Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

Mar 16, 2021 8:02:29 GMT gillan1220 said:

OUCH! So one B-21 ended in rebel hands while the rest of the B-21s and B-2s are still in the loyalists. Even then, one lost B-21 and two B-2s is gonna cost billions. Makes me think of the USAF can replace these B-2 bombers. While China holds the record of shooting down a B-2 in the air, the DAR holds the record of destroying two in a single attack.

Speaking of which, what became of the Republic of Singapore Air Force attachments at Luke AFB in Arizona and Mountain Home AFB in Idaho? Would they at least sit it the civil war out or will they be ordered to go back home to Singapore? What about the German pilots in NAS Key West?

I wonder too what would become of the Filipino communities in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos live in Hawaii, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and three states of the West Coast so they would be in DAR territory. Over at the East, thousands of Filipinos live in Illinois, Michigan, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Virginia. Not to mention too Filipino-Americans serve in the Armed Forces and would be shooting other Filipino-Americans.

The rebels had three and lost one. The US Air Force just had the one and it survived the night.
(I should have totalled losses at the end there)
The loss of the two US Air Force B-2s on the ground, plus B-1s and B-52s, is just mind-boggling in financial terms.

I'm thinking that the DAR seized the planes and politely told the pilots/ground crew to go home. Other countries have done it in wartime and promises can be made of later compensation. Won't win the DAR any friends in Singapore but they need those aircraft: I'll use the Singapore ones soon too so thanks!
There is no mass forced conscription on either side, despite the fears of many it will come, but volunteers for the fight are signing up. Many might fight for either country. Americans being ordered to shoot at Americans, actually doing it rather than being prepared to beforehand, is going to see many triggers not pulled.

[gillan1220]

Mar 16, 2021 16:26:50 GMT James G said:

I'm thinking that the DAR seized the planes and politely told the pilots/ground crew to go home. Other countries have done it in wartime and promises can be made of later compensation. Won't win the DAR any friends in Singapore but they need those aircraft: I'll use the Singapore ones soon too so thanks!
There is no mass forced conscription on either side, despite the fears of many it will come, but volunteers for the fight are signing up. Many might fight for either country. Americans being ordered to shoot at Americans, actually doing it rather than being prepared to beforehand, is going to see many triggers not pulled.

I could see those Singaporeans not follow the DAR and head East or to Canada. I'm pretty sure their leaders told them not to get involved in the civil war. Other allied exchange personnel such as those Germans, Saudis, Filipinos, and Japanese within the CONUS would probably be ordered to go within US territory. After all, none of the countries I mentioned do not recognize the DAR.

[James G]

Mar 16, 2021 18:12:51 GMT gillan1220 said:

Mar 16, 2021 16:26:50 GMT James G said:

I'm thinking that the DAR seized the planes and politely told the pilots/ground crew to go home. Other countries have done it in wartime and promises can be made of later compensation. Won't win the DAR any friends in Singapore but they need those aircraft: I'll use the Singapore ones soon too so thanks!
There is no mass forced conscription on either side, despite the fears of many it will come, but volunteers for the fight are signing up. Many might fight for either country. Americans being ordered to shoot at Americans, actually doing it rather than being prepared to beforehand, is going to see many triggers not pulled.

I could see those Singaporeans not follow the DAR and head East or to Canada. I'm pretty sure their leaders told them not to get involved in the civil war. Other allied exchange personnel such as those Germans, Saudis, Filipinos, and Japanese within the CONUS would probably be ordered to go within US territory. After all, none of the countries I mentioned do not recognize the DAR.

I agree. Aircraft defections have taken place and I'll cover some of them. I'd assume some of those foreign training forces in the DAR would make a run for it with their aircraft if they could. Others would do as you say and go to US territory if possible or be ordered home by the DAR if they couldn't flee.
But the DAR will still have wanted the jets, plus any other military gear on their soil belonging to others they could take.
No foreign involvement of significance will be seen in this conflict in a direct manner. Some will try but fail. Friendly countries, even NATO, will not get involved.
Where things will happen will be overseas  

[James G]

66 – Too many coincidences

White House Chief-of-Staff Sara Keating had urged the president to not do the planned press conference with the assembled journalists in the aftermath of first blood being drawn in the civil war. She strongly suggested that Roberts let his press secretary take the brunt of the anticipated uproar from the media: they’d get their kill, as all lions must, elsewhere too from SecDef Ferdinand over at the Pentagon. Roberts told her no, he was sticking to the planned briefing. In a last ditch attempt to shelter him from all the incoming fire – metaphorical that was – Keating said that he should take a one-on-one meeting with a friendly journalist instead. No, Roberts wouldn’t budge. He went into the lion’s den and got savaged, just as expected. The country and the world watched as journalists shouted questions, even accusations, at him. Roberts was targeted extensively by hostile members of the media yet journalists from friendly sections also laid into him. Regardless, he took it all. Unlike Walsh, he told Keating once it was done, he had no intention of hiding from the media and the people at large. After he departed that press conference, his press secretary took other questions which were asked of the Roberts Administration not directly related to the first exchanges of fire between federal United States forces and those of the rebellious Democratic American Republic.

Admiral Miller was at the top of the agenda for the media. The new Secretary of Homeland Security had been the senior-most presidential appointment to a Cabinet-level position which would usually require Senate approval. Roberts’ wide-ranging executive orders which he had signed within hours of being sworn in as the 49th President had allowed him to bypass the usual nomination & confirmation process in light on the declared National Emergency which he had inherited. All seven posts on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and new heads of both the CIA & the NSA had similarly been appointed in such a rapid manner. The press secretary answered the journalist’s posed questions about why that was done in the manner it was and defended Roberts’ actions by pointing out that other presidents had filled such posts in times of need in ‘recess appointments’. Moreover, the text of that EO signed by the president allowed for any of his appointees to be removed by the Senate if need be, should there be a justifiable cause to do so and a two-thirds majority too. Mentioning all of those appointees, those beyond the top-tier national security posts, the press secretary tried to deflect attention away from Miller. That didn’t work. It was he whom the media focused upon. For so many, he was a bogeyman figure. His reputation strongly preceded him with Miller intensely distrusted among journalists. Democrats from Congress, even a good number of Republicans too, especially those with a Libertarian outlook, feared for the country with him where Roberts had put him. The president’s press secretary tried everything, laughter as well as outrage, at some of the comments made about Miller. None of it caused the outpouring of distrust and fear to cease. He wasn’t wanted in the job by the White House press corps and they didn’t hide that. It wasn’t up to them who the Homeland Security Secretary was though.

Miller’s secretary watched that press conference yet he didn’t. Normally he would have engrossed himself in criticism directed at him and add those who it came from to his mental list of enemies. That was not an exaggeration at all, as others had found out to their cost. Instead, his secretary took notes on who said the worst things about her boss as he had told her to do. She did so because Mien Fuhrer, as she called him behind his back, was far too busy with his new duties. The Homeland Security Department was at the forefront of the war being raged against the DAR. Miller had told the president upon appointment that there were to be two fights to be had with those in Las Vegas who had betrayed their country. One of those would be on the battlefield with tanks and guns while the other was to be waged in the shadows. That was to be an intelligence war, one which Miller had been approved to lead. In the fight against the DAR, the CIA had initially tried to take the lead yet as Miller had pointed out, and the president had agreed, it was all a domestic matter after all. External intelligence agencies would continue to protect the United States, even divided as it was, from foreign threats while the DHS would focus on the internal one which the DAR provided. Such a decision had been made the afternoon when Roberts had become president and the then head of the CIA had handed in his resignation afterwards leading to that need to appoint a replacement with haste. Miller had found that the new boss at Langley was a lightweight in comparison to the man he had replaced. His position as heading the intelligence war would be unchallenged.

