Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

[raunchel]

And so the Syrian mess begins. This time, Assad won't be receiving much in the way of Russian help (and any that would appear won't last long), and the international ability to strongly intervene otherwise also isn't there.

[James G]

Jun 4, 2019 4:04:25 GMT raunchel said:

And so the Syrian mess begins. This time, Assad won't be receiving much in the way of Russian help (and any that would appear won't last long), and the international ability to strongly intervene otherwise also isn't there.

A year early and with a different start but it will be just as terrible.
There were some Russian forces in Syria but they were knocked out early. Assad only has partial Iranian aid. Russia can't defend itself let alone anyone else.

[forcon]

One Hundred and Seventy Five

In the Far East, the intensity of the Allied air campaign was beginning to slacken. American carrier-based fighters were doing the heavy-lifting there, but the Royal Australian Air Force was also flying its F-111s and its F/A-18s from South Korea and from occupied airfields on Sakhalin as well.

Sakhalin had fallen now with the large-scale surrenders taking place there, at least by Russian regulars, and the need to strike Russian forces in support of the amphibious operations in the Far East had diminished greatly, replaced by the desire for a continued campaign against Russian lines of communication running westwards. The majority of targets belonging to the Far East Army Command had already been destroyed, however, and many units stationed here in the east had gone west by this point in the fighting.

However, to the west, the same could not be said. Airstrikes into Russia had been expanded greatly with tactical air operations now formally crossing this border. F-16s and F/A-18s carried out defence suppression strikes on a near-permanent basis, with SEAD patrols up in the air over western Russia to 'splash' these targets whenever they made the fatal mistake of turning on their radars.

Meanwhile, F-15E Strike Eagle fighters along with European Tornados pummelled Russian forces as they moved across the imaginary line running down from St Petersburg and past Smolensk. Losses were falling as the days went on, although some major incidents would occur as long as Russian air defences kept up their brave if ultimately futile efforts to stop the bombardment. One such incident saw an RAF Tornado strike plane engaged by an SA-15 battery near St Petersburg, with the burning jet crashing down into the centre of Russia's second city.

Further north, tactical airstrikes were carried out at the hands of the US Navy. Some Tomahawk cruise missiles were used here as well but their numbers had been greatly depleted and the US task force up there in the Norwegian Sea was running out of such weapons, leaving the campaign largely in the hands of Hornet and Super Hornet crews.

The success of Global Strike Command's vaunted B-52s in targeting Kola echoed by the Navy strike planes flying directly into Russian airspace almost unopposed as SAM radars went offline in the name of self-preservation. Few enemy fighters even got off of the ground; those that did were forces to operate without AWACS support against their attackers.

More strategic operations also took place against Russia. Those few B-2 stealth bombers in the American inventory were really making a name for themselves in World War III, despite a trio of losses to Russian defence forces. Flying deeper into Russian airspace than any other aircraft, the Spirits again visited Moscow, this time targeting the Communications Ministry as well as several military command posts located outside of the city.

Success was met at every turn here as GBUs lit up the night sky across the Russian capital, well-defended as it was. Another B-2 risked penetrating deep into Russia from the Black Sea. This operation was as controversial as it was risky.

The stealth bomber was nearly blown out of the sky by what few MiG-31s remained active as she neared her target. Engels Air Base had been targeted before with the B-2s striking the airfield and destroying five of the Russian Air Forces’ irreplaceable elite, Tu-160 Blackjack bombers, the very same aircraft which had boldly penetrated American airspace and attacked targets across the eastern portion of the continental United States.

The stealth bomber launched AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons at Engels, this time targeting not the Blackjacks, but specifically the airfields’ own infrastructure. Hundreds of bomblets separated from the main formation of the JSOWs and rained down upon Engels; fires danced across the airfield as hundreds of personnel fell victim to shrapnel wounds.

A trio of Tu-95 Bear bombers were taken out as well, a fact which was confirmed by post-strike reconnaissance. This was something of a happy coincidence, with the Bears thought to have been long-since dispersed elsewhere. This was in fact true for the majority of Russia’s Bear bombers, but a few of them remained at Engels…until those B-2s and their JSOWs showed up. Wirth the destruction of the Bears so too came the obliteration of ground personnel and their equipment.

Since the strikes on Seattle and the Eastern Seaboard, Russia had not been able to directly attack the American mainland with conventional forces. Russia’s arsenal of cruise missiles, like its arsenal of everything else, had become greatly depleted and now air attacks against Russian soil were a daily event…and Moscow needed to strike back.

