Shanghaied - 2ACW

[gillan1220]

That's one hell of an airlift, even bigger than the one in Vietnam at the end of the war.

[James G]

Mar 21, 2021 13:39:44 GMT gillan1220 said:

That's one hell of an airlift, even bigger than the one in Vietnam at the end of the war.

It does depend upon how many people they lift out, but will still be huge.
Evac aircraft will go north, south and west... but not east!

(big update below showing why that won't be a good idea)

[James G]

71 – Opening offensive

After nearly a week of preparations, the US Armed Forces launched their ground attack along the Main Front to smash the DAR’s military and begin the liberation of the West. That delay from the time when President Roberts had finally taken office to when the opening offensive started had been said by some (politicians mainly) to be too long while others had regarded it as too short (those in uniform mostly held that opinion).

Operation Shining Sword got underway on January 25th.


The US VII Corps struck into the northern half of Colorado on three axis’ of advance. Disestablished back in 1992, a year after completing the crushing of Saddam’s much heralded Republican Guard, the corps headquarters had only been re-established the same day that Roberts took office. It had been done with haste yet there had been contingency plans for that for years. Moreover, all of the forces and the majority of personnel were already in-place. That was how it looked in the Pentagon when it came to fielding the VII Corps: simple, just a matter of putting a staff in at the top and getting those below in position. The 10th Mountain Division – a light infantry division in all but name – began moving down into Colorado from out of Wyoming in the north, advancing south with the Interstate-25 corridor to be their main supply route (MSR) but without them tied to that road itself. In from the northeast, out of Nebraska, the 29th Infantry Division moved into Colorado too with the I-76 corridor once more as a MSR: those were National Guard units from across the East Coast. Finally, the 1st Infantry Division followed the I-70 corridor across from Kansas. That division, which had had all of those recent command issues, was reinforced while in Kansas – where it was based in peacetime at Fort Riley – by its third combat brigade out of Fort Knox off in Kentucky. The VII Corps had a three-to-one advantage over its opponent. General Fuller’s DAR Army had the Colorado Corps in the state after which that command was named with the 4th Infantry Division in the north and the 25th Infantry Division to the south: the former was positioned all by itself to try and turn back the VII Corps. As the battle was joined, with each side using air power, artillery and missiles on the offensive as well as the defensive, American soldiers began killing each other. There were some instances of shots being fired wide on purpose as well as a hesitancy to open fire when ordered yet with the large number of forces involved, when someone fired on time and on target, everyone else seemed to join in once blood was spilt. Casualties were quick to climb as the VII Corps moved forward, fighting a battle of manoeuvre with the outnumbered and outgunned 4th Infantry Division. The colonel commanding one of that DAR Army division’s brigades, the one poised to stop the 29th Infantry Division in the centre of the VII Corps triple attack, was shot dead within his mobile command post right as the battle got going. A fellow officer, someone like him who’d sworn to fight for the DAR yet who was from the Deep South, killed him before being gunned down in an exchange of fire with other soldiers. That disruption there in the CP was significant. So too was what happened to the 10th Mountain Division’s mobile CP on the move when the column of vehicles was bracketed by a flight of inbound Tomahawks. SM-6 air defence missiles took down several of them fired from deep with the Rockies against a high-value target being tracked by small, unarmed drones but not enough. When the moving front-lines were engagements took place between soldiers who were only so recently brothers-in-arms. There were clashes of foot and between armoured vehicles: tanks engaged identical tanks with once more M-1A3 Abrams’ being unable to destroy the other as had been found in Idaho during the preceding weekend. Ambushes were sprung by the defenders as they pulled back, in tighter to defend the approaches to Denver. The VII Corps tried to manoeuvre all around them and not get caught in as few fights as possible. Instead, there was much effort made to encircle and trap DAR units with the hope that once cut off they could be enticed to surrender. That worked on some occasions yet not on others. Other VII Corps elements blasted away at the opponents with a fury that couldn’t be understood by those on their own side. In places, everything was one giant mess for the attackers and defenders. Elsewhere there seemed to be perfect order in what each did. A couple of well-executed localised counterattacks by the 4th Infantry Division’s brigade on the right hand side against the 1st Infantry Division brought the incoming attack from out of Kansas to quite the embarrassing halt. That was helped too by what went on up in the skies above on that cold but bright winter’s day in Colorado.

