointed at him – as he was repeatedly asked his name and how he had got here. The only replies from the Russian was to state that he wished to defect to France and to relate two names of DGSE officers he said he knew worked here. He wanted to speak to one, or both, of them. The outrageous external security breach outside would be something that was going to cause a lot of later drama though the dramatics inside were lessened when one of the two employees whose name the Russian had called came down and went with him into a secure side room off the lobby. There would be no gunshots now. The Frenchman knew the Russian. He was a major with the GRU who had been monitored by the DGSE where he acted for Russia’s interests in several African countries, against those of France, and where the French had given him the nickname la brute (the brute). The name wasn’t meant to be flattering and it also adequately described some of his activities on that continent. More than just his time in Africa when committing brutal acts, the Russian was known to the DGSE for his assignment as an accredited diplomat – dealing with cultural affairs supposedly – to the Consulate-General in Strasbourg. He’d behaved himself when in France though was watched by the DGSE’s domestic counterparts due to la brute’s known status as an intelligence operative. From Strasbourg, he’d been expelled from France back in July though along with the majority of Russian diplomats in France (the consulate-generals in Strasbourg and Marseille were both closed while there were enforced drastic personnel cuts at the embassy here in Paris) who were sent home. La brute had left France and been watched go. Now he was back and had got himself here all without being detected. And he was saying he wanted to defect.

Vouched for in terms of identity, the wannabe defector was spoken to mainly by senior people though with the same Frenchman whose name he’d given as a sort of laissez-passer present too. They had questions, many questions to ask of him. Why was he defecting? What did he want in exchange? Was this a defection which he wished to see done now or would be a ‘defector-in-place’ and stay with his organisation while feeding the DGSE information? Where was his family and wasn’t he concerned about their fate? Did he have any information which he considered valuable for France in terms of knowledge or, even better, physical evidence that could be important? Why had he chosen France to defect to? What motivated his desire to do what he was doing knowing the consequences of such an action? They weren’t trying to force him to leave (should he go to, then difficulties might arise) nor turning him away, but a walk-in – the term for a such a person as he appeared to be in the international intelligence world – was always going to bring these types of questions. The DGSE had to be on their guard. He could have been a false defector either aiming for a long-term complicated campaign of disinformation or a sudden one-shot blow to harm the DGSE and France. They tried not to offend him yet did throw this barrage of questions at him because of the danger which he might pose. The room was wired: there was high definition video and audio surveillance upon him. Those talking to him this Friday afternoon were all professionals and several had dealt with walk-in’s before… though usually to embassies or consulates rather than the heavily-guarded DGSE headquarters around which there was supposed to be an impenetrable barrier of armed men!

La brute could have played it coy. He could have dropped dark hints about things he knew and asked for many things before he revealed those. He could have been hostile and evasive. He could have made up extraordinary lies, seeking to confirm the DGSE’s worst fears, while looking for an opening to enrich himself. He did none of that though. He sat in a room with French intelligence officers and warned them of what was coming. France, like other NATO countries was about to be attacked. He had knowledge of attacks to be made against France because he had been smuggled into France to help assist in the preparations for them. He had decided instead that he wished to no longer have anything to do with the GRU, President Putin’s regime, nor even the Rodina anymore.

When were these attacks to take place?

Within hours came the response from la brute: just hours now.


It had been just after four o’clock (Central European Time) when the French-speaking Russian intelligence operative had appeared within the confines of the DGSE headquarters. On a normal Friday at such a time, especially at this time of year, he would have been lucky to have found so many senior people around, especially someone he had personally butted heads with in Francophone Africa. These weren’t normal times though. France’s foreign intelligence agency was, like the majority of the French Armed Forces, on alert due to the incredibility tense stand-off with Russia. Outside of France’s borders, the DGSE had operations underway in terms of traditional intelligence operations as well as those which would be deemed as being of a paramilitary nature. The Division Action was busy abroad and the DGSE even had its own spy ship, the impressive Dupuy de Lôme with all of its antenna array, at sea supporting such activities. France wasn’t about to be caught flat-footed by a war launched by Russia and the DGSE believed that it was in a position to catch wind of such a foolish move by Putin far ahead of time.

It wasn’t believed that the Kremlin was about to launch a war at this time. France’s allies disagreed though the position of the DGSE, which they briefed President Sarkozy on, was that with all the military readiness that NATO had moved to, Russia just wasn’t going to do it. There weren’t yet the signs of impending actions that the DGSE could see. Now, sitting in their headquarters, was a Russian GRU man saying that Russia was ‘just hours’ away from doing that in the face of all the detection in-place that they had to spot an incoming strike against France with far longer lead time… and using their own means too.

The defector downstairs was kept talking. La brute continued to be asked countless questions with tricks tried to catch out any lies. DGSE officers in with him played good cop / bad cop where there was friendliness and hostility both shown. Upstairs, the senior people, including the agency’s director, discussed what he was saying. He was giving information on GRU activities where they had people already on French soil ready to launch armed attacks. His claim to be unsure of the exact time of that incoming attacks, the very moment when they would be launched, concerned those people. That was a problem for them. If his story was true, then he should know that. The interrogators in the room – their superiors were watching this live and in contact with them – were instructed to push for details here. The Russian said that he didn’t know that. His task was logistics and intelligence, not direct planning. Pushed he was, again and again, but he remained steadfast in his denial of not knowing when. He kept saying that it was due to happen soon. He spoke of how he had left and come to Paris at the last possible moment because he had tried to find out exactly when but failed. With an apologetic tone, la brute said that he could not have done any more than he had.

As he kept talking, la brute gave details of several of those incoming attacks against France. He provided much information. This would all need checking out to be confirmed though the Russian kept on saying that France didn’t have the time to do that. He could say that all that he wanted; the senior people at the DGSE weren’t going to have their actions dictated to them by him. France could act faster than he thought and without him stopping them. Several hours passed before word came back to la piscine from the French countryside but it was the confirmation needed. Outside of Avord Airbase, the home station of the French Air Force’s fleet of E-3F Sentry aircraft, there was a farmhouse where well-armed security troops from Avord’s security detachment had quietly moved to surround. There were armed men spotted inside. The scouts sent there – half a dozen men from the Fusiliers Commandos de l’Air platoon at Avord – would need time but more than that, larger numbers to strike, yet they had seen what la brute had said would be there. The base went on full alert and a raid prepared. That was now the business of the military; the DGSE now moved to take their defector more seriously. He wasn’t told about how his information had panned out but pressed for more. The pressure was kept up on him to spill his guts and – no matter how much he protested he didn’t know – reveal when the attack would come.


Sarkozy was in Brussels tonight (it was after ten o’clock before the Avord sighting was made) where several EU heads of state were meeting. The European Union was getting more involved in the NATO-Russia stand-off after for much time recently playing a back seat. This intervention was welcome by some and not welcome by others. Briefed on what was going on, Sarkozy left the Belgian capital. It was night-time and the city was full of security forces: the foreign media had no idea that he left. His hosts and officials with international partners – representing both EU and NATO nations – weren’t told why. He came back to Paris and met with the head of the DGSE and several ministers. This occurred well after midnight and continued into the early hours of August 7th.

Sarkozy wanted more information. He wasn’t alone in that. That information was being sought. Time ticked away. There was a countdown ongoing and few knew the scale, even the existence, of the timetable that the countdown was linked to.

H-Hour was approaching.

However, an event in the North Sea, unrelated to events at la piscine with what la brute had to say, meant that that H-Hour would come earlier for others than it was supposed to be.

[James G]

Forty-Three

For nearly a week now, units of the Royal Netherlands Navy had been tracking a freighter ship as it steamed across the North Sea, seemingly en route for the famed Dutch harbour of Rotterdam, a bustling international seaport. The origin of the vessel was unknown to Dutch intelligence. Other agencies such as the CIA and MI6 could offer little information about the ship, except that she had at one time been registered under the flag of Sudan some years prior.

There was no database to show where the ship had left port and where she had travelled thus far; all that was certain was that she had briefly halted in Kaliningrad several days prior. With the crisis in Eastern Europe threatening to spiral out of control, and with British forces preparing to enter the European mainland through ports such as Rotterdam, a decision was made within the cabinet of the Dutch government that the unknown vessel – known as the “Ghost Ship” – was to be intercepted and boarded. This operation was to be carried out by men from M Squadron of the Maritime Special Operations Forces.

M Squadron, unlike its sister C Squadron, specialised in the counter-terrorism role and had practiced such boarding’s dozens of times. Joining these elite Dutch commandos were four members of Britain’s Special Boat Service, the SBS.

The four SBS men joining the Dutch had been attached to the unit in preparation for joint operations overseas, but when the sergeant commanding the small detachment informed his superiors of the imminent Dutch raid on the Ghost Ship, the decision was reached in Whitehall to allow those for Royal Marines to join in the operation. Elite as they were, nobody could deny that the Dutch commandos did not have the same measure of combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan as the SBS soldiers, and the Dutch were largely grateful for the support although somewhat resentful that their allies thought they needed the help.

This issue was fast overcome, however. There was a long-standing tradition of friendship between the Dutch Marines and their British equivalents, and under NATO war plans, the majority of the Dutch Marines would find themselves under the command of the UK’s 3 Commando Brigade, which was currently up in Norway alongside its American counterparts. The government in The Hague was also happy to have the diplomatic support gained by the interception being a joint operation.

The assault team, numbering thirty-one commandos including the British troops, moved by helicopter from the mainland to the frigate Tromp, patrolling in the North Sea at a distance. Aboard the ship, the commandos underwent a final briefing and carried out final checks on their weapons and equipment.

They wore black dry-suits to protect them from the icy waters should they end up there; their weapons were short-barrelled versions of the Heckler & Koch 416 assault rifle, with each man also carrying a Sig Saur 9mm pistol for use in a more confined environment; they also wore night-vision goggles attached to their lightweight helmets. Some of the commandos carried shotguns or breaching charges to make their way through locked doors. After spending nearly an hour afloat aboard the Tromp, the Dutch & British commandos were given the final approval to mount an assault on the Ghost Ship.

Though the primary threat was believed to be Russian Special Forces – Spetsnaz – the Dutch also believed that the ship could be nothing to do with the Eastern Europe Crisis at all, but rather a plot by terrorists. They were prepared for any eventuality. The assault team boarded a trio of Royal Netherlands Navy NH-90 helicopters. Due to the small nature of the frigate’s helipad, the helicopters had to land one after the other to pick up their troops. The helicopters made visual contact with the Ghost Ship at quarter to four in the morning, Amsterdam time. Efforts by the Tromp to hail the Ghost Ship had been met with stony silence. As the leading NH-90 approached the ship, a figure aboard the vessel fired upon the chopper with an RPG-29.

The assailant had been hasty in aiming the weapon and the ship was being tossed about by the waves; it was a harrowing moment for those aboard the aircraft, but the flaming projectile missed narrowly as the helicopter pilot banked sharply to the left. Door gunners aboard the three NH-90s returned fire with machineguns, trading rounds with the crew of the ship while the pilots manoeuvred their lumbering beasts into position to disembark the commandos. After a brief exchange of gunfire between the enemy troops and the helicopter door gunners, two of the NH-90s came to a hover at both ends of the storm-tossed vessel.

Commandos began repelling from those two helicopters, while the third chopper provided cover with its machineguns. Men aboard the ship fired on the rappelling Dutch commandos with short-barrelled AK-74s and other small-arms. Two of the Dutchmen were hit, one killed and another wounded, before they reached the ground. The remaining troops leapfrogged expertly into the ship, killing several of their opponents as they advanced. The circling NH-90 returned fire onto the bridge of the ship, killing several people within the tower.

The fire-fight lasted for some thirteen minutes, with the commandos clearing the ship room-by-room and taking heavy casualties. Six Dutchmen and one British commando were killed as the ship was cleared; Ten of their opponents were dead, and six more had been captured by the time the vessel was declared secure. The men captured aboard the ship were clearly Russian speakers.


Before a second wave of helicopters arrived to deposit a bomb-disposal experts and a scratch crew to run the Ghost Ship to safety, the commandos attempted a hasty interrogation of their prisoners, but to no avail. Apparently not understanding the Dutch, but answering questions in thickly-accented English when questioned in that language, each prisoner simply repeated that he had nothing to say.




At that moment, no coercive methods where used against the prisoners. However, before being loaded aboard one of the helicopters, those Russians were informed bluntly that, as they were not in uniform, they could not expect to be offered the protections granted by international laws governing the treatment of Prisoners of War.

While they remained in the custody of the Dutch, the intelligence services of the United States, Great Britain, and France would all want to talk to these individuals. Reports of the incident in the North Sea were sent up the chain of command first to SACEUR in Brussels and them from Admiral Stavridis up to the political leaders of almost all NATO countries as Moscow denied those men aboard the Ghost Ship were Russian commandos, claiming them to be terrorists unaffiliated with Russia.

Thus, the final hours of peace came to an end.





Forty–Four – Renegade Down

For a long time now, the position of Admiral Blair as the US’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) had been imperilled. He’d held on to his role when many expected that he would have been asked to resign and leave the Obama Administration. There had been many disputes between him and other elements of the Intelligence Community – that alphabet soup of multiple agencies – though these couldn’t all be blamed on him: the two previous office holders, both under Bush, had faced similar troubles. The issue which was long there, which remained unresolved, was the scale of the influence that the DNI should have within the Intelligence Community. Blair had walked the same tightrope as his predecessors had done on this with shots coming from all sides. If it hadn’t been for the standoff with Russia, the White House would long ago have replaced him with someone else. But he remained. The two principle issues which had beset his time as DNI were efforts to establish his office’s control over the CIA and also increased intelligence cooperation with France. The French issue was something new. That country’s president was a friend to America (not a poodle though) and far more willing to have his own intelligence agencies being cooperative with those of the United States than any of his predecessors had been. Blair and his French counterpart had pushed for France to join the Five Eyes: Six Eyes it would have been. Any Six Eyes organisation of intelligence sharing which included France would have to have been agreed to by the American’s four other existing partners – Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand – and there would be those who would push for another country instead of France to take the place: maybe Israel or Germany, possibly Singapore or South Korea. Domestically within the United States, it would be a big deal among politicians as well as the Intelligence Community. France just wasn’t trusted due to activities stretching back many decades. Therefore, for the time being Six Eyes wasn’t on the cards. Blair wanted it though and had made the effort to get the ball rolling… and thus made himself many domestic enemies while doing so.

Blair’s sort-of counterpart in Paris was Bernard Bajolet, a career civil servant and experienced diplomat who was Sarkozy’s ‘intelligence coordinator’. Internal politics within the French intelligence community were just as fierce as they were in Washington yet not out in the open. Bajolet didn’t have the enemies that Blair had. He had the confidence of his president: something that his American contemporary didn’t have. It was Bajolet who contacted Washington on the evening of August 6th making the call to Blair when it was one o’clock in the morning (thus August 7th) in Paris but only seven p.m. on the US East Coast. This phone call let the Americans know the basics of what was going on with the Russian defector inside the DGSE headquarters who had given warning of an incoming attack against NATO. Blair was informed that this information seemed to check out too with there already having been a sighting – directly based on what their defector was saying – of a Russian commando team ready & poised to strike at a French military base. Moreover, other information he was giving of knowledge of two more attacks due to hit France was fast being run-down while alerts were sent out. This defector, Bajolet impressed upon Blair, was saying that at some-point in the next few hours, Russian forces were going to strike against NATO in a full-scale war with attacks made in Eastern Europe where the frontlines of the conventional fight would be but also deep throughout their rear areas too. Blair asked about the DGSE’s ‘spy’ inside Russia – what was he saying? France had someone high-up in Moscow, Blair knew, though wasn’t privy to the details of that as that was the closest guarded secret of the DGSE. He and the US Intelligence Community believed that it was a Russian national – and France was happy to let them think that for it protected their man – rather than a Ukrainian military officer inside the Russian capital. Bajolet (who didn’t have all of the information on that himself for the details were need-to-know) could only tell the American on the other end of the connection that confirmation was being sought from that angle and nothing was yet available there. Regardless of that, Bajolet’s president was gravely concerned. France didn’t believe that this man was lying. An attack as feared and France was informing its ally. Blair asked whether Sarkozy was going to contact Obama and Bajolet replied that his president wanted to do just that. This information was being shared ahead of that to help with any confirmation which could come from the United States ahead of direct communication between the two presidents. Sarkozy was going to have the call set-up so the two men could talk within the next hour though – as things like this were often done between allies when important matters of state concerning intelligence were discussed – this call had come first. Blair would speak to his president and then get back to Bajolet soon; the Frenchman wished him well.


Sarkozy’s chief of staff had arranged with Emanuel another trans-Atlantic phone call and so the two presidents spoke after Obama had been briefed by Blair ahead of that. There were more calls for the American president to take tonight in Washington when both London and The Hague were in touch with him (each time, the British and Dutch prime ministers had their subordinates in the intelligence field call ahead first) concerning a worrying development in the North Sea with a ship inbound for Rotterdam. They were going to launch an emergency military operation against it soon enough and wanted the United States aware of this. Meanwhile, the national security team at the top level of the US Government assembled at the White House. Cars and even a helicopter brought members of the National Security Council here late on the Friday night. Vice President Biden was in California on an official trip but everyone else was called-in; Biden would be in contact through a video-conference once he reached Air Force Two which was waiting for him at Moffett Field. Clinton and Gates were present along with Admiral Mullen and General Jones. Also in attendance were the secretary of energy & treasury (Chu and Geithner were statutory attendees) along with White House regulars in the form of Emanuel, Brennan and Donilon. Blair turned up just after Panetta – his mortal enemy from the CIA – arrived. There were many people down in the basement of the White House.

They were here to discuss what was looking like the beginning of – in Sarkozy’s words when he’d spoken to Obama – Putin’s pre-emptive war.

The fact that this had all come from the French, and through Blair, poisoned the atmosphere of the whole thing. It shouldn’t have but there was politics at play even at this crucial moment. The French intelligence – the ‘so-called intelligence’ as it was deemed – was questioned because it came without a time for this attack and the French also refused to reveal the name of the defector in their DGSE headquarters; they did the latter to protect their source (as the CIA would have done) but it didn’t look good to those meeting in the White House. What was coming from the governments of Britain and the Netherlands had come through different channels (Gates and Panetta) so that did change things there yet, there remained the issue of the poisoned chalice which the DNI and his connections with France. Obama tried to move past that detail and push onwards. He demanded answers from his national security team instead of petty infighting on such a thing as this: Emanuel backed up the president’s even comments with some choice comments of his own about this not being the time for these personal disputes.

What was going on? Was Russia about to attack? If that was due, how could that be stopped?

The politicians, officials and military men debated this for some time. There were many ongoing discussions with many opinions given. Answers were needed though, not opinions. From across the Intelligence Community, some of those answers were sought with questions asked about what the NRO and the NSA were seeing. How about the CIA’s intelligence assets, what information could they give? The satellites and the communications taps were seeing and hearing what they had before with no changes. As to the CIA, there were no viable assets left of theirs inside Russia with any access to the top of the leadership. No one had any answers, just speculation and prejudices leading to opinions. When Biden came on the line, he had a suggestion to solve this issue where he saw everyone back in Washington as going around in circles.

Biden’s idea was to get Putin on the phone – or Kozak if not Putin – and ask him directly while promising him that if he does, it will be the biggest regret of his miserable life. There were a few attempts to raise objections to this approach but Obama had all of those dissenters cease their jabbering. The vice president had said what needed to be said. Obama said that this was what he wanted to see done.

Before it could be though, word came from Europe of what had happened with that Russian ship. It was a Dutch-led operation with active British participation yet NATO cooperation had come before and during the assault on the high seas during the early hours there. The assault team had taken the ship but faced casualties in doing so. From Admiral Stavridis at SHAPE in the Belgian countryside, the National Security Council was told that the Dutch had been met by gunfire during their approach and taken losses when aboard. They had done well but paid the price for it. Many of those within the ship were dead yet others had been taken prisoner: these were Russian nationals. In his opinion, they were Spetsnaz. These men weren’t on no pleasure cruise, not with all the weapons aboard and a ‘hostile attitude’ as per their reaction to the Dutch Navy helicopter. Stavridis stated that be believed that those Russians had been stopped before launching a commando action similar to what the defector in French custody had been talking about. He thus strongly recommended that the United States move to DEFCON Two.

In the Situation Room, where it was almost half past ten at night now, that recommendation was debated. DEFCON Two, plus also increasing the COGCON level too (that of Continuity of Government readiness condition: dispersing those in the presidential line of succession should the very worst happen), had its supporters and those who urged caution too. The latter had fewer voices of agreement than the former. If it had just been what the French were saying and nothing else, then that was one thing. But those Spetsnaz… Gates came out strongly for DEFCON Two and Biden agreed. With the two of them leading the way, others fell in line. Again though, there was a delay. This was caused by Clinton who was on the phone during the debate – multitasking as she gave her input in that – talking to the Dutch foreign minister. She told Obama that the Dutch chargé d'affaires in Moscow had already spoken by phone to the deputy foreign minister: he was saying that these men weren’t Russians and were probably terrorists. In addition, the Russian foreign ministry warned against ‘dangerous allegations’ being made. It was still early in Moscow but they were awake, taking urgent calls at such an ungodly hour and being extremely combative in their diplomatic relations. The question was asked as to whether the Dutch had been unable to contact Kozak and was that why they ended up talking to his deputy: Clinton confirmed that that was indeed the case.

The call that Biden had urged to be made to Putin or Kozak still hadn’t been attempted. Obama wanted that dealt with and he also gave the nod for DEFCON Two and COGCON One both to be enacted. Neither of these two alert status’ had ever gone that high before (worldwide that was with the former) but they were now. The president had decided that this had to be done. The Russians were out of control. There was no time for caution and the danger, even if he personally wasn’t so sure that Putin would have his war, was staring him in the face. He had to do all that he could to ensure the security of his country. Gates spoke to Stavridis and NATO’s commander affirmed that his party was leaving SHAPE any second now. There was a command-&-control aircraft waiting for NATO’s commander and his immediate staff at Chièvres Air Base. He’d be on it and he politely enquired as to when those in the White House were going to get out of there and stop sitting around talking!

They were leaving very soon, Gates said, very soon indeed.


HMX-1 was the squadron of US Marine Corps Aviation who provided available and secure airlift for the president and the country’s leadership. It had been alerted in the previous hours to be ready to make evacuations from the White House when the first news came of that ship that the Dutch were going to raid. Jones and his deputy Donilon both had pushed for the Marines to be ready and their urging on that had been justified with Obama’s order to now begin evacuating the White House. There was a VH-3D sitting on the White House lawn with others nearby waiting to join it once it was airborne with its VVIP passengers to form a shield around it in the sky. In addition, several cars (provided by the US Army; they did road transport for the president) were also on the White House grounds. The helicopter and those vehicles were all to take members of the country’s leadership out of here. The White House was a target for an attack and those inside were best off dispersed. Biden was elsewhere already and COGCON One called for the Congressional leadership plus others such as the Attorney General to be out of danger, that danger being in one fixed and known location. The evacuation procedures were designed to be perfect and practiced often. It was approaching eleven o’clock – gone dawn over in Eastern Europe now – when they started. They were disrupted at once though.

Clinton was due to leave the White House by car and be driven to the State Department. Chu, Geithner and Panetta had already left in their vehicles while Obama, Gates and Mullen were all taking Marine One to Andrews AFB where there was an aircraft waiting for them. When away from the White House, then the Russians would be spoken to and other measures enacted to avert open conflict. There was thought to be time to do this. However, into the Situation Room at the moment of evacuation came a call from Moscow. It was Kozak on the line wanting to talk to Clinton. Obama had instructed her to make the call to the Kremlin to get hold of Putin – or contact Kozak at the Russian Foreign Ministry if she was unable to reach the Russian President – once she reached the State Department. Now Kozak was calling here instead. The timing of the call should have rung alarm bells for how suspicious it was. It was almost as if someone wanted to throw a spanner into the works… Obama urged Clinton to come with him and return Kozak’s call from Andrews. Donilon, staying at the White House, would keep him on the line in the meantime and then transfer the call over there. The helicopter flight to Andrews would be faster than the drive to the State Department and therefore this would lessen the chances of Kozak giving up waiting. Maybe Clinton could have stayed at the White House and spoken to him from there but the urgency of the demand for evacuation following procedures led to this decision to being taken. Panetta, already on the move in an armed ground convoy, found out moments after he left that so many ‘principles’ were all going in one helicopter but he was unable to stop that from happening. He really didn’t like the idea of so much of the country’s leadership all being bunched up at once.