[crackpot]

Strike back with what exactly? Old mother Hubbard called. Cabinet is bare.

[Brky2020]

Jun 4, 2019 23:56:42 GMT crackpot said:

Strike back with what exactly? Old mother Hubbard called. Cabinet is bare.

[Dan]

Jun 5, 2019 0:47:17 GMT Brky2020 said:

Jun 4, 2019 23:56:42 GMT crackpot said:

Strike back with what exactly? Old mother Hubbard called. Cabinet is bare.

I could see Zhirinovsky pulling this card from the pack, but not Putin. If Putin tries this, he may find that due to an unexpected fault at the telephone exchange, his call is routed to a rather confused state janitor in Nemchinova primary school, who while honoured to find out that the defence of the Rodina depends on him and him alone, he will wonder what he can do to achieve that with his mop. 

[James G]

Jun 4, 2019 23:56:42 GMT crackpot said:

Strike back with what exactly? Old mother Hubbard called. Cabinet is bare.

Almost bare, almost.
They will dream up a suitable 'cunning plan'.

Jun 5, 2019 0:47:17 GMT Brky2020 said:

Oh you only do that when all else fails and NATO’s tanks are entering Moscow.

Jun 5, 2019 7:17:01 GMT Dan said:

I could see Zhirinovsky pulling this card from the pack, but not Putin. If Putin tries this, he may find that due to an unexpected fault at the telephone exchange, his call is routed to a rather confused state janitor in Nemchinova primary school, who while honoured to find out that the defence of the Rodina depends on him and him alone, he will wonder what he can do to achieve that with his mop. 

This is the prize winner for Top Post of the Year!
See lordroel for your reward.

[lordroel]

Jun 5, 2019 8:40:23 GMT James G said:

Jun 4, 2019 23:56:42 GMT crackpot said:

Strike back with what exactly? Old mother Hubbard called. Cabinet is bare.

Almost bare, almost.
They will dream up a suitable 'cunning plan'.

Jun 5, 2019 0:47:17 GMT Brky2020 said:

Oh you only do that when all else fails and NATO’s tanks are entering Moscow.

Jun 5, 2019 7:17:01 GMT Dan said:

I could see Zhirinovsky pulling this card from the pack, but not Putin. If Putin tries this, he may find that due to an unexpected fault at the telephone exchange, his call is routed to a rather confused state janitor in Nemchinova primary school, who while honoured to find out that the defence of the Rodina depends on him and him alone, he will wonder what he can do to achieve that with his mop. 

This is the prize winner for Top Post of the Year!
See lordroel for your reward.

Do not think we have any Grand Order of the Mop on this forum, but I will check the awards anyway.

[James G]

One Hundred and Seventy–Six

‘Moscow needed to strike back’ was certainly true. A plan to do so was already in the making but one now given urgent attention from the Kremlin. The Security Council of Russia gave their approval to begin something that would bring with it many worrying risks though at the same time promises of great reward too. It was called Operation Volk (Wolf).

The Russian army would do in early September what it had done back in early August: launch a massive surprise attack. Coming out of cover, two field armies, with troops brought in from far away, would strike forwards and aim to get behind NATO forces to either crush them or cause them to surrender. It had worked before – well… depending on your opinion there – and was intended to work again. It would be a war-winning move which would bring the war to a successful close. Moscow would then afterwards approach the West aiming to get them to talk terms.

Where was Russia to launch its surprise attack? In Belarus and Poland.

Where would it be launched from? The Ukraine.


Volk called for the Thirty-Fifth Army (Far East based troops who had left there as Sakhalin fell) and the Forty-Ninth Army (from the North Caucasus; men not involved in fighting the Georgians and the Americans) to travel through the neutral Ukraine, go around the Pripet Marshes and then enter Belarus from out of northwestern Ukraine. One field army would advance northwards to retake occupied Belorussian soil; the other would move northwest, passing through southwestern Belarus, and into Poland. Kovel in the Ukraine would be the staging post with Brest the first objective in Belarus. Earlier ideas to launch the attack into Poland direct from the Ukraine had been scuppered by Kiev but the second strike was planned to quickly reach Polish soil after crossing only a small portion of Belarus.