MQ-9s flown by the DAR Air Force’s, from a squadron detached from the 57th Wing which had been part of the evaluation force at Nellis AFB, flew past where the principal fighting was and into the rear. They attacked follow-up elements of the 1st Infantry Division as it approached Colorado with hits all the way back into Kansas against combat and non-combat units. The burning of fuel trucks along Interstate-70 deep into Kansas closed that MSR. There were DAR Air Force units spread across Colorado, and back into Utah too, to support the Colorado Corps. Carrier Air Wing Two had only recently part of the US Navy at NAS Lemoore back in California. USS Carl Vinson, a Pacific Fleet carrier, was undergoing a ROCH at Norfolk in Virginia (thus lost to the DAR) and its air wing had been sent to Denver International Airport by Fuller to join other units there. No commercial flights were going in and out of there with military units instead making use of the six runways and wide open spaces. Navy Seabees had been busy on the ground to make defensive works for all of the jets there yet the US Air Force had struck hard, repeatedly, at the airport. Still, there were those aircraft from the DAR Navy in the skies above Colorado. FA-18Es, two-seat -18Fs and F-35s flew missions over that state as well as into neighbouring ones. Aircraft in both DAR and United States service shot down those on the other side and attacked ground targets. Target identification was extremely difficult due to all sorts of electronic warfare efforts going on to confuse the other side which more often than not managed to disrupt the efforts of the aircrews in friendly jets. Buckley AFB had F-16s there in Colorado Air National Guard service as well as F-35s from the 8th Fighter Wing (stationed in South Korea until the previous year). In the middle of ongoing air operations, the US Air Force got a low-level raid through all of the DAR efforts to counter that. Wisconsin Air National Guard pilots with their unit under federal control flew their F-16s over Buckley at a seemingly impossible low altitude while going supersonic. Bombs fell in their wake with noise of the explosions at first drowned out by the sonic boom. F-15Es with the 4th Fighter Wing were also attacking DAR targets inside Colorado and had been moved up from South Carolina to Forbes Field ANGB in Kansas: that place was hit by JSOW cruise missiles fired by FA-18Es and then bombed too. Air raids such as those on military airbases deep inside the American Heartland were meant to be the stuff of bad fiction. They happened though as the opening offensive against the DAR took place. Up above, so many multi-million dollar aircraft were successfully shot at and came crashing down. Pilots who took the time to confirm their target, who were confused by all of the interference in the electromagnetic spectrum or just plain unlucky lost the fight to stay airborne and fight a war which the majority of them really wanted no part of deep down.


US Marines fought DAR Marines in eastern New Mexico. The II Marine Expeditionary Force had a three-to-one advantage and made a big attack using the two marine divisions (2nd & 4th) as part of the opening move while keeping the Army National Guard assigned 28th Infantry Division back for follow-up operations. On the other side of the fight was the 1st Marine Division out of California which was part of the New Mexico Corps. New Mexico was a huge state with much of the east of it full of open spaces. There were towns all over the place, even big ones like Carlsbad and Roswell, as well as plentiful road connections. Still… it was deserted in so many more areas. It was also up on the Llano Estacado: the ‘staked plains’ which had so amazed European explorers who had ‘discovered’ America. US Marines had come up the impressive Caprock Escarpment on the eastern side, out of the Texan Panhandle (to join some who moved out of the Oklahoma Panhandle too), ready to cross it and fight their way to the other side of the plateau where the Mascalero Ridge was. The 1st Marine Division opposed that effort. Marines on each side moved about in trucks, amphibious tracked armoured vehicles, wheeled LAV-25s & HMMWVs and helicopters. They sprung ambushes and made tactical retreats as well as edging forwards to pin down opponents. Counterattacks and counter-counterattacks were made. There was plentiful artillery and air support: the latter involving aviation assets in the hands of fellow Marines. In addition there were also tanks.

Back in 2025, the 2020 decision made to remove main battle tanks from the US Marine Corps inventory had been reversed. That had been widely welcomed. Out of storage those M-1A2s had been taken and returned to re-established combat units. The attacking 2nd Marine Division and the 1st Marine Division on the defence each used them. Never straying far from the main body of marines engaging each other apart from in a few isolated cases due to how the front-lines moved, the firepower at hand from the tanks was used widely. With a real low risk of civilian casualties due to where the clashes took place, those tanks joined in with all of that other supporting firepower. AH-1Z attack helicopters, F-35 jets and some older AV-8Bs were all present. There there was all that artillery as well. Marine gunners were called upon again and again to kill fellow marines. Those in the fire support platforms engaged their opponents without the hesitancy seen elsewhere among those on foot up close and personal with the enemy. Seeing another marine, even if he or she was from a government not recognised by the one which they served, held the fire of many of those on foot. On plentiful occasions, the enemy was allowed to escape or would surrender when trapped. Commanders tried to make sense of it all and other marines didn’t do what their buddies did, yet it happened all over the place. However, incoming distant fire from heavy weapons was rarely held off. The 1st Marine Division was forced back and back. They came closer and closer to the Mascalero Ridge and the course of the Rio Grande as the 2nd & 4th Marine Divisions (the latter following the former) pushed onwards. Objectives such as Cannon AFB – which the DAR didn’t defend as it was too far forward – in the centre were taken as well as communications links around Rosewell. To the north, where the Santa Fe National Forest sat on the flank of the way ahead to the state capital Santa Fe and also Albuquerque, there was a hold up to the II MEF getting as far forward as required. A lot was done in one day but too much had been asked. The corps commander ordered the 28th Infantry Division to come forward and prepare for a night attack.