Onto Marine One along with Obama went Clinton along with Gates, Mullen, Jones, Brennan and Emanuel. They were supposed to be taking a short flight across to Andrews free from danger.

They wouldn’t make it to Andrews.


Inside Washington, a GRU commando team had been on stand-by for the past five days. There were ten men and three women – thirteen; unlucky to some, lucky for others – who had entered the country individually on commercial flights as well as overland. They had converged upon the American capital and collected weapons & equipment left waiting for them by others who had already departed less they be caught: the thirteen were expendable but those who’d already left weren’t regarded as such. Each member of the commando team, including the three women, had a particular job from communications interception to security to launching the actual attack. The target of their attack was any helicopter which left the White House grounds after twenty-three hundred hours on August 6th. They hadn’t been specifically told that it would contain the American president and they would be killing him yet none of their number was an idiot. They knew what they were doing. The Russian strike team members didn’t openly question their orders nor consider defecting. Each of them had several close family members who remained back home in the Rodina. A helicopter was spotted leaving the White House: it was Marine One getting airborne at two minutes past the hour. Unbeknown to the Russians here to kill, and those on the helicopter flying above them, half the world away a war had already started where armies would clash on land, fleets would engage each other at sea and flotillas of aircraft would fight in the skies. There was a different form of warfare taking place here though. Secret Service radio communications & also those of the US Marines had been intercepted – the Russian state had the means to do this; a terrorist or an assassin could just keep on dreaming – and night vision gear was used to observe from afar helicopter operations. Four other identical VH-3s which were orbiting above the White House as Marine One lifted off to join them, and thus be hidden among the others, were ignored as attention was on the one climbing. As it did so, one of the intercepted communications from the Secret Service which the GRU strike team distinctly heard was the reference ‘Renegade under way’: that was Obama’s Secret Service codename. From atop of two buildings, and also out on the street tonight, three of the Russians took specially-adapted SAM-launchers from sports bags: besides each missile operator was a comrade carrying a submachine gun. On cue from their mission commander, who was aided himself by his spotters, a trio of SAMs were lofted into the sky. These were laser-guided missiles and no radar-jammers, no deploy chaff and no fancy maneuvers would stop an attack like this with three of them – coming from several directions too – from having success. An escape for the GRU team would be a far greater challenge than taking down Marine One.

The pilot aboard Marine One was a damn fine flier. The US Marines officer had been under fire in combat and knew how to dodge incoming projectiles. That had occurred in a war zone though and with unguided bullets and rockets. Yet, he’d been trained to dodge missiles and gave it his best shot. The launch of the missiles was spotted by himself and his co-pilot as the rocket motors fired marked their launch. Direct sight of them was lost due to all of the lights on the ground and the sudden violent maneuvers undertaken to get Marine One, and its VVIP passengers, out of danger. As he swung to starboard, aiming to seek cover and going in the opposite direction from where he had seen the tell-tale signs of missile launches, there was nearly a collision with one of the other helicopters. Another VMX-1 helicopter moved to put itself between the area from where the launches had been sighted and Marine One was. Like the men and women on the ground making this attack, the crew of this VH-3 were expendable when the life of the nation’s president was at stake.

Marine One was no soft target. It had infrared jammers to defeat a missile attack as well as flares and chaff too which could be used to stop radar-guided missiles. The pilot and co-pilot were highly-trained to dodge an attack from either a missile or sustained gunfire. There was armour-plating as well at key points, lightweight Kevlar. The US Marines and Secret Service agents aboard were all armed so if it had to put down in a hostile environment, they would be able to defend the passengers too. This was all public information and considered by those who attacked the helicopter. One missile slammed into that VH-3 which put itself in the firing line and another failed to achieve a hit upon any helicopter. The third missile hit Marine One. It struck the cabin and the explosive charge went off there. This was no ordinary explosive but instead a specialist incendiary weapon. The cabin was ripped open and a fireball erupted within: the pilot and co-pilot were incinerated. Meanwhile, the helicopter which they had been flying fell from the sky. It crashed moments later when it came down nose-first into The Ellipse, the public park just south of the White House. The time was just after four minutes past eleven.


“Renegade Down, I say again, Renegade is down!” – Another radio message from the Secret Service intercepted that night, this one by the GRU listening post at the Russian embassy.

“Oh my God…” – The words of an inebriated tourist up from Florida, out on Constitution Avenue who had a burning helicopter come crashing down seemingly only a few yards away from him and his wife.

“No. Just tell me it isn’t true, please.” – Comment attributed to Joe Biden aboard Air Force Two in the skies over Nevada when he was told that Marine One was down in Washington.


Marine One had fifteen people aboard when it hit the ground.

These were the President of the United States, the Secretaries of State & Defence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security & Homeland Security Advisers, the White House Chief-of-Staff & the president’s personal aide, four Secret Service agents and three US Marines as the aircrew.

Rescuers, including Secret Service agents running with guns drawn from the White House grounds, would pull three of those alive from the burning helicopter though one of those, Brennan, who’d been Obama’s Homeland Security Advisor, would die before he reached the hospital. The two others were one of those agents aboard and Bob Gates too, each of them severely hurt with life-changing injuries. Marine One burnt furiously during that rescue attempt of those aboard. One of the rescuers would lose his life and another two would be badly injured. Try as they might, they couldn’t pull anyone else out of the helicopter which was on its side with the front crumpled in. When the DC Fire Department got water on the fire, it took a long time indeed for that to have any meaningful effect. The fire destroyed the helicopter and many the bodies of those trapped inside.

Barack Obama, the nation’s forty-fourth president, was dead.

And the United States was at war.



Those aboard Marine One:
#1: Barack Obama, United States President, dead
#2: Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, dead
#3: Bob Gates, Secretary of Defence, injured
#4: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dead
#5: Jim Jones, National Security Adviser, dead
#6: John Brennan, Homeland Security Adviser, dead
#7: Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief-of-Staff, dead
#8: Reggie Love, personal aide to the president, dead
#9 & #10 & #11 & #12: Secret Service agents, three dead & one injured
#13 & #14 & 15: US Marine aircrew, all dead

[James G]

Forty-Five

The Spetsnaz were not only active in Washington DC.

A second team of operators from the GRU’s Spetsnaz forces had, in previous weeks, been infiltrated into the mainland United States through Mexico. Their route had been a perilous one, involving several weeks aboard a freighter ship to Nicaragua and then a covertly-chartered flight to a remote Mexican airstrip. There, they’d been met an SVR contact who provided them with a trio of rugged pick-up trucks, as well as false passports, cash, and other supplies.

Using these supplies, the eighteen-strong team had crossed the border in three teams of six. They went over illegally, using smuggling routes uncovered by the SVR as well as contacts within the Mexican cartels. How exactly the SVR had made these contacts, the Spetsnaz men did not want to know.

All eighteen of them got over the border in one piece.

They travelled in the same smaller groups to a safe-house in Oklahoma arranged for them by the SVR before linking up as a unit once again. Tinker Air Force Base, located in the southern part of Oklahoma City, was home to the 552nd Air Control Wing of the United States Air Force. The wing operated over two dozen E-3D Sentry Airborne Warning & Control System (AWACS) aircraft, with the jets being identifiable by the larger radar dish protruding from their tops. AWACS aircraft had been considered high-value assets since the inception of the concept, being available in limited number and requiring highly-trained crews to operate.

The task of Spetsnaz Detachment #319 was to destroy as many AWACS aircraft as possible on the ground at Tinker AFB.

As a secondary target, the Spetsnaz team was to destroy the KC-135 tanker aircraft belonging to the 507th Air Refuelling Wing of the U.S. Air Force Reserve and the 137th Air Refuelling Wing, Oklahoma Air National Guard. All personnel encountered by the Spetsnaz at Tinker AFB were to be shot dead on sight. This wasn’t an act of barbarity for the sake of barbarity, as the Spetsnaz men would stand accused of, but rather it was done because such a small unit of men operating this far in enemy territory could not hope to cater for Prisoners of War, and the highly-trained personnel that operated high-value air assets such as the E-3Ds and KC-135s needed to be killed to prevent their use by the enemy later on.

To accomplish their task, the Spetsnaz carried a variety of weapons. Ak-74 assault rifles were their primary weapons, sometimes with underslung grenade launchers, along with Saiga-12 shotguns, RPK light machineguns, RPG-29 rocket launchers, grenades, satchel charges, and Sa-14 surface-to-air missiles. When the order came to attack, the GRU Spetsnaz team had just witnessed the US Air Force base go into lockdown as DEFCON Two was declared. Nevertheless, they had an objective to achieve; theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.

Rather than risk using one entrance to the base, the Spetsnaz commander decided to break his unit down into three teams of six once again for the assault. One team approached through the sun-dried undergrowth from the south, cutting through the barbed wire with pliers and making entrance to the base.

The second team quietly infiltrated from the north, successfully dodging floodlights and squads of military police as they snuck within range of over a dozen E-3Ds parked on the northern side of the facility.

The third team approached from the east, prowling in from the suburban housing districts that were sprawled out in that area.

As they approached, U.S. Air Force E-3Ds and as well as the National Guard and Reserve KC-135s were scrambling to take to the skies as a result of the DEFCON Two alert that had suddenly been issued. The United States had not reached such a level of alert since 1962, and subsequently it was somewhat ill-practised, although everybody from the President down knew that it was impossible to perfect the sudden scrambling of hundreds of aircraft and the lockdown of bases such as Tinker, which housed not only military personnel but their spouses and children too.

The Spetsnaz commander gave a single-word order just as his comrades in Washington D.C. carried out their mission; “execute.”

From the shadows, eighteen Spetsnaz soldiers emerged.

Spetsnaz Team #3 never got far. Upon infiltrating from the east, they found themselves surrounded by U.S. Air Force Security Police personnel, heavily-armed with M-4 carbines and M-249 light machineguns. The sudden use of a massive searchlight blinded the commandos, who wore night-vision goggles. This gave the Americans the time they needed to open fire. The Spetsnaz fired back, killing two of the base security troops, but four of their six were quickly killed, with two more wounded. The Americans rapidly pinned the infiltrators to the ground and cuffed them, marking them out as the first POW’s of World War III.

From the south, Team #2 achieved somewhat more success. Bursting into view, they cut down several ground crewmen along with a squad of security police personnel.

Though two of them were killed during the charge, four more men made it to the first batch of aircraft, a trio of KC-135s along with a single E-3D. The AWACS jet was destroyed by a satchel charge which was detonated seconds after it had been planted. A KC-135 nearby suffered much the same fate. Another soldier lobbed a grenade into the engine of a KC-135, blowing off the wing of the aircraft, before he was gunned down. The two survivors retreated southwards, hoping to escape the barrage of American gunfire that was now being directed against them.

Neither made it as security troops pursued, killing one soldier before the other dropped his rifle to the ground and raised his hands. He would live, but not to fight another day. The Defence Intelligence Agency, the FBI, CIA, and many others would all want to talk to him, and for the young Spetsnaz junior sergeant this would be a deeply unpleasant experience.

Team #1 achieved the most success. Lead by the major in charge of Spetsnaz Detachment #319, they had crept within view of no less than ten AWACS planes on the northernmost parking area of the field. They destroyed two with RPG-29s and another with a satchel charge, before advancing rapidly towards the aircraft while laying down covering fire. A Humvee filled with security troops was blown up by an RPG, killing five of them. As security troops swarmed towards them, the surviving Spetsnaz troops withdrew into an aircraft hangar behind them, taking hostages as they went.

A trio of ground crewmen, a wounded Air Force Security Police trooper, and two members of a KC-135 crew were forced at gunpoint into the Spetsnaz stronghold, which the Russian soldiers quickly fortified, barricading the doors. The Russians demanded a safe passage off of the base, threatening to kill their prisoners if their demands were not met.

The security troops refused their demands of free passage, and within twenty minutes, an assault was ordered by the outraged and shaken base commander.

A full platoon of Air Force Security Police personnel would soon storm into the hanger. Explosive booby-traps set up on the doors killed two of the American assaulters as well as a hostage. The other hostages took the opportunity granted by the chaos to tackle one of their captors, dragging him to the ground and beating him to death as the assault occurred. The final surviving Spetsnaz soldiers killed another two U.S. Air Force men before they were themselves cut down in a hail of gunfire. The attack on Tinker Air Force Base had lasted less than half-an-hour. At the end of it, fifteen Russians and forty-seven Americans were dead. Five of the invaluable E-3Ds and two KC-135s had been destroyed.

Orders were already being issued for the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, along with members of the US Army’s ultra-secretive commando formation known as Delta Force, to begin the hunt for these ruthless teams of highly-trained Russian commandos that would be fleeing from Washington D.C.





Forty–Six

As there was in Washington, the GRU had placed a strike team inside London too. Like their counterparts in the American capital, this small team of Spetsnaz in the British capital were here to kill political targets. Moreover, they too were on a time restriction: they couldn’t act until it was four o’clock in the morning on August 7th. No matter what, they couldn’t do anything before that moment. The afternoon beforehand, they had been sneaked into an old and historic building on Whitehall known as Banqueting House. This was a place for functions – official and private – and was right inside the heart of the area around Whitehall which was on security lockdown since the emergency powers under the Civil Contingencies Act had come into play. There were only nine men who hid inside the building. Well-armed and well-trained they were, but the small number of them limited what they could do. Their orders were for them to do much: those who gave those orders were safe and far away. Overnight, when several of the GRU men had been tasked to conduct a reconnaissance of the area – they’d been here before when it wasn’t under lockdown but seeing the area when it was guarded was necessary – they had found that task near impossible. There was ongoing trouble in London. An unofficial and illegal anti-war march had taken place through the middle of the city and been broken up by the authorities. In the heat of the moment, things had turned very ugly and protesters run riot. They hadn’t gotten anywhere near Whitehall but all caused all sorts of trouble elsewhere. There had been disturbances elsewhere in London too on that Friday evening and into the night where criminals had taken advantage of the situation and started looting as well as violence. All of this trouble had aided the Spetsnaz on one hand but hurt them on the other. Security forces were called upon to support supressing trouble elsewhere yet those who remained were on high-alert less some troublemakers had evaded detection and made it to Whitehall. There were helicopters in the sky right over Whitehall with both infrared systems as well as spotlights looking down. Getting up onto the roof of Banqueting House nor moving far from there at ground level had been impossible. Furthermore, unbeknownst to the GRU, where firstly that defector had gone running to the French in Paris and the Dutch had gone after that ship in the North Sea, this increased security even more. One of the scouts attempted to enter the grounds of the Ministry of Defence’s Main Building, which lay behind Banqueting House, but found the area full of soldiers. The police were gone and the pre-scouted entry point had a British Army Land Rover (mounting a 12.7mm heavy machine gun too!) parked right in front of it. Policemen came inside Banqueting House and did a thorough job of searching for anyone inside… they weren’t quite thorough enough but it was a close call. Without voicing it, both the detachment commander and his deputy, experienced men who’d been in tougher spots than this yet didn’t except it here, considered abandoning the mission in the face of all of this security. Time ticked away though towards the allotted strike time. Their doubts eased when the policemen left the building and observations made outside showed the empty Whitehall with a near absence of soldiers in view.

At zero four hundred hours, as the war begun elsewhere in the world, Russian soldiers brought the war here to the very heart of Britain’s capital. In the darkness (though it would be light really soon), the Spetsnaz exited their hiding place. They formed a trio of three-man teams and moved forward. Whitehall was a major London thoroughfare for traffic but was closed now. Either side the roadway there were buildings where some had bare frontages yet others had a little cover available. There were no hedges to hide behind or parked vehicles. The GRU strike team was extremely exposed but had no choice: the limited cover was too why only nine men had been sent. One trio scaled the walls of the frontage of the Horse Guards buildings – to the left of the main entrance – and sought cover there on the western side. The two other teams scurried along the pavement on the eastern side and sought cover behind trees after getting over the low railings for the MOD grounds or hiding behind a memorial in front of the building. It was a horrible battlefield for them to be in. Those atop a flat roof on the House Guards structure had some protection but those down below them had really very little: for the latter, the second team looked at the so-far unused floodlights and the third team (sheltering around a memorial & statute) were worried about ricochets off the concrete. This had all been seen before by these men though not at a time like this when there was now a war on. Time to think about the extreme danger they were now in was short though. Whitehall came alive with activity. It was as if a switch was thrown. Those floodlights in the MOD grounds were illuminated (the men below them on the grass froze) and British soldiers started moving. Six sets of Russian eyes were on the gates to Downing Street. Vehicles coming out of there onto Whitehall, to cross over the road and head into the MOD or to go either north or south away from here, were what they were looking for. There were government ministers meeting in Downing Street who’d now be starting to evacuate. Some would go out through the rear, likely to an incoming helicopter to land in Horse Guards Parade – where the other three sets of eyes were now looking –, but others would come out of the front entrance. The evacuation commenced just as foreseen. And it was one met with gunfire.

Chaos ensured with that gunfire. It was disorganised but murderous mayhem. The shooting took place for nearly five minutes. The Russian plan went awry. They should have sent more men if they wanted this to work. The British weren’t prepared for this but they weren’t helpless victims. Only one ministerial car was hit, an armoured Jaguar. An RPG round struck it while rifle fire raked escorting vehicles. That car contained Liam Fox, Britain’s defence secretary and he was dragged from the burning Jaguar by his wounded bodyguards. One of the Russians put a round into him when he was exposed. They blew most of the top of his head off and – literally – claimed quite the scalp. Met. Police officers with both SO1 and CO19 (Specialist Protection and Specialist Firearms) returned fire and so did Territorial Army soldiers who were part of the London Regiment: these were men with D Company, the London Irish Rifles, who had the rotating duty into Whitehall this morning. The Spetsnaz were extremely exposed and surrounded with haste. Their own evacuation attempt saw them shot down. Out over on Horse Guards Parade, no helicopter came into land. There was gunfire outside and David Cameron was kept inside first 10 Downing Street and then taken below the Cabinet Office into a secure room. Other ministers – Clegg, Hague and May – were kept inside buildings when the shooting occurred out on Whitehall. Their police bodyguards weren’t taking them into the gantlet of gunfire. No helicopter was coming (there was one waiting to though) and the men atop of the Horse Guards building were spotted soon enough. They had sniper rifles, an RPG launcher and a SAM launcher along with their assault rifles – a lot of weaponry to lug about! – but there were only three of them. They were pinned down and had fire directed at them. A helicopter did show up but this was a Met. Police aircraft. It shouldn’t have flown into this firefight and was lucky that the Russians below were under fire for they otherwise would have engaged it with their SAM launcher. These guys couldn’t escape: between them and the rally point in St. James’ Park there were soon more soldiers. From out of Wellington Barracks, men of the Grenadier Guards (whom the London Regiment was assisting) joined in the firing against them. The Spetsnaz in Whitehall, the three groups of them, were doomed.

It was all over by twenty past four.

Seven Russians died in the firefight and another was shot when trying to escape while being given medical attention: ‘shot while trying to escape’ was actually true here though for a long time afterwards that would be regarded as an euphemism for an extrajudicial killing. As to the ninth man, he had been first thought dead. He’d taken a bullet to the head and lay bleeding on Whitehall. He was only unconscious though… his future wasn’t going to be one he would enjoy. British casualties were far higher. There were fifteen dead and three wounded. The dead included Fox with other casualties being soldiers, policemen and a couple of civil servants too. None of those injured had been shot. If they had been, they would have lost their lives. The bullets used by the GRU strike team were all laced with poison (as had been seen at the failed attack at Heathrow the week before) in their violation of international law. Whitehall was awash with security cameras and those caught the exchanges of gunfire and the explosion of the defence secretary’s car. However, there was no media presence at the time of the incident. As said, Whitehall was on lockdown and there were those media restrictions nationwide affecting the big news-gathering organisations. However, several independent journalists – that could mean anything from professional freelancers to amateur students – were covering the violence from that rioting which had reached the area of The Strand and close to Trafalgar Square which was ongoing from the night before. Some of them got camera stills or even video footage of distant activity. What occurred took place out of their view but close enough that the gunfire could be heard – automatic gunfire, a lot of it – and then there was the onrush of police and soldiers afterwards. What these journalists got was a confused picture of it all with grainy, jumpy images. Policemen shouting at them to get clear as well as soldiers running past with guns, heading for Downing Street, was the scale of their scoops. It would all be great ratings if presented to the public. Yet, who was going to publish or broadcast this all at this time?


Another Spetsnaz team were in Belgium. They went after the SHAPE complex in the Belgian countryside, where the military headquarters of NATO on this side of the ocean was located. SHAPE had a counterpart HQ at Norfolk in Virginia as well as the organisation’s political base being right inside the heart of Brussels. A holdover from the end of World War Two, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe was a real command centre and was located away from a population centre at the insistence of the Belgians back in the Sixties when it was transferred from its previous site in France. Back then, the Belgians had been worried about such a place being a target for an attack in wartime.

Ahead of the Russian assault at five o’clock in the morning, NATO’s commander had already left in an emergency evacuation. The Spetsnaz hadn’t seen him go. Even if he had been observed leaving, the GRU strike team here still had their orders. Hitting SHAPE was an operation that their superiors wanted. Why it couldn’t be hit with missiles, that wasn’t explained to the men on the ground. They were told to go in and kill as many of those inside as they could. That they did. Theirs was the biggest of all of the Spetsnaz teams at work at the moment of the war’s attack anywhere outside of the Baltic States and Poland (larger numbers were used there and supported by Russian Airborne Troops’ parachute forces) but this was still quite the task. The SHAPE complex was huge. Twenty-four men, no matter how prepared they were, were never going to have as big as an effect as a brace of cruise missiles fired by a distant bomber.

Gunfire and explosions erupted with the Russian assault. They split into four teams of six with two of those groups engaging surprised Belgian troops tasked for security duties with the other pair aiming to get deep inside the complex. They were looking for SACEUR and his senior people and had information on where he could be found. The Belgian troops – a second-line unit; the best troops from this small county were in transit through Germany and bound for Poland – did better than expected. Only the surprise factor, plus the intensity of the assault against them, caused the Russians to penetrate forward and into the complex. Regardless, the Belgian soldiers kept on fighting. They killed some of the Spetsnaz and caused others to be pinned down. Poison-tipped bullets defeated the efforts of those providing medical attention to save the lives of injured Belgians but still the others kept fighting against this ferocious enemy. Other gunfire against the GRU strike team came from NATO military personnel inside SHAPE. From across the alliance, officers and enlisted personnel were assigned here. For some it was a plump, no-work posting yet for others this was career advancement. These military personnel had access to weaponry. They couldn’t fight as a cohesive and trained unit and many ran for their lives instead, but others wanted to fight back and did so. In the darkness and with smoke swirling around from fires started, SHAPE was defended from within. Unfortunately, in the chaos, there was a lot of friendly fire where NATO personnel fired on one another believing they were shooting at Russians. Civilian staffers here were cut down while running for their lives instead of staying still and in any cover they could find. Several of the Spetsnaz fired smoke grenades to cover their attacks. Screams of ‘gas, gas!’ came from panicked NATO personnel due to pre-war briefings given on the expected use of chemical weapons by Russian forces – elsewhere, not here – in wartime. Like in London, it was pandemonium for the attackers and the defenders.

The Spetsnaz ended up with failure on their hands. Some of their number were dead and the rest split into one large group and three smaller groupings. They were all over the place and increasingly pinned down. The Belgians brought in more men and within the complex and there was increasingly better leadership shown from the mixed bag of NATO personnel here: men who’d been in a warzone before or just those who stepped up once in their life really achieved quite the big deal. A junior British officer, carrying a shotgun along with his SA80, made a heroic charge with half a dozen more following him to gun down that larger group of Russians and even take a live prisoner. It was madness, worthy of a Hollywood film, though the traditional understated reaction from the Briton in response to later platitudes would ruin such a script. This put an end to any Russian escape attempt to a distant rally point hidden in woodland a few miles away. The rest of the Spetsnaz were trapped and isolated from the others. They grabbed hostages and barricaded themselves in offices. This had been something done half the world away out in Oklahoma and would be done elsewhere (the London strike team tried to grab a female Met. Police officer before that young lady broke his face and sat back to watch him being shot by a solider there) with hostage taking. Here at SHAPE, those in civilian attire were preferred to any hostage in a military uniform. The taken hostages would be human shields. Escape was what the Russians wanted to do, using these people, but how was that to be done? The Belgians were bringing in more men. There was Spetsnaz activity in Brussels itself meant to draw off what Belgian special forces weren’t on their way to Poland but still other soldiers arrived here in the following hours. A stand off ensued and it was one which wasn’t going to be solved anytime soon. Meanwhile, dozens upon dozen of people, Russians and NATO personnel, lay dead and wounded all across SHAPE. In the headquarters had been in Brussels rather than near Casteau, there would have been even more loss of life.