NATO and the US V Corps fighting in Belarus would be hit from the flank and surrounded from behind. Where the German-Dutch I Corps remained on Polish soil behind them, they would be crushed by the attack moving against them. Russian troops would feint for another drive towards Warsaw once more but instead focus their Polish operation on going through the Podlachia region. Moreover, to support the twin strikes in the rear, NATO forces at the frontlines were to be met with an early distraction where Russian Airborne Troops taken from the last of the central reserve would join in the fighting around places such as Baronovichi and Kobryń first. Each of those were currently being held. Russian thinking was that once NATO saw Russia committing what they believed where its last reserves, elite troops too, that would be the most that could be done. They would take their eyes off elsewhere.

Volk was a good plan… on paper anyway. There were many difficulties in getting it underway though. The Kremlin was told that it could begin on September 8th (they made the decision on the 4th) and this meant getting an extraordinarily large number of component pieces into place first. Those two Russian armies had recently arrived in Western Russia: now they had to be sent though the Ukraine and towards Kovel. When they moved, they had to do so with speed yet also as little fuss as possible. Success depended upon them not being spotted with it being made clear by the generals to the politicians that if they were, the border crossing would be opposed and Russia’s last gasp attack defeated.

Going through the Ukraine quietly was done for another reason too. In Kiev, President Yanukovych had been bullied into allowing for this to happen but he wanted to afterwards claim that his country hadn’t known. That was how he intended to sell things whether the Russians met success or failure: we didn’t know. Such was the reason why Poland wasn’t going to be invaded direct out of the Ukraine. If that had occurred, Yanukovych had stated that his country would be forced into the war. Russian troops arriving into Belarus after supposedly illegally crossing Ukrainian territory was something that he believed he could claim with a straight face: NATO would be furious but not as much as if they went direct into Poland. Ukrainian forces wouldn’t provide any assistance to the crossing of the Russian forces through their territory either, not openly anyway. This would mean that the Russians would have to do everything themselves too.

In Moscow and Kiev, it was assumed that they could do this without NATO realising what had happened until their troops in Belarus came under attack… maybe even believing that the Thirty-Fifth & Forty-Ninth Armies had gone through the Pripet Marshes and stayed in Belorussian territory all along. Maybe.

In recent weeks, with the Ukraine ‘behaving’ in NATO eyes, there had been a reduction in the surveillance undertaken of the country by them. There hadn’t been any overflights of reconnaissance drones and the Americans had their satellites looking elsewhere too. There were still NATO troops from several different nations in the bordering countries but they no longer had much air cover directly assigned to them after the war in Transnistria had finished. Yanukovych didn’t want a war with NATO, hence his restrictions on what Putin had wanted done at first, but he no longer believed that the West could launch a war against him, not with everything else going on. Moreover, in Kiev, like in Moscow, there was the confidence that Volk would succeed.


The DGSE – France’s foreign intelligence service – had their spy still active in Moscow. The Ukrainian military attaché to Russia remained based at the embassy in the city which had been repeatedly bombed by American stealth bombers. The general had witnessed those strikes and their aftereffects. He had many times worried that the same would happen to Kiev too at some point if his nation did something stupid. Such was the reason why he was spying for the French.

He wasn’t spying on his own country though: he had told the DGSE when he first agreed to work for them that he would do no harm to the Ukraine. Nods and assurances had come from his handlers to this. That was an agreement which they had no intention of honouring in the long-term. It would be a foolish thing to keep to. The intention was for the general to eventually do that either by being talked into it or made to understand that if he didn’t do as asked, he risked exposure. The DGSE was full of professionals and would do that the right way so as to not get him to call their bluff. Anything like that was in the future though. The general hadn’t been working for the French for very long. Only after Yanukovych had been put into place through Russian overt interference in the recent presidential election had be approached the DGSE with his conditions attached. From him had come one of the last-minute warnings sent to NATO of impending war and during the conflict he had given France much intelligence. There was information which flowed through his hands that NATO was eager to be informed of. They asked for more things though, information which he couldn’t get his hands on.

The embassy was being watched by the Russian FSB. The general was being monitored too. He was no fool and his handlers had provided him with some help to avoid detection but it was a dangerous game he was playing. Contact with the DGSE was made through cut-outs, all of whom were Russian nationals before then passed to a French spy operating under deep cover in Moscow. Passing information one way and messages back the other way was no easy process and time-consuming due to the worry that the FSB would catch on.