With presidential approval, plus the support of the Vice President and the new Director of National Intelligence (a somewhat toothless yet grand sounding post) too, Miller’s DHS was at the forefront of the conflict with the Democratic American Republic which Roberts was the face of. Miller believed that bringing the rebels to heel ultimately would come from the efforts which he oversaw too, not those of the Pentagon nor anyone else. He began the process of taking the DAR apart from within. Communications intercepts were made and there was the beginning of agent insertion. Contacts were forged with internal opponents with some of those forced into cooperation too. It was all typical intelligence work, what the CIA would do against a foreign adversary overseas. The DHS did it in America though, with the justification from Miller that acting against American citizens like that was done because they were engaged in a rebellion against the country. The usual laws and the inbuilt checks-and-balances against intelligence operations on home soil by the federal government were thrown out of the window using that justification. It was Miller who convinced the new president to sign that other EO where high-profile political & intelligence captives taken during the fighting were to be held without access to legal counsel nor contact with the outside world. One of his first tasks once he was at the DHS was setting up the infrastructure to allow interrogations to be done once captives began arriving at various selected sites. In addition, Miller had DHS people give orders to other intelligence agencies – all of which failed in their battles to retain their usual sure-fire independence – to conduct much of the work for them. Finding and running agents behind enemy lines, turning captives, intercepting signals and so forth, all of that traditional intelligence work to be done by others, was ordered to overseen by Miller. Such was the reason why Roberts found himself a day into his presidency needing a new National Security Agency head as well when the chief there at Fort Meade refused to resign and he had to fire her to allow Miller to do all that he wanted to.


Watching powerless through Walsh’s lame duck period as secessionism, insurrection and then ultimate armed rebellion took place, Miller had been in contact with people in & out of government about what was happening. The media hated him and so did many politicians, yet Miller always had had a long list of contacts in the intelligence world. None of them were highly-placed and almost all had a conflict (real or imagined, known or unknown) with the top levels of the organisations within the US Intelligence Community. Like-minded people had agreed with Miller that much of what had occurred out West during the build-up to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence made in Las Vegas had been too convenient. All of those events, those terror attacks and shocking acts, had fell just right for those who had a single-minded goal of pulling part of the country out of the union so they could get their own way politically. A giant conspiracy with hundreds, thousands of members even, wasn’t seen by Miller nor those who agreed with his outlook on that, but they did believe a very selective and tight group was behind much of what happened. Their activities had been driven by their goal where they had at times made use of events beyond their control yet at other times deliberately caused some of the chaos seen. There were too many coincidences.

The death of Shauna McCleary had been the clearest example to Miller of that. She had gotten herself arrested on federal sedition charges on purpose and seemed to have wanted to be held in federal custody so her supporters could make her out to be an imprisoned martyr. That all made sense. What hadn’t was her murder. There were theories aplenty, reasonable ones and the words of crackpots, about what had happened to see her demise. None of them Miller had agreed with. For the federal government or supporters of secession to kill her didn’t make sense. On his second day at the DHS, Miller had been told that the CIA had an extensive file upon one Felix Jesus Carrillo Morales. That businessman’s name had popped up again and again concerning those political figures at the top of the DAR. Miller had requested his file. The CIA had tried to give him nothing then sent over something so full of redactions is was pretty much just blacked out lines on pages with a few meaningless words here and there. Miller had gotten the un-redacted file after a call made from the president to Langley. Carrillo was, unbeknown to almost everyone but the CIA, a major player in the drug business. He worked with several cartels down in Mexico and supplied illegal drugs north of the US-Mexico border. Others who had tried to do what he had, work with several criminal gangs of such force as the cartels, had died in the attempt. You worked with one or none, that was the way of the business. He had his own full independence too, again something unknown to others to have achieved. Carrillo and his Vaqueros security group had been providing personal protection to key DAR figures ahead of secession without any one of them, people such as Maria Arreola Rodriguez, seemingly knowing about his criminal activities. Miller’s information at the DHS was that Carrillo somehow had California’s Governor Pierce – who was right there at the top of the Council of Thirteen – under his thumb. That rumour, which the CIA file had nothing on, led Miller to look into Carrillo as he did.

Working with his top people, Miller came to the belief, due to the weight of evidence when it came to just how far Carrillo’s tentacles reached in terms of his criminal enterprises, that it was very likely that Carrillo could have been behind McCleary’s murder. No solid proof was there early in the investigation, just a feeling due to the uncovered knowledge of his reach and what the CIA had shown he’d been able to built as a trans-national drug smuggler with such capabilities to influence people & events. It was Miller himself who made the jump assuming that Carrillo had killed McCleary to help speed secession along to grow his drug empire. His DHS people weren’t so sure yet Miller instructed them to go either prove his theory wrong or right. It was one he was convinced of though. It was madness on the face of it yet made sense to him. There was additional suspicion too in Miller that drove him to order the investigation into Carrillo to see if he was behind so much of what had led to the final acts which had seen the DAR formed. Those domestic terror groups in the West who had kidnapped and murdered federal employees had vanished. The DHS could only look from without, not from within the DAR, but they were gone. There was no evidence that the DAR had done anything to bring them to heed: the demands and declared political positions of them, all which Miller had previously believed based on pure suspicion alone were those of one group overall, hadn’t been fulfilled the instant that the Democratic American Republic came into being. Some stood in firm opposition to that new country. Using what was in that CIA file, Miller’s people linked names and enterprises to previously disjointed bits of federal intelligence. The pictures weren’t complete and could had shown something else if looked at a different way, yet Miller’s investigation there once more fingered Carrillo for all of that.

It was a realisation which made Miller want to see Carrillo dead in a ditch somewhere… yet something that he had to marvel at too for how it had all been done. Carrillo hadn’t covered his tracks because, while talented, he was still an amateur. Other than that, Miller held the man’s work in high esteem despite his hatred of what that criminal had done to his country.


The clue was in the title: Department of Homeland Security. Miller had taken that seriously upon taking the position as DHS Secretary and did so throughout his service. His job was to protect the nation, even when it was divided and even from itself. The formation of the DAR had brought about an exposed threat to the country from without. Hostile foreign intelligence services were at once identified as either already or soon to start penetrating the United States’ national security from the moment that Miller took up his post. With presidential authorisation, orders went out from Miller’s office that all and everything was to be done to ensure that the country was protected against adversaries from overseas aiming to take advantage. Roberts, Mitchell and Ferdinand had all been in alignment with Miller’s thinking that there would be moves made at infiltration to not just steal secrets but keep the civil war going for longer than necessary by enemies of the United States. It made sense. It was what America had done to its enemies in the past. That was to be stopped from happening where detected, and done too in DAR territory as well. Foreign intelligence operations weren’t to be tolerated, to allow them to develop to see where they went: they were to be shut down. Any foreign agents, either their nationals or third-country operatives, caught within United States territory were to be at once deported. As to any of those captured inside the DAR… Miller was given permission to deal harshly with them. ‘Harshly’ was a loosely-defined term, one which Miller had been glad to be on the executive order he had been given a copy of. Isolation, ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ and even disappearances – for good – were actions which Miller had considered were covered under ‘harshly’.

US Customs and Border Protection was an agency part of the DHS. Ahead of Miller taking up his post, those employees within DAR territory had either agreed to work for that rebel regime or resigned. Control over the borders with Mexico and Canada where there was DAR territory was lost to the DHS. The president of the Democratic American Republic had declared an amnesty for all illegal immigrants, including Dreamers as the US Supreme Court had said she was, upon forming her new country. Rumours of that, taken to the extreme in what that meant, had seen a flood of migrants head towards the United States. Many of those coming northwards from Central America through Mexico – Mexicans themselves were far outnumbered in the rush of people heading into America from elsewhere in Latin America – were pointed either accidently or by design the wrong way: towards Texas. Miller’s extensive intelligence work pushed him away from addressing that issue as much as he had wanted to yet it was a big concern. The United States’ southern border was in chaos. In addition, where those migrants had gone towards Arizona, California & New Mexico, there was no ‘open border’ as they had been told… not officially anyway. The DAR did have an immigration policy. So much of the border was in fact open though without the DAR being able to effectively stop the flow of migrants. Alongside them came drug smugglers – those like Carrillo – seeking to take advantage. The DHS had to look ahead, to after the conflict against the rebels was won, in how to deal with all of that as it wasn’t a problem to be resolved once those in Las Vegas fell from power.