Like the VII Corps, the US IX Corps had been dis-established in the 1990s as well. ARNORTH under General Corrigan had brought that command back to life to serve as the northernmost component of his multi-corps opening offensive. However, the IX Corps had a lower number of available forces than others – not even enough to give it a two-to-one advantage where it was sent – and less-capable units too. Up in Montana the corps HQ was set up with responsibility for taking command of that flank fight with the additional spread of operational area made into the west of Wyoming too. It was winter and none of that area was in any way good ground for a major fight on the ground. Fuller’s Idaho Corps were in the same area and had been on the offensive themselves, in a limited way though, ahead of Corrigan having the IX Corps advance into Idaho with the intention to start the process of liberating that state. The IX Corps had the US Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade on-hand at the start as well as the ad hoc 163rd Armored Group of several Army National Guard tank units. Arriving just ahead of the fighting commencing was the 34th Infantry Division coming into the southwest of Montana with more national guardsmen with the 38th Infantry Division in that state plus in Wyoming. DAR air and missile attacks had stung them hard while moving in. Yet, the Idaho Corps had been hit hard itself from above as the US Air Force returned those attacks. Only the 41st Infantry Division was in-place, already bloodied too, with the 2nd Infantry Division not ready. The sparceness of the terrain, as it was down in eastern New Mexico, allowed for extensive use of firepower to be employed without having to worry that civilians were going to stray into the path of all of that. There were civilians though, those carrying weapons and acting as militia. The IX corps had no control at all over them. Green Berets had contact with some groups but no real supervision. Many of those militia were anti-government in nature who wanted a fight. The ‘invaders’ from out of the Pacific Northwest were their targets yet there was also plenty of desire to shot against those sent from DC too. The ‘unlawful combatants’ caused a whole load of mess to all involved. Air power was a big deal in the fighting up in the Inland Northwest. A lot of it, especially the US elements, was based some distance away from the fighting though requiring tanker support in-flight or suffering the penalty of lower war-loads and short on-station flight time. Local small airports in Montana were used by A-10Cs in US Air Force service while other aircraft were based further east in other states; there was use of both Gowen field ANGB and Mountain Home AFB by the DAR Air Force units though they too flew from distant states (Oregon & Washington) for many their air missions. F-15EGs taken from Republic of Singapore Air force service from their Mountain Home training base flew attack missions against United States targets. However, as had been seen over the weekend, once the Monday came there was another desertion to Canada by a DAR aircrew in one of those jets. That failed: an Oregon Air National Guard F-15C shot it down before it would cross into Canadian airspace. A lot of questions were asked as to what was the point of that?

On the ground, the 1st Armored Brigade from the 34th Infantry Division linked up with the two non-divisional elements of the IX Corps to engage DAR army units in the Snake River Valley. Idaho Falls was retaken during the opening offensive and there was a big fight over near the Craters of the Moon National Park too. The 41st Infantry Division had a missing brigade on the edges of Wyoming, far away from where the real fight was with the IX Corps. The commander of the Idaho Corps brought up some of the 2nd Infantry Division on the counterattack yet couldn’t retake lost ground nor establish any real defensive position, even an elastic one which was needed. That latter division full of US Army regulars whose commander had gone over to the DAR had lost too many personnel to defections and desertions. Its manpower was far lower than it should have been and there were also equipment shortages caused by extensive sabotage. A fight on the move to keep the IX Corps out of pushing into Idaho in the following days was lost on the first day that battle was met. Air power wasn’t enough to turn the ride for the DAR in that fight even when another carrier air wing without a carrier to fly from, on that occasion Carrier Air Wing Nine who had new bases in Oregon, was employed extensively. Those aircraft spent too much time fighting the US Air Force in the skies or recovering from attacks made against them on the ground to truly influence fighting taking place to try to halt the IX Corps from liberating more of Idaho. The rest of the 34th Infantry Division came forward with the 38th Infantry Division pushing in from the flank. The situation in the Inland Northwest of holding on to all that had been taken from a forward position looked lost for Fuller so early on.


On the far southern flank, in the south of New Mexico which was near El Paso yet also stretching out far to the east past Far West Texas, the DAR’s 40th Infantry Division had no forward positions out on their area of responsibility of the Llano Estacado. Fuller had given the New Mexico Corps commander the autonomy he gave elsewhere to fight smart due to the weakness of numbers available. That was needed with that second division under command (the other being the 1st Marine Division) with the New Mexico Corps. Lined up in opposition to them ahead of battle was the three-division, plus attachments, US III Corps. Both of the 36th & 48th Infantry Divisions with all of those well-equipped national guardsmen moved first. They struck out of Far West Texas to enter New Mexico while behind them the III Corps held back the 1st Cavalry Division and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment (the latter a mechanised brigade of Strykers flown home from Poland). Texan national guardsmen with the 71st Airborne Brigade made a heli-assault into the rear as part of the opening move with Nebraska attachments also in that force. They landed near to the White Sands and started to launch a multi-axis attack against Holloman AFB. That was being used by A-10s and drones rather than non-performance jets but was still important. Trying to deal with that penetration in the rear while being hit with a big frontal attack was a big ask for the 40th Infantry Division. They fell backwards, deeper into New Mexico behind the Rio Grande with a defensive position near Las Cruces to anchor upon. Other elements of the 36th Infantry Division – on the left flank of the two-division attack; the 48th Infantry Division hit almost empty ground – had already crossed the river near to El Paso though and sought to advance up the eastern banks to cut off that planned tactical withdrawal. Into the fight was sent DAR air power, lots of it.