If they found one link in the chain, then the general was pretty sure he’d be ‘disappeared’.

The Ukrainian Embassy wasn’t involved in the planning for Volk. Neither the ambassador nor the military attaché were party to the concept let alone any of the political factors when it came to Yanukovych doing all that he could to keep the Ukraine neutral while allowing for that new Russian attack on NATO. Moscow and Kiev arranged that at a president-to-president level and also between military commanders-in-chief. However, there was some supposedly unrelated information which came through the embassy. There were bits and pieces concerning transportation access, the meeting of military officers to act as liaisons and such like. The general saw much of this. Naturally, he took an interest in what was going on. He had all the information in front of him that something like Volk was going to happen (the exact details not there though) should he be able to put it together. He just had to see it. If he did so, and that was a big if, then he would face a difficult personal decision.

Tell the DGSE and see what that brought for his country, or do as Yanukovych was going to do and pretend ignorance while again seeing what they would bring for his beloved Ukraine. Which one would he do? Would he understand what was going on before then? If he did, could he get the word out in time?

[crackpot]

Gah! A cliffhanger!

[forcon]

What happens next, whoever wins, will be an epic fight on the scale of Kursk. Excellent work!

[crackpot]

Jun 5, 2019 20:41:02 GMT forcon said:

What happens next, whoever wins, will be an epic fight on the scale of Kursk. Excellent work!

Hopefully with a Russian playing the role of Erich Von Manstein this time.

[Brky2020]

Jun 5, 2019 8:40:23 GMT James G said:

Oh you only do that when all else fails and NATO’s tanks are entering Moscow. 

That isn't where this is headed?

[James G]

Jun 5, 2019 20:24:39 GMT crackpot said:

Gah! A cliffhanger!

It'll take a couple of days to come to play.

Jun 5, 2019 20:41:02 GMT forcon said:

What happens next, whoever wins, will be an epic fight on the scale of Kursk. Excellent work!

You should know: the battle is yours to fight!

Jun 5, 2019 20:54:43 GMT crackpot said:

Hopefully with a Russian playing the role of Erich Von Manstein this time.

In my head it was more the Battle of the Bulge type of scenario.

Jun 6, 2019 1:53:14 GMT Brky2020 said:

That isn't where this is headed?

That isn't current in our planning.

[forcon]

One Hundred and Seventy Seven

That war-winning counterattack the Russians were set to launch wasn’t going to happen yet. Despite the requests of some in Putin’s inner circle, the troops needed weren’t place and NATO wasn’t in the right position either for offensive operations to commence. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t any fighting in Belarus, however. NATO forces were driving hard on Minsk, the Belarusian capital, against resistance that was of varying quality and quantity alike. Given its dire situation, Moscow was prepared to throw Lukashenko under the bus if need be. Putin saw his ally to the west as a chess piece, something that could be sacrificed in negotiations when the counteroffensive successfully cut off NATO’s V Corps and left the bulk of the American and French heavy forces encircled in enemy territory.

The Americans could be whittled down in negotiations if they were on the back foot, and so too could their European allies. Giving them Belarus would be enough to placate the Americans and satisfy their thirst for vengeance. Until the counterattack, however, the fight continued. In northern Belarus, the Polish 11th Armored Cavalry Division made a daring armoured thrust towards Lida with the intention of opening up the road to Minsk. The so-called ‘Lida Gap’ had been scouted out by NATO reconnaissance satellites and was seen both by Mattis and Petraeus as being the quickest route to the Belarusian capital.

The Poles went into the Lida Gap with their Leopard-2s and armoured fighting vehicles in the lead, smashing aside Belarusian forces that fought in opposition. The Battle of the Lida Gap was a major event, one that saw artillery and airpower utilised in support of the ground attack. American Apache gunships circled above the battlefield while a team of Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group carried out reconnaissance ahead of the main force. F-16s and A-10s in the air blew apart enemy troop concentrations on the ground and what followed as a massacre for the Belarusians. Equipped with light anti-tank weapons and some T-72s, the Polish ‘thunder runs’ broke the spirit of the defenders despite Lukashenko’s imposition of his ‘collective punishment’ policy for families of soldiers who were thought to be involved in treasonable activity.

The Americans hit the Lida Gap from the south, seizing the woodlands inside which additional enemy troopers were concealed as well as the highways needed for the Polish armour to swing southwards towards Minsk. The 101st Air Cavalry Division utilised its Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters to transport two full infantry brigade combat teams into the fray, escorted by AH-64D gunships and fighter cover as well. The Americans’ luck did not hold, however, despite the success of the Polish armoured formation to the north.