Miller sought to Crack The Panda.

That Chinese messenger service in commercial use, the remarkably secure Panda app, which the leading members of the DAR had been using pre-secession and once they had their country up and running too, had defeated all efforts to hack it. Since the previous year, the US Intelligence Community had been trying to defeat its encryption. The fact that those engaged in rebellion against the United States were using a Chinese service was an outrage! The Panda had all of that advertised security, borne out by fact, but to Miller and others like him, the belief was that the very top levers of the Chinese intelligence services had a back door access. In the past, the NSA had created a commercial messaging app and seen it used by enemies of the United States ahead of it being turned on them: Israel, Miller was told on his first day at the DHS, was at that point doing the same thing with an app they had created (and sold to unsuspecting users as European through front companies) to use against their enemies. Miller’s intentions were to do that down the line with something else yet he was driven early on in his time as DHS Secretary to as soon as possible Crack the Panda. Assistance was, like before, sought from the Five Eyes partners in the global intelligence network of the US, UK, Australia, Canada & New Zealand. There was also help sought from others such as the Israelis and other players in the field who didn’t have such a public reputation for cryptological warfare. Once Miller got his way, the intention that he had was not just to read messages between those on the other side to fight the intelligence war – nor shut it down as Walsh had been seeking to do – against the DAR. He had bigger plans. There would be exploitation done. He’d turn those enemies of the United States against each other via black propaganda selectively fed to them and bring down their whole rotten house of cards. Ahead of that happening though, every conceivable effort was thrown at Cracking the Panda. Miller had been sure that there was a way to achieve that and that those who had tried before hadn’t been creative enough nor as driven as he was.

[bigvic]

Interesting scenario here

[James G]

Mar 17, 2021 1:22:50 GMT bigvic said:

Interesting scenario here

Something I've had in my mind for a long time. I wanted to do a different take on a 2ACW than I've seen elsewhere.

[James G]

67 – Hesitancy

The region known as the Inland Northwest had been the source of much trouble during the Years of Lead, especially the later years leading up to the civil war. Across eastern parts of Oregon and Washington, through all of Idaho and across into western Montana (to stretch the geographic definition as far as possible), right-wing militia groups had long been active. Uniting under the banner of the White Star Militia and with friendly local political cover, their activities had been highly destabilising for not just the Inland Northwest but the country too. It was in that region where the first battles of the Second Civil War were fought against expectations that they would occur elsewhere.

National Guard forces serving under the banner of the Army of the Democratic American Republic moved to secure the rest of Idaho which hadn’t been taken before the war started. A federal offensive to secure the western half of that state and to push national guardsmen from Oregon & Washington back to where they had come from had yet to get off the ground before the DAR struck first. General Fuller, the military commander of the breakaway West, had wanted to wait for more regular elements of the DAR Armed Forces to reach the area yet delays with that, plus a highly-favourable situation on the ground, saw his forces strike out. The 81st Mechanized Brigade along with the incomplete 116th Cavalry Brigade – both reporting to Fuller’s 41st Infantry Division – followed the course of the Snake River upstream deeper into Idaho towards the small city of Idaho Falls. The state’s lieutenant-governor was there with her state government having abandoned Boise to the DAR when Governor Winkelman (who she had deposed only to see him return) to establish themselves in Idaho Falls. On each side of the opposing forces were personnel from Idaho’s National Guard, plus those out-of-state national guardsmen too, while all around them were militia members from the Patriotic Corps. All of those different actors in the battle to take Idaho Falls made for quite a confusing situation with identical equipment, similar training and everyone present being American lining up against their brothers- & sisters-in-arms. On many, repeated occasions, when it came to pulling the trigger that wasn’t done. Sometimes that hesitancy was rewarded by those on the other side not doing so either yet that was far from the case most of the time. When prisoners were taken, the majority of them were treated by each side exceedingly well despite the political differences between the different governments (state and national) which they represented. However, there were several war crimes committed where captives, especially the militia seized by the DAR and DAR-aligned national guardsmen from outside of Idaho, were shot after surrendering against all the laws of warfare. No official orders came from on-high for that to be done. Yet, there were many instances of officers going up the command chain who either looked the other way or covered things up afterwards. The excuses made were those who had been killed were unlawful combatants or served unrecognised regimes. Bad behaviour was excused in the heat of battle when it came to certain captives slain. It wasn’t though when civilians were killed. Most died in accidents, a few were shot on purpose, but whatever the reason, both sides punished those who killed them: they were their fellow Americans who each said they were trying to liberate from oppression!

Fuller’s forces reached Idaho Falls within hours of advancing towards that city. They ran through opposition which chose to stand and fight using weight of numbers or chased those who opted to flee in an organised retreat. There were no politicians to capture there. An attempt to continue onwards, moving northeast to take the rest of Idaho beyond that point was forestalled though. Idaho national guardsmen (on the United States side) were reinforced by those from Montana who had moved down into Idaho. Serious fighting was conducted on the approaches to that neighbouring state as those from Montana joined the fight with the desire to stop a DAR invasion of their home state. Tanks fired on each other, blasting away at identical tracked vehicles in the service of their opponents. Each side had M-1A2 Abrams’ in the fight and while there weren’t that many, they made their presence felt on the battlefield. Nonetheless, when they did fire on each other, and the shots weren’t deliberately wide of the mark (that happened like the non-firing did), everyone present realised how hard it was for one Abrams to destroy another one! Air power joined in late in the fight, too late for many those on the ground could almost all agree upon. First came F-16CG Fighting Falcons flown by South Dakota Air National Guard pilots and then A-10C Thunderbolts serving the Idaho (DAR) Air National Guard. Aircrew held their fire at times, not hitting those below with the defences made afterwards that they didn’t want to hit friendly forces below them. On the occasions when they did drop bombs, launch rockets or fire their cannons, the effects were quite something. Several M-1126 Stryker-ICV armoured vehicles carrying infantry squads who didn’t disembark in time were shot up and left alight with Washington national guardsmen in them while the A-10s managed to hit a good number of Montana-crewed M-1s: the tanks were blasted to ruin from above when it had been so hard to do that from on the ground. By the time that air power had slowed ground operations down to a crawl, more of it showed up. Those later additions were of regular units. Fuller’s forces had F-15E Strike Eagle’s in service out of Mountain Home AFB. They were tasked to hit targets beyond the immediate battlefield, to stop more US forces coming forward. Bomb runs were made but there were also desertions/defections from a pair of those jets each which had two aircrew (initially thought to make that less likely). One F-15E made a long flight up to Canada after leaving Mountain Home with the aircrew seeking asylum while the other jet flew to Montana while broadcasts were made concerning the defection of those onboard. From out of Mountain Home there were also F-15EG Strike Eagles which belonged to the Republic of Singapore Air Force. Seized and in DAR Air Force service – the foreign personnel sent home –, they were flown by Americans with another desertion made, once more up to Canada where the two women (both instructors) aboard wanted to take no part in the war against their fellow Americans and removed a weapon to fight that. Last to the ‘party’ were US Air Force jets. A flight of F-35A Lightnings came in from the east. They didn’t bomb anyone on the ground but instead kept the skies clear of DAR aircraft. An A-10 was downed and so too was a UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter supporting the 81st Brigade. Other DAR jets stayed clear due to no immediate fighter support on-hand. With those F-35s, flown by the 20th Fighter Wing which had moved up from South Carolina to Minot AFB in North Dakota, there were other firing opportunities which presented themselves against more DAR aircraft which they didn’t take despite clear shots. Such a thing when realised up the command chain later would cause one heck of a stink.