The number of commandos sent to SHAPE was the largest of all of their multiple strike teams to open the war. The smallest was just a detachment of six men active at one of the places targeted in France. This wasn’t the Cold War and there weren’t hundreds or even thousands of them available. They struck through many NATO countries though not all. Moreover, there was more of a tactical focus for the Spetsnaz closer to where the frontlines were in Eastern Europe where they opened the way for advancing columns of troops there. These high-risk attacks taking place so far away would see those taking part looking likely beforehand – as then proved by events – to never make it back. Those who gave the orders sent these men (and women too in selected strikes) to cause chaos in distant lands knowing that they would lose such people. They could have hit Marine One, Downing Street, SHAPE and other places with missiles, but they wanted ‘situations’ to develop where there were hostage situations, hunts for escaped attackers and such like. A missile strike was over in seconds; a commando raid could tie up enemy resources for quite some time. The fear of more attacks, where NATO had to deploy guards all over the place and also chased shadows, was desired.

Mixed results came from these actions where the GRU sent its people far afield. Complete and utter success came with the destruction of a communications site in the Czech Republic where the team got away without loses (which actually wasn’t foreseen back in Moscow). In the eastern half of Germany, a Luftwaffe communications site at Schonewalde was attacked by a strike team who met wholescale failure where they were gunned down by an alert defence without doing any damage; again, the quick ending didn’t suit the GRU’s needs. Washington, Tinker AFB and London would all be rated as successes along with attacks made against CFB Trenton in Canada (a military transport hub which was very busy) and the Geilenkircken airbase in western Germany too. Brussels and The Hague witnessed gunfire where attacks against political targets there resulted in casualties and produced similar results to what occurred in London. Two further UK strikes were planned yet the one against RAF Waddington was called off two days beforehand when all of the targeted E-3 Sentry aircraft were deployed away from there; there was an assault at RAF Kinloss which resulted in a lot of mayhem and a hostage situation with the Spetsnaz pinned down. Then there was France. All three operations – one due to be undertaken by a team instructed to abort their Italy attack with days to spare and hit a secondary target in France instead – were blown at the last minute by that defector. This saw events take a different turn with the Russians on the defensive. Burning aircraft, alight buildings, destroyed communications equipment… and a lot of dead people. That was what the attacks occurred overall. Killing Obama would be the defining event of all of this for history yet those who’d come under fire elsewhere and survived only concentrated on what they had emerged alive from. The Spetsnaz were nasty fighters. They weren’t supermen and died like anyone else in the right circumstances, but they took many with them when doing so. Using poisoned bullets and taking hostages was what they did too to make sure that they would be remembered long afterwards with infamy.

[James G]

Forty-Seven

The plan for Operation Slava required NATO airpower to be if not eliminated then at least significantly degraded in the opening hours of the war. Bear & Backfire bombers under the command of Russian long Range Aviation (DA) had the task of achieving this in conjunction with the Spetsnaz strikes. There had been some eleventh-hour hopes amongst the bomber crews that their mission would be cancelled and that war would be averted altogether, but most of the men flying the bombers new that it was far too late for that to happen and had prepared themselves accordingly. The operation which they were about to fly had been practiced on a smaller scale, but the coordination of so many aircraft flying sorties against so many different targets was something that was virtually impossible to prepare for. There were four groups of Bears & Backfires dedicated to a massive cruise missile strike which was to be initiated at right before dawn on August 7th.

*

Group #1 consisted of fourteen Bears. They had taken off from airfields around western Russia, and the pilots had skilfully grouped their aircraft into formation in the skies over Belarus.

These aircraft never strayed from Belarusian airspace as they began their mission. The bombers concealed themselves behind a cloud of electronic radar jamming in an effort to hide their presence from NATO ground-based radars in Poland and E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft further west over Polish airspace. NATO fighters – Polish F-16s and, somewhat ironically, Russian-built MiG-29s in the service of the Polish Air Force, along with American F-22A Raptors – patrolled the skies over the Polish-Belarusian border, but until the first shots were fired they were under strict orders not to enter Belarusian airspace, thus allowing the Bears to launch all of their missiles.

Those bombers each launched eight KH-55 cruise missiles, or as NATO would call them, AS-15 Kents. The missiles were loaded with high-explosive and runway-cratering warheads, designed to render NATO airfields inoperable at least on a temporary basis. They streaked away from the Bears and disappeared into the dawn sky, aimed at numerous airfields in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Hundreds of NATO warplanes were crammed into those airfields and soon after the initial missile launches, an enormous effort was made to scramble those aircraft and get them away from their bases. Though NATO planners back in Brussels didn’t expect the initial strike to involve nuclear weapons, it was a possibility that had to be considered and planned for. A pair of NATO AWACS birds, one over North-Western Poland and another over Prague, detected over a hundred inbound cruise missiles and vectored in the Falcons, Fulcrums, and Raptors to intercept them; it was too late to go after the bombers. Splashing those missiles was what counted now! Radar and communications jamming by Russian air and ground elements, as well as the sheer speed of the inbound Kents made that a difficult task though. Plenty of missiles were shot down before they could reach their targets, firstly by fighters and then by American and German-manned Patriot missile batteries set up around major Allied airfields in Eastern Europe. Over two thirds of the missiles got through the hasty NATO defence effort, however, and slammed into their targets.

Poland saw its 21st Tactical Air Base, located right outside Świdwin, damaged by missile strikes. Jets from the air forces of Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States were all stationed their alongside Polish aircraft, and explosions devastated numerous aircraft hangers, fuel and ammunition storage dumps, and barracks as well. Similarly, the 22nd Tactical Air Base in Malbork was hit hard by the Kents, along with the 23rd Air Base further south near Mińsk Mazowiecki. Finally, the 31st Tactical Air Base received the attention of Kents, with those missiles cratering the main runway of the airbase and killing dozens of servicemen and women.

Further south, Zvolenska Air Base near Prague was hit. That facility, further from the frontlines that other bases, was a focal point for NATO support aircraft, such as tankers and electronic warfare planes; many of these valuable jets had gotten off the ground in time to escape destruction, but terrible damage was still wrought. The final target for missiles launched from the Bears over Belarus was Presov Air Base down in Slovakia. Spanish F/A-18 Hornets as well as German Tornado strike jets were stationed there, and several of these aircraft that had been unable to scramble in time were destroyed, while fires raged as missiles hit their hardened aircraft shelters and supply facilities.

This attack had been largely successful despite the failure of the Kents to knock out any of the AWACS planes deployed in the Czech Republic. It wasn’t truly devastating, but was more of a nuisance attack aimed at rocking the alliance back on its heels, levelling the playing field for Russia’s smaller air force in a tactical sense. Many buildings were left burning and runways cratered, but all of the targets struck by Group #1 were still capable of launching combat operations against Russia.

*

Group #2 consisted of six of the smaller, faster Tu-22M Backfires. They were far more survivable aircraft, being capable of flying at supersonic speeds and having a far smaller radar signature than the Bears did. They carried shorter-ranged cruise missiles, with each bomber carrying ten KH-15s as opposed to the larger KH-55s. Named the AS-16 Kickback by NATO intelligence, these missiles had originally been designed to carry nuclear warheads, but today they had purely conventional payloads. The Backfires launched their missiles at four targets in Denmark and Northern Germany. Already, Luftwaffe Typhoon fighters were on their way to intercept, and the Russian jets went to afterburners and fled back eastwards immediately after firing their missiles. Still, it wasn’t enough to save two of the aircraft, which plummeted into the Baltic Sea after being taken out by long-range air-to-air missiles fired by the German fighters.

Screaming in over the coast, numerous Kickbacks slammed into Aalborg and Karup Air Bases, housing F-16s of the Royal Danish Air Force. There were other bases in Denmark that could have been targeted, but these facilities were seen as the most vital and given the smaller number of missiles allocated to this element of Operation Slava, planners at the Russian Defence Ministry wanted to hit those important bases first; other targets in Denmark could be taken out at a later date if that was deemed necessary.

The RDAF was unable to shoot down any of those incoming missiles, and all twenty-six of them hit their targets. Men and women dived for cover as they impacted, with the massive explosions sending fragments of burning metal flying into the darkness. Dozens of personnel on the ground died at Aalborg and Karup, but nevertheless, many of the Royal Danish Air Force F-16s were able to take to the skies after a brief period of reconstitution, with few of the aircraft themselves being destroyed.

More missiles came in over the Baltic coastline of Germany. They were launched at Schleswig Air Base as well as Rostock-Laage International Airport, which despite being a civilian airport also held a military role. The objective of targeting these to airfields was to harass NATO air forces there and prevent them from intervening further north or east. There were more German Tornados based at both Schleswig and Rostock-Laage, as well as US Air Force F-16s and some French Mirage-2000s. Most of the jets escaped destruction either by getting into the air or by remaining in hardened aircraft shelters. Some didn’t though. At the latter target, a trio of American F-16s was annihilated by a Kickback that struck the centre aircraft on a taxiway, whilst a German C-130 transport plane – thankfully empty apart from the crew – was struck by another missile at Schleswig Air Base.

*

Over the North Sea, Group #3 was not so lucky.

The six Bears that had been assigned to strike targets in the Netherlands and Western Germany would never launch their missiles. A pair of Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16s flying Combat Air Patrol (CAP) along the coastline were vectored toward the bombers, which were totally helpless against fighters crewed by well-trained pilots with excellent air-to-air missiles at their disposal.

The two F-16s attained missile locks on the lead Bears and fired their AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) at them. Predictably, the two lumbering Russian bombers were knocked out of the sky in a ball of fire. Another bomber was shot down by a third AMRAAM. Then the Dutch fighters moved in, this time firing heat-seeking missiles at a much closer range, knocking down another two Bears.

The final Bear pilot jinked and dived his aircraft in a hopeless effort to avoid destruction; he was shot down by cannon fire from the F-16s which sheared off the bomber’s wing and sent it spiralling into the North Sea. Other F-16s were scrambled both from Holland and from Belgium, but to the disappointment of their pilots, the Bears over the North Sea had all be neutralised.

Not one single missile would strike Holland or Western Germany that morning thanks to the efforts of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, who had achieved the first air-to-air kills of World War III.

*

Eight more Bears flew down over Norway and neared the airspace of the United Kingdom. They had avoided US Navy and Royal Norwegian Air Force fighter patrols, aided by the successful jamming efforts of electronic warfare aircraft all the way back over the Kola Peninsula. The Atlantic Ocean was a very big place indeed and avoiding Allied air defences was something that the Bear pilots had practiced countless times. These Bears, like the ones that had struck at Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia moments earlier, carried the longer-ranged AS-15 Kents as their primary (and only) weapons. Launching their missiles from over a thousand kilometres away from British airspace, those bombers were easily able to evade any sort of defence that the Royal Air Force could have mounted had they seen the bombers coming. Radar stations in Scotland and along the coast of East Anglia tracked the incoming missiles and passed that information onto the UK’s own air defence network as well as the American Patriot missile battery commanders stationed around US Air Force bases in Britain. A trio of targets were to be struck that summer morning. British and American air defences reduced the number of incoming missiles by over a quarter, but far too many would still get through.

RAF Lakenheath, despite its name, was a US Air Force facility, housing the F-15Cs and F-15Es of the US 48th Fighter Wing, making it a crucial target; a dozen missiles hit this massive American airbase, lighting up the Norfolk countryside with explosions. Tragically, a C-17 carrying men from the US Air Force was hit as it taxied towards a hardened aircraft shelter, with that explosion killing eighty-seven men and women; more damage was done when the main control tower took a direct missile hit.

RAF Fairford, another American-run base, housed B-52H strategic bombers belonging to US Air Force Global Strike Command. Here the defenders had done well and the bombers had been sheltered to the best standard that they could have been; none of the ancient B-52s – older, like the Bears, than most of the men and women who flew them – were destroyed although some suffered minor damage. However, significant damage was done to the airbase facilities, with numerous taxiways and runways cratered and buildings destroyed.

Finally, RAF Marham, one of the Royal Air Forces’ largest facilities, was hit. Royal Air Force Typhoons and Tornados took to the skies to avoid destruction, leaving personnel on the ground to fend for themselves; an effort was made by RAF pilots to intercept the Kents but little could ultimately be done with those missiles flying so low and at such high speeds. Hangers and storage depots crumpled under massive explosions and yet more damage was done, but Marham, like most other targets, remained a functional airbase.

*

Russia's initial strike had been largely successful despite the annihilation of Group #3 by the Dutch. Russian planners knew they weren’t going to be able to destroy NATO’s air forces with cruise missiles alone; the idea of the strike was to wreak as much havoc as possible and cause casualties on a large scale, slowing down the pace of NATO air operations and buying time for the Russian Ground Forces to push out into Baltic States, Poland and Norway.

In that respect, the goal had been achieved.





Forty–Eight

NATO fighters and even the US Army’s Patriot missiles could engage air-launched cruise missiles fired by Russian bombers yet there was no defence available against shorter-ranged ballistic missiles fired from mobile launchers on land. The speed, ballistic arc and the closeness of launch point to target area negated any defence against them. From out of Russia proper, the Kaliningrad region and Belarus, missiles came. They crashed into a wide variety of targets through the Baltic States and Poland. The missiles used were the newer Iskanders and the older Tochkas. There were a lot of them used and fired off in a series of short barrages with a few at a time. The gaps between the waves of incoming missiles occurred when the mobile launchers from which they were fired changed locations to relaunch. However, different units were involved in this and it allowed for an extended period of launches where they came with an overall regular fury. In the end though, the missiles stopped coming. Russia didn’t have an endless supply of them. Over a hundred had been fired as a target list was worked down and while there were more, these were being saved for further missions in the following hours, days and weeks. The barrage was over with but only for now.

It hadn’t been perfect. There had been all sorts of problems with the attack. It was all very complicated where a strict series of orders was meant to be followed. Incompetence, faulty equipment and just plain bad luck had affected the firings of them. The Iskanders were used as magic bullets to hit the most-important targets and did well yet not all of them worked as advertised. A lot of disappointment came with the Tochkas. In recent years, many systems within the launchers had been upgraded and the crews had had much recent training. These weapons had long been stored though and not all of them had been stored correctly. The range on these missiles had been something that the Russians had sought to artificially increase ahead of their use. During the build-up to military action, the rocket brigades transferred towards Russia’s western borders and into Belarus had been kept some distance back from the border with the launchers & supporting vehicles at staging sites. Over the night of August 6th / 7th, they had moved forward. They were tasked to go right up to the frontiers of the nations which they fired into and launch from there. Detachments of personnel with radio beacons – simple technology, nothing fancy – were waiting at pre-scouted sites. This gave the missiles that extra range. Not all firing teams reached those sites though. There would be hell to pay for them; couldn’t they read a damn map? Accuracy within the missiles themselves was good, especially the Iskanders, but never perfect. Some of these expensive weapons were wasted where they missed their targets by distances great and small.

Like the ballistic missiles, an artillery barrage came. For decades, NATO military personnel had been trained to ride out Soviet and then Russian artillery barrages in wartime scenarios. How do you train men for such a thing though when Soviet-Russian doctrine was to use so many guns all at once? There were NATO troops who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years and been under fire before… but nothing compared to what the Russians unleashed on the first morning of the war. Like they did with their missile-launchers, they brought their artillery forward to sites right up on the border in the hours of darkness – there were fantastic errors of navigation here too – and then opened fire. Barrages commenced with batteries and battalions opening fire and then motoring off to new sites. The Russians (and the Belorussians too) used self-propelled weapons for this while keeping their less-mobile, towed guns back for the time being. What they feared was counter-battery fire yet they weren’t firing off one shell and retreating: instead they fired many before departing for a new location. It wasn’t just shells being sent westwards either. These artillery units contained howitzers as well as heavy mortars and multiple-barrelled rocket-launchers (MLRS) too. The crash of the guns was continuous. The first big barrages were followed by weaker ones in terms of numbers of projectiles fired though it was kept up in the form of putting a lot of artillery upon the targets. Modern artillery was capable of a lot. Howitzers would raise their barrels high to fire their first shell and then slowly lower it each time as another was fired. Done right, this would bring many shells down on one target all at once and from the same gun. The MLRS’ fired a pre-loaded ‘package’ of rockets and had another set moved into place with ease to fire them off: there was no individual loading of twelve or sixteen rockets ahead of firing. Different types of warheads were used from conventional high-explosive fragmentation projectiles to anti-armour submunitions to aerial-scattered mines. Some weapons blew up on contact with the ground, others detonated at various altitudes. Some ‘special’ artillery was used as well in the form of a sort-of MLRS system known as the TOS-1. This was often called by the Russians a flamethrower. It fired thermobaric and fuel-air explosive rockets in a thirty-projectile barrage. Few of these systems were available and their range was short, but they had quite the effect where used.

The missiles and artillery were used in a tactical form. They were fired up and down the frontlines over which war was about to come yet also stretching backwards while retaining the tactical nature of their use still. The Isklanders were especially useful in the rear though some of the big howitzers could stretch pretty far too. Other weapons were used closer-in. The aim of this all was to blast open entrance ways into the Baltic States and Poland for attacking units as well as to pin down enemy units out of the immediate vicinity of where those attacks were coming so they could be later moved against. Heads were to be kept down and those on the receiving end left frightened as well. That was the aim here: shock and awe. Once the big opening barrages were done with, the artillery systems would move with attacking forces going forward and firing from inside occupied land. They would be broken up too where attached to operational commands rather than centralised. Some of them would be going very far forward indeed with the majority of the attacking forces who were now kept back from the frontlines and watching from afar the crescendo of fire on the horizon which all of this created.

Others were moving forward though under the cover of this barrage. Scouting units were striking out ahead and penetrating the borders to enter hostile territory ahead. There were armoured columns as well as dismounted men on foot (many Spetsnaz teams). Others used light vehicles, helicopters and transport aircraft: with the latter, no big parachute jumps were made even with two airborne units in-place but smaller ones were made still. Russian and Belorussian forces crossed into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Deterrence had failed and NATO countries were being directly invaded.


In the days leading up to the war, when many were convinced that it was certain to come regardless of what was done, others had been determined to see it stop. Extraordinary diplomatic efforts were made through international organisations, bi-lateral contacts and even unsupported lone contacts. Games had been played by the Kremlin in some of this too where they tried to deceive many – meeting success in some places and failure elsewhere – that the crisis could be averted. At SHAPE in Belgium (where war came directly to them) and also at the CJTF-East headquarters in Krakow, there was none of that delusion and false hope. The generals and political staffers assigned reported back to their governments that from what information was being gathered and funnelling into them, war was coming. This was listened to by some in distant capitals yet, shamefully, ignored in others: there were just some people who couldn’t, wouldn’t accept that fact ahead of it actually happening. From SHAPE and Krakow, they saw a massive gathering of enemy forces positioned to the east. Moscow and Minsk were play-acting with their fears of a NATO invasion – who could imagine such a thing? – and, it was decided, getting ready to attack. They saw all of those missile-launchers (being taken in by many inflatable dummies too though) and massed artillery. They also observed all of the enemy armour present. Russian maskirovka efforts here to conceal what they had fooled NATO intelligence. It was not though in the manner directly foreseen. NATO overestimated what was present. All of that moving of equipment around and all of the false radio signals – low-hanging fruit for the West’s ace in the hole which was its intelligence-gathering capability – gave a false impression that what was present was larger than it actually was. The joint Russian-Belorussian force was big but not a dozen heavy divisions big! On their intelligence charts, NATO staffers had given their opponent an army which they could only field with much more time. The intelligence was collected properly but analysed incorrectly. In some ways, it was better to be safe than sorry. Later, NATO would correct itself here and realise that all of those mobilisation-only units were yet to move away from garrisons and not in the field at the beginning of the war. Until then though, they were believed to be active.

The outbreak of war brought immediate orders in reaction to this perceived greater strength. Those orders were for NATO forward units to withdraw. It was to be a fighting withdrawal, and one to bloody the enemy to make them pay dearly for moving forward, but a withdrawal it would be nonetheless. It was empathically not a retreat! NATO forces were spread too thin and they could pull back to concentrate. As the Russians and Belorussians spread out, NATO would bring its air and ground units into play in a joint effort. The invaders would be shown what combined arms warfare was really done.

Not all NATO units under CJTF-East command, led by the US Army’s General Petraeus would retreat – some of them just couldn’t –, but the majority would. Admiral Stavridis had this already as standing policy and from his aircraft above Belgium (far away from the gunfight at his headquarters below), the signal was sent to Petraeus. There had been a respectfully dispute over this in recent days where Petraeus, further forward and personally unsure that the Russians had this in them, had questioned Stavridis on this approach. It did make strategic sense and was something that SACEUR’s subordinate wanted to do in reaction to an incoming attack, but he didn’t want to withdraw so fast straight away. He had in fact argued that many forward-deployed units should be withdrawn earlier while at the same time keeping others in-place to ride out the first opening Russian attack. The information that SHAPE had had been causing alarm there though. It was realised by both men that this was going to cause problems of a diplomatic nature. The Poles were going to go mad as their territory was abandoned to occupation… and the Baltic States governments were going to see themselves physically cut off. Petraeus was able to get a concession from Stavridis where for as long as possible the Suwalki Gap would be contested – two good units in the form of the US 2nd Cav’ and the Polish brigade of paratroopers – in a mobile battle, but elsewhere there would be that withdrawal. They weren’t going far, it wasn’t as if NATO was pulling back to Germany or anything like that, but the forward positions were to be withdrawn from from as the Russian-Belorussian force moved forward to take ground.

The orders went out. Some units didn’t get them while others did and chose to ignore them: in the latter category, that was many Polish formations. Radio jamming of signals came alongside refusals to retreat from sovereign soil. Elsewhere though, the majority of NATO units forward deployed started to withdraw. The Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, spread across northern Poland, pulled its British and most of its Polish troops back. The Americans with the US V Corps all retreated but one of the two Polish divisions there didn’t pull back away from the Belorussian border; the German airmobile brigade there didn’t get the order due to intensive jamming as well as being in the way of several successful Iskander hits on its own communications. This was Poland; things were even worse on the ground in the Baltic States. Here there was little room to withdraw and no willingness on the part of the local forces to do so. Command arrangements here were poor in the form of individual brigades all reporting to Krakow directly rather than through a divisional or corps headquarters. This was something which had been put off being sorted out with politics a factor in it. Even if it had been, so many local commanders here refused to take a step back. They would defend every square meter of their hard-won territorial integrity! With them up here though, in Estonia and Latvia, the Americans had their paratroopers and there was that mixed NATO brigade. They were both right in the firing line of tanks coming at them from ahead and with the (false) expectation that soon enough Russian airborne and amphibious troops would be striking at them from the rear. They were quickly going to be cut off with no one coming to rescue them. What a bad day they were about to have.

[James G]

Forty-Nine

The Danish government had not considered an amphibious assault on Zealand to be a realistic possibility should war break out, as was happening now, due to the perceived lack of amphibious transport ships available to Moscow in the region. Though several such vessels had been moved to the Baltic Fleet from the Black Sea Fleet earlier in the year, it was thought that this was merely for training and intimidation purposes, or at worst for use against the Baltic States, where any conflict would surely be confined too?

Like many European governments, the Danish leadership had been caught up in wishful thinking, and was not even sure that there would be a war, let alone one fought on Danish territory. The junta in Moscow, however, had different ideas. Zealand sat directly in the Baltic Approaches, and planning for the armed seizure of the island had been underway since the days of Joseph Stalin, remaining constantly updated throughout the Cold War. Denmark was by no means an easy target, but nor did she have much in the way of defensive infrastructure and planning.

NATO’s drafted Eagle Guardian battle plan did not take into account ground fighting in the Baltic Approaches; there were no NATO reinforcements tapped specifically to cover the region, unlike during the Cold War, when an entire NATO command had been in place for its defence.