The jets flew from Arizona where air support for the New Mexico Corps was based if it wasn’t up at Kirtland AFB near to Albuquerque. At Davis-Monthan AFB, Libby Army Airfield, Luke AFB and MCAS Yuma the DAR Air Force had a big combat force. Among all of that included a whole load of F-16s and F-35s which had been requisitioned from their foreign owners and others taken from AMARG. F-16s once flown by Taiwanese pilots had been sent to AMARG after that country’s fall: no one was going to give them to China when Beijing demanded that everything Taiwanese in the world belonged to them. Once more, the DAR had Singapore jets, F-16s in that case originally from Holloman. Then there were all of those F-35s which belonged to a variety of foreign governments: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Norway and the Netherlands. The extensive multi-national training facility at Luke had been where all those jets had been taken into DAR Air Force service from. They filled the skies with former US Air Force jets and Air National Guard ones from several states. Air battles with the US Air Force commenced in the sky, something which drew in US Marines aviation supporting the II MEF in New Mexico on occasion, as each side tried to control the skies. Among all of the air battles above, that confusing mess due to electronic interference, the Singaporean & Taiwanese F-16s got down low among many A-10s also flying. The 71st Airborne Brigade around Holloman was targeted to a great extent and so too were the 56th & 72nd Infantry Brigades on each side of the Rio Grande. Those national guardsmen screamed for air cover while being blasted from above. Around Holloman, helicopters bringing in more men but especially supplies, were targeted in the air & on the ground as well. Patriot and SM-6 batteries could get any good number of kills in to make enough difference in time. The 36th Infantry Division was brought to a bloody standstill in both trying to stop the 40th Infantry Division retreating over the river in reasonable order and also there being an evacuation from out of Holloman. There was all sorts of other things going on at the time in southern New Mexico with the commander of the 80th Armored Brigade (a California Army National Guard unit) being assassinated by Green Berets and Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss being raided by DAR MQ-1Cs when there were US Army helicopters aplenty there. More special forces teams in United States service arrived in the Lincoln National Forest and in the small city of Alamogordo the DAR civil authorities pulled out when ‘armed citizen action’ took place as residents there sought to liberate themselves ahead of the US Army arriving. That was all important in the big picture and so too was the movement forward of the regular US Army elements of the III Corps ready to carry on the fight overnight. However, DAR air power had done some serious damage and shown their immense value in the same region too.


The last corps-size force under ARNORTH taking part in the opening offensive was the US XVIII Airborne Corps. Right in the middle of the Main Front Corrigan had them positioned. They moved into southern Colorado to engage with the DAR-controlled 25th Infantry Division and the significant air power on-hand there as well.

The start of that move into southern Colorado was rather dramatic...

[gillan1220]

Mar 21, 2021 19:41:33 GMT James G said:

Mar 21, 2021 13:39:44 GMT gillan1220 said:

That's one hell of an airlift, even bigger than the one in Vietnam at the end of the war.

It does depend upon how many people they lift out, but will still be huge.
Evac aircraft will go north, south and west... but not east!

(big update below showing why that won't be a good idea)

This legal battle will give headaches to those countries concerned about their citizens.

I would like to see an ORBAT of these soon. Looks like the DAR did manage to seize those foreign F-16s and F-35s. The governments of those countries must be angry to demand them back, considering the Taiwanese and Singaporean F-16s were shot down.

[James G]

Mar 22, 2021 4:25:35 GMT gillan1220 said:

Mar 21, 2021 19:41:33 GMT James G said:

It does depend upon how many people they lift out, but will still be huge.
Evac aircraft will go north, south and west... but not east!

(big update below showing why that won't be a good idea)

This legal battle will give headaches to those countries concerned about their citizens.

I would like to see an ORBAT of these soon. Looks like the DAR did manage to seize those foreign F-16s and F-35s. The governments of those countries must be angry to demand them back, considering the Taiwanese and Singaporean F-16s were shot down.

It certainly will.
I'm working on my air ORBAT. hard to do as tracking down units as they are now, trying to configure them plus changes for a hypothetical 2029 and get it all to make sense. Trying though and will be done at some point.
The Singapore Gov., like those European ones, will be mad: the Taiwanese are in no position to complain though since most were captured in Taipei in 2027 and are likely in Chinese secret interment camps somewhere on the mainland!

[James G]

72 – Red Dawn

In the 1984 blockbuster film Red Dawn, invading pathfinders landed in a high school playing field via a parachute drop. Weapons containers fell and those on the ground set about securing a perimeter while also laying coloured smoke flares for airborne units to follow them into the airhead which they had grabbed. Those fictional invaders, Cubans and Nicaraguans, made that dramatic landing in the middle of Colorado to start a world war. On a late January morning forty-five years later, the real thing happened. Of course, it wasn’t those from Central America who made the jump into Colorado but instead Americans themselves. US Army Rangers (from the Ranger Reconnaissance Company) and US Air Force Special Tactics personnel acted in the role of pathfinders arriving in hostile territory. There were detachments of those pathfinders spread around the city of Colorado Springs the moment light appeared on the horizon. They jumped from low-flying MC-130J Commando transports who flew away back east as fast as possible and those they left behind began marking & securing five drop zones for those following behind them.