That fighting in Idaho on January 25th ended up with the DAR having control of most of Idaho but not all of it. They were pretty close to Montana’s southwestern border once their advance was stopped as well already being stretched along the long western side. The Idaho & Montana national guardsmen would be joined by tankers coming all the way from Kansas during the night though still without any regular US Army forces as promised: they’d form the improvised 163rd Armored Group. Back in Montana, the 173rd Airborne Brigade – which had been flown home from Estonia – was still forming up at that point while Green Berets who had also meant to have arrived had been redeployed to another potential flashpoint. Such an important theatre of conflict which the Inland Northwest was would afterwards draw in many more more forces yet in the first battle, numbers on the ground and in the air were few considering the size of the region to be fought over. As to the butcher’s bill, on that day when that fighting had taken place in Idaho, close to three hundred lives were lost. That number could have been far greater than it was without so many hesitations about firing seen. However, those Americans who lost their lives had all been killed by other Americans.


There were more fighting the same day inside another recently-taken piece of DAR territory, which stretched across the new border too. In the northeastern corner of Utah and afterwards into the expanses of southwestern Wyoming, less intensive yet just as deadly combat was met. National guardsmen loyal to Utah’s legitimate governor (even though he’d fled the state) were joined by more of those Patriotic Corps militia in the area around the Uinta Mountains. Utah’s own Green Berets were there, holding onto the last reaches of their state that hadn’t been taken by secessionists. The day beforehand had seen civilian representatives of the usurper governor foolishly try to expand DAR control towards the area and thus subsequently murdered by the militia. Lives had been lost there like they had been elsewhere in Utah which was, like Idaho and eastern Washington, somewhere where the rule of those in Las Vegas was bitterly contested. Teddy Clarke’s fanatics had been doing things in Utah which hadn’t been seen in other DAR states despite there being – for lack of a better description – propaganda in the United States saying it had been. Arrests had been made for ‘political crimes’ and ‘justice’ melted out. Utahans fought back to be joined by those from outside coming in… while everyone screamed ‘where the f*ck is the Army?’. Oregon’s 41st Infantry Brigade (far away from other divisional elements) were inside Utah along with some US Marine Reservists who had been co-opted in DAR service. Fuller – not happy at all at what had been done behind the lines – had those troops under his control move to secure the northeastern corner of Utah. That push forward had air cover too…

...and was opposed just like the advance in Idaho was. American aircraft clashed in the skies. There were shoot-downs which occurred yet at the same time far more incidents where afterwards aircrew claimed what they did was in fact ‘intimidation’, ‘equipment malfunction’ or ‘the fear of hitting my own side’. In other words, they didn’t shot when they were supposed to. Even drone operators flying MQ-9A Reapers – California Air National Guard personnel back in their home state – used the same excuse when it came to several engagements against ground forces. Black Hawk helicopters in the service of Wyoming’s Air National Guard were able to air-lift out of the Uinta Mountains several of the Green Berets teams when the situation on the ground was lost for them while no one shot them down. Yet, a RC-12K Guardrail reconnaissance/signals aircraft flown by the Oregon Army National Guard went down when flying unarmed after an attack by those 20th Fighter Wing F-35s (who saw action over Utah too) launching missiles from far beyond visual range. On the ground, the 41st Brigade saw off the defenders inside Utah and pushed them back into Wyoming. The state line and the new border was crossed by HMMWVs and then helicopters ferrying troops forward. Inside Wyoming, to the west of where the Green River separated that corner of the state from the rest, there were all sorts of small-scale fights over a huge area with each one not influencing the other directly. DAR soldiers fought militia units where they didn’t hold their fire as well as Wyoming national guardsmen where at first there was a weariness to shoot at them. Those defending their state against ‘invaders’ quickly got rid of any hesitancy themselves leading to the 41st Brigade returning accurate fire. More helicopters and jets filled the sky due to the size of the battlefield and the lack of civilians apart from in concentrated areas. There were A-10s, F-16s and F-35s up high while down below were AH-64D Apache attack helicopters: each side had the same aircraft. Up went the casualty count, far beyond what had been seen when the fighting had started across in Utah.

Some of those US Army soldiers from the 173rd Brigade who’d been flown from Eastern Europe to Montana showed up in the later stages of the fighting in Wyoming. Heli-lifts brought a few rifle companies into support the outnumbered Wyoming national guardsmen against those from Oregon moving in via Utah. Only in a couple of incidents did the regular soldiers show up yet where those paratroopers (who a few days before had been garrisoned outside of Tallinn) did make an appearance, they were victorious. They shot straight and didn’t hold their fire against an armed enemy, even if those were fellow Americans. The gathering darkness of the evening when the engagements occurred helped with that and so too did the fact that those paratroopers had been overseas on deployment where they were hyped up to fight off against a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States. Seeing the effects via drone footage and listening to radio reports, Fuller ended up reaching down the command chain directly in haste and pulling back elements of the 41st Brigade which had gone far forward. Wyoming was abandoned only hours after being entered. It wasn’t as if the DAR Armed Forces had plentiful numbers of troops on-hand and they had met an opponent ready to do everything in defence of United States territory without prejudice. The whole war-fighting strategy to stop the Democratic American Republic being strangled straight after birth by United States firepower depended upon the ability to strike out then pull back. Fuller had done that in Wyoming and would report back to the civilian leadership on his ‘success’ there. Things hadn’t exactly gone like that inside Wyoming but that was how he presented it. Elsewhere, a ‘victory’ would be proclaimed by Fuller’s opponents but that was expected.

The clashes in Utah & Wyoming, just like those up in Idaho, on the first day of the civil war finally getting going totalled over five hundred fatal casualties in the end. That figure was going to go up, up and up again as the two sides continued to clash. They each had far larger and more potent forces facing off elsewhere, along the ‘main front’. That would be where the next battles would be fought.

[James G]

[James G]

68 – Opposing forces

The pre-conflict commander of US Army North (ARNORTH) had been replaced during the weekend ahead of the first major instances of ground combat taking place along what would become the Main Front of the war between the United States and the Democratic American Republic. Lt.-General Jeanne Keller-Brown had been long in-place at what had been a mainly administrative and training command. When she was relieved of command, there was widespread assumption, gleefully spread by troublemakers, that that removal was because she was female. That wasn’t the case at all. Keller-Brown left her role because her eldest son, a soldier like her, was serving with the DAR Army after his unit defected to that new country. She didn’t want to be responsible for killing him and knew that her actions while commanding ARNORTH would be questioned as to whether what she did was done to avoid his death. The Pentagon reassigned her elsewhere, to an admin. post back east. When the truth came it, it did dampen down the outrage at the alleged sexism yet the damage had already been done in public relations terms. Replacing her at the headquarters of ARNORTH, at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, was Lt.-General Peter Corrigan. He was a fighting general, one with a strong reputation for that. There were many people inspired by his presence as leading the ‘point command’ for the conflict which would take place through Colorado and New Mexico towards the Rockies. However, like other commanders across the US Armed Forces – and also out West with the DAR Armed Forces as well –, Corrigan faced immense difficulties when it came to the willingness of those beneath him to fight their fellow Americans. He had several key members of his own staff in Texas resign their commissions and that happened elsewhere once he prepared to move into place his assigned forces. Up at Fort Riley in Kansas, almost the entire command staff, plus brigade & battalion commanders, through the 1st Infantry Division did the same thing upon receiving orders to move westwards across that state and approach Colorado where the border with the DAR had been imposed. That was a big loss all with one unit yet it occurred in countless other places too. The media had been calling such people ‘refuseniks’. It wasn’t a correct definition of what such people were doing but became the word which was widely used so much so that that was what they were called. Officers, enlisted soldiers and reservists became refuseniks. Some of them remained at their posts but many more went AWOL. Attaching to ARNORTH for combat operations back home were some of the elements of the US Army stationed in Eastern Europe. The 173rd Airborne Brigade flew home missing a dozen or so personnel who went missing ahead of flying out of Estonia yet when the 3rd Cavalry Regiment (a combined arms combat brigade despite the historic designation) followed them in a massive air-lift from Poland, over a hundred soldiers were missing. They’d gone AWOL with the belief that doing so in Europe rather than back in the United States would see them face less punishment in the short-term. Asylum claims were lodged by many of them all across Europe when they travelled out of Poland. What do do with refuseniks in all of their forms, including ones which went to Canada and Mexico, was a massive problem for the US Army. The Pentagon didn’t dump the issue in Corrigan’s lap and he was thankful for that, but he had missing personnel everywhere and the concern too that more would do so either ahead of combat or once it started.