The initial assault by Russian forces on the Danish island of Zealand occurred shortly after the initial wave of cruise missiles struck their targets. Structured as a rifle company, nearly two hundred men from the 16th Spetsnaz Brigade disembarked from a charter aircraft on the tarmac at Copenhagen International Airport, the largest on the island. Wearing the uniforms of Russian regulars and armed with assault rifles, anti-tank missiles, and mortars, the Spetsnaz troops rapidly secured the airport against minimal resistance.

As the airport was secured, a much larger force of Commando Frogmen, the naval Spetsnaz arm, disembarked from a Ukrainian-flagged freighter ship docked at the city’s main harbour. Their success was similar, though casualties were incurred as they fanned out to secure the port.

Half a dozen Ropucha-class landing ships, as well as numerous other amphibious assault vessels, appeared on the horizon shortly after five in the morning. The Danish government had been moved to a military command post at an Air Force base on the mainland hours before, as word was received that President Obama had been assassinated and then information began flowing in about the commando and terrorist strikes were taking place in both the United States and Europe.

Units from the Royal Danish Army’s 2nd Infantry Brigade moved to react to the invasion, facing harassment from naval gunfire as they did so. Based across Zealand, the formation was equipped with Leopard-2 tanks as well as infantry fighting vehicles and man-portable missiles. The 1st Armoured Infantry Battalion began moving out of its barracks at Antvorskov as the initial Russian landings took place. With command and control in chaos as a result of air, cyber and Spetsnaz operations, the Danish mechanised battalion was routed for Copenhagen, where it expected to meet light resistance from a largely infantry force.

Instead, however, nearly two thousand men from the Baltic Fleet’s 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, equipped with T-80s, as well as BMP-2 fighting vehicles and BTR-80 armoured personnel carriers were now disembarking at the dockyards secured by naval Spetsnaz. Flying from airfields around St. Petersburg, Su-24 Fencer of the Russian Air Force repeatedly bombed targets around Copenhagen as the landings took place. Within the city itself, the Russians were opposed by the Danish 2nd Armoured Infantry Battalion, garrisoned at Hovelte.

Russian Marines pushed into the city after repeated airstrikes against their opponents. Opposing the Fencers in the sky above were the F-16s of the Royal Danish Air Force. Though their bases had already come under cruise missile attack, the F-16 pilots had taken to the skies in force and were able to knock down no less than seven Russian strike aircraft. The fighters escorting the strike aircraft repeatedly found themselves engaged with Polish and German fighters while en route for Zealand, thus preventing them from being able to assist the strike fighters. The fighting quickly moved into the city of Copenhagen itself. T-80 tanks belonging to the 336th Guards Brigade’s armoured battalion clashed with Danish Leopard-2s in tight urban engagements, with the Russians pushing further inland by the hour as building after building was raised to the ground.

The Danes resisted fiercely, damaging the harbour facilities where possible but failing to prevent the landing of additional Marines and their heavy armour. There were a few Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters available to the naval infantry, flown from the decks of the small fleet of destroyers and frigates which covered the amphibious assault by specially-trained crews. They provided support with rockets and missiles, but three of their number were knocked down by RDAF F-16s.

The Royal Danish Air Force high command was pressuring the government for permission to bomb the harbours and dockyards that had already fallen into Russian hands, but the government was extremely reluctant to authorise such operations, given the high number of civilians caught up in the area. Nevertheless, they eventually relented, allowing for major airstrikes by Danish and other NATO aircraft to take place in and around Copenhagen; by this time, naval infantry units were in the process of erecting an SA-11 surface-to-air missile battery around the harbour, to provide more effective air cover than the mobile SAMs moving in with the marines.

An attempt was made to crater the runway of Copenhagen International Airport, while the 2nd Armoured Infantry Battalion attempted to push southeast and separate the airport from the harbour where the Marines had landed; this effort was a total failure, with T-80 tanks blasting their way through the hastily-assembled defences sitting between the two landing sites. Two tanks and numerous armoured vehicles were knocked out by Danish missile crews as fighting spread throughout the city of Copenhagen. The Danes were struggling to bring about artillery support as well, while Russian troops could call in fires from the destroyer and trio of frigates waiting nearby.

The streets of Copenhagen were alive with gunfire as countless buildings were raised to the ground by repeated naval and aerial bombardments. Numerous bridges were destroyed and fleeing civilians jammed the roads. As the 1st Armoured Infantry Battalion began moving towards Copenhagen, yet another disaster would strike. Russian Su-24 jets roared over the highways down which the convoy of troops were advancing, unleashing not only conventional bombs but two massive thermobaric weapons as well.

Those thermobaric bombs sucked in the oxygen from all around them, sometimes with such force that Danish infantrymen had their lungs torn out through their mouths as they tried to breath. Countless others died in the fires while many were horrifically maimed. In total, nearly four hundred Danish soldiers had died in the attack. The 1st Armoured Infantry Battalion had yet to fire a shot in anger, and yet it was already combat ineffective.

The 2nd Infantry Brigade had two more battalions, but those were ‘cadre’ formations who would need more time mobilising. Soldiers had only been ordered to report to their barracks several hours before the outbreak of fighting, due to the Danish government’s reluctance to engage in activities that might have been seen as provocative towards Moscow. Only as the Dutch and British commandos had stormed a freighter ship crewed by Russian commandos bound for Rotterdam did the Danish government finally order a full mobilisation of its forces, and by then it was already too late.

A smaller, secondary force of about seven hundred marines began landing at Koge, splitting the attention of the Royal Danish Army.

The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, was now joining in the fray after recovering from the initial bombardment, and soon the Tornado strike jets based at airfields along the Baltic coast of Germany were in the air, bombing the Koge landing site though holding back from hitting Copenhagen directly. As dawn broke and fighting continued in the island, German jets were able to sink one of the Ropucha landing ships in a daring low-level airstrike, along with a smaller Air-Cushioned Landing Craft (LCAC). Despite the efforts of the Luftwaffe and the Royal Danish Air Force, however, there was a full brigade of naval infantry fighting on Zealand by morning.

The Danish needed help, and they needed it fast.




Fifty

There was a Russian-flagged ship located fifteen miles offshore, just outside Norwegian territorial waters. It was to the northwest of Tromsø and had been there all night. The MV Kuzma Minin was a freighter outbound from the distant Algiers and heading for the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. It had come to a halt just after midnight. The ship wasn’t drifting but was running on minimal power and holding its position. Norwegian coastguard authorities had first reacted before the military had got involved. At the beginning of the week, Russia had blown up that oil rig in the North Sea and now they had a ship of theirs acting extremely suspiciously on the edge of Norway’s sovereign seas. With haste, the Norwegians reacted to the presence of the Kuzma Minin. Contact was made by radio where the captain claimed that he was having power difficulties. He requested permission to come to Tromsø and dock there, citing the safety of crew and cargo. This was denied. A Norwegian ship headed towards them and instead, coastguard personnel would come aboard. The response which came was that that would be unsafe for them to do so. If the alarm bells weren’t ringing already, they were after this. Further military assets were alerted. Whereas before it was just an aircraft and a patrol boat, now there were several of each all paying attention. Warning alerts were sent to several military sites throughout the north of the country. As to the Kuzma Minin, what exactly was going on was unknown. That unknown breed grave concerns. Where there commandos in there? Was the ship secretly armed ready to strike at Norway? Dawn came and news arrived that Dutch (aided by the British) had raided that ‘ghost ship’ in the North Sea. This pushed the Norwegian alert level even higher. The war which everyone feared, but had tried to convince themselves wasn’t coming, looked increasingly likely. Norwegian military forces prepared to engage that ship as they moved even more military assets into standby positions nearby. It was all a ruse though. The Kuzma Minin was just a distraction. The civilian crew aboard, joined by several GRU officers who had manned the radios, were only here to draw as many eyes on them as possible, eyes which weren’t wanted to look elsewhere.

H-Hour arrived.

Norway came under direct attack as did other NATO nations. One of the origins of that attack wasn’t from the Kuzma Minin though. There was another ship which the Norwegians should have been paying attention to: this was the MV Pride of Lagos, a West African ship which had arrived yesterday at the port of Harstad. Port authorities had already checked it out but their checks hadn’t been thorough enough. From out of it came Russian naval commandos. There were less than forty of them and well-armed they might have been, but this was quite the task that they were charged with. Assaulting the port of Harstad and engaging civilian security people was one thing; holding what they would take was quite the other. The port town was in a reasonably isolated area but it was home to Norwegian military forces from that country’s own commandos. Many of those men were elsewhere: others were at their garrison. Harstad was to be fought over throughout the morning. Those commandos waited on reinforcements… and waited… and waited. Where was their support?


Multiple attacks were directed against selected sites across the north of Norway. Russian forces went into action to smash opposing NATO forces in the region as well as take territory. They made a three-pronged approach to do this. It wasn’t something to be completed in a day, let alone the morning when it started, but it was meant to see victory as an outcome after a few days of fighting. The Norwegians were expected to fight & fight well and the Russians were well aware that the country’s allies had forces arriving in Norway too. Regardless, the attack was made. There was an overland attack made where first one motor rifle brigade, and with another one following, was to advance westwards overland from the Kola Peninsula. Russian Airborne Troops were to make landings in the rear, to the north and northwest of the Narvik area. There was to be an amphibious assault too, also in that general region over on the western side of Norway’s Arctic, but this one would take time to get going. The Russian plan of attack was complicated. There were multiple components. Terrain and weather, as well as the strength of the opposition, defined the whole planned operation. There were many self-imposed limitations on the attackers too, all of those which came from Moscow. Some hushed conversations between senior military people questioned whether those back in the Kremlin actually wanted them to win… or just tie down so many NATO forces in one hell of a mess that this was looking likely to create by all of the complications?

The border crossing was undertaken by the lead elements of the 200th Brigade. These Russian forces went over under the cover of an artillery attack and with localised tactical air support. It was a long way to Narvik. Norwegian forces began harassing them straight away. The forward defensive forces fell back as they fought and commenced long-planned measures to delay and cripple an attacker. Their fight was going to be long and hard from them but they intended to make it just the same for the Russians invading their country. Rapidly, the Russian timetable started to slip. They were barely inside Norway and the mess that had been feared by some of the realists was already happening. The 25th Brigade remained in Kola and ready to start following in the next couple of days: some wondered if they would ever make that trip. The amphibious operation wasn’t one what mirrored had been done down in the Baltic. There was no element of surprise available due to the distances involved and the significant NATO forces in the way. Overnight, a massive Russian naval combat flotilla had started moving towards the North Cape – to round that headland at the very top of Scandinavia – and joining them too were the amphibious ships who slipped their moorings from Kola ports under the cover of darkness. The warships out ahead would have to open the way by engaging in battle those who attempted to bar their path. Only then could the ships carrying the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade do the same and head for their far-off landing sites. The Norwegians were waiting for the Russian combat flotilla. Within hours, doing what aircraft hadn’t be able to do due to enemy air activity, Norwegian submarines struck. There were several of these all offshore north and east of the North Cape. They began duking it out with the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet.

Norwegian aircraft were unable to intervene in the opening stages of what would become the Battle of the North Cape because they were busy. The Russians had filled the skies with combat aircraft of their own. These were in support – indirect rather than direct – of the third element of the combined assault into Northern Norway. Fighters and strike-bombers were engaged by the Norwegians where F-16s clashed with MiG-29s and Su-24s. There were a whole series of confusing fights going on high up in the skies with victories claimed on each side in these clashes. The pilots of these aircraft didn’t see their opponents. These engagements were all made at beyond visual range. There were RAF Sentry aircraft at Bodo (others in Germany too, all rather than at their home base of RAF Waddington; the reason why the Spetsnaz strike there had been called off) providing AWACS support to the Norwegians and the Russians had airborne command-&-control aircraft of their own in the form of A-50s. The task for these battle controllers in the sky was immense. They were doing a remarkable job and nothing got past them. The British saw the slower-moving Russian transports and the Russians saw the Norwegian fighters moving against them. Each side reacted to one another in this. Those transports were eighteen aircraft carrying paratroopers, An-26s and Il-76s, with each was making a lone & unescorted flight. The F-16s got some of them but others got through. They flew above a trio of designated drop-zones and from them the paratroopers jumped. The airborne battalion from the Russian 11th Air Assault Brigade was split up into three assault companies to make these jumps leaving the rest of the brigade, with its airmobile units, to be flown in later.

The Bardufoss Jump met the most success. The company of Russian paratroopers who landed all around this Norwegian airbase, from where the majority of the currently-airborne F-16s were flying, had a hard fight once on the ground first against a Norwegian Army unit and then Air Force personnel. They fought their way into the airbase among an evacuation taking place there from the Norwegians as they pulled out, destroying what they could on the way. Su-24s provided some air support for this and was crucial but soon enough, those aircraft were gone: they were so far from home and thus short on fuel. The paratroopers were soon joined by the beginning of the airlift to bring in more men yet this fight wasn’t over. The Norwegians had other airbases in operation and while the disruption from losing Bardufoss was going to hurt greatly, they weren’t finished here. Incoming Russian transports loaded with more men as well as light armoured vehicles now faced attack. Man-portable missiles were used to shoot them down on approach. Norwegian troops, beaten back by the assault, reassembled for a counterattack. The second assault was the Evenes Jump. This was another airbase, though smaller than Bardufoss. Only half of the troops made it to the ground alive. They were afterwards meant to move off and up to Harstad while keeping Evenes secure: two significant tasks to achieve simultaneously and what a challenge that was. It was one which they failed to achieve. Localised counterattacks drove them back from Evenes itself and pinned them with their backs to the sea. The Russians didn’t have the airbase in their hands and nor were they going to lead a later assault to link up with those fighting for their lives at Harstad. Then there was the Andoya Jump. This was a wash-out. Strong, unexpected gusts of wind at the last moment blew many paratroopers off-course… and into the sea. Andoya was an airbase on a headland at the top of an island. Only a maniac would try to take this facility like this. The paratroopers were not maniacs but the senior man who had cut their orders was. Three quarters of those initially sent to Andoya didn’t make it. The others were killed in battle or taken prisoner. Among the defenders of Andoya were US Marines: they had ground personnel for their aviation units on the ground and fought alongside their Norwegian comrades-in-arms to keep Andoya out of enemy hands.


The wheels had come right off the Russian assault into Norway. The reverses suffered were grave and, taken this early on, were looking likely to make the whole thing a disaster. The Russians pushed onwards though. Those ground forces kept moving from their border start lines. The naval engagements off the North Cape continued. The airlift of men to join the paratroopers (those left alive) was to keep going. There were a series of fights in the sky between aircraft with now Norwegian aircraft engaging ground targets too, on their own soil, along with the Russians doing the same. None of this was coming to a stop anytime soon. The Russians still wanted to overcome Norwegian & NATO resistance while the Norwegians and their allies were determined to defend their territory.

The immediate available forces to each side in-theatre at the start of the conflict were evenly matched. Russia had its four brigades (two in action; two to follow) while NATO had three combat brigades plus significant smaller – Norwegian – attachments. Norway had just the one standing brigade yet could mobilise many more men and organise them quickly. Both the Royal Marines (with Dutch attachments) and the US Marines also had a brigade-sized force of men too. They could, and would in the case of the Americans, be joined by many more. NATO was fighting on friendly territory here. This was good ground to defend. Where Russia had made a head-on attack followed by ongoing attempts to secure the rear was overall a good battle plan yet it was hardly that unexpected in the strategic sense. For decades, NATO had studied how to defend the north of Norway. The Russian attack nearly directly mirrored one of several mock invasions plotted by ‘red team’ planners. Defeating an attack like this was what NATO moved to do.

The fighting continued. Russia and NATO battled it out. There were further surprises in the rear where Russian Spetsnaz made an appearance later rather than at the immediate outbreak of the fighting and they caused trouble in many places. In addition, the airbase at Bodo, where the RAF Sentry’s were joined by US Marines aircraft spinning up ready for conflict – there was a squadron of FA-18s present to aid the embattled Norwegian Air Force, – came under missile attack. First there were distant Russian bombers (staying in Russian airspace) which fired their long-range cruise missiles and then to support this a Russian submarine offshore launched several more. That submarine was the Nerpa, an Akula-class attack submarine. India wanted this submarine on a long-term lease but the international situation had seen it in Russian Navy service. Cruise missiles were fired from its torpedo tubes rather than VLS launchers limiting their numbers yet giving the submarine time to hide between these firings. Bodo’s runway was cratered at times and there was a wait to sweep it of the cluster munitions. Twice the Nerpa did this. The third time this was tried, it wasn’t so lucky: a Norwegian P-3 Orion, an aircraft which had earlier sunk that ship Kuzma Minin regardless of what it had or hadn’t done, dropped a torpedo on the submarine. The Norwegians had lost a submarine in the Battle of the North Cape earlier in the day but taken an enemy one out here. Russia would rue the loss of such a submarine as the Nerpa. It could have played a far more significant role in the war than the short role it had. The Norwegians would spend a long time afterwards worrying about the effects of this sinking which they themselves had done: the Nerpa was a nuclear-powered vessel. Would the safety measures there aboard in the face of catastrophic hull loss to prevent an ecological disaster hold out? The submarine had gone down in (relatively) shallow off-shore waters.

The issues around Bodo, plus the loss of Bardufoss, only slowed the movement of NATO force to join the ground fight that the Norwegians were in. They were moving soon enough though. The British and Dutch headed for Andoya and Harstad; the Americas were inbound for Bardufoss to aid the Norwegians there. Norway was going to be a secondary theatre of this war going on elsewhere but that didn’t mean that it was going to be any less violent nor intense.

[James G]

Fifty-One

The fighting along the northern approaches to Tallinn was short but extremely violent. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, had been deployed to cover the northern side of Lake Peipus alongside the Estonian Land Forces’ 1st Infantry Brigade in a short-sighted and somewhat foolhardy gamble aimed at preventing a war from breaking out rather than actually fighting one.

1st Battalion, 73rd Cavalry Regiment – the 2nd BCT’s reconnaissance force – was positioned just west of Johvi, defending the town of roughly ten thousand people from foxholes and bunkers. The local civilian population had aided the Americans in building tank-traps and laying concertina wire; against any other foe, it would have been an impressive series of obstacles. The 138th Motorised Rifle Brigade, under the command of the Twentieth Guards Army, had punched through the border town of Narva with barely a shot being fired, and besides a series of roadside ambushes mounted by the Estonian Defence League, had faced little resistance until meeting the Americans, whom they clashed with shortly before dawn.

The initial skirmishes went surprisingly well for the hopelessly outgunned paratroopers of the 2nd Brigade’s reconnaissance battalion, with well-hidden paratroopers using Javelin shoulder-fired missiles to knock out three BRDM scout vehicles and a BTR-80. Nevertheless, the American positions were soon ferreted out by Mi-28N attack helicopters, which used their unguided rockets as opposed to their AT-6 Spiral (in NATO parlance) anti-tank missiles. Soon enough the 1st of the 73rd Cavalry was withdrawing westwards, covered by a small and largely ineffective bombardment from the 105mm light guns of the 2nd Battalion, 319th Field Artillery Regiment. Russian artillery units were quick to pounce, opening fire with much larger 152mm guns in a massive counter-battery bombardment. Soon enough, the American guns fell silent as they were either destroyed or forced to move rapidly to secondary firing positions. Following the shock of the initial skirmishes, the American commander on the ground attempted to reconvene his forces further west. After the terrible losses suffered by the 1st of the 73rd, he had little hope of holding onto Tallinn in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower.

The Americans fell back before even meeting the T-72s of the 138th Motor Rifle Brigade, pulling back to a secondary pre-planned defensive line running through the dense woodlands of the Laheemaa National Park. Here, the Americans hoped that their opponents would be forced to dismount to clear the forest, thus negating the advantages of the Russian tanks whilst simultaneously preventing an advance down the E-20 Highway, the major road from the Russian border to Tallinn. However, it was not to be. Meanwhile, the Estonian Defence League put up a significant fight to defend Rakvere, buying time for the Americans to withdraw at significant cost to themselves, with the defenders, along with the townspeople, taking murderous casualties from sustained artillery barrages as the day wore on. As they moved westwards to the National Park, Russian Su-25s made several strikes with unguided cluster munitions against the withdrawing American troops, causing severe casualties amongst the infantrymen. Attack helicopters carried out further attacks with intense rocket and cannon fire directed onto American troops. Air support for NATO ground troops in the Baltic States was supremely lacking, with sophisticated SAM systems covering the three countries from Russia, Belarus and Kaliningrad and making any attempt at close air support extremely costly.

The 138th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade would not, however, hit the main American positions in force until early afternoon, when T-72 tanks and BMP-2s came thundering down E-20. Preceding the advance by the ground troops, however, was an artillery bombardment on a truly unprecedented scale. As well as using 152mm howitzers, the Russians utilised BM-21 multiple rocket launching systems (MLRS), relics of the 1960s but still highly effective against infantry. Hundreds of projectiles seemed to descend upon the Americans from the heavens, striking the ground indiscriminately as the paratroopers dove for cover. Members of the 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry Regiment, suffered the most, with nearly two thirds of their number becoming casualties as a result of the bombardment. Su-25s repeatedly bombed the Americans, although a pair of the aircraft was shot down by US Army troops using Stinger missiles. Russian infantrymen dismounted their BTRs and BMPs, storming into the woodlands as the weakened defenders struggled to mount effective resistance. Both sides of the E-20 highway became the sites of heavy fighting. The initial lunges made by the Russians were, in fact, probes meant to locate the weak points in the line. The U.S. paratroopers gave a good account of themselves, pushing back several infantry assaults by Russian troops, coordinating their defence and forcing the Russians into pre-planned kill-zones. However, along the tree line on the eastern side of the woods, where the 2nd of the 508th Infantry was located, a full mechanised battalion of the 138th Brigade charged into the fray, racking the American foxholes with cannon fire from their 30mm guns. Several BMPs were destroyed as American soldiers fought back with anti-tank missiles, using Javelins and grenades in an attempt to offset the superior firepower of the Russian mechanised units. More infantry came pouring through the gap in the line created by the BMPs, overrunning the whole battalion before they could withdraw. Hundreds of soldiers were killed where they stood. In this type of fighting, beneath the trees and with smoke drifting through the air, taking prisoners was a rare thing. Whole squads and even platoons were cut down where they stood as they attempted to surrender, with the 1st of the 508th being completely destroyed. Grenades were thrown into foxholes and fighting devolved into hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and entrenching tools.

The only consolation of such brutal fighting was that US units were fighting so close to their attackers that the Russians couldn’t utilise their air or artillery support for fear of hitting their own men. Having secured the northern side of the woodlands, the commander of the 138th Brigade sent his heavy armour barrelling down the main highway. Heavy fighting was still ongoing along the southern side of the road, but the Americans there – members of the 2nd Battalion, 325th Infantry – were too distracted by the waves of infantry coming towards them through the burning woodlands to be able to engage the tanks coming down the road. The defenders had hoped to form a kill-zone along the highway by funnelling enemy armour down the road before using their remaining anti-tank missiles and calling in whatever air support could be summoned.

With the failure of this plan, all hope for 2/82nd Airborne was lost. With the highway secured, Russian forces poured through the gap in the 2nd Brigade’s lines, effectively encircling the US Army units still fighting in the woodlands. Within an hour of making it through the main defensive line, T-72 tanks were closing on the field headquarters company, along with 2nd Brigade’s engineer battalion, support battalion, and shattered artillery battalion. Those support troops fought back harder than the Russians had expected, but they were facing overwhelming firepower superiority. As tank shells began thundering down around his command post, the commanding officer of the Falcon Brigade ordered his staff to begin destroying communications equipment and documents, while a hastily-devised and short-lived defence was mounted by engineers and support staff. Hundreds of these soldiers were cut down by machinegun fire from the advancing tanks. These men and women died fighting to buy time for the 2nd Brigade’s communications equipment and classified information that could give the Russians an even bigger advantage.

It took only a matter of minutes for the fight to be over. The colonel commanding the brigade – himself wounded by shrapnel from an earlier artillery attack – staggered out of the command tent amidst burning vehicles and the sound of gunfire as the final, scattered pockets of US resistance was mopped up. Waving a white flag, the commanding officer offered his surrender to the Russians, bringing an end to the slaughter. Of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team’s 4,400 members, nearly fifteen hundred were dead in just a single afternoon of fighting, with nearly twice that number captured; a few would escape into the wilderness, but even fewer of them would evade captivity or death forever.