The low-flying helicopters were immensely vulnerable to troops equipped with even primitive anti-aircraft missiles. Using systems such as the SA-7 and SA-14, Belarusian troops belonging to commando forces engaged the choppers. ZSU-32 anti-aircraft guns utilised by an air defence regiment which had withdrawn with 1st Guards Tank Army assisted in the effort despite facing destruction at the hands of Hellfire missiles launched from the supporting gunships. American drone surveillance efforts had failed to ascertain the number of anti-aircraft weapons positioned north of the now-famed Lida Gap. No less than twelve helicopters were downed, including a pair of CH-47 Chinooks, each of which took fifty men down with them when they crashed and burned.

For almost the next six hours, helicopters landed and withdrew to pick up more troops. Losses mounted as the 101st Division cleared the woodlands against scattered but determined opposition. US Air Force warplanes dropped cluster munitions in the trees, setting off a colossal forest fire that would further detriment the war effort of both sides. The countryside was secured by nightfall despite the resistance faced by the Americans, nonetheless. Casualties stood at over two hundred dead on the part of the Americans. Somebody was going to pay for those mistakes, fairly or otherwise.

In central Belarus, V Corps heavy armoured forces, the best that NATO had, pushed on towards Minsk regardless of the events playing out to the north. The main goal for today was the capture of Baranovichi, and with it a major airbase located near to that small city. The 1st Armored Division had the task of accomplishing this, and it aimed to do so with minimal losses. However, contradictory orders came all the way from Lt.-General Ryan at corps HQ which demanded the Old Ironsides reach Baranovichi as soon as possible, countermanding the division commander’s casualty averse instructions. Lives were lost that day that didn’t need to be lost. 1st Armored Division could have approached with more caution and taken more time, but a full-scale attack on the city had been demanded of them.

Though the division had been bloodied during the fighting so far (its casualty numbers were the third largest of any US formation during the war) it remained a highly effective fighting force with experienced soldiers and good, modern equipment that functioned properly despite having been damaged in battle. T-80s from what remained of the 5th Guards Tank Division, a formation that had been devastated by the wrath of American airpower, tried to stop the US Army’s armoured onslaught. Local militiamen dug into Baranovichi itself to defend the city. The Americans fought their way through the remnants of the 5th Division – effectively an understrength regiment in all but name – and made it to the airfield before swinging into Baranovichi itself from two different directions along the P99 & P108 Highways.

The Americans’ M1A2 tanks were vulnerable here to missile fire, with three of those vehicles knocked out by the militiamen. This urban fighting was more akin to the combat some of those American soldiers, mainly NCOs and mid-grade field officers, had been a part of in Iraq during the occupation there. The militiamen in Belarus were better-armed and had some Russian advisors working within their ranks but they were dramatically less fanatical than the Americans’ opponents in Iraq had been.

The result was the seizure of most of Baranovichi by the end of the day, albeit at considerable cost to the attackers. Nevertheless, over four hundred POWs were taken by the Americans, for a total of fifty-seven US Army deaths.

In southern Belarus, the French forces, with the US 1st Cavalry Division to the north, were advancing up along the Ukrainian border. Something was about to happen here that they did not yet know about, but in keeping with their orders, the Allied units, with the Italians covering their rear, drove on Pinsk against a mixed-bag of resistance efforts. Everything from professional troops with T-72s to roadside Improvised Explosive Devices planted by guerrillas harried the advancing troops. Even so, the advance couldn’t be stopped. Despite everything the Belarusians (and Russians too) threw at them, the two Allied divisions kept pushing onwards.

Airpower was the key to these successes, with most defences against this now rendered inoperable. Bombs devastated the countryside from numerous types of aircraft from all across Europe, including Slovakian and Polish MiG-29s built back in Russia herself.

One of the more prominent successes of the day was the rescue of over five hundred POWs from a camp north of Pinsk by members of the 10th Special Forces Group. The facility had been located by Belgian warplanes returning from a strike to the east, and then French Special Forces had been assigned to reconnoitre the location before those ‘Cowboy’ Americans showed up in their Osprey multipurpose aircraft and stormed the camp.

It looked like NATO had gotten the better of the days fighting across Belarus.

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