Corrigan’s ARNORTH included US Army units as well as US Marines under command in addition to Army National Guard units. A huge multi-corps force was what he had been given command of. His mission was to strike westwards to the Rockies, through that mountain chain and keep going until he reached the Pacific far beyond. Full-scale warfare against his fellow Americans, so many of them until weeks beforehand brothers-in-arms, was to be waged at his direction. There were many restrictions which came with that though. Collateral damage, civilian casualties in other words, wasn’t just to be something avoided as if ARNORTH was fighting a ‘usual’ conflict. They were not to be allowed to occur at all. No excuses were to be made, Corrigan had been told upon appointment, for American soldiers killing civilians who they were supposed to be liberating from domestic oppression. Those who did it would be punished and it would be up to Corrigan to oversee that. Such an order made sense politically. Corrigan was no dummy and understood that. No wish had been in him to kill his fellow Americans, especially innocents caught in the crossfire of war. However, to advance on the Pacific through the DAR without accidently killing civilians was something that he and everything else understood before combat was met was going to be really difficult to achieve. Many had said that would be impossible.

ARNORTH had once been the Fifth US Army. Corrigan was given command of it when it held five of those corps-sized operation commands spread long the length of the country from Montana, through Wyoming, Nebraska & Kansas and into Oklahoma across to Texas’ border with Mexico. Not since World War Two had any American field commander led such a huge force. Well over half of his forces at the beginning of the fight were reservists and national guardsmen. The US Marines had a big presence as well. That left the US Army formations under command as a minority. With a good portion of others still in Eastern Europe and the DAR having taken a big chunk as well, Corrigan’s ‘own’ people lined up ready to fight short on numbers. In terms of major combat units, ARNORTH commanded the 1st Cavalry & 1st Infantry & 10th Infantry Divisions as well as the 82nd & 101st Airborne Divisions too; there were also units such as those two brigade-sized ones out of Europe. The US Marines provided both the 2nd & 4th Marine Divisions (the latter a smaller, reserve formation) with them all being fully capable of operating in the armoured combat role far from the sea and any form of amphibious operation. There were seven National Guard divisions, several of them without their usual components: the 28th & 29th & 34th & 35th & 36th & 38th Infantry Divisions as well as the 48th Infantry Division which had been something in creation ahead of the West of the country breaking away. Like the regular formations, they were capable and well-armed units with the additional good news which Corrigan had that they had suffered less so from personnel going AWOL. US Army Reserve units formed many of the non-combat supporting units like the Army National Guard did. Overall, those were much larger than the fighting troops at the front-lines. Their tasks were immense, including bringing forward all of the supplies, equipment & ammunition which had taken much longer than combat units to get in-place before Corrigan could start the fight. Covered by the US Air Force (with major Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard additions), under the control of the First Air Force – known as AFNORTH – Corrigan’s ARNORTH was ready in his opinion to start major combat operations on January 25th 2029.


General Fuller’s DAR Army was smaller than ARNORTH. He had a total of seven division-sized formations under command at the start of the fighting with one of those – having given up sub-units for reinforcement elsewhere – left in Hawaii. With subordinates given geographic responsibilities rather than a huge, possibly unwieldy central command, Fuller had his forces lined up in opposition against a United States invasion spread too down a long stretch of territory. There had been defections as well as desertions ahead of the beginning of major combat operations: DAR Armed Forces personnel either went AWOL or over to the United States. There had been mutinies and significant acts of deliberate sabotage too. National Guard units were a third of the number of large combat units which the DAR Army had available to serve with half coming from former US Army elements which had gone over to the DAR either easily or in a contested manner. Despite a head-start in deployments, due to the problems with the loyalties of personnel, Fuller didn’t have all of what he wanted sent forward when the fighting started. The 2nd Infantry Division (missing a full third which had been in Alaska and remained under United States control) was still back in Washington state on January 25th. He had managed to complete a big airlift out of Hawaii though with the 25th Infantry Division – also missing a brigade which had been in Alaska yet being joined by a part of the 3rd Marine Division with the rest staying there – going to Colorado to link up with with the 4th Infantry Division which had been garrisoned at Fort Carson. From out of Southern California, the 1st Marine Division had moved into New Mexico and joined with national guardsmen from the 40th Infantry Division: Fuller had the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, a training unit, with them too. There was also the 41st Infantry Division (like the US’ 48th Division, a new-ish formation) spread across Idaho and Utah following the ‘capture’ of those two states to take them into the DAR fold.

Fuller had taken control of all of those huge supply sites spread across the West when he had built the DAR Armed Forces. At the Pentagon, they’d concentrated on the nuclear sites, leading to every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resigning when President Walsh did nothing to stop that, yet Fuller had gained more by taking such places as AMARG in Arizona and the Sierra Army Depot in California. F-15s and F-16s were pulled from the Boneyard for the service of the DAR Air Force. Tanks and armoured vehicles came out of that depot. It was all military equipment which had been stored in excellent condition with the DAR Armed Forces having the personnel to put them to use. The manpower concerns were even more acute in the Democratic American Republic. Proportionally, Fuller lost more than the US Armed Forces did ahead of combat. There were less losses from National Guard units though that did increase once those formations moved out of their home states and elsewhere into the DAR. For the former regulars and reservists of the US Armed Forces which the DAR took under command, retirees and personnel of staff courses filled roles all over the place. There were a lot of expressed opinions from those who did that that they only did so because they felt it was their duty to defend the states in which they lived, and thus the new country which those had joined, when the federal United States government began offensive combat operations like they did starting with those opening air attacks. So many had thought that the political differences might be ironed out even at that late stage. Yet, bombs had fallen and in DC there were proclamations made of ‘full-scale war’. That all drove DAR recruitment to its military forces better than anything any politician in Las Vegas could have said. The message which had gotten out was that President Roberts had crossed the line and therefore it was only the right thing to do to fight against that even if the ultimate cause of secessionism in the West was one which so many of those who wore the uniform of the DAR Armed Forces didn’t ultimately agree with.

When Fuller’s forces moved about to be in position to once combat opened, there was less media coverage of all of that. Across in the other country which was the United States, footage from camera crews and live reporting followed the deployments made in addition to recordings uploaded onto social media sites such as YouTube. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security were having a devil of a time shutting all of that down as it was giving away military secrets in their opinion. YouTube’s owner, Google (and ultimately Alphabet), were like all of the Big Tech companies from California’s Silicon Valley whose commercial operations had faced massive disruption. Forced to chose between one side or the other, they’d opted for the bigger market which was the United States: in Silicon Valley there were empty offices and workers who wouldn’t receive their monthly paycheck. The upheaval was blamed by Big Tech for footage online and military secrets being spilled on discussion forums. The traditional media made claims to federal authorities that they were making use of their First Amendment rights and also claimed that they were taking care not to spill any real secrets. They also knew though that many important figures in Congress were just itching to go after them with mass censorship too so that did restrain some of what was broadcast. As to what didn’t happen in the West, with YouTube, Facebook and the rest of social media ‘dark’ across ten states, there was nowhere for citizens to upload images & recordings of all of the military gear on the move to. The majority of the media which had been in the Democratic American Republic was gone. The large conglomerates were based in the East and had to leave less Congress take action against them for operating in ‘enemy territory’ or they had been thrown out by the DAR when trying to report negative coverage as in the case of various right-wing outlets. What was left of the media in the DAR was small and had been forced by regulations backed by laws pasted with haste in Las Vegas (the Parliament there had been expanded from one hundred members to 115 when Idaho, Utah and Guam & the Marianas joined) to do as they were told in the name of public safety. The entire editorial staff of the LA Times had resigned en masse at that in one of the high-profile incidents of media non-cooperation with the authorities. There were other similar events like that too. What it meant though was that there was no outside coverage telling the public, either in the DAR or across in the United States, what Fuller’s forces were up to. The Pentagon had its satellites, reconnaissance drones and was inserting special forces teams but no free media coverage to watch in addition to that. Still, information on what ARNORTH along with air separate components would face when going up against the combined Western Command was fully understood. The overall numbers and strengths were measure in different ways yet, when it came down to it, the defenders with Western Command were on the wrong side of a three-to-one advantage held by the attackers. Fuller knew that as well as Corrigan did. Fighting ‘smart’ was what Fuller’s orders to his subordinates told them to do as they set about defending the DAR in the face of a United States invasion to squash it dead.