The road to Tallinn was forced open and the 138th Motorised Rifle Brigade charged towards the Estonian capital.

*

Meanwhile, the Estonian Land Forces were under attack from the south.

The 76th Guards Air Assault Division had launched its offensive directly from its peacetime bases around Pskov, under heavy air cover. The paratroopers with the 76th Guards Division were the elite of the Russian Armed Forces, serving under the command of the VDV rather than that of the Ground Forces. For the purposes of Operation Slava, however, the 76th Guards Air Assault Division was operating as a unit attached to the 20th Guards Army, the main Russian formation with the responsibility for invading Estonia and Latvia. There were Russian tank divisions driving north-west across Latvia under that Army’s command, but the paratroopers with the 76th Guards Division were going into Estonia – the Baltic country in the militarily weakest position – to eliminate Estonian forces defending the southern border with Russia.

There were battalion-sized helicopter assaults on a pair of locations along Highway Route Three, which stretched right the way across central Estonia. In addition, there was a battalion-size parachute assault that was also planned to take place along this highway. The 104th Guards Air Assault Regiment made these assaults, jumping mainly from Il-76 Candid transport planes and landing from helicopters flying at low altitude. At Tartu, Estonia’s second city, a battalion of the 104th Regiment landed at daybreak on the city’s airport. The jump didn’t go perfectly; sometimes men fell off course or were killed and injured as they landed or when their parachutes failed to open. Estonian soldiers with the newly-formed 2nd Infantry Brigade managed to down one Candid with a Russian-made man-portable air defence system. The aircraft plummeted out of the sky in flames, killing the many paratroopers who didn’t manage to bail out before it impacted the ground. Enough soldiers did land safely though. There was a brutal fight within Tartu as the Russian battalion seized the city from the Estonian Defence League. Those Estonian soldiers put up a fierce fight, but, like the Americans in the north, found themselves hopelessly outgunned. Russian Frogfoot attack aircraft contributed mightily to the paratroopers’ firepower, launching repeated attacks from the air which left much of the city in flames, with few fire-fighters available to put out the fires.

Another battalion landed by helicopter, descending into the undefended woodlands between Tartu and the border with Latvia. The 104th Guards’ third battalion ended up in a major fight further east, where they ran into Estonian troops from the 1st Infantry Brigade. They had arrived in lumbering, unarmed Mi-26 Halo transport helicopters with a number of Havocs for cover. Two of those Havocs were shot down by MANPADs as was a third Halo, as the other troopers struggled to disembark from their aircraft under heavy fire. The only thing that saved the Russian paratroopers was the presence of airmobile BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicles, whose firepower was able to prevent the utter destruction of the whole battalion. Their objective was seized after an hour of fighting, but heavy casualties were inflicted on the attackers and the battalion would soon have to be pulled off of the line to allow for replacements to be inducted into the unit. Up to forty percent of the battalion’s personnel were killed and most who survived were wounded in one way or another.

As their comrades from the 104th Regiment went into action both by helicopter and by parachute, men from the 76th Division’s 234th Guards Air Assault Regiment crossed the border in a massive helicopter assault. An immense artillery bombardment from the 1140th Artillery Regiment, joined by the heavier guns attached to the Twentieth Guards Army, preceded this advance. Defensive lines dug by the 2nd Infantry Brigade of the Estonian Land Forces were shattered by repeated bombardments, causing many casualties. Spetsnaz teams attacked mobile command posts, often failing to actually overwhelm their targets but nonetheless sewing confusion into the Estonian ranks. The 234th Regiment’s men flew into Estonia in Mi-17 Hip transport/light attack helicopters and Mi-24 Hind gunships. The Hips could carry a whole squad of riflemen while the Hind gunships has a lesser transport ability but bore much more firepower than the other aircraft. Fencers & Frogfoots accompanied those helicopters from above, locating targets below them and opening fire with rockets and bombs.

The 2nd Infantry Brigade was caught in a trap between the 104th Regiment along Highway Three and the 234th Regiment’s frontal helicopter assault. They wouldn’t have retreated even if they could have though; this was their homeland and they were going to stand and fight. The resistance put up by the 2nd Brigade was gallant but ultimately it achieved nothing other than inflicting a few more casualties on the advancing Russians. Russian soldiers disembarked from their helicopters under heavy fire from Estonian troops, moving out on foot or in BMD-2s to storm the trenches occupied by their enemies. The helicopters circled high above like birds of prey, hunting for signs of resistance. A series of forest fires were ignited by Hinds using napalm weapons to eliminate Estonian troops hidden in the woodlands, while soldiers below fought with not only rifles but hand-to-hand weapons as well when the ammunition ran out. Few Estonian soldiers allowed themselves to be taken prisoner; they had been told countless stories about the brutality of the last occupation of their homeland by parents and grandparents, and they weren't about to lay down their weapons and allow that to happen again. The Russians had to clear out the defiant Estonian infantrymen foxhole-by-foxhole, bleeding themselves dry in the process of doing so. Eventually, though, the overwhelming superiority of the Russian forces achieved victory. The fight was far from bloodless, leaving the 234th Regiment with a number of casualties to attend to, but ultimately the 76th Division’s goals in Estonia were achieved; that result had been an inevitability really, given the disparity in firepower between Russian and Estonian forces.





Fifty–Two

Denmark was a sideshow and so was Norway. Even Estonia was a diversion – an important one, yes – when it came to the main effort where Russian focused its war in Europe. That focus was with the advance through the two other Baltic States and Poland too. Operation Slava would be won with success in that… or Russia would lose its war regardless of anything happening elsewhere. Following the missile & artillery strikes which commenced at H-Hour, and hot on the heels of the forward recon units, Russian & Belorussian heavy forces moved forward.


Pouring into Latvia was the Russian Twentieth Guards Army. On its right wing, units under command attacked Estonia yet the main effort was to strike westwards into Latvia and then turn southwards through Lithuania afterwards. Two heavy divisions along with that third regiment from the airborne division involved in Estonia took part as the main combat-manoeuvre elements of this. Latvian forces on the border were in the way of an armoured steamroller which was quick to show no mercy to those who dared oppose them. There were some US Green Berets with those Latvians and in the way too. They stood no chance and could only try to escape.

Russia’s 10th Guards Tank Division – organised with two motor rifle regiments and two tank regiments rather than one and three respectively – tore forward. The border defences were run through and they moved deep into Latvia. Link-ups were made with scouting units and firefights met. The Daugava River was where they headed towards, aiming to reach crossing sites ahead grabbed by reconnaissance elements. There was no significant Latvian opposition to this advance: their troops were elsewhere. NATO’s Baltic Mechanised Brigade was between the Russia armour and the river though. It was midday when the 10th Division clashed with the mixed group of enemy soldiers. The fight occurred near Spogi, a town along the main road running towards Daugavpils on the Daugava. The NATO troops did well. Each of the three battalion-sized battlegroups fought together despite the mixture of men within them from the variety of countries which had contributed. British and German tankers covered themselves in glory in individual fights with the mass of Russian tanks coming at them. Croat, Czech and Dutch infantry gave it everything that they had. Danish scouts and Slovenian anti-tank teams tried to keep the fight cohesive. Canadian and Romanian light troops held open the rear ready for the brigade to conduct a fighting withdrawal. The numbers weren’t on NATO’s side though. Russian artillery – firing from afar but also soon enough close-in – silenced their guns and then turned on the NATO infantry units. Russian tanks got between the main body of opponents and the river to completely surround them. The company of Canadian infantry in the rear was caught in this and wiped out; only the Romanians managed to escape the trap. The brigade commander, an experienced British officer, screamed for outside support. Where was the air cover he was promised? Where was the ground reinforcement coming up from Poland? No answers came with communications cut by Russian jamming and shelling. All that there was instead was a relentless attack to blast them to smithereens. Three regiments from the 10th Division had won this fight and straight afterwards, another tank regiment approached the river and linked-up with those holding bridges. Over the Daugava they went and they reached the Lithuanian frontier in the late afternoon before crossing there too. More of the division was tasked to catch up – leaving the rounding up of whatever NATO soldiers were left alive to one of the regiments – as the 10th Division kept on going. They were deep inside Lithuania by the time they stopped, once it got dark, and behind Lithuanian troops fighting on the border with Belarus.

Moving into Latvia afterwards was the 4th Guards Tank Division. They were being kept back for a second fight and to be used in pincer movements further south. Their slower forward progress, moving at a leisurely pace almost, saw them reach the Daugava further downstream and around Jekabpils. Bridges were already in the hands of armoured scouts and the process of crossing them started. SAM teams were setting up to cover this as everyone waited for NATO air power to come into action. That hadn’t yet occurred. There were enemy aircraft over Latvia but they were involved in the fighting around Riga, closer to the sea. Latvia’s 1st Infantry Brigade was between that city and the Russian frontier. They fell backwards towards Riga and further and further away from the NATO Brigade. Pre-war plans had been for the two of them to fight side-by-side yet they only moved apart and were attacked all by their lonesome. Fighting the Latvian organised combat troops here were Russian paratroopers. Men from the 23rd Guards Air Assault Regiment fought with their armoured vehicles and also had assistance in moving about with assault helicopters. The Latvians didn’t stand a chance and neither did they didn’t put on a good show. Comments from NATO politicians and military briefers would later portray things differently but that wasn’t the case. Faced with what they were hit with and knowing themselves that they were doomed, the Latvians suffered massive rates of desertion while others threw up their hands in surrender. The Twentieth Guards Army had been given thirty-six hours to take Riga; they were there in under ten. NATO air activity continued when it came to a special operation west of the capital and the 23rd Regiment afterwards was heavily hit by air strikes which caused more losses than what the Latvians had done. This would delay them from their objective of rolling down into Lithuania afterwards but not stop them.

Although large areas of the country remained unoccupied by the end of the war’s first day, the fight here had been won by the Russians. Only the Courland area, next to the Baltic, was somewhere that NATO could have held. There were no troops that were available to be sent there at this time though. By tomorrow, more of those light scouting units would be taking in the sights along the coast there.


Polish fears before the conflict started, and why they wanted NATO forces aplenty on their soil (even Germans despite the historic issues), were that from out of the exclave which was Kaliningrad, Russian forces would invade Poland. An invasion of Poland was coming, though not out of Kaliningrad on the first day of the war. Instead, the mission for Russian forces in the region on August 7th was to hold firm facing Poland while assisting in the overcoming of Lithuania to the north and east. The Eleventh Army Corps did as ordered. Those two motor rifle brigades merged into an ad hoc division (the 1st Guards Motor Rifle) held the Polish frontier behind fixed defences. Exchanges of artillery fire at distance and closer rifle fire between men occurred. North-to-south or south-to-north movement didn’t occur yet though. That would be for another day. Up into Lithuania, Russian paratroopers with their 98th Guards Airborne Division struck. It was these men, in conjunction with the brigade of naval infantry now off in distant Copenhagen, which the Poles had feared would make an assault deep into Poland with those heavy ground troops. The Lithuanians were the target for the opening Russian attack though. The 98th Division was all over them, hitting them from behind when Lithuania had its lone heavy combat force, the Iron Wolf Brigade, fighting the Belorussians. BMD infantry fighting vehicles, aided by self-propelled mortars & anti-tank guns (2S31 Venas and 2S25 Spruts), moved forward along with men in trucks; there were no air drops and only a few helicopter movements. Klaipeda on the Baltic fell to the advance of one regiment; a second marched on Kaunas. One further Russian regiment, and the one with most of the available armour, entered the southernmost reached of Lithuania. They were on the Lithuanian side of the Suwalki Gap. NATO had its men involved in fighting on the Polish side. The Russians had an easy time going forward and completed a clockwise turning manoeuvre as they went onwards aiming for a link up with the Belorussians. Where they faced opposition was from the skies. Firstly, RAF Tornados, who should have been aiding the Baltic Brigade, bombed them from above and then Belorussian Su-25s hit them. The latter was a ‘friendly fire’ incident though with nothing friendly about it. One of the pilots from those Su-25s who misidentified the Russians as Poles ejected when his aircraft was shot down and was then killed by his enraged captors despite his nationality. This ugly incident aside, link-up was made on the ground between ‘allies’. The way was shut into Lithuania should NATO have tried to force it open here… something impossible due to events elsewhere.

Belorussia’s Fifth Assault Corps conducted the attack into western Lithuania. Three combat brigades – the 19th Reserve Tank, the 103rd Guards Mobile (an airmobile unit) and the 120th Guards Mechanised – conducted this with strong support from recon, artillery and engineering units. The Lithuanian capital Vilnius was struck on the right with the link-up with Russian allies striking out of Kaliningrad made on the left. The Iron Wolf Brigade tried to stop the Belorussians from getting into their capital and did a good job. For most of the war’s first day, if it had been just this fight all in a vacuum, Lithuania won. A poor show was put on by both the 19th & 120th Brigades where they went into Lithuania behind all of that opening massed artillery and with good air cover above them. The Lithuanians ran rings around them in quite the embarrassment. Russian officers attached to the command staffs were aghast at the performance; naturally, they would have done things differently and done it well… or so they assured themselves However, once the Russians entered Lithuania from out of Latvia and also Kaunas fell, Vilnius and its defenders were doomed. The Lithuanians had knocked out all of those tanks with missiles, moved down infantry with well-sited machine guns & heavy mortars and also rode out the artillery barrages but were now being approached from the rear. They couldn’t withdraw north nor south nor east nor west. They fell back closer to the city instead. Ground defended from the Belorussians so well was now given up. Vilnius would be fought over another day but it was there where the last of the country’s resistance would be. As to the 103rd Brigade, that Belorussian unit had an easier time. They met those Russian paratroopers ahead of schedule and after facing weak opposition on the way. Russian anger over supposedly friendly aircraft bombing them was shrugged off in this victory that they had confidently won.


Poland was invaded from elsewhere rather than Kaliningrad.

Russia’s newly-named First Guards Tank Army (the former Twenty–Second Army received an historic name as a propaganda move) was in Belarus pre-war. It included Belorussian units among its many Russian forces. The field army was bigger than the one which had been present in East Germany at the end of the Cold War and far more-capable too. Orders for the multinational elements of the US V Corps coming from SACEUR through CJTF-East had been for those forces near to the Belorussian border to pull back once war erupted. Both the American’s own 3rd Infantry Division and 172nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team did so; behind them, the Polish 16th Armoured Cavalry Division also in north-eastern Poland did just that too. They withdrew ready to fight better when concentrated and to be joined by reinforcements which would pour into Eastern Europe soon enough. Neither the German 1st Airmobile Brigade nor the Polish 1st Mechanised Division did the same. The Germans didn’t get the order to withdraw and the Polish general refused to do so. Up in the Polish side of the Suwalki Gap, American and Polish troops there separate from the US V Corps, were instructed to fight it out and withdraw when they needed to.

Russian heavy forces with their 2nd ‘Taman’ Guards Motor Rifle and 5th Guards Tank Divisions, assisted by two Belorussian mechanised brigades, entered Poland side-by-side. They fought through Polish border troops left in-place all on their own and under air cover plus heavy artillery support. The Taman Guards moved towards Bialystok. This small Polish city was at a crossroads and thus a key communications centre. Occupying the town directly when taken would be a task for the Belorussians and it was somewhere not desired to be fought over. The Russians hoped to see American troops engaged near it and destroyed before Bialystok fell into their laps: it would be a prise to be traded away in peace talks. The 170th Brigade escaped from the Russians though, pulling back and away fast. Russian aircraft tried to stop them with bomb attacks yet flights of Su-27s trying to protect Su-24s lower down were feasted upon by F-22s firing from distance. NATO’s rear airbases had been hit and hit hard, but they still had some operational with aircraft flying from them. The American ground forces got away. The Taman Guards failed to achieve their goal. They had a large area of Polish territory occupied and the Belorussians moved on Bialystok with their 6th Guards Mechanised Brigade – where they would have to fight for it – yet that didn’t matter for nought. However, they’d face a different second day in Poland. In the meantime, the 5th Division met the Poles in battle where they clashed with their 1st Division. The utterly stupid and vain attempt to charge head-on into battle by the divisional command cost thousands of Polish casualties in terms of deaths, injuries and prisoners taken. His deputy had him removed from command and pulled back the shattered division in the afternoon and back down the road to the distant Warsaw. This left the city of Biala Podlaska uncovered; somewhere similar in terms of size and importance to Bialystok. Again, Belorussian troops (from their 37th Guards Mechanised Brigade) approached a Polish populated area to meet defensive fire from irregulars and lighter troops. The 5th Division couldn’t follow the mass of retreating other Poles though when waves of aircraft showed up in the skies. All sorts of NATO jets made appearances. Some were hit in the skies from Russian fighters and others eliminated by SAMs fired from missile-launchers rolling forward with the leading ground units; others got through though. There were too many Russians to finish off but they could bring them to a stop. This occurred with the 5th Division halted a third of the way between the Belorussian border and Warsaw. Polish minds were at once focused on the threat to their capital over and above anything else.

That German brigade (the Bundeswehr had two brigades of paratroopers as well; one held back at home and the other in Afghanistan) had a terrible day. They were engaged by Belorussian airmobile men with the 38th Guards Mobile Brigade. This fight occurred along the banks of the River Bug between where the two Russian heavy divisions were operating. The First Guards Tank Army’s HQ hadn’t expected much of the Belorussians in this fight: they were left pleasantly surprised. The Germans, waiting on orders, were caught by a foe who attacked from multiple directions and used light armoured plus armed helicopter support. They returned fire while waiting desperately for external support. None came, just more Belorussian attacks and then they came under fire from distant Russian missile units given them as a target of opportunity. It was a slaughter. That slaughter in combat was joined after the fighting was over too. German soldiers surrendered and many were killed by Belorussians in acts of cold-blooded murder. Hyped-up by propaganda of historical grievances, the result of that was that the 38th Brigade was responsible for the slaying of dozens of bound prisoners. Orders from above were for such men – especially POWs from America and Western Europe – to be treated well and used for later political purposes; the Belorussians didn’t obey them.

On the map, the Suwalki Gap looked like something more than it was. It was a corridor for access from Poland into the Baltic States – and the other way too – and the terrain was reasonably good. It wasn’t perfect for armoured warfare though. That argument could be used for famous military regions like the Fulda Gap or the Hof Throat from the Cold War era too but the Suwalki Gap wasn’t like the Karbala Gap which had been found in Iraq and exploited there in 2003. There was much woodland in this part of Poland and the transport links weren’t that great despite the main road running north-south. Moreover, as said, that road ran north-south. Those assigned to attack it moved east-west plus had several lakes plus some marshland between them and the road in the centre of the region. Behind those natural defences were the American’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment joined by the Polish 6th Airborne Brigade and 18th Reconnaissance Regiment; coming at them were the Russians with their 3rd Motor Rifle Division and the 11th Guards Mechanised Brigade from Belarus. A huge fight commenced which took place without break throughout the day and into the night. Countless engagements occurred where everything was thrown at winning by each and in many places at several times proper command-&-control was lost. In such a battle, that was impossible to maintain. No winner emerged by the end of the day. Each side had taken huge losses yet failed to overcome the other. Training and preparation for war for all involved hadn’t prepared them for this! Military equipment was smashed apart like toys destroyed by an enraged unruly child. The Russians & Belorussians hadn’t taken the region. The Americans and Poles hadn’t kept them out of all of it though. All that had occurred was that there were many, many dead here. This included civilians too who lived among this sudden battlefield of unheralded violence. Fighting would continue through the darkness and into tomorrow. The killing went on.

[James G]

Fifty-Three

Joe Biden had been aboard Air Force Two high above California when World War III began. When DEFCON Two was declared, the Vice President was hustled aboard the aircraft by Secret Service agents. Less than half-an-hour after the modified Boeing-747 took off, Vice President Biden was told of the terrible tragedy that had occurred in Washington DC. It was Secret Service personnel who informed him of what had happened, that Marine One had been shot down by what was believed to be a team of Russian commandos likely from the GRU. There were a handful of military advisors – lower ranking officers, not the Joint Chiefs of Staff – aboard the plane who told Biden about the specifics of the incident, and that the Russian Armed Forces had initiated a war of aggression against NATO in Europe. Officers curtly informed him that he was now the de facto forty-fifth President of the United States of America. This was truly terrible news for Biden to receive; during his life, Biden had suffered a great deal of personal loss when his wife and baby daughter had been killed in a car accident back in 1972. He considered Obama a personal friend as well as a political ally, and the death of the President was a huge blow to him on a personal level. “No. Just tell me it isn’t true, please,” the Vice President said when told of what had happened. He shed tears over the loss of Obama and over the deaths of the others aboard that aircraft too, but there was no time to address the losses further.

Biden had to be sworn in as the President of the United States. This was done by video conference. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts had himself been taken into protective custody by the Diplomatic Security Service when COGCON One was initiated. He was moved by vehicle to Mount Weather, Virginia, where his safety against anything other than a twenty-five megaton nuclear missile was assured. On route to Mount Weather, Roberts was contacted by those aboard Air Force Two and a hasty swearing-in ceremony was held. Roberts wished Biden good luck and offered all of his support to the newly-inducted President before hanging up. Roberts new that Biden had a war to fight and didn’t want to get in the way any further. He had done his job.

Aboard Air Force Two, Biden instructed the remainder of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (they had been at the Pentagon whilst Chairman Mullen had been at the White House with Obama) to initiate the Security Control of Air Traffic & Navigation Aids (SCATANA) protocol. This involved all civilian air traffic being grounded and navigation taken over by the Federal Aviation Administration and US Northern Command (NORTHCOM). The number of civilian flights over the United States at the time was minimal due to the ongoing crisis and the calling up of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, but nonetheless landing those civilian aircraft that were airborne was a nightmare. It had to be done though with fears that Russian bombers armed with either nuclear or conventional cruise missiles would be infiltrating US airspace and the prospect of additional Spetsnaz attacks on the ground. Thankfully, there were no large-scale accidents involving airliners that sought to make an immediate landing, but there were some close calls nonetheless. US Air Force and Air National Guard fighters took to the skies to enforce the no-fly zone, while Biden’s aircraft – now Air Force One – was joined by F-15C Eagles of the California Air National Guard as a fighter escort.

Back in Washington DC, a massive security effort was underway to protect the capital. The Mayor of the District of Columbia declared martial law, and troops from the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment were sent into the city to assist the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in closing off all the entrances and exits. Marines from the security detachment at the Marine Corps Barracks Washington DC joined in this security effort; National Guardsmen were also soon to deploy. Fire-fighters, police and ambulance crews raced around the streets of the US capital in expectance of further attacks. FBI agents and forensics teams from the DC field office, soon joined by a huge number of additional agents and support staff from the agency’s headquarters in Quantico, went to the crash-site to begin securing evidence after the casualties had been evacuated. Every possible exfiltration route out of the city – those had been identified by the FBI after 9/11 in case of another terrorist attack – was guarded either by soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Regiment or by officers of the MPD.

Meanwhile, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, an organisation that was almost comparable to Tier One military units, was helicoptered to Reagan National Airport, where the local authorities had set up a command post. Those federal agents looked more like soldiers, arriving in green fatigues, body armour and combat helmets, armed with pistols and assault rifles; hunting the Spetsnaz was to be largely their responsibility. Landing at Reagan National some hours later would be operators from Alpha Squadron of the US Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, otherwise known as Delta Force. Men and women from the US Army’s Intelligence Corps as well as a few people from ‘other government agencies’ or OGAs were assigned to Washington to join in the hunt for the Spetsnaz as well. There were going to be political issues in deploying those elite soldiers on American soil and debates over the legality of doing so with regards to the Posse Comitatus Act. Those issues would be solved another day, however; President Biden’s first act after being sworn in was to order the Joint Special Operations Command to provide personnel and logistical assistance in hunting down the enemy commandos. Biden also talked with Attorney-General Eric Holder in confirming the lawfulness of this. There was much more to discuss when it came to the legalities of all that was happening; would the captured Russians be treated as POWs, for example, and given a trial? Or would they be treated as spies or “unlawful combatants” and thus summarily shot without due process?