Red Drop Zone was outside the Air Force Academy High School. In the baseball diamond, the soccer pitch, the running track & the football field, Detachment 2 landed. There were no children in the school to watch in awe and terror – nor for them to shot at as in that film – as they got to work. Radio beacons and the flares were spread about. A couple of obstructions which would be a danger to falling paratroopers were removed with haste. Rangers moved to establish over-watch positions less someone try to interfere. It was less than a quarter of an hour before first light when the pathfinding team touched down and in that time those at the Red DZ achieved all of their objectives. Then, once the skies began to ever so slightly brighten, more aircraft appeared in the sky. A dozen C-17A Globemasters appeared with their rear loading ramps open. Paratroopers from a reinforced brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, 3rd of the 82nd organised as Task Force Panther, jumped via a static line: their parachutes were opened automatically. What also came out of the transports were specialised drop pallets with ammunition, equipment, a handful of vehicles and even a platoon of tanks as well. Getting those down exactly where they were supposed to be achieved the success desired by the pathfinders.

A battalion-group of TF Panther landed at the high school: others landed elsewhere at Black, Blue, Green & White DZs. The high school was on the edge of the main campus for the benefit of children who worked there rather than attendees and sat within a mile of the Air Force Academy airfield. There was clear ground between Red DZ and the airstrip though somewhere not really suitable for falling paratroopers to touchdown there: going straight into itself the airfield was also not part of the mission because a direct assault would be instantly opposed, all at the worst possible time. As the school was, the academy airstrip was closed to the usual use of it. However, the DAR Air Force had sent RED HORSE engineers there to allow it to support their air operations inside Colorado. Aircraft hadn’t been deployed there before US Army paratroopers landed pretty close to it though had been making use of it for landings & take-offs to support the nearby Peterson AFB. 1/508 INF was that battalion which landed at the Red DZ. With haste, the commanding officer took his lead company straight towards the airfield. The rest of his battalion would follow but he went ahead taking his men there to secure it. Like Peterson, which shared runways with Colorado Springs Airport, and also Butts Army Airfield some distance to the south, the airfield which 1/508 INF went to seize after moving out from the high school was to afterwards used for more of the unit’s parent division to fly into central Colorado without making a dawn jump. Gunfire met the paratroopers from confused but capable defenders who were fast to try and stop them. The drop was unopposed yet the first fight was rather bloody. No one had thought it wouldn’t be.


The US XVIII Airborne Corps had three combat divisions assigned for its move into the middle and south of Colorado below where the US VIII Corps were operating on the right flank. Only the 82nd Airborne Division was parachute capable. The 35th Infantry (Army National Guard units) and the 101st Airborne Divisions were, despite the latter’s name, light infantry divisions. The paratroopers had been assigned a tank unit from out of a VII Corps unit but for everyone else, they had their light vehicles as well as helicopters rather than heavy vehicles. US Highway-50 as it followed the route of the Arkansas River upstream from out of Kansas into Colorado was the principal axis of advance for the XVIII Corps’ ground effort to link up with those sent out ahead. The road would function as their MSR as well. The 35th Infantry Division was given the task of moving forward first, on foot and via helicopter while the 101st Airborne Division was kept back to be used to support them and the 82nd Airborne Division (via an airlift) in needed. National guardsmen from Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma made contact soon over crossing what the United States regarded as the state line but the Democratic American Republic called an international frontier. There were exchanges of gunfire with forward elements of the 25th Infantry Division, another light unit. None of the DAR marines assigned to that division when it was airlifted from Hawaii were met by the 35th Infantry Division at first. Small-scale clashes, most of them ambushes and also the use of flanking moves to get behind opponents, occurred throughout the first morning. There were many tactical withdrawals made by the defenders after they bloodied their attackers but they held their own. That was until a whole battalion was lost in one fail swoop just after midday. 2/35 INF surrendered on its commanding officer’s firm instruction when moving forward to secure the division’s positions near to the small town of Granada. His men did as they were told and a gap opened up which part of the 45th Infantry Brigade flooded through. Either side of that, portions of the 25th Infantry Division were suddenly cut off. Air power was called in by the divisional commander to allow him to pull back in good order but the US Air Force had their own jets in the sky to contest that effort. Soldiers on both sides were bombed from above and other aircraft were shot down, but DAR air power didn’t make the difference. DAR Marines came forward. They’d been attached to the two brigades of the 25th Infantry Division as well as forming their own regiment-group (half of that division had marines as its fighting strength) and held back in the rear to plug any gaps which would appear. The marines didn’t mid being assigned as ‘shock troops’.