[gillan1220]

Media becomes an OPSEC breach which is a headache for the Pentagon.

[James G]

Mar 19, 2021 3:47:16 GMT gillan1220 said:

Media becomes an OPSEC breach which is a headache for the Pentagon.

They'll shut it all down eventually but before then it will be a nightmare!

[James G]

69 – Super-duper missiles

The USS Michigan, a cruise missile submarine converted from a ballistic missile boomer, launched an attack on the Democratic American Republic from far behind where the Main Front was in the east. Wave after wave of Tomahawks were fired from the Michigan when it was less than a hundred miles off the coast of Northern California. They were sent inland, striking varied targets across much of that new country whose defences were positioned against a threat from the other direction. From out of the twenty-two missile tubes which had once held Trident SLBMs, seven Tomahawks each were shot skywards. Several misfires occurred but almost a hundred and fifty of those missiles were sent towards Arizona, California, Nevada and Oregon. The firing process was rapid and once done, back down deep into the waters of the Pacific Ocean the Michigan went. It was the second time in two years which the submarine had completed a full launch of its entire arsenal: the Chinese mainland had got a dose of all that the Michigan was capable of giving out in January 2027. Before the attack orders had come for the strike against the DAR, the submarine had been on the other side of the Pacific – near to Palau, behind the Philippines – ready to once more do that again to China should war once more erupt. A speed run beneath the middle of the Pacific, all while there were ‘difficulties’ aboard among a small number of the crew, had been made so that the Michigan could do what it did. With empty missile tubes and no friendly port nearby, the submarine was left without a mission post launch. It had done its job though. Those Tomahawks had gone to where they were supposed to, aimed at exclusive military targets held by those in rebellion against the legitimate US Government.

Warships also in the service of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet who had remained loyal to the recognised government in DC made their own attacks against the DAR too. None of them came as close to shore as the Michigan did, fearing DAR counter-action (which several did face), and they too shot off many, many of their own Tomahawks. The West Coast was struck and so too was Hawaii as well. The cruiser USS Lake Erie led a surface action group which included a trio of destroyers which joined her in hitting Hawaii. Those ships sped away afterwards yet were chased by aircraft coming out of the airfield at Barking Sands, where the missile test range was located on Kauai. The aircraft were faster. DAR Navy strike-fighters were those who made the responding strike with FA-18F Super Hornets launching both JSOW and SLAM-ER missiles. Lake Erie led the air defence mission and there was a downing of many of those inbound missiles but not all of them. The cruiser was struck by one missile and would survive: the destroyer USS William P. Lawrence was hit multiple times and would be lost to the sea with heavy loss of life being incurred.

Flying from Alaska, B-52H Stratofortress’ which usually called Minot AFB in North Dakota home (they’d been moved back out of the firing line) also struck at the DAR from behind when those huge, old bombers launched waves of cruise missiles too. Those were ALCMs and JASSMs fired from off the shoreline of Canada’s Vancouver Island and down towards Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The timing of the launch was coordinated with the US Navy making their own missile attacks. All over the early morning skies there were those missiles flying towards military targets deemed to be of value to the DAR. Those air and naval strikes in the rear came alongside far bigger ones – also coordinated to make it one giant Time On Target attack – coming in from the east towards the DAR. More B-52s as well as B-1B Lancers shot off ALCMs & JASSMs. They were fired from outside of DAR-controlled territory and passed above where the front-lines of the civil war ran. Down through the Rockies they struck home, hitting road and rail links where those ran through the mountains across the east of Colorado and down into New Mexico somewhat too. The Front Range behind Denver, those mountains which looked down upon the city, were blasted at selected points. Cheyenne Mountain further to the south (near Colorado Springs) was left alone yet nearby there were huge explosions to strike the access route of US Highway 24: Interstate-70 linking Denver to the west got similar attention. Deeper inside DAR territory where the communications links came across the Rockies the target list was extensive for that United States missile strike when more missiles hit. General Fuller had his army closer to the new border but his supply lines ran back through the mountains. Two of the B-1Bs involved from the 28th Bomb Wing, flying from Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio following their Ellsworth AFB base in South Dakota having been targeted by the DAR Air Force, were carrying a special load: thirty-one ARRW missiles each (internally & externally). Those were brand-new hypersonic, glide weapons with a top speed of close to Mach 20. Many years past, the 45th President had called them ‘super-duper missiles’. The Chinese had been on the wrong end of the first ARRW live test in wartime. The DAR got its own taste of them. Launches were made from over Indiana before the aircraft returned to their temporary home. Very soon afterwards, those missiles hit their targets. Edwards AFB in Southern California was struck dozens of times. It was one of the DAR Air Force’s key airbases from where they had important combat aircraft capable of carrying their own ARRWs – Fuller had secured a stock of them – based outside of Los Angeles. Las Vegas was also hit. The DAR Parliament had been using a convention centre and it was levelled after multiple hits; Nellis AFB outside of the city, a facility comparable to Edwards, was also targetted. Blowing up where the parliamentarians had been meeting was done at presidential direction and was the only civilian target struck… or ‘regime target’ as a Pentagon press briefing would afterwards call it. Those politicians weren’t there but it was where they had been spending all of their time creating the laws of their Second Republic. Inside Las Vegas they might have felt safe, had been the reasoning of President Roberts for the attack, yet not after that.


Along the Main Front, where all hell was due to break loose once AFNORTH and Western Command clashed on the ground, less dramatic air and missile attacks were made ahead of that. Across the eastern reaches of Colorado and New Mexico, drone operations in the hours of darkness saw the opposing sides using identical equipment. There were MQ-9A Predators in the service of their air forces while their armies had MQ-1C Grey Eagles up as well. Missions were run of surveillance as well as attacks. The drones were targeted from the ground and in the air in direct attacks using live weapons to stop their activities. In addition, there was also electronic warfare conducted against them. The DAR Armed Forces had employed that against the immense United States cruise missile attack which came their way, with the Pentagon afterwards finding out how effective that had been in post-strike analysis. In a tactical sense, such warfare conducted against drones by each side had a mixed bag of success for the two of them. It was far easier to kill a drone with a missile rather than to try and make it crash through interference. Lower down, even smaller drones flew as the drone wars went onwards. Some were hand-launched by soldiers while others were a bit bigger.

Moreover, flying up higher than others, the big drones also conducted their own missions with RQ-4B Global Hawks in the sky. They were on pure reconnaissance tasks yet too faced attacks. Each side took down a handful of them, severely denting the overall number in service. Killing them was the work done by DAR Army and US Army missile operators armed with SM-6 surface-to-air missiles. Since 2024, those weapons designed for use by the US Navy had been in US Army service. Getting at a RQ-4 was no easy feat but the SAMs lofted towards them did extremely well and brought them crashing to earth so that the other side couldn’t get the intelligence picture required. The same launchers for the SM-6s also came with Tomahawks: once more a naval weapon had been brought for ground service off-the-shelf. Those cruise missiles were fired in a semi-tactical role towards identified high-value targets with SM-6s shot towards them as well when spotted. Shorter-range ATACMS missiles likewise flew east and west, many of those engaging ground forces lined up ready for the first main instances of heavy combat. Those missiles brought death and destruction where they went. It wasn’t just in Colorado and New Mexico, DAR territory, but in parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas & Wyoming where the civil war sprung to life for so many who had hoped against hope that it really wouldn’t.