Those Spetsnaz men and women weren’t to be caught in Washington DC. Splitting into smaller groups with the intention of re-grouping further out in the wilderness in Pennsylvania, the Russian commandos fled from the capital before the main effort to seal them in had really begun. For the most part, this escape occurred without incident, with the commandos fleeing by vehicle and then sneaking out of the city through roads which had yet to be secured. In one instance, however, three GRU commandos – two men and women – suffered terrible luck when their car broke down on a countryside road outside Bethesda. A family vehicle that was passing by the road in an attempt to leave the city pulled over to offer their assistance. There had been an argument between the husband driving the car and his wife in the passenger seat; the father was reluctant to pull over for fear of a carjacking whereas the wife wanted to offer their assistance. Eventually, the presence of a well-dressed woman amongst the stranded individuals was enough to convince him to pull over. It was a fatal mistake; the four people inside of the vehicle – father, mother, and two daughters – were dragged out of the car. Debate occurred between the GRU commandos about what to do with the family; they weren’t monsters who enjoyed killing unarmed civilians, and there was a legitimate military reason for taking them along as hostages. Tragically, though, the Spetsnaz commander decided that there wasn’t enough room in the car to take the family along without looking suspicious.

All four civilians had their throats cut, and the Spetsnaz drove away in the stolen car.

Aboard Air Force One – those aboard had to keep reminding themselves that this was their call sign now – President Biden entered a near-endless briefing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Joint Chiefs had been driven, rather than flown, from the Pentagon to the nation’s underground Alternate National Military Command Centre at Raven Rock Mountain, also known as Site R, in Pennsylvania. Once they had arrived at the complex, the Joint Chiefs set up a video call with the new President to keep him appraised of the situation. General James Cartwright of the US Marine Corps was the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and once Admiral Mullens’ death had been confirmed, Cartwright had stepped up and taken that role on an ad hoc basis until he could be confirmed by Congress and the President as the new official Chairman. There wouldn’t be any political problems with that happening, but the organisation of Congressional hearings was not exactly a priority at that moment. Plans were made for the Joint Chiefs to board the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, an E-4B aircraft known as ‘Night Watch’, and fly to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, where Biden’s aircraft could also land and he could move to Night Watch. These plans were scrapped before they could be implemented, however. The Joint Chiefs were safe as they could be at Site R, and yet more moving around would only cause problems with communications. Biden would be accompanied by more junior advisors when he boarded Night Watch. For now, though, he was stuck aboard Air Force Two, communicating with the Joint Chiefs by video conference. The Forty-Fifth President was informed of the specifics of the war. He was told that Russian aircraft had launched long-range cruise missile attacks against NATO facilities across Europe, including in Great Britain, while additional Spetsnaz commando strikes had also taken place. The Pentagon was informed that Britain’s Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, had been shot dead in a separate incident in London and this was also reported back to the President, as well as the outbreak of what appeared to be a hostage situation developing at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium. Another Spetsnaz attack had taken place at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, but the perpetrators of that attack had all been killed or captured during the fighting. President Biden authorised the “enhanced interrogations” of those men who had been captured back at Tinker AFB; their wounds were to be treated appropriately, but after this they would be transferred to the Marine Corps Brig at Quantico; there, the FBI, CIA, DIA, and Military Intelligence would begin the questioning of those captured Russians. When they had struck at Tinker AFB, those commandos had been wearing civilian clothing with articles of military equipment over the top, rather than wearing identifiable uniforms; this meant that the United States was under no obligation to treat them as POWs.

Biden was told that Russian forces were attacking Norway and Denmark and were crossing the borders into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. They had done this by using Belarusian territory and reports so far indicated that Belarus was involved in this war just as much as Russia was. Questions about the neutrality of other Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) states were also raised; as of that moment, no military forces from Kazakhstan, Armenia or any other smaller Central Asian States had been involved in attacks against the US or its allies. President Biden made it clear to his military advisors that any and all hostile acts from any foreign country, including letting Russian forces use their territory, would be seen as an act of war against the United States of America, and the appropriate military action would be taken. There were some concerns here with the President’s emotional state; he had just lost several close friends and was clearly angered while issuing those orders. The Joint Chiefs had some concerns that this might draw Iran into the fighting if they allowed Russian warships to use their bases or aircraft to fly from their airfields. President Biden calmed shortly after though, and what could have become a constitutional crisis was averted. Biden, like every American, was angered, but he was still competent and mentally stable. He wouldn’t allow for his emotions to get the better of him and he made this clear to both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to his personal physician.

Advised by General Cartwright to do so, the President gave the orders to the US Armed Forces to begin a full-scale mobilisation. A large-scale call-up of troops had already been taking place since mid-July, but now this call-up was to encompass every soldier, sailor, airman and marine as well as every reservist and National Guardsman. All military leaves for any reason other than serious and immediate medical issues were cancelled until further notice. The Pentagon was drawing up plans to bring every ex-serviceman and –woman who had left the military within the past two years back into service. Many of them would not need retraining and the influx of Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans would provide a major boost to the US Military. Some, particularly those in technical areas, would need retraining but that would be far quicker than training new draftees from scratch. Something similar to this had occurred several years prior with the controversial ‘stop-loss’ policy, but that hadn’t come close to mirroring the sheer scale of this call-up. Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey told Biden that he could stand up the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 23rd & 24th Infantry Divisions with new troops in the space of roughly ninety days. Nobody new how long this war was going to last, and in the past several months Russia had dramatically boosted the size of its own armed forces with new conscripts and old reservists. Biden gave the authorisation for Casey to begin this task.

There were many other issues that had to be addressed by the United States government; Biden had to ask Congress for a formal declaration of war, and he had to replace the slain cabinet members and advisors. All that could really be confirmed was that American troops and their allies were once again fighting, killing and dying on the European countryside and in skies and waters all around the continent.




Fifty–Four

The Russian military feared NATO air power more than NATO’s armies. This wasn’t said openly but it was the considered opinion among the majority of senior officers that using its aircraft rather than soldiers, the West would be able to overcome Russia on the battlefield. The concern in the Kremlin had been NATO soldiers marching through Red Square after toppling the regime via a Washington-backed colour revolution, hence why they went to war, but that could only be done, the men in uniform knew, if those soldiers were cover by aircraft above them. Russia had a large and capable air force. However, 2010 was really the wrong year for it to be sent into action. In a few more year’s time, when following existing modernisation and procurement plans, the Russian Air Force would have been in a far better shape. The state of international relations hadn’t given them that time though. August of this year saw the Russians forced to use their air power, going up against a stronger opponent. There were many tricks that they had up their sleeve and didn’t aim to fight fair, yet the task ahead of them was daunting. How were they going to win, or at least not lose, the air war? There was advantage at once taken of the element of surprise where Russia struck first. Using waves of air-launched cruise missiles was done at once and these were targeted at NATO aircraft on the ground. A lot of effort was made to go after AWACS aircraft in NATO service too where Russia rightly recognised that such aircraft would be war-winners for the West. The Russian Air Force also opted to not fight certain parts of the air war. No long-range air strikes deep into the enemy rear – apart from cruise missile firings – would be conducted and there would also be an absence of Russia aircraft on battlefield air defence missions. They would take place in air interdiction, tactical strikes, but not put fighters above ground forces moving forward close-in. Fighters would stay high and back when on the defensive and thus leave coverage of the ground forces to their own many air defence assets in the form of missiles and guns. Russian fighters would make forward sweeps at times and there would be strike aircraft above the battlefield. It was just a case of getting rid of what was regarded as going to be a costly mission – the ground forces would be filling the skies with projectiles and shooting at any aircraft regardless of nationality –, with the same consideration given to deep strikes by aircraft as well where it was understood that many aircraft would be lost for little appreciable gain.

Russian combat aircraft allotted to take part in the air warfare aspects of Operation Slava were all well-used and recognisable types. There were fighters in the form of MiG-29s and Su-27s along with MiG-31 interceptors too. Su-24s and Su-25s were available for tactical strike roles. There were a couple of newer Su-30s (upgrades of the Su-27) and a few dozen MiG-29SMTs as well. However, while procurement was underway, Russia didn’t yet have in service the advanced aircraft it needed such as further-upgraded Su-30s as well as new Su-34s and Su-35s. These aircraft were really needed for the war which was to be fought and would have provided a significant upgrade in Russian capability. The Russian Air Force would only dream on what they would do with those aircraft. The reality was that they had what they had. The aircraft flying were good pieces of equipment and carrying a wide array of weapons & systems, many of these some of the very best, and these would have to do. Nonetheless, Russia’s air and ground forces also had something that the militaries of NATO didn’t have: a mass of air defence equipment operating from the ground. Many NATO countries had such weapons yet none of them fielded them in the same number and manner as Russia did. These were more than just defensive or air denial weapons. Used right, they could provide an offensive element by their very presence where they wouldn’t be anticipated. Russia considered itself far ahead of anything that the West had when it came to its air defence capability. Even if this was only hubris, there were a lot of such weapons in service. These would be used alongside aircraft – with zones of responsibility split up – in the air war which Russia fought in Eastern Europe.

Once unleashed, Russia’s air power began to play an immediate role in the war. Over the Baltic States, fighters and strike aircraft conducted multiple missions to deny NATO the ability to conduct its Eagle Guardian plan to defend those three countries from invasion. NATO aircraft which tried to interfere were engaged above Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Sending more aircraft out over the Baltic Sea on missions against hostile shipping and to try to influence the fight around Copenhagen was a serious drag on this though due to the reprioritising midway through the day towards those tasks. The battle plan here had only survived a few hours before it was shelved. However, enough had been done to influence the fight already on the ground in the Baltic States. Russia didn’t realise just how effective its early activity there had been. They won the fight there made with their air power and it took some time to actually understand that when the focus was on combat extending away from there. Other Russian air activity was focused over Poland. Russian aircraft strayed deep inside Poland yet no further than roughly midway across the country on the war’s first day. Fuel restrictions were part of this but more than that, there was a desire not to overreach here… something which failed in the fight above the Baltic Sea. Those opening missile attacks had done serious damage where they hit many NATO airbases and post-strike analysis – a lot of this wishful thinking – believed that these had done even more than they had. What Russian aircraft focused on was engaging NATO fighters high over Poland and also making low-level tactical strikes against NATO ground forces. These operations met successes in certain circumstances and failures elsewhere. Once NATO brought its F-22s and also Typhoons into battle – with the latter, the RAF along with the Germans flew the Eurofighter (the Spanish were already planning to send a squadron of their own too to Slovakia) –, early Russian successes where they used their Su-27s to engage Polish F-16s and MiG-29s came to an end. Each side had the use of AWACS aircraft in the fight but NATO held the edge. Russian Flankers went down in alarming numbers. Battlefield air interdiction saw the Russian Air Force have an easier time. Lessons had been learned from the air war over Georgia two years ago. There were some errors made, glaring ones at times, but when things went right, they really did. Many NATO ground units, especially those close to the borders of Kaliningrad and Belarus, found themselves under heavy air attacks. Russia was able to target them when they were on the move and deliver plenty of ordnance on-target. There were reconnaissance jets flying about low as well and these were homing-in on electronic signals to guide attack aircraft towards them. Some NATO troops could get their limited numbers of SAM systems into play and they made use of these yet when they did, Russian air power came back to target them heavily. What NATO ground forces needed more than their own air defences were friendly fighters above them. Distant far-off fights high up where Russia took losses meant nothing to those on the receiving end of Russian tactical air strikes. They were hit & hit again and demanded air cover!


NATO’s first day of the air war started badly. They had aircraft in-place across Eastern Europe with many more on the way. The Russian opening attack really hurt them though. French fighters based in the Baltic States had enemy fighters in the sky engaging them there and then Russian tanks swarming towards their increasingly-isolated base. Other NATO aircraft tasked to support those fighting on the ground there, all meant to assist in Eagle Guardian, were unable to reach that fight. They could only make a pinprick effort over the Baltic States. Russian forces swarming into the three small countries brought with them their air defences and others were operating within Kaliningrad too. NATO just didn’t expect Russia to move its longer-range SAM units like it did so far forward so fast. They correctly anticipated tactical air defences but not the strategic-level ones which came forward. Multiple batteries of late-model S-300 and newer S-400s were present. These opened fire on NATO aircraft and took down several. Others had their missions over the Baltic States called off in response. This brought more NATO aircraft into Poland’s skies instead. Russian had put SAM-launchers onto Polish soil along with its armoured columns coming out of Belarus yet on the first day, those there weren’t as effective as they were elsewhere because NATO wasn’t coming towards them into firing envelopes. These still claimed kills just not as many as above the Baltic. What NATO found difficult to deal with were Russian fighters filling Poland’s skies above the northern & eastern parts of that country and then too all of those tactical weapons closer-in. Buk and Tunguska missile and missile-gun combinations engaged multiple NATO aircraft when they tried to attack Russian ground formations. Groups of Russian Spetsnaz were out far ahead of where the frontlines were and active around NATO airbases: they physically assaulted some airbases with guns and explosives while in other cases just sat nearby firing missiles at aircraft landing and taking-off.

On the flip side, just as Russia’s senior military officers had feared, when NATO air power was allowed to operate as it was designed to, when all of their efforts to stop that failed, it reigned terror on them. The fire and fury unleashed was a sight of hell for them. The Americans were joined by several of their NATO allies in putting combat aircraft of their own in Polish skies and moving them out over the Baltic Sea as well. In many ways, it was a ‘free for all’ in terms of first day operations. Aircraft were put into the sky on ad hoc missions where a lot of pre-war planning was followed yet in other ways that was thrown out of the window too. There was a rush to do a lot at once. That was done all in a hurry. Russian fighters were shot down high-up and strike aircraft sought when operating lower down. The Poles didn’t have the best of days while neither could the US Air Force, the RAF, the French Air Force, the Luftwaffe, the Spanish Air Force nor the Czech Air Force (these were the air arms with a current significant on-the-ground presence) boast that many things had gone their way. They danced to Russia’s tune where they responded to what was being done with the Slava offensive. Air strikes into Belarus or Kaliningrad were unable to be undertaken at this time nor any real presence put into the skies above both of them when Poland had been hit as hard as it was and there too had been those strikes made further back into Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia by cruise missiles. Where they were able to get at the Russians – and the Belorussians too – in the skies enemy aircraft were knocked down. The numbers grew, especially as the day got later. Damage to airbases in the rear was repaired (patch-up jobs) and better coordination occurred. The hours of darkness were waited for where overnight air operations, those of an offensive nature and going forward deep, were going to take place. NATO was going to take the war back to where the Russians and their Belorussian allies were flying from. In doing so, they aimed to change the whole face of the ongoing air war and turn it rapidly into the victory they were certain they could achieve with speed.

[James G]

Fifty-Five

The Royal Danish Army had less than forty Leopard-2 tanks in its entire inventory. Conversely, the Russian 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade alone had more than seventy T-80s. Other, lighter kinds of armoured vehicles were plenty on both sides, and anti-tank missiles streaked across the city of Copenhagen. The Danes had lost almost half of their tanks by the early evening of August 7th, and across the island, Russian Marines were advancing with vigour.

The smaller landing force that had disembarked at Koge, consisting of the 877th Naval Infantry Battalion amongst other support units, pushed northeast amongst scattered opposition on the ground, with the 1st Armoured Infantry Battalion, the main force that would have opposed them, destroyed earlier in the day by thermobaric weapons. The Russians faced repeated attacks from the air, however. German Tornado’s, Danish F-16s, and US Air Force A-10s all made repeated bombing runs, slowing the Russian advance but not without casualties. Countless sorties were flown from bases further south in Germany. The skies were rarely clear of NATO warplanes, and although many losses were incurred by Allied pilots, control of the skies over Zealand and the Baltic Approaches was wrestled out of the hands of the Russian Air Force and Naval Aviation within hours of the initial landings around Copenhagen. Surface-to-air missiles continued to pluck NATO jets out of the sky, but American, German, Danish and British aircraft were able to mount a consistent flow of raids against Russian units disembarking at Copenhagen and Koge, dramatically slowing the advance of Russian forces. Efforts at aerial interdiction only increased throughout the day, causing heavier and heavier casualties amongst Russian units.

The plan, which was now falling apart, was for the 877th Battalion to link up with the main landing force somewhere around the township of Roskilde.

NATO operations to reinforce Denmark were under way already. The British Army’s 16th Air Assault Brigade, a formation with nearly ten thousand men under its control, had been waiting to deploy to Latvia at the outbreak of fighting. With the situation in Latvia fast becoming hopeless, the decision was made by NATO’s still-confused commanders not to send the British paratroopers into the Baltic States, where they would likely be annihilated in a piecemeal fashion. Rather, the British airborne brigade was to deploy to Zealand to assist the Danes in fighting off the invaders.

Royal Air Force C-130s took off from RAF Brize Norton, loaded with men from the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment. By four in the afternoon, these men were descending onto Zealand.

2nd Battalion – 2 PARA – landed safely north of Copenhagen, with its landing site having already been secured by members of the Pathfinder Platoon. They moved into Copenhagen itself on foot, joining the Royal Danish Army’s 2nd Armoured Infantry Battalion in urban fighting as the day drew to a close. The Paras took up defensive positions in the northern district of the city, aiming to block a Russian breakout effort and prevent the linking up of the two landing sites. The battalion rapidly found itself engaged in heavy fighting alongside the Danes throughout the evening. The Paras clashed with Russian Marines, and yet more of Copenhagen was raised to the ground in the fighting. Having brought with them a large amount of American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, the British troops were able to score numerous hits on the T-80s of the 336th Brigade, but not enough to prevent Russian forces from pushing westwards into the Rodovre District.

To be an infantryman fighting against armoured or mechanised forces was never a desirable position to be in, but the urban nature of Copenhagen played to the advantage of the defenders, allowing for infantrymen to hide inside shattered buildings or behind piles of rubble and engage their better-armed opponents before moving rapidly to new defensive positions, bleeding the Russian Marines dry before they could make any significant headway. The Danes held on in the north, pushing back repeated attempts to break out of the city itself and up the northern coast of Zealand, albeit taking murderous losses as they fought. Su-24s again targeted their positions, this time using conventional bombs, with Danish air defences knocking down four of their number. The men of 2 PARA held onto highway junctions in Rodovre, taking heavier and heavier casualties under fire from BTR-80s which moved with the Russian Marines. The battalion of self-propelled 2S1 howitzers launched barrage after barrage of 122mm artillery fire against the northern and western defensive lines within Copenhagen, causing massive loss of life. Bodies of soldiers, British, Danish, and Russian, as well as civilians, littered the streets.

The sky was thick with ash and smoke as flames roared through the city.

3 PARA found itself in an even worse situation. Six hundred men descended from the afternoon sky, landing in the farmlands around the as yet uncontested town of Havdrup. As they landed, men of the 877th Battalion were advancing past the town, and quickly moved to defensive positions. The whole battalion of British paratroopers was pinned down under heavy machinegun and mortar fire immediately upon its landing, with dozens men being killed by enemy troops firing downwards from an elevated position. This one-sided battle lasted for nearly twenty minutes. Every time British troops attempted to move, they were cut down by accurate enemy fire. Repeated attempts to silence the enemy guns were a failure, with neither the British nor the Danes having much artillery that could be brought to bear. This would only change when Harrier GR.9 jump jets flying from HMS Illustrious, positioned in the North Sea, flew in low over the horizon and hit the Russian positions with rockets and then again with laser-guided bombs. The Para’s then counterattacked, running in broad daylight across open ground towards Russian positions which had them pinned down. More casualties were sustained as the British soldiers closed with the Russians, engaging them in hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and rifle butts. High-explosive and white phosphorus grenades were thrown, burning men alive in their trenches. The British charge was one of sheer desperation, and 3 PARA’s commanding officer would later admit he never thought it would work.

Nevertheless, rocked back on their heels by the ferocity of the fighting, a battle which they were not prepared for, the 877th Battalion engaged in a tactical withdrawal, pulling back southwards under the cover of artillery fire. Though nearly a quarter of 3 PARA had become casualties in the surprise battle, the Russians had been pushed back closer to their landing site in what was a major victory for NATO forces on Zealand; there could be no link up between the two landing forces until the main landing force could push through the blood-soaked streets of Copenhagen.

The rest of 16th Air Assault Brigade was rapidly airlifted into airfields on the northern side of the island. Men from the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment were the first to disembark, joining 2 PARA in the western suburbs of Copenhagen. Similarly, 1st Battalion, Royal Ghurkha Rifles, was transported by helicopter to join the Danish 2nd Armoured Infantry Battalion, desperately holding out along the eastern coast of the island. Supporting them was light armour from the Household Cavalry Regiment. Troops and 105mm guns from the 7th Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, were also flown onto Zealand. The effort to airlift to these 8,000 soldiers as well as their heavy equipment to Zealand was herculean in nature, involving not only Royal Air Force C-130s but also civilian airliners belonging to British Airways and other airlines taken under government control during the final days of peace. The Royal Air Force possessed only a small number of larger American-made C-17 transport aircraft, and those few big, vulnerable jets were used to transport the FV107 Scimitar fighting vehicles of the Household Cavalry Regiment, dramatically boosting the firepower of 16th Air Assault Brigade and putting them in a better position to take on Russian armour.

Despite the casualties suffered by 3 PARA, and to a lesser extent 2 PARA, plans to push Russian forces off of Zealand would soon be put into effect.

*

The Russian Baltic Fleet moved to reinforce the 336th Naval Infantry Brigade by sea. This was to be done by using a combination of airpower and naval vessels to eliminate the NATO presence in the Baltic, thus allowing the Russian Navy to transport more troops from St Petersburg and land them at Koge and Copenhagen. On paper, this reinforcement could be done and it would allow for the Russians to launch a giant pincer movement, pinning Danish troops to the coast in between the two landing sites. Unfortunately for Russia, the GRU had greatly overestimated just how long it would take for NATO ground forces to reach Zealand and strengthen the battered Royal Danish Army brigade stationed on the island.

The naval Battle of the Baltic Exits began in the afternoon on August 7th, less than twenty-four hours into World War III. A pair of United States Navy submarines had already moved to position themselves just off of Gothenburg, Sweden, to prevent any Russian vessels moving out through those narrow straits and into the North Sea where they could threaten southern Norway, or perhaps even England or Germany. With British paratroopers and airmobile infantry now moving to support the Danes, the initial worries that Zealand was soon to be lost were quelled, but the situation there was nonetheless precarious. If the Russian Baltic Fleet could move more personnel there then the situation would be reversed once again and there were few ground units that NATO could send to the island to prevent its loss.

The NATO Surface Action Group in the Baltic Sea moved from the south, from its positions along the Baltic coast of Poland, to engage Russian warships and transports moving troops to Copenhagen. Those NATO vessels had been in position to repel an amphibious assault on Gdansk, with the idea of a direct attack on Zealand being seen as outside of Russia’s capabilities. NATO aircraft were engaging the Russians out over the Baltic Sea and over the front in Poland, and there were few submarines that would be able to operate in the Baltic; this would be an old-school ship-on-ship fight more reminiscent of the First World War than anything modern, despite the use of radars and high-tech missiles. There were five Russian destroyers and frigates protecting the amphibious vessels from which a second wave of ground troops would disembark at Koge and Copenhagen. Two Sovremenny-class destroyers, packed with firepower, defended the landing ships, along with a pair of Neustrashimyy-class frigates and an older Krivak-class frigate. NATO warplanes from Germany and Denmark had already engaged the amphibious ships early in the morning and had successfully sunk an LCAC and one of the Ropuchas. This wouldn’t be enough to prevent another wave of troops from landing though.

The German frigate Bayern was, much to the displeasure of the US Navy task force commander, the first NATO vessel to score a hit on a Russian ship. The captain of the Bayern was able to attain a firing solution on the Pyliky, the old Russian Krivak-class frigate which protected the amphibious forces on their south-eastern flank. Bayern launched a pair of Exocet missiles, French-made weapons that were outdated compared to the Harpoons carried by other NATO ships, one of which missed the Pyliky but the other of which scored a direct hit. With less modern damage control systems than the other Russian ships, the Russian frigate went down fast.

The Sovremennys, however, were what NATO sailors really feared. They were very modern warships packed with every anti-ship weapon one could conceive. One Russian destroyer, Nastoychivyy, engaged the Allied vessels with what NATO called SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship missiles. Two Sunburns hit HMS Kent, one of two Royal Navy vessels in the Baltic Sea. Kent, unlike the Pyliky, was a fairly modern ship and her crew were well-drilled in damage control. Nevertheless, this would not be enough to save the Royal Navy frigate. However, much of her crew was able to safely evacuate the ship due to their training, and when she sank, over seventy percent of her crew, almost two-hundred strong, escaped to tell the tale.