While there had been some deadly clashes between those first in the fight, there too had been a lot of intimidation, deliberate misfires & refusals to engage the enemy. When the DAR Marines came in, they were psyched up ready for it. Oklahoma national guardsmen were pushed back and given a real beating. All the ground taken was re-seized by those marines when they also made use of their extensive fire support. Some of their tanks – which the XVIII Corps had no intelligence that had been brought to Colorado – ran through a last stand attempt made with ease. Prisoners were taken (treated very well as fellow Americans) and the DAR Marines weren’t exactly brutal with their opponents but they fought much better and destroyed much an opposing battalion. The other friendly units nearby were able to pull out with some semblance of order despite all of the craziness going on above in the air. Those marines themselves then became the focus of air attacks. They were hit pretty hard by F-35s dropping cluster bombs which deposited anti-personnel submunitions above them right at the moment when plenty of them were without meaningful cover. Someone had messed up, those who survived knew that, and they had paid the ultimate cost of a gap above exploited by the US Air Force. In their sacrifice they saved so many others from disaster.

The 35th Infantry Division moved in the 33rd Infantry Brigade (soldiers from Illinois and Puerto Rico) to replace the shattered 45th Infantry Brigade and retook the Granada area. Plenty of time had been wasted though and the planned shattering blow that was meant to have been delivered to the defenders had failed to occur. What was feared by the 35th Infantry Division was that their opponents would make more of those attempts to blunt off their attacks and keep fighting as well as they had despite incidents such as that mass surrender. The divisional commander wasn’t aware of the big picture like his corps commander, nor his opposite number either was too, concerning what was happening in the DAR’s Colorado Corps rear. Air interference coming towards the XVIII Corps units coming out of Kansas eased up and the 25th Infantry Division was unable to move forward more of its marines which it had held in reserve ready to fight throughout the Arkansas River valley where they had long expected an attack to come. That was because of all that was going on around Colorado Springs as the day went on.


Butts Army Airfield was located to the south of Colorado Springs and was a small airstrip not really suitable for a major airlift to come in. It had been the Blue DZ with Detachment 5 of the joint Army/Air Force pathfinder unit going there and securing its capture for supporting use. Black DZ had been where Detachment 3 had gone and that was the main entrance to Cheyenne Mountain. The high school landing site for paratroopers at Red DZ meant that the Academy Airstrip was taken and would be put to use like Butts was: not for the main effort. However, Green & White DZs were where pathfinders with TF Panther (Detachments 1 & 4) secured landing sites for paratroopers to form up at and march towards Peterson/Colorado Springs Airport towards from two different directions. Commercial air operations were at a standstill but the airbase and the civilian infrastructure had been under DAR military control since Colorado seceded from the United States to join the Democratic American Republic. There were F-35 flight operations originating from there with the 35th Fighter Wing (in Japan until early 2028) and also the Thunderbirds air demonstration squadron (they’d had a repaint) making use of it. Engineers had built revetments and there were air defences. It was a main jet base for the DAR Air Force, one of the three of those in Colorado: the others at Buckley ANGB and Denver International Airport. Defended by ground personnel who did well when having to suddenly try to fend off a ground attack in the immediate aftermath of a massive air strike, TF Panther elements took it in the end. Those M-1A3 Abrams tanks dropped by air helped make that possible. Some defenders died near to all of the shot-up combat aircraft while others gave in when they really understood the odds against them: they weren’t proper combat soldiers. Others fell back though, abandoning their airbase but not giving in. It was all disorganised yet effective. They dug-in everywhere and the airhead couldn’t be effectively used to fly in more of the 82nd Airborne Division with them having weapons at-hand to threaten that by their closeness to the runways. Paratroopers with the 1/505 INF and 2/505 INF, plus 3/73 CAV in the airmobile light recon. role, did their best. They had those few tanks and heavy artillery had also been airdropped. What was needed was air support though.

AC-130J Ghostriders appeared alongside returning MC-130Js. The latter carried armament but the former were dedicated gunships which on the brand-new AC-130Js were truly impressive arrays of firepower. Two of them made pylon turns around pinned down defenders outside the airport perimeter. In a tight circle, with a wing dropped to allow for the mounted weapons to fire, the AC-130Js flew fast allowing for a continuous rate of fire. Conventional attack aircraft could make several passes firing weapons yet do nothing like what the gunships did. From the 105mm and 30mm cannons, shells pummelled those on the ground targeted. The use of the carried Hellfire and Griffin missiles was something not allowed due to civilian areas so close by but the cannons kept roaring. Those underneath all of that fire went through hell. A third gunship was seen by those on the ground with the DAR Air Force troopers and the US Army paratroopers all believing that it was to join the attack. A shout of alarm from the operations officer of 2/505 INF changed everything though. “That’s not one of ours!” He was correct, it was an AC-130U Spooky in DAR service. A lightweight Griffin dual-purpose missile from the AC-130U smashed into one of the AC-130Js: down that aircraft went with its pilot making a crash landing in open ground away from where he was sure civilians might be. The newcomer fired its own cannons against TF Panther elements inside the airport perimeter who were setting about opening it for airlift operations. That other AC-130J and the MC-130Js had flown off leaving the skies in the ownership of the newcomer for a little while. To be without the promised air cover, and under attack from a gunship while their own had fled, infuriated the paratroopers. They didn’t have to wait long though: more aircraft returned to the skies above. The DAR Air Force put F-16s in and there were Air National Guard F-15s crewed by Louisiana pilots too. That gunship was shot down – again, the pilot crashed his wrecked aircraft out of the way of civilians – and so too were several jets engaging each other. The F-15s won the air battle when they killed two F-16s and chased another pair off yet at a cost of one of their own. That fighter exploded in mid-air and the wreckage fell into the residential Valley Hill area of the city: six innocent lives on the ground were lost in the crash and resulting fire.

Control around the airhead was eventually established – the first two gunships had done their job – and specialist US Air Force personnel on the ground with TF Panther got it open to incoming flight operations. They had been surprised upon arrival at how much of the place was in fine shape despite massive cruise missile attacks upon Colorado from the US Air Force which were supposed to have done some major damage to the facilities (just not the ones they wanted to take). Regardless, they opened it to more C-17s inbound with the rest of the 82nd Airborne Division and XVIII Corps supporting assets. Friendly A-10s arrived too to start using the facility before F-35s were due to show up: some of the Air Force people moved to see what could be recovered in terms of captured DAR Air Force F-35s too. They found many of them damaged by the fighting and also blown up during the pull out yet there were a good few capable of seeing flight again. As to that downed AC-130U in DAR hands, it had been sent to Colorado Springs up from a dispersal strip near Canon City ahead of an emergency move by the 4th Marine Regiment to launch a counterattack. It was lost yet the counterattack carried on. That unit of DAR Marines had some tanks, plenty of armoured vehicles and many well-trained fighting marines… and more air support with a squadron of AH-1Z helicopter gunships. They were the 25th Infantry Division’s overall reserve. Retaking Colorado Springs’ airheads was their urgent assigned task. TF Panther was informed of their approach using plentiful reconnaissance coverage from small drones. In addition, the 4th Marine Regiment was under air attack as it moved. Onwards those marines went though, partially covered by friendly air support to try to stop the impediment to their progress. They set off to crush their airhead established deep inside Colorado by those who must have seen a certain Patrick Swayze film too many times!

[James G]

73 – Casualties & captives

Just shy of fifty-three hundred casualties were taken by the two opposing sides combined in the opening stage of the Second American Civil War. That was deaths and serious injuries totalled up and included more than a hundred civilians too. Of the latter, the majority of them were killed in accidents (with those responsible suffering the consequences of punishment) but there were also a dozen militia members, illegal combatants, also among the butcher’s bill. The two Americas took more losses than the Chinese did in their fortnight-long conquering of Taiwan: though that didn’t included Taiwanese casualties. The staggering figure took the breath away of those in the know. The two sides had at that point yet to commit their full forces and had only just began to tear lumps out of each other. Worse was certain to come, much worse. With the number of combat dead, the percentage of those injured on the battlefield who ended up losing their lives was far higher than in recent conflicts fought overseas by the United States in its seemingly endless wars in Middle East. Advances in modern medicine along with exception battlefield medical care practised in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Algeria & Egypt had previously saved so many lives from potential loss. All of that combat care was available for those fighting their brothers-in-arms at home. However, before late-January 2029, when had been the last time that American soldiers had been shelled by a battalion of heavy artillery or been underneath an airstrike by a squadron of high-preformance combat aircraft? Should US Marines have made it to Taiwan before the Taiwan Conflict ended, and faced Chinese marines & paratroopers in action, such losses would have occurred there. The casualty count inflicted at sea was bad enough in that fight yet would have been on par with what happened across the Main Front. Nothing like what those fighting in Colorado, Idaho and New Mexico, nor getting attacked in the rear, had been done to American soldiers in the field for decades before they did it to one another. The scale of it, the brutality was awful for all of those involved.

Overstretched yet heroic medical units did all that they could to save lives. As a consequence of the conflicts in the Middle East, US Armed Forces & DAR Armed Forces medical personnel alike went into the field armed to protect themselves. Insurgents had attacked them in the past and their training dictated that they be armed. Yet, at the same time, they also used clearly marked battlefield ambulances with big white crosses on them set against a red background. Vehicles had been repainted from the ‘standard’ camouflage pattern which had been abandoned in years past as another consequence of fighting in the Middle East against those who purposefully targeted such vehicles. Helicopters preforming the Dustoff role made no secret of what they were doing. They were likewise adorned with medical evacuation markings and flew missions with radio calls made in the clear about their activities. Accidental gunfire struck one of them when in New Mexico evacuating US Marines casualties – thankfully leading to no more injuries nor a feared crash – and the commander of the DAR Marines unit involved was aghast at what was done: he offered in the clear radio apologies to those his marines were otherwise fighting with full gusto and promised to punish the idiotic gunman responsible. The two sides treated each other’s casualties. American soldiers had done so on foreign battlefield against even some of the most reviled opponents but when it came to their fellow Americans, again who they’d been so busy trying to kill, when it came to treating casualties no effort was spared in doing so. When battalion aid stations and field hospitals fell into the custody of an attacker, no effort was spared in going in there and doing all that needed to be done to treat the wounded no matter which opposing government they had been serving. They kept on seeing each other as fellow Americans regardless of how hard they fought on the battlefield.

The majority of medical care units within the US Armed Forces before a significant portion defected to those in rebellion, and remaining the case afterwards, came from reserve units. There were some full-time regulars yet volunteer reservists, who’d been overseas many times throughout the Noughties, Teens & Twenties, who formed a great deal of the overall number of service personnel. In addition to them, there were likewise doctors and nurses (especially those in specialist fields) who had been put through medical school by the military and had a commitment to service if needed. Those volunteers worked in the civilian field in peacetime. They were called up for action though, to serve their country in the time of its greatest need. General Fuller’s DAR Armed Forces had identified a shortfall of personnel during mobilisation of the military forces of the Democratic American Republic when it came to the numbers of medical personnel. At many of the forward sites behind where battle was met along the Main Front, there were DAR Navy corpsmen/women present. Fuller had few ships at sea – there were various reasons for that – and used those who could have been out in the Pacific instead on land in the middle of the divided America. From the Pentagon, SecDef Ferdinand had followed the standard play-book with those call-ups from the civilian field aplenty: he’d also made sure that those reservists were pushed to the front of the queue in deployment schedules so they could be fast where they needed to be. Regardless of all of that preparation, no one seriously expected such huge casualties, especially so early on. Those trying to deal with all of the wounded were overwhelmed on many occasions. Behind the lines were were civilian hospitals to where many casualties ended up being sent: places already missing staff who were in uniform. Personnel from the US Public Health Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) – a uniformed military service though without combat forces nor great numbers – acted as administrators to help with that with regards to transfer, supplies and ensuring security. Plenty of excellent work was done though that didn’t mean that the issue of dealing with the large number of combat injuries was something under control.

Then there were the dead. With so many of them, either killed in combat or dying later despite all efforts to save them, there was localised overwhelming of those tasked to deal with the remains of fellow soldiers, marines, airmen & sailors. Other PHSCC staff assisted the efforts on each side by military units in trying to deal with all of the dead. Once more, the numbers weren’t expected in how quick they came. There were body-bags on-hand and transport to move the corpses of the dead… yet there were just so many of them. The bodies were treated with care and respect where they were dealt with. That included those from opponents too. The matter of ultimate fates of those remains, whether that be burials or cremation, and where final resting places were to be, was something that those involved in removing corpses from the battlefield didn’t directly deal with themselves. However, decisions on that had to be made by those at the top on either side of the great divide. Problems cropped up moving them even further than they initially were. Resolutions to the questions on whether to hand bodies of their soldiers over to the other side were something that was really tricky and was passed onto political leaders rather than those in uniform. Those involved asked themselves many a time if those politicians who decided that they wanted to settle their difference via bullets realised just what the real outcome of that was going to be when there were all of those fatal casualties and so many more certain to follow.


For several decades beforehand, the Pentagon had used three different descriptions when it came to captives who’d been involved in the wars which America had fought. There were ‘unlawful combatants’ who were generally classed by politicians as terrorists: those were unrecognised as legitimate fighters in conflicts yet who ended up at times in captivity. Prisoners of War were American soldiers held captive by the enemy, even if the organisations/groups were themselves unrecognised as legitimate opponents. And there were also Enemy Prisoners of War: captives taken from the ranks of recognised enemies. Unlawful combatants had ended up at places like Guantanamo Bay or had been subject to rendition to a black site in a friendly country for a fate which they certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed. POWs were ‘our guys’ which the bad guys had taken while EPWs were regarded as ‘their guys’ that America held as prisoners. Before the opening offensive was launched by the US Armed Forces on orders of President Roberts to ‘liberate the West’, the two sides fighting inside America anticipated that they would have captives from all three categories. Unrecognised militia were considered to be something that would be demanding to deal with in terms of how to treat them when they were still Americans. Yet, with POWs in the other side’s custody and EPWs held as well, nothing was expected to ever be easy. It surely wasn’t.

When it came to captives in uniform, there were those taken in battle who had surrendered either voluntarily or been forced into that. Numbers with that were figured by both Fuller and Ferdinand to be something high very fast once the fighting started. That didn’t mean that they wanted to take EPWs though nor have their personnel held as POWs by the other side. Arrangements were made as best as could be beforehand and standard operating procedures were followed once that occurred. Good treatment was done on a wide scale. There were many regretful incidents at the same time though. Detainees had a duty to escape captivity and military discipline was supposed to be maintained while in captivity. Military police units and PSYOP soldiers were busy, so too medical personnel who had wounded captives to deal with. Securing, transporting and ultimately guarding the numbers of captives was a big deal requiring major logistical effort and manpower. Escape attempts were made either at point of capture or while on the move. On plentiful occasions, the frequency of which commanders were not happy to discover, when captives ran they weren’t always perused either: for those involved in guard duties, to stop what happened would have meant shooting their fellow American soldiers who had already laid down their arms.

The two sides ended up with many defectors in their custody, those who had willingly surrendered. For those in US Armed Forces custody, they many had EPWs who claimed that they had been forced into taking that oath of service to the Democratic American Republic and had sought the first opportunity to make a run for it. There were those in DAR captivity who claimed that they didn’t want to fight either and didn’t believe that a fight between Americans was what they didn’t want to be a part of: they effectively took themselves out of the war by going over to the other side. Among these captives were those who wished to switch sides