Among all of the firepower unleashed, groups of soldiers entered the other’s territory by covert means. Green Berets – though also some US Navy SEALs – made silent insertions going both to the east and to the west. The Special Forces community had been torn apart like the rest of the US Armed Forces by the formation of the Democratic American Republic. The DAR took control of both the 1st & 10th Special Forces Groups though, as was the case with the 19th Group too of national guardsmen, there were missing component parts in other areas of the country or overseas along with waves of desertions, defections & mutinies. The 3rd, 5th, 7th & 20th (the last National Guard manned) remained loyal to the United States. Detachments of various sizes with all sorts of missions set about conducting their assigned tasks. There were reconnaissance, observation and patrol missions. Targeted assassinations and other direct action strikes were the job which others were given. Some went out to cause random chaos in the enemy’s rear to draw attention away front line forces while further teams were tasked to seek out partisans and such like. Eyes were what those involved feared the most when deployed, the eyes of their fellow Americans caught on the opposite sides of a new border. They could be seen and reported to the military authorities. In overseas operations, Green Berets would often be forced to ‘act’ against being seen with extreme violence: that wasn’t something that those sent into action during the Second American Civil War were ordered to, or even prepared to, do. Those were their fellow Americans, civilians, whose eyes on them which they were on constant guard against.

[gillan1220]

The classic dilemma of Americans shooting what will be their fellow neighbors and friends. Glad most of the Navy is staying loyal in DC so the DAR has less projection powers. Although in this war, it can be said neither side is good or bad. They are both in the Grey Zone. I have a few relatives in California IOTL and I think they'd have evacuated far from the cities. The Philippines would be concerned of its citizens trapped within DAR-claimed territory just as any other would be.

On the other hand, I cannot wait to see the chapter on the RSAF F-16s based in Idaho and Arizona. I particularly like the design of their tail fins.

[James G]

Mar 20, 2021 2:40:04 GMT gillan1220 said:

The classic dilemma of Americans shooting what will be their fellow neighbors and friends. Glad most of the Navy is staying loyal in DC so the DAR has less projection powers. Although in this war, it can be said neither side is good or bad. They are both in the Grey Zone. I have a few relatives in California IOTL and I think they'd have evacuated far from the cities. The Philippines would be concerned of its citizens trapped within DAR-claimed territory just as any other would be.

On the other hand, I cannot wait to see the chapter on the RSAF F-16s based in Idaho and Arizona. I particularly like the design of their tail fins.

Global knock-on effects are many. It has left things for so many up in the air.
Foreign governments and their reaction about civilians is covered below. I've covered the Philippines in that.
Nice images. I'll get to the air power soon enough!

[James G]

70 – International rescue

With all hopes finally dashed that the situation in America would be resolved at the last minute by jaw-jaw instead of war-war, the global reaction to the unfolding civil war was one of horror from many yet glee from others. Allies, friends and those who relied upon the United States with regard to maintaining international peace were left aghast at the need for violence internally which would direct attention away from the rest of the world. There was celebration from enemies and those with difficulties with the American-imposed global order. At first there had been widespread global belief that things would be over rapidly with regard to the secession in part of the United States but when they saw the Democratic American Republic fight back against attacks, it was realised that while those who had broken away would still lose in the end, that would take some time and really do America some damage. First governments and then later the public in foreign countries came to realise that the DAR had nuclear weapons. That caused a lot of alarm. A nuclear exchange in America between warring parties fighting a civil war seemed highly unlikely… or did it? The knock-on effect, the fall-out from that possibility was terrifying for even those who wished to see the United States do itself immense harm. Allies were likewise frightened at the consequences of that happening should the situation go that way.

The territorial integrity of the United States had been broken by the internal secession. Self-declared President Maria Arreola Rodriquez took ten states out of the union and then made two Pacific territorial regions an eleventh state. The latter was Guam and the Northern Marianas – Guam & the Marianas as her government called the state – which were in the Western Pacific and near to China. Guam had been blasted by multiple missile hits and even low-level air attacks two years beforehand in Chinese counterstrikes against Operation Eastern Dawn; the Northern Marianas were only attacked a little. Demilitarised after the Taiwan Conflict, there had been invasion fears about Chinese marines storming ashore for some time there and also back in DC. Upon joining the DAR, Guam governor, who joined the Council of Thirteen to represented his whole state, authorised the flying out from Guam of the battalion of infantry which formed the main body of the island’s Army National Guard. To New Mexico they went, joining with the 29th Infantry Brigade out of Hawaii and the larger 40th Infantry Division. Left practically defenceless after that, there were fears among President Roberts and the US Government that China might have a go at seizing that island and the Northern Marianas too. They didn’t think in DC that the DAR could defend those islands and nor could the US Armed Forces in a conventional sense with all of the chaos inflicted upon the US Pacific Fleet and Pacific Air Forces HQ. Then there was the issue of Alaska. That state’s two senators and lone congresswoman all kicked up a stink in DC about how the breakaway of the West and the Pacific left their state exposed to a hypothetical Russian attack across the Bering Strait. The governor in Juneau was less concerned and believed that next to impossible yet she couldn’t control what was said in DC. There were elements of the US Armed Forces in Alaska, even reinforced somewhat after the talk of invasion, to counter any possibility of Russia’s President Makarov doing something as stupid as that. The headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division, plus elements of that Army National Guard formation including one its combat brigades (the other joined the 38th Infantry Division sent to Montana), was sent to Alaska to take overall control of the two US Army brigades who had been left orphaned when the 2nd & 25th Infantry Divisions – who had the bulk of their fighting strength in Washington state and Hawaii respectively – went over to the DAR. Combined with the air presence in the state and naval forces off-shore, plus the fact that it was winter, Alaska was protected against any Russian attempt at a land grab. Still, due to those Alaska politicians in DC making all of that noise who were joined by others in Congress talking about Alaska’s supposed ‘exposure’, and the worries from further politicians about Guam and the Northern Marianas, President Roberts made a public statement from the Oval Office were he talked of ‘foreign threats’ to American soil, even if it may be in the hands of rebels. If anyone had any ideas of making at attempt to seize them, Roberts asserted that the United States would take ‘full retaliatory action’ against that.

Senate Majority Leader Green was asked for comment by a journalist about whether the 49th President meant nuclear weapons with that: Green affirmed the position of the United States was to do that if invaded by a foreign power, no matter where that happened. Once more, he spoke without coordination from the White House about such an important matter yet on that occasion, Roberts didn’t mind. Adversaries were made to understand the consequences of any dreams they might have had at taking American territory while it was in the middle of a civil war. Naturally, to those already worrying themselves into a panic over the thought of Americans using nukes against each other, such open talk like that sent some right over the edge into full scale doom!


Ben Ben Tiram, the Prime Minister of Israel, had had an excellent relationship with President Walsh. Progressives in the United States had generally been in uproar at that considering all that they accused Israel of being and doing across the Middle East. It was said that Tiram had been behind American bombs falling on Egypt, killing so many innocents. Walsh and he had gotten on very well with many believing that Tiram had the 48th President under his thumb. With the Roberts Administration in office, Tiram sought to maintain excellent relations with America. Financial aid (including substantial military gifts) and security links were what Tiram wanted to keep. President Roberts nor his party were adverse to doing that and Tiram was easily able to switch from the Democratic Walsh to the Republican Roberts with ease as who was his best-buddy in DC. However, with the United States falling into civil war, Tiram correctly saw an American urgent retreat from the Middle East happening. Islamic revolutionaries in Egypt had remained unbeaten despite all efforts to crush them by American bombs and Egyptian military rifles. Iran was an even bigger threat with those in Egypt just one proxy in its undeclared war against Israel. Tiram had all of those ties with the Saudis and the Gulf Arab Monarchies – which everyone denied were real – yet the United States had for long been the foremost military power in the Middle East. From out of the eastern Med., half of the Sixth Fleet sailed away and most of the Fifth Fleet likewise departed from the Persian Gulf & Indian Ocean. All of that naval power, especially the air and missile components, left with more likely to follow. Israel wasn’t left alone but Tiram feared the worst. He offered Roberts all the support that Israel could do, which really amounted to nothing in terms of any influence to the fighting inside the United States, but there was no stopping that departure of forces. It was a worrying time for Israel’s PM.