Nastoychivyy was the next ship to end up down in Davy Jones Locker’. She was hit by numerous Harpoons fired from the USS Kidd. It took less than half-an-hour for the Russian destroyer to sink, taking half of her once-victorious crew down with her. Meanwhile, the other Sovremenny assigned to the Russian Baltic Fleet returned fire on NATO shipping to the south-east. The destroyer Bespokoynyy and the Neustrashimyy-type warship Yaroslav Mudryy launched their own anti-ship missiles back at the USS Kidd and also at the Polish frigate ORP Generał Kazimierz Pułaski. Kidd was able to ‘splash’ those incoming ‘Vampires’ with her air defence systems, firstly knocking several of them down with Sm-2 anti-aircraft missiles and then killing another with her Phalanx Close in Weapons System (CIWS). The Polish frigate was not so lucky; a pair of Sunburn missiles slammed into the ship. The first detonated on her helicopter landing pad at the rear of the ship; the second buried itself within her hull before exploding, igniting the ships magazine in a thunderous explosion which utterly destroyed the former US Navy Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, taking most of her crew down with her.

In turn, Kidd as well as HMS Montrose, a Type-23 frigate just like the now-sunken Kent, launched their Harpoon missiles back at the trio of surviving Russian ships. A big volley of Harpoons was fired, some never making it to their targets but others doing so with devastating effect. Bespokoynyy was damaged with a Harpoon hit from Montrose, leaving her rudderless and dead in the water, easy prey for the two more AGM-184s which struck the destroyer after being launched from USS Kidd. She went down just like so many other ships already had. Next it was Neustrashimyy, the namesake of her class. The Bayern scored her second victory of the day when an Exocet launched from the German frigate sank Neustrashimyy. She was finished off by a second missile hit, this one a Harpoon, from HMS Montrose.

Yaroslav Mudryy turned to flee. She was able to launch another anti-ship missile at the Kidd as she withdrew. That missile was blown out of the sky by a US Navy Sm-2. The fleeing Russian frigate was now at the mercy of four NATO warships, and they had no intention of letting her escape; three Harpoons would strike the hapless Yaroslav Mudryy, sending her and most of her crew to a watery grave at the bottom of the dark Baltic Sea. Flames from burning oil slicks danced on the horizon as the Battle of the Baltic Exits came to an end with a resounding NATO victory.




Fifty–Six

Ahead of the opening of their war, the Russian leadership had pointedly not made many of their allies – real allies and ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ allies – aware of what they had planning to do. China was one of the best informed and even they knew extremely little. The fear was that by talking to others, then they would talk among themselves and let the cat out of the bag. Countries such as Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela for example weren’t informed ahead of the war launched. It was anticipated that several, if not all of them (maybe not Libya to be fair) would recognise the opportunity given them with America and its Western allies under attack and therefore jump into the war. Why would they not? Outside of the borders of the former Soviet Union, close allies of Moscow were informed ahead of time that war was coming. Belarus was fully committed and Russia also made sure it had Armenia, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine on-side. Yet, no formation active participation was sought from either in the war’s opening stages. This was especially important with the Ukraine. Kiev was told late, very late indeed, and Moscow did so because it didn’t want Ukraine in the war at this stage, if at all. On paper, Ukraine would appear to offer much but the reality was different. Russia feared national stability in the country as well as rating the state of their military poorly. There was something to be had with having a friendly neutral in the form of the Ukraine too. NATO would have to be prepared to face down a possible Ukrainian attack – as they already were by how they had committed elements of their military pre-war to guard against that – and would have to keep many of those in-place when fighting Russia in case the Ukrainians did attack. In south-eastern Poland, through Slovakia & Hungary and into Romania there were NATO forces from across their alliance. Some of those would depart to fight up in Poland, yes, but not many. The Kremlin sought to keep as many as they could out of that fight too by giving them a fight to have where the idea that the Ukraine could join that looked likely. This concerned another ally within the borders of the former USSR: the unrecognised, breakaway state of Transnistria (sometimes known as Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic).

Aided by a regiment of Russian paratroopers in-country, Transnistria’s small army attacked Moldova. Moldova wasn’t a NATO member but its immediate neighbour Romania to the west was. This attack was focused on moving westwards too. Romania had its army mobilised ahead of the war with the belief that a Kremlin-supporting Ukraine would invade. Bulgaria had sent troops to Romania and there was a brigade of multinational troops from several NATO countries – a force smaller than the one in Latvia – also present. Note had been taken of Russia sending men to Transnistria and also the presence of Russian fighters in-country too. This was what Romania had feared and now it came true. Moldova was caught in the middle of this where Romania was the true goal of Russian activity here with Transnistria browbeaten, bullied even, into involvement all with the greasy promise of big prizes when it was over. That attack into Moldova started good enough but it was never going to be enough to overrun the country. As Transnistria was, Moldova too was a heavily-militarised state. The Moldovans fought back. The stage had been set for a bigger conflict here where there was a wait for it all to expand. Inside Romania, an attack was made at the military facility of Câmpia Turzii – the Romanian Air Force’s 71st Air Base – when a Spetsnaz detachment struck here. Their planned action was to take place at the outbreak of war in coordination with those made elsewhere yet a delay, one not their fault it must be said, took place. The mission was still given the green-light by the detachment commander as hitting the facility deep in the heart of historic Transylvania was important: Romanian MiG-21s (old but good aircraft and upgraded well enough) flew from here on a regular basis and they had been joined by some NATO reconnaissance assets. The delay meant that the attack was made late and against an alerted opponent. Furthermore, Romanian special forces were present along with US Green Berets where both were planning to use the airbase as an airhead for operations against a possible Ukrainian invasion, and this was a presence unknown to those who struck here. Russian commandos met these men in battle and came off worse from the fight with many of their number cut down and the rest scattered where they faced a tough time afterwards on the run.

Russia operated military facilities on Ukrainian soil. These were bases in the Crimea with the naval anchorage at Sevastopol and a naval airfield there too. Ukrainian neutrality didn’t mean that these, where they supported Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, wouldn’t be used in wartime. Russia intended to do so. The Black Sea would be a Russian lake with complete dominance sought over it. Turkey’s pre-war sudden break with its NATO allies greatly aided this. The Turkish Straits were shut to military shipping due to the ‘emergency’ in light of the failed coup d’état. Russia’s interests were hampered a bit by this as they would be unable to get their ships out but, in all honesty, it wasn’t likely that they would have done had Turkey kept that waterway open. The result of Turkish action was that what NATO naval presence there was in the Black Sea was now cut off. The navies of Bulgaria and Romania had warships at sea and they had been joined by a few vessels from the French Navy and the US Navy. The Black Sea Fleet went after those ships at the outbreak of war. Russian ships and aircraft did so with gusto. They wanted the prize of taking down ships such as the American destroyer USS Ross and also the FNS Courbet, a French frigate. The former carried Tomahawks which could – and probably would – be fired against Sevastopol or even Russia itself while the latter had, at the end of July, conducted aggressive actions (in Russia’s eyes) against the Black Sea Fleet. In the past week, both of them had withdrawn away to the southwest and near to Bulgaria but the Russians kept their attention on them ready to put each on the bottom of the sea floor. When H-Hour arrived, the Black Sea Fleet went after NATO ships with those two at the top of their list of targets. Both were hit on the war’s first day. An aircraft firing several missiles from distance set the Courbet ablaze from bow-to-stern leading to her eventual abandonment and sinking. With the Ross, the destroyer was torpedoed by a stalking submarine. Its attacker got one hit and moved in for a second, and killer, strike. However, a counterattack with the Ross’ helicopter dropping torpedoes as well as aid from the Romanian Navy drove off that Russian submarine. The good news with that came alongside the bad with ten sailors dead and three more left missing. Ross remained afloat but under tow. Spotted heading towards it, over the horizon, were up to a dozen Russian surface combatants with frigates, destroyers and cruisers among them. Urgent signals were sent from the destroyer asking for orders from Sixth Fleet’s command post, a headquarters in the process of relocating to Croatia from Naples when war came. With so much happening elsewhere, there was a delay in response. When that did come, orders were issued for Ross to use her Tomahawks while the ship’s captain was informed too that unfortunately no help was available at this time. Fire your missiles and do your best was what the captain was in effect told. He did just that with launches made of twenty-nine of the thirty cruise missiles aboard (the last one just wouldn’t fire despite everything tried to get it to fly) against far off targets. Those missiles flew towards the Crimea and mainland Russia with a wide array of impact sites selected for them. As to the Black Sea Fleet, they were due to arrive by the next morning. The Ross, joined at sea by the Bulgarians & Romanians, would have her ultimate fate decided then and not on its terms.

Serbia wasn’t a country which could recently be considered to be a Russian ally. Historic relations between Belgrade and Moscow had been good overall though fraught with periods of tension over certain years. In the summer of 2010, Serbia wasn’t about to go to the war with the West at Russia’s behest. Within moments of the war starting however, Russia tried to get Serbia to do so. An offer of ‘full support’ was made to support a ‘rightful re-taking of Kosovo’. What that full support meant wasn’t expanded upon. Though unsaid, it was clear that the expectation to would be that Serbia would as well act against NATO countries. Serbia was surrounded by those and in Belgrade, they realised that they’d end up fighting all of them. Furthermore, should it retake Kosovo, which many in Serbia did see as ‘rightfully’ theirs, Serbia would too be at war with Western Europe, Canada and, of course, the United States as well. News came fast from the latter where the ambassador in Washington informed his government that Obama was dead. The American president had been killed in a Russian assassination. This, more than anything else, was the key matter in the decision in Belgrade to send a polite ‘no thank you’ to Moscow. The ambassador had stated the obvious: America’s rage was going to be worse than 9/11 and Serbia didn’t want to be in the way of that. Only a fool would put themselves in a position to join this war voluntarily. In a telling further remark, that same diplomat speculated that there would be few other countries who would decide to join Russia’s war on this basis too. The Kremlin might think differently but they were free to do what they thought best. Serbia would do what it considered to be the right course of action and stay out of this conflict.

Further south, the US Navy had the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis at sea in the eastern Med. Along with its battle group, the carrier was in the Aegean Sea west of access to the Turkish Straits. Airspace of both Greece and Turkey were closed to ‘foreign military aircraft’ at the outbreak of war. This aided the Americans in making sure that the Russians couldn’t come at them with aircraft laden with missiles but restricted their own capabilities too. The Stennis was full of jets and there was a war on but they had no one to fly against. From Split where Admiral Harris (US Sixth Fleet’s commander) had transferred to, he requested from SACEUR permission for his aircraft to fly above Greece and then over Bulgaria to take part in Black Sea naval operations. This was refused. Stavridis – still aboard his aircraft and a long way from the gunfire at SHAPE – was following his pre-war political instructions on this where the neutrality of Greece and Turkey was something that NATO had agreed to overcome through diplomatic means. Neither country had turned on NATO directly but it was feared that they would if they believed themselves under threat with their airspace infringed. Harris and those below him could do nothing to change this for now. It was all politics and all over their heads. Therefore, the Stennis spent the first day of the war doing nothing. Patrols were made from its aircraft and missions planned for ‘when’ airspace was opened up but before then, the extraordinary offensive capability of this vessel by means of its air wing was let impotent when it could have done so much.

[James G]

Fifty-Seven

Mid-morning on August 7th, the Iberian Peninsula would suffer its first deaths from the ongoing fighting.

As the U.S. Sixth Fleet, joined by warships from the Spanish and French navies closed with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, on the other side of the Bosporus, Russian submarines lurked deep below the blue waters, which seemed to sparkle innocently beneath the August sun. The Russian submarine Gepard had been waiting patiently just west of the Gibraltar Strait to carry out her mission. She was an Akula – meaning shark – class vessel in NATO terminology, and had been in service since the end of the Cold War. The Russians would have called her a Project 971M vessel. Though not as good as the American Virginia-class submarines, Gepard was almost an even match even for the powerful 688/Los Angeles-class boats which formed the backbone of the US Navy’s SSN force.

Gepard and her crew had been at sea since March. After they had initially been surged from Arkhangelsk, her crew had taken the vessel down south past Norway, all the while playing hide-and-seek with the Royal Norwegian Navy’s submarines and anti-submarine warfare ships. She had then gone back north after passing Scotland, moving up around Iceland and through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap, narrowly avoiding NATO’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) as she went. After spending some time under the ice caps of the Arctic Circle, she was ordered to head back south at the end of July. When August came, her captain was given sealed, pre-written orders that were to be opened at five in the morning Greenwich Mean Time on August 7th, 2010.

Having avoided the sonars of several Spanish ASW frigates as well as French and American maritime patrol aircraft, she prepared to launch her strike against two key NATO military installations at sunset. The first targets of Gepard were located on the British enclave of Gibraltar. This tiny area of land was home to some 30,000 people, and despite territorial issues with Spain was firmly under the control of the United Kingdom. It was thought that closing down the port facilities located here for any period of time would significantly affect NATO’s ability to resupply its surface forces in the Mediterranean. A secondary target on the outpost was Gibraltar International Airport, which shared its facilities with RAF Gibraltar. This airstrip had rapidly become home to several Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft in the days building up to the war, and neutralising it would mean the heat would be taken off of Russian submarines throughout the region.

The second target was the United States Navy Sixth Fleet facility at Rota, in Spain. Though the base was currently devoid of ships, those having left port as the shooting started farther east, it was still a crucial supply facility to NATO naval assets in the region, and US Air Force C-17s had been spotted by an asset nearby landing at the base’s airstrip, flying in munitions which would then be moved further east to the Sixth Fleet.

Gepard was armed with what NATO called the SS-N-21 Sampson land attack cruise missile.

Coming to a complicated hover, she fired a total of twenty-one of these missiles towards Gibraltar and Rota. Though Gibraltar was thought by Russian naval planners to be the more important of the two targets, Rota was hit first due to the geographic location of the submarine when she had fired her weapons.

Spanish Army MIM-104 Patriot air defence batteries had been assembled across the country, and of the ten missiles aimed at Rota, seven managed to get through, one having crashed due to a technical failure and two more being shot down.

Those seven missiles caused immense damage.

Three of them targeted Rota’s shipyard, destroying several heavy-lifting cranes and a storage hangar, as well as starting a fire which burned throughout the night. Two hit the airfield, destroying a C-17 and cratering the southern end of the runway. One more narrowly missed the fuel dump, exploding harmlessly in a thankfully empty field. The last Sampson did perhaps the least military damage, but caused the greatest loss of life. American civilians in Spain were being flown out on those C-17s bringing in naval munitions and other supplies, and several hundred tourists were crammed into the airport terminal by the airstrip. As Spanish radars detected the inbound missiles, they were warned to dive for cover. This did little to help when the last missile slammed into the terminal building, collapsing half of its structure and killing fifty-two American civilians as well as a dozen sailors and airmen.

Due to the direction of the inbounds, Gibraltar was not protected by those same Spanish SAM batteries. All eleven missiles passed low over the Spanish countryside before screaming in on Gibraltar.

One missile with a faulty guidance system slammed into a housing estate, killing fourteen Spanish civilians as it approached the rock.

Five more inbounds struck the airport. Two, which hit the runway, were loaded with delayed-action munitions, cratering the airstrip with dozens of bomblets that would have to be cleared before aircraft could safely fly from their once again. The remainder targeted two aircraft hangers, causing both buildings to collapse. Another four hit the shipyards. Though they were not, in fact, empty as those in Spain proper had been, no ships were destroyed by the four missiles. However, several pallets of munitions being unloaded caught fire and then exploded, sending shards of burning metal scattering for hundreds of yards. This whole incident was filmed by a cowering civilian with a mobile phone and would make its way around the internet. The last missile, thankfully, was also faulty; it slammed into the Mediterranean Sea, causing no casualties. Even so, the attack had been a dramatic success. Flight operations at Rota were hampered and on Gibraltar they would be an impossibility for the foreseeable future. Seventy-two Americans, forty-five Spaniards, and twenty-five Britons, both civilian and military, had perished in the attack. Added to that number would be the one-hundred-thirty strong crew of Gepard as she ran into an American counterpart during her escape.

USS Hawaii killed the Russian submarine with a Mark-48 torpedo before the fires had even been extinguished. The American skipper had been directed to head towards the location of his Russian counterpart after the Spanish had spotted the missiles roaring out from beneath the pale blue ocean. He’d dropped his vessel in behind Gepard and fired two torpedoes for good measure; the Russians never had a chance.

*

Shortly after the attacks on Gibraltar and Rota, the first military engagement of the war would take place in the Pacific. An abundance of relatively small-scale engagements would take place across the world’s oceans on that first day of fighting, although many much larger naval battles would follow on in the coming days. The government of Australia was due to hold a Parliamentary vote on whether or not to enter the war – the result of which was already predetermined – that night, but until that happened, US forces in the Pacific would be on their own. Pacific Command under Admiral Robert F. Willard had jurisdiction over both the Third and Seventh Fleets of the US Navy as well as US Air Force, Army and Marine Corps units based in Japan and the Republic of Korea. Both of those countries appeared to be remaining neutral at least for the time being, limiting Willard’s ability to utilise his land-based airpower. There were plans for an offensive against the Russian Far East and these would be carried out, but it would be some time yet before the forces were in place to do this.

The naval engagement which took place in the Pacific Ocean that day involved submarines. US Navy submariners were relatively confident in their ability to avoid detection and get the upper hand on their Russian counterparts, but they were not cocky or overconfident; that would be careless. The crew of the USS Jimmy Carter, one of only three Sea Wolf-class submarines in existence, got into a sub-surface duel with a Russian Sierra-II submarine right up in the North Pacific off of Juneau. The name of that submarine was Pskov; it was suspected that she was attempting to land Spetsnaz teams somewhere on the coastline of Alaska, although this couldn’t be proven. The Russian skipper detected the Jimmy Carter and turned to engage her.

The American fired first…

…And missed.

Pskov was a good submarine; she was inferior to the Sea Wolf-class, but she was a good boat nonetheless. Her crew were well-trained and experienced, just like the Americans. It was anybody’s game. The fear was palpable in the stale, recycled air aboard both vessels. Nervous sweat dripped down faces; some sailors thought of loved ones back home, but most focused on nothing other than doing their duty. Pskov manoeuvred to take a shot back at the American SSN and then launched a Shkval torpedo. Carter broke hard to starboard, dispensing countermeasures much like a jet in a dogfight. The Russian torpedo missed just like that American Mark-48 had done less than a minute beforehand.

The do-or-die engagement drew to its awful close. The captain of the Jimmy Carter managed to get his boat in behind the Pskov when the Russian skipper made a crucial mistake in turning away and exposing himself to the Americans as a target; a final Mark-48 was launched. This time, the torpedo hit. A brief explosion shook the waves and then Pskov and her crew drifted down to a dark, icy underwater grave.




Fifty–Eight

The British Government had a National Security Council though this Cabinet Office committee was something new (only established back in May) and couldn’t realistically be equated to its across-the-ocean counterpart in Washington. There was a secure briefing room below Whitehall similar to the Situation Room under the White House yet there was no real public consciousness – brought about by fictional portrayals in literature or on the screen – that Britain had a similar government organisation to the one that the United States had. Throughout the early summer, the National Security Council had been meeting on various occasions and each time below ground in Cabinet Office Briefing Room A: COBRA was the favoured shorthand term rather than the official one for these gatherings. Attendees varied and the meetings took place at short notice where ongoing events were reacted to. The idea was that with access to a wealth of information and all meeting together in a secure environment, the highest matters of state business when it came to national security could be discussed among those present.

The National Security Council / COBRA met straight after the shooting incident on the streets above and those present were there throughout the majority of the war’s first day. Politicians, officials and military personnel were called in from across the country. Things were rather chaotic.


In the immediate aftermath of the incoming news that war had started, information flooded into COBRA. Obama’s death was confirmed, news came that Russian attacks had been made in multiple locations aboard and then there were reports of military activity which commenced against Britain directly. With the latter, first there were the cruise missile strikes from distant bombers. RAF Marham was one of three airbases inside the UK targeted by missiles with the other two striking American-operated facilities. Some of those missiles were on target, others went off course and a few more were engaged by US Army units launching interceptor missiles in the form of Patriots. Those missiles hit broke into fragments and such parts of the missile bodies fell to the ground to join those off-target in creating civilian casualties. From Gloucestershire and Norfolk there came uncomfortable news on this matter. Another airbase, RAF Kinloss up in Scotland, had been raided Russian commandos. They’d killed people and blown up aircraft with several of their number then held-up inside a building on-site and surrounded. Those in London heard reports that they had taken hostages to use as human shields. That armed stand-off there wouldn’t last long before it ended and with it came further loss of life. To add to this, word came that there were more Spetsnaz whom had been engaged elsewhere, this time at the Chicksands military facility in Bedfordshire: two of their number had been shot dead before making an attack with the rest sought. Alas, it quickly became clear that there was an error here. Two people were dead but they were innocent British civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was looking like there had been no Russian commando team at all and instead an overreaction from British military personnel there… Non-fatal incidents nationwide were reported too. A significant attack made by cyber means had commenced against the UK. It had affected parts of the nation’s telephone network and also several British banks: with those, cashpoints throughout the country belonging to several commercial organisations weren’t working. The power grid was unaffected by a failed attack that certainly had been tried to knock that out. From over in mainland Europe, there were similar reports when it came to telecommunications and power being hit in such a manner with things far worse in terms of phone & internet connections in Germany than here in Britain while in Belgium there were regional power outages. This all could have been a lot worse here at home and the news was that these attempts to do damage via such means – more than could be done with explosives – were still ongoing.

British forces overseas were at war. There was a Russian military offensive underway through the Baltic States and Poland as what was looking like Moscow’s main effort yet attacks had occurred elsewhere in places that British forces were deployed including Norway. Up in Latvia, where the British Army was heading-up that mixed NATO deterrent force on the ground, deterrence there had failed. Communications with them were lost but other reports said that they were in the way of hundreds of Russian tanks – was this 2010 or 1980? – pouring over the border towards them. RAF aircraft over on the Continent were engaged in NATO-commanded wartime operations from the get-go where operational control of them was arranged via allied cooperation. British Army units in Poland (in larger numbers than in Latvia) were again under NATO supervision. They’d faced air & missile attack, COBRA learnt, and were being pulled back from forward exposed positions in response. British diplomatic facilities in Latvia and Lithuania were silent with no contact available though a connection was made with the embassy in Tallinn. The Estonian capital was under missile attack and the ambassador there reported gunfire in the streets outside, possibility originating from the port area as a starting point. On the line came the defence attaché there too: he said that American and Estonia troops were between Tallinn and the Russian border and he was expecting that… he never finished what he was saying. Communications with Tallinn were cut off and couldn’t be re-established despite everything tried. Denmark and its capital city Copenhagen soon became a subject of concern. First reports of Russian Spetsnaz at the seaport there, possibility the airport too, were corrected to the news that the Russians had hundreds of marines all over the city. The confirmation came from NATO and Danish sources before contact was made with the British Embassy there. Similar to Tallinn, what the ambassador and his senior people could say didn’t last long before the line went dead but COBRA was informed that there were many British nationals in Copenhagen: far more than there were known to be in the Baltic States. Many were at the embassy and seeking safety while all around them, the city was at war where civilian casualties were reported to be extraordinarily high. From the Netherlands there were reports of gunfire on the streets of The Hague at the outbreak of war in what sounded like a mirror of the attempt to kill ministers there like had been done in London and this was repeated in reports out of Belgium too. There though, it wasn’t just Brussels where Russian commandos had showed up but also at the SHAPE military complex as well: that situation was one where conflicting reports of the scale of activity and whether it was all over or ongoing kept on arriving. It took several hours for it to be confirmed that those who attacked the place were pinned down with hostages yet spread out into several groups. No immediate resolution came with this and the stand-off there continued for the time being.

All of this in the first couple of hours. It was going to be a long day indeed.


There was a career diplomat who functioned as the country’s National Security Adviser and he was supported by a secretariat. They manned the phones and delivered news – which was meant to be processed first to eliminate rumours reaching the decision-makers – while the NSA himself supported those attendees. There were many people called in. Seven Cabinet ministers and the prime minister were at COBRA. Two more Cabinet members were elsewhere, both at the PJHQ Northwood base north of London less a Russian strike (commandos, a bomb or a nuclear attack) eliminate the nation’s leadership. The Chief if the Defence Staff wasn’t far away, just over the road at the MOD’s own below ground bunker. The heads of MI-5 and MI-6 each came to COBRA. There was an invitation made by the prime minister where he had the Leader of the Opposition and a trio of her shadow cabinet members – each of them only months ago government ministers themselves – show up with the Mayor of London also making an appearance. Add to these people the various others in the form of those not holding high-ranking positions, COBRA was a busy place. The actual room after what that was named was one of several under the Cabinet Office and they were all put into use. Up above them, Whitehall remained an armed camp. There were soldiers and policemen inside buildings and outside, all where that Russian commando team had struck in the early hours. Casualties were recovered and even that live prisoner. There’d been further alerts where a false sighting of another armed man – more Spetsnaz; were they everywhere? – had been reported. Helicopters were in the sky, armoured vehicles were on the streets and armed soldiers swept offices throughout the length of Whitehall & further out too. The body of the slain defence secretary was taken away as were the others. The security cordon kept the curious back and this so-called safe zone was extended during the day encompassing an area which included Whitehall at the centre while stretching down past the Houses of Parliament, over to Buckingham Palace, through St. James’ and across Trafalgar Square back to the Thames. It was a Saturday and there had been increased security for a week beforehand so this wasn’t that difficult to do yet it was a big effort. Some would say that this was all a bit late: the damage had already been done.

Liam Fox was dead. There were several junior ministers under him at the Ministry of Defence, including prominent among them the Lib-Dem Nick Harvey as Armed Forces Minister. Harvey was soon in London – coming from his distant constituency to land in a helicopter at Horse Guards Parade – but David Cameron nor those with him at COBRA wished to have him step up and replace Fox. Harvey just wasn’t the man for that job. There were others considered and Cameron wanted a replacement made as soon as possible, preferably today. He himself selected someone and had the staff put a call through to that candidate at the same time as the prime minister was on-hold waiting for another call to be put through where he could talk to now-President Biden. Soon enough, David Davis showed up. Davis was Cameron’s 2005 rival for the party leadership though had served in his shadow cabinet afterward. He’d left in 2008 yet only this year, Cameron had asked him to return to join his new government. Davis had politely refused. The two of them had met in the preceding weeks before today where Davis had been among a group of cross-party backbenchers seeing Cameron over the issue of civil liberties due to the pre-war crisis with Russia. He came to COBRA today and Cameron asked him to take over from their deceased colleague Fox. Cameron gave an assurance on Davis’ pet issue over civil liberties and also asked him to serve his country at a time like this. Davis agreed. This wasn’t the United States where parliamentary approval or anything like that was needed: Davis was already a Privy Councillor and with haste he was in the job. The prime minister regarded him as the best man for the job and no strong vocalised objection came from the others present.

There were many ministers at COBRA. Nick Clegg, William Hague, Theresa May, Ken Clarke, Chris Huhne, Phillip Hammond and Dominic Grieve were there from the Cabinet (George Osborne and Vince Cable were those sent to Northwood) alongside several junior ministers present too. Their reactions to all of the incoming news which they received alongside Cameron was something that it was a good idea that the public didn’t see. If they had, national morale would have been gravely shaken. There were so many things to discuss and many decisions to be made. It wasn’t just military matters but also related domestic concerns. Among the latter was the decision taken to have Grieve, the Attorney General, head up an urgent investigation into how the shooting in London and the assassination of Fox had been able to occur. The security breach was something of the most serious nature. The Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), the Justice Secretary – Clarke – and the Director General of MI-5 had all been in dispute over who was responsible and who should take charge of looking in what happened. Grieve was selected as a compromise on this. When Harman was present, she as the leader of the opposition – pending the delayed outcome of the Labour Party leadership election –, was asked if several Labour people would join a national government. It was agreed that her and four others would all do so with formalities needing sorting out there but, most-importantly, this being made public for the sake of national unity on a political front. Everyone present knew that this was going to cause controversy in time and there was no mistake there. In direct military-related matters, other decisions were made. Air Marshal Stirrup, the CDS, was instructed to make sure that everything was thrown at getting the Royal Navy’s third Vanguard-class submarine, one laden with Trident missiles, to sea to join the two others which were already out: who knew if Russia was soon to follow up its conventional attack with a nuclear one? A third submarine would give Britain more ‘deterrent options’ on that point. From where the Chief of the General Staff – Stirrup’s subordinate as head of the British Army – was at Northwood, newly-installed Davis spoke to him direct and told General Richards he wanted the 3rd Mechanised Division to ‘speed up’ its ongoing deployment to get to Poland as soon as possible. Offers of help within the NATO framework to allies in immediate need were made by COBRA. A proposition for British SAS troops to be sent to address the SHAPE situation was decided upon yet events were already moving at pace there with the French already providing naval special forces from Commando Jaubert to end the stand-off there: if they couldn’t resolve the situation tonight, then it would be tomorrow. Latvia was another issue which came up. Communications were still out with both the NATO Brigade in the field and also Riga too, yet the ambassador was in contact by the early afternoon. He was with several other diplomats from various representations of NATO countries (neither the Americans nor the French though) who had left Riga alongside part of the Latvian government. In effect, they were on the run and moving towards the Baltic coastline in an area infested with Russian commandos on the ground and their jets in the sky. The Latvian president came on the line. He asked for help and that was one which was decided to be given. A special operation was something that would resolve that matter.

Then there was Copenhagen.

This was a decision which took some time to agree to. There were those who worried it would turn out to be a disaster. Held ready as an immediate standby for rapid intervention within NATO’s operational area was the British Army’s 16th Air Assault Brigade. They’d been reinforced and held at the highest state of alert while under command of CJTF-East. They were still British soldiers though. The Russians were all over the Danish capital and British civilians, as well as Danes and other Europeans, were right in the firing line. The brigade could get there fast and knew the ground – well… Denmark anyway – from recent NATO exercises. They were pulled from direct NATO operational control and re-tasked on a UK national-level to support the Danes. Orders were cut and off they went to the Baltic. It was madness, several COBRA attendees said, to do so with such haste. Where was the pre-deployment reconnaissance of opposing forces? How many Danish speakers were there among their number? Were they ready to fight in a battle over urban terrain? However, SACEUR was in agreement where Stavridis oversaw the command arrangements and had support arranged. British troops were fighting around Copenhagen later that day. They would take losses in combat but weren’t slaughtered as some feared they might. However, what happened with this played into a wider chain of events concerning the position of SACEUR doing what he did on the war’s first day. There would be a different kind of controversy, so much of it related to American politics, to come. After those sent to Copenhagen to join the battle did so, and much later in the day, worrying other news came from the Baltic. COBRA was informed that two Royal Navy warships had been hit and sunk in engagements with the Russian Navy: both HMS Kent and HMS Montrose were reported to be those lost. This was corrected soon afterwards to it just being the Kent… ‘just’ meaning that still many, many lives were lost. It came at a time when discussions were being had concerning other elements of the Royal Navy.

One of those Labour appointees to the national government was the retired admiral Lord Alan West. In the Brown government, he’d been a junior minister for the security & counter-terrorism brief at the Home Office. May had her own junior minister in that role now – Lady Neville-Jones – and wasn’t about to have West back at the Home Office. Cameron and Harman had agreed to West serving as armed forces minister (it wasn’t Harvey’s day; he was suddenly made a minister for ‘home defence’). With Davis’ agreement, West recommended to COBRA that the semi-retired aircraft carrier HMS Invincible be brought back into service. She was at Portsmouth where she’d been for five years. The experts had said she’d take eighteen months to return to service but West said that this could be cut to six months with everything ‘including the kitchen sink’ thrown at that effort to cut the time by a third. West was thinking ahead and considering the long-term implications of replacements for battle damaged ships in war. Others at COBRA heard only ‘six months’ and they started to comprehend what that period of time, maybe even longer, would mean to spend as a country at war.

These weren’t happy thoughts.

[James G]

Fifty-Nine

Russian forces were closing in on the capital of Latvia. Latvian President Valdis Zatlers was still in Riga while his country was being attacked. An underground facility beneath the Defence Ministry was being used to brief President Zatlers. As well as numerous aids and security staff, two other senior figures in the Latvian government were there. Both Minister of Defence Imants Liegis and Commander of the National Armed Forces Lieutenant-General Raimonds Graube were with Zatlers as the lights started to flicker and the sound of explosions rumbled in. There were soldiers of the Latvian National Guard outside the building, and armed police officers as well. Although they all wanted to be proud of their nations’ armed forces, Zatlers, Liegis & Graube all new that the end was nigh. This had been anticipated and plans for the military to go underground and form the core of a resistance movement were ordered to be put into place. Concern now fell to the fates of those individuals on a personal level. Latvia was succumbing to enemy occupation and there were Russian paratroopers outside the capital. The head of government and the leaders of the armed forces couldn’t allow themselves to be captured alive by Russian forces. Lieutenant-General Graube new this and he wore a sidearm on his hip for that very reason; however, like Zatlers and Liegis, Graube very much preferred the idea of surviving to see his country be liberated once again.

NATO new all of this information. It was being fed directly to SACEUR’s airborne command post and to political leaders in many NATO nations as well. Alongside the Latvian government members were several ambassadors and diplomatic staff from the UK, Holland, Portugal and Romania. Those personnel had made their way to the Latvian Defence Ministry, keeping in contact with their home nations as they moved. It wouldn’t be long before Russian soldiers were kicking down the doors of the Defence Ministry and dragging all of these senior figures out in cuffs. Both for political propaganda purposes and to a lesser extend for military reasons, this couldn’t be allowed to happen. The Lithuanian governments’ fate had already been sealed with many of its members trapped in the surrounded Vilnius, and the Estonian government was already missing, presumed killed or captured.

However, there was still a chance to save that beacon of Latvia’s democracy.

A complicated and short-notice special operations mission was put into effect to rescue Zatlers and his comrades. Zatlers, Liegis & Graube, the three ‘principals’ of the Latvian government, along with those diplomats from the myriad of other NATO countries, were moved by a Latvian security team into a small fleet of inconspicuous-looking civilian vehicles and then driven rapidly out of the city with only hours to go before the net was sealed and Riga was surrounded on all sides. Heavy NATO airstrikes covered this daring escape; the strikes would have been launched regardless, but their occurrence made the escape of the Latvian government a legitimate possibility rather than a pipe dream. Enough time was bought for Zatlers and his companions to get away. Speeding down country roads after leaving the city, the Latvians made it to a pre-arranged pick-up-point hidden in the dense woodlands of the coastal Kemeru National Park.

A C-130J Hercules transport aircraft from the RAF’s No.47 Squadron, a unit dedicated to special ops, flew in low over the coast, pulling up at the last second. That aircraft was shielded by numerous American F-16s which drew fire away from it. A twelve-man team of commandos from Britain’s Special Boat Service parachuted from the back of the C-130, landing in the Kemeru National Park. The British commandos – accompanied by a translator from the Secret Intelligence Service who had, in his own words, “not signed up for this bollocks” – linked up with the Latvians and the NATO diplomats as well as their security staff. Russian forces were closing in behind them quickly. On foot, they scrambled through the thick woodlands, tumbling and falling every other step in a headlong dash for the coastline. They emerged from the treeline and onto the beach, where four more SBS men waited with a pair of inflatable motorboats.

They weren’t out of the woods yet though, at least not literally. Russian soldiers from a reconnaissance company belonging to the 23rd Guards Air Assault Regiment were close behind. They opened fire from the woodlands as the British and the Latvians raced towards their inflatable boat. The SBS team and the Latvian security men returned fire, pouring down covering fire and allowing the principals to clamber into the dinghy. The Captain commanding the SBS detachment remained behind on the beach along with several of his men, holding off the Russian paratroopers and buying time for their charges to get away. This sacrifice would be honoured for generations in British military history, regarded as a stand similar to that of Rourke’s Drift even though it had really been a small engagement in what would be a very big war indeed. The inflatable craft carried the Latvians and the SBS troopers – men who would be truly broken by leaving their comrades behind – further out to sea. They were picked up by a vessel of the Royal Norwegian Navy. The submarine HMNS Ula was waiting in the Baltic Sea. Her crewmember helped the shaken Latvians and the British commandos aboard. They would probably have preferred being further north, fighting off the Russian forces that were invading their own country, but their orders were to fight where they had been stationed before war had broken out, and they would do so.

The rescue of the Latvian President and his closest military advisors was a small and costly victory in what was shaping up to be a day of defeats for NATO.

*

The first press briefing of the war took place within the Pentagon itself on the evening of August 7th.

Ever since the First Gulf War, the press had demanded access to the frontlines. Many in military circles resented them for this and wanted journalists to stay far away from the battlefield. There were concerns with this briefing over the potential of secrets being revealed by accident and even paranoia amongst a few DOD officials that some journalists might be enemy spies or terrorists. Those journalists being admitted into the building found themselves facing an unusual amount of scrutiny, and were watched by eager-eyed National Guardsmen in full ‘battle-rattle’, carrying M4 Carbines. This extraordinary amount of security was a reflection of anxious and angry mood that resonated nationwide. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and many of the Pentagon’s planners had been relocated to Site R already, leaving a relatively small number of people actually at the building. President Biden himself ordered that a military briefing take place after he himself addressed the nation.

The DOD was mostly truthful with the American people. Mostly.

The Russian commando strikes and the air & cruise missile attacks were told as truth, as was the fact that NATO forces were conducting what was being called a “tactical withdrawal” in Poland and the desperate situation in all three of the Baltic States. Victories in Norway and at sea were touted. However, the Pentagon briefer, when asked about the fate of the brigade of American paratroopers stationed in Estonia, denied that that formation had been destroyed. He told the enterprising Huffington Post reporter that contact had been temporarily lost with the brigade headquarters due to Russian jamming and electronic warfare, but that the Falcon Brigade was still fighting and slowing the Russian advance on Tallinn. This was a falsehood and the Department of Defence knew it. Those 4,400 American soldiers were now all either dead, POWs, or on the run. Nobody wanted to admit that at the time though; a US military defeat on such a scale was unheard of since the Korean War. Even in Vietnam, whole brigades hadn’t simply been swallowed up by an enemy advance like 2/82nd Airborne had.

It would not be any American journalist that exposed the truth, but rather a British one. Almost immediately after 2/82nd had formally surrendered, the officers and enlisted personnel with technical knowledge were separated from the others and taken off for interrogation, while most prisoners, after being searched, were marched off to holing camps further east. Some of those soldiers were forced to make appearances on television, and, at gunpoint, many told of how their whole brigade had been annihilated. They weren’t traitors because of doing this; many were wounded and under the influence of strong painkillers and others had been beaten and threatened into talking to Russian cameramen. Russia Today & RIA Novosti were blocked in most NATO countries by the time war broke out, with that being done under the authority of many emergency powers laws. Despite efforts to prevent it from getting out, the whole thing ended up online very quickly and then major Western news channels caught wind of it. The BBC aired a report about the whole fiasco and that was quickly caught onto by the major American news networks. The Pentagon would soon confirm this as the truth; the DOD stated that there had been a mistake with the briefing and that there had been no intention for a lie to be told.

There were other issues domestically with a number of anti-Moscow riots and protests taking place outside Russian consulates and embassies nationwide. In DC, thousands of people gathered outside the Russian embassy chanting for its members to be arrested, or in some cases, lynched in the streets. The Metropolitan Police Department sought to contain the disruption, but the Russians were ordered out of the United States, given just twenty-four hours to leave the country or face arrest. In Seattle, the small Russian consulate there came under fire when one individual – not part of an organised group – shot at the building with a hunting rifle. He was able to fire several rounds, none of which caused any casualties, before being apprehended by the police. Many onlookers jeered and booed the officers who arrested the shooter. People burned effigies of Putin that night and a number of Russian-owned businesses were torched across the US. In a few cases, local police departments were hesitant to conduct proper investigations, leading to the FBI announcing that it would pursue and prosecute those involved in attacks on innocent Russians to the fullest extent of the law.





Sixty

Despite everything which had happened since the late summer of 2008, and especially throughout this summer too, there remained Westerners inside Russia. These were from NATO countries and those traditionally associated with ‘the West’. Ambassadors and the majority of diplomatic staffs had been pulled out long before the war began. There were travel advisory notices – even outright bans from some countries – when it came to visiting Russia to say nothing of how difficult Russia had made matters with visa requirements. Things had been getting tense inside the country for Westerners with harassment from unofficial elements of the Russian state – teens with Nashi – berating them in the street for the attitude of their home governments. Regardless, there were a good few thousand within the borders of Russia at the outbreak of war. The Russian government had a good idea where to find most of them. They had been forced to register their hotels or places of residence with the police since the middle of July. Once the war started, efforts were made to detain these people. Russia wanted them in custody but not to hold them as hostages to use them as bargaining chips with the West. Instead, it was to expel them from the country. This would be done ‘politely’ too. There was a propaganda war alongside a shooting war. Russia would play by its own rules and do things which it thought would play out well – whether they would or not was to be seen – and that included removing Westerners from their country. For their own safety, they were told, foreign civilians were asked to report to police stations nationwide. They then began their journey out of the country with Russian intending to sent them out through neighbouring countries like Finland, the Ukraine and Turkey: whichever would agree to aid Russia in this. They weren’t robbed, beaten or overtly treated badly but they were firmly removed from Russia starting on the war’s first day. Public announcements were made directed at those who hadn’t yet done so to report to the police as well as urging Russians to remember their patriotic duty and assist such people in leaving the country… that second bit concerned many Westerners who heard translations of such a remark. There were those diplomatic compounds too. Consulates and consulates-general outside of Moscow in many cities were already closed but there remained embassies in the capital. Such places had few high-ranking staff left working there and for some time now, Russian nationals employed at them hadn’t been into work. Moscow police and even FSB personnel in uniform were around them all throughout the extensive period of crisis. Those FSB officers, joined now by people from the Foreign Ministry, entered the compounds. There were ‘incidents’ at several including the American and French embassies where threats were made of shooting. This eventually didn’t occur though and such places were taken over by the Russian state without violence. Diplomats were told that they were being expelled from Russia and with immediate effect. For the US Marine guards at the American embassy, their fellow US Marines were fighting elsewhere in the world though here in Moscow they were instructed by their senior diplomat present to put down their weapons, leave their posts with him and see the embassy taken over without a shot being fired. Heroic and suicidal stands for no reason weren’t going to take place.

There was quite the disturbance inside the Kremlin. Fradkov and General Shlyakhturov – the heads of the SVR and the GRU respectively – almost came to physical blows during a meeting of the Security Council. Some of the others present pretended to be shocked and outraged at such a protocol violation yet secretly were rooting for fisticuffs between the two men. Why did their verbal argument nearly turn to violence? It was because Hillary Clinton was dead. The SVR’s intelligence-gathering operations deemed the ‘Chappaqua Connection’ came to an unexpected end because the GRU had assassinated her alongside Obama and the others in Marine One. No more would intelligence of the highest quality coming from the American secretary of state be available for Russian exploitation. The line was dead there, Fradkov said. Shlyakhturov shrugged his soldiers. He’d told Putin and the others that she hadn’t been targeted directly as Obama was the priority target but there was more benefit from her death than loss to Russia. The Americans would be on their knees in tears at the loss of so many important people; she too was an enemy of Russia who would have gladly seen all those here in the Kremlin hung from lampposts in the streets from the mob. He also mocked Fradkov and asked whether he would be on his knees crying for her too. Bortnikov got physically in the way of the two men and then Patrushev called for order and respect… especially in the presence of the president. Eyes turned to Putin, glaring at them as was his way, and those up on their feet sat back down. Shlyakhturov ignored Fradkov and moved to talk about all of the successes that the GRU had had with their specialist operations elsewhere too. There was plenty of report and all of it was framed as success. This came as part of a longer briefing given to the Security Council by others as well. Those gathered inside the Kremlin – ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice if necessary – to hear the series of military briefings were treated to news similar to what the GRU head had said. Russia’s armed forces had had a good day. There had been some reverses met, of which details were provided, but these were few and not that severe when it came to the overall aim of the conflict sought. Russia, those present were told, had started the war as it would go on: with victory.

Russia hadn’t embraced the internet like the West had – it was invented over there to be fair – yet neither was it something ignored. Its uses were exploited though there was often a refusal at the highest levels to go all the way. It was something seen as dangerous, something which couldn’t be controlled. All of that information, all of that means of unchecked communication… The internet was a weapon though. Cyber warfare was something understood in Russia. They’d witnessed it done to others and used it themselves. Any notion in the West that Russia was behind the curve here was shown to be entirely false with actions undertaken to conduct cyber-attacks at the outbreak of fighting. More of these were due to come too past the opening strikes. There was the possibility that the West would take the step of activating ‘kill switches’ to their internet services (less dramatic than it sounded; telecommunications companies could be ordered to cut services rather than someone with a Big Red Button) but before then, what damage would be done would be. As to those other aspects of the internet, Russia was monitoring them ahead of the fighting commencing and once it did so as well. Information was sought through systems broken into yet also open-source means. The latter were social media platforms. There were intelligence-gathering assets instructed to exploit these looking for avenues to aid the war effort. Unfortunately, they were suddenly overwhelmed. There was so much information out there and the useful stuff was hidden among that. The big websites for internet communications used across the West were alight with comments and media. It would take hundreds, maybe thousands of years to go through all of this and that would be far too late! Russia just wasn’t in a position to exploit what there was out there. The reaction which came online to the outbreak of war filled websites with so much of use yet all drowned out by what really wasn’t. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter weren’t able to be used like Russia wanted them to be done to gather information. Youtube, the video sharing platform which was growing faster than many had expected in recent months following the period of international crisis and civilians in the West uploading content, was more useful than the others. Russia had watched pre-war as it was filled with ‘citizen journalists’ filming military deployments and security measures to post them online for friends and strangers to watch. Once the war started, these increased. People put themselves in grave danger in doing so; Russia was ever so grateful for this! One senior GRU officer made a throwaway remark to his colleagues that in the future, this conflict might be called the ‘Youtube War’. You never know… Videos titled such as ‘Russian parachutists landing in Sweden’, ‘Croydon Looting’, ‘Putin killed my Mum’ and ‘Look at all those cars!’ were online. These four examples concerned footage of two aircrew who had ejected from a downed Russian fighter reaching the ground in Sweden (and being detained by the Swedes), a wave of looting of shops taking place in South London by criminal youths, a video of a woman lying dead in the street in Copenhagen with her daughter crying while describing what had happened and traffic jams at a border crossing on the US-Mexico frontier where it was closed. These were just a very few of oh so many. The footage wasn’t that great. There were grainy, jumpy images and more talk than action. Those watching actually saw very little. Another video entitled ‘News chopper down over D.C.’ sparked GRU interest: there was footage of a helicopter crash moments after it had come down in the American capital with the man who recorded it believing then and afterwards that he had filmed a media helicopter on the ground & alight. Only later did he realise that it was Marine One on the ground and once that was revealed, viewership rates for his video were astronomical. Russian operatives watched these videos. They saw others too with images of fighting taking place in Denmark, Norway and Poland. Further military deployments were recorded from afar and posted online too with no one stopping this. However, among all of these goldmines of intelligence, there was once again plenty of chaff to wade through. People recorded video diaries of what they said where their final moments as they waited for ‘the bomb’ to fall… and waited. There were those too who repeated rumours and falsehoods: some stupid people even made fake propaganda purporting to be from inside Russia claiming that the West was about to fall and the end of the neo-liberal order was about to be ended with Russian tanks taking over Berlin, Paris, London and even Washington. It was madness, pure insanity!

Russia’s worldwide allies did what Serbia had done and refused to enter the war against the West. Serbia had said no when it came to the matter of Kosovo and this was the same with those who could be considered as far closer to Moscow than Belgrade was. In Caracas, Damascus, Havana, Pyongyang, Tehran and Tripoli, these opponents of the West declined to go to war as well. The regimes in each weren’t about to join in the conflict that Russia was involved in. Hesitation had been expected by those in the Kremlin but they instead got a rude surprise when they received a series of rejections to their suggestions that the time was ripe for them to strike. The military briefings which the leadership received on the course of the war had brought much assurance of ultimate victory but that was then tempered off by the news which kept coming in from elsewhere where those countries were staying out. Were Russia and Belarus going to remain all alone in this war? They didn’t need others, did they?