Government spokesman for the regimes in Belarus and Venezuela made statements which suggested the international peacekeepers from the United Nations should be sent to enforce a ceasefire inside America. Those weren’t serious suggestions. What they were was payback for remarks made by American politicians and officials in recent years when there had been major unrest in their countries. Walsh’s Secretary of State had tried, knowing it would fail yet still going through the motions, to have UN Blue Helmets go to those two nations. Out of Damascus, Havana, Pyongyang & Tehran came remarks purportedly deploring the violence seen in America and attacks made against the political system of democracy & Western values when the end result was civil conflict and two competing regimes who each claimed legitimacy. Makarov’s Kremlin spokeswoman responded with laughter at the suggestion that Russia would invade Alaska. Instead, she pointed to American forces in Poland and the Baltic States which she said were ‘poised to invade Russia’: Roberts should bring them home to resolve the troubles within his own country. In addition, she also suggested that there were ‘legitimate concerns’ about the United States’ democracy and that those in Las Vegas had a ‘cause which needed consideration’ with their independence. While the two remarks were contradictory, they were taken in DC as a worrying concern over possible Russian later recognition of the Democratic American Republic. The DAR’s Minister for Foreign relations hadn’t sought Moscow’s recognition where he’d met absolute failure elsewhere but the possibility of a one-sided one caused alarm.

Mexico had been left in economic turmoil by events north of the border. First the US economy had taken that huge hit on Black Friday and then there was the UDI made in Las Vegas. Any trade with the Democratic American Republic, even in the simplest form, as well as any sort of diplomatic contact at any level was something that the Roberts Administration and Congressional figures had promised Mexico it would regret doing. In Mexico City, the nation’s embattled president who was fighting that decades-long Drug War watched the northern border regions collapse into violence due to the loss of so many jobs and the security situation a mess over the frontier. There was nothing that could be done to resolve the damage that was being done to Mexico’s stability short of an immediate end to the DAR… which wasn’t certain to happen any time soon. In Canada, there were also major economic effects. Those weren’t as severe as they were in Mexico but were nonetheless very real. Canada’s PM also had concerns about the security situation with her nation’s border with the new illegal country on her border. There were illegal crossings being made by militia volunteers, including Canadians, going through Canada. Americans going the other way had entered Canada from the DAR claiming asylum including those who flew military aircraft into the country. Deserters from that regime, plus the US Armed Forces too, arrived. None of this was done quietly. A political stink from the Opposition, plus within her own party, erupted over how to deal with all of that. In a behind-the-scenes agreement with the Roberts Administration, the PM agreed that military aircraft would be returned to the United States – even if those came out of the DAR – though there would be no forced return of deserters. It was understood in Ottawa that certain people in Congress would kick up a fuss but Roberts assured her that there would be no real hard feelings, nor anything to come of that, beyond showmanship. Canada had asylum rules which the United States might not like but won’t demand be changed. In exchange, NORAD and Five Eyes intelligence would continue to flow between them and Canada would keep a military force in the Baltics as well as next to Alaska.


All across America, on both sides of the border between the United States and the Democratic American Republic, there were foreign nations within the divided country. They came from all over the world and included dual-nationals too. Some countries didn’t give a damn about their citizens in America – diplomats excluded – despite what they said in public about worrying about their fate within a country beset by civil war. Most did though with certain ones really worried and feeling forced by domestic politics to see them taken home to safety. That even included those in the east, far from where there wasn’t any fighting and ignored that fact that the targetting of civilians was something that each side was doing their utmost (even to the detriment of military operations) to avoid. There were a good number of foreigners who volunteered to serve in the militaries of the two sides with the belief that it would get them citizenship or just because they believed that the cause was right. In addition, the foreign nationals inside America included military personnel on exchange or as part of training units based there. Governments recalled them home and wanted to take military equipment as well. First the DAR Armed Forces started seizing aircraft and such like before the Pentagon issued instructions for the same to be done in territory which they controlled. Promises were made of compensation and later return. As to those military personnel, they were sent home though. Some chose not to and decided to join the fighting. The DAR took most of them while the position of the Roberts Administration was that that would only cause problems; for those who sought to do that, whether they managed to do it successfully or not, no good would come of that in the long run for them back in their home countries. Those who did end up fight had defected to an illegal foreign regime, DC reminded their governments, and that was an unfriendly act.

Plenty of governments wanted to get their people home. Diplomats would stay but students, contractors and those visiting families or as tourists were considered to be in danger whether they were in California or Florida. Canada was right at the top of the list of those nations which were prepared to evacuate their citizens out of danger, especially from the DAR-controlled areas, and were joined by others such as Britain, the EU, Australia and Asian countries such as India, Japan & the Philippines. To fly home people from US-controlled regions was something they set about doing first. Those who wanted to come home could with DC providing assistance in that. As to those in the Democratic American Republic, that was a massive problem. Many had already cross the border into Canada and Mexico, even travelling over the new border down the middle of America, yet the majority of the foreigners there weren’t able to leave. There were no outbound flights going overseas nor any ships in transit. For there to be travel links with the DAR had been something that the Roberts Administration had told world governments would mean to be not the act of a friend. The president was implored by foreign leaders to not stand in the way of an an evacuation. In Europe, such a thing was being called an ‘international rescue’ less they be killed, much to the displeasure of those in DC who kept assuring governments that there would be no danger to civilians. In addition, to conduct a rescue, there needed to be cooperation with the DAR authorities. Tommy Zane sought to finally make some success in his bid for his country’s foreign relations by first make statements that there was no danger to those overseas visitors and then promising assistance in making an evacuation if felt necessary. To have any contact with Zane was something that DC once more claimed wouldn’t be the act of a friend… more likely an enemy.

Jo Renzi was still going through the nomination process to be the new Secretary of State. It had been held up by questions about her past conduct over an ethics concern when working for a giant multi-national corporation when she was on course to be confirmed. Roberts didn’t want to just appoint her over the heads of senators still upset at him doing that with other key figures into his administration due to his claims of national security expediency. Before senators and the rolling cameras, she repeated that declaration that any country having contact with those in Las Vegas engaged in rebellion against the United States would make them an enemy of America. Vice President Mitchell was on the phone to London and Brussels where he said pretty much the same: don’t talk to Zane or else. The British PM was left in a bind due to the strength of political feeling in Parliament demanding the rescue of British nationals while he had been so publicly against the DAR as he sucked up to Mitchell and the Roberts Administration. The EU president refused to play that zero-sum game. She told Mitchell that it had to be done: Europeans needed rescuing and it would be done while having contact with Las Vegas yet with no recognition in any form of their claimed legitimacy. Mitchell couldn’t get his way when he met with the president about ‘punishing’ the EU. The Europeans were partners in the stand-off against the Russians in the Baltics and there were additional military deployments that the French especially, working with the British, were making to secure the peace in other flashpoints. To throw all of that away just to make a point was not going to happen. Mitchell was left unhappy, so too members of Congress, at Roberts’ u-turn. The president backed down on that ‘you are either with us or against us’ attitude, as the Italian PM had deemed it, rather than seek new enemies when he already had a major one in Las Vegas.

The international rescue mission was allowed to go ahead. The EU first, then other countries such as Britain followed in pulling out people from the DAR. When confirmed, SecState Renzi got involved and oversaw things to give the public appearance that the United States wasn’t allowing foreign governments to have any sort of ties with the Democratic American Republic. There was much talk of a humanitarian angle and how those people were in danger from the DAR Armed Forces, not the US Armed Forces, when they were in the West. Meanwhile, Zane portrayed things differently. Not stupid enough to claim that his country was getting international recognition (he was no dummy as a former US Ambassador to the UN) he played his hand well. Flights were coordinated to get out foreign nationals through Canada yet with Zane making statements that the DAR Air Force would protect them from US Air Force action. He won a diplomatic victory in seeing everything arranged on the ground in his country despite all of Renzi’s claims that there were no foreign ties that the DAR had managed to make. What he sought afterwards to do was to expand upon those ties which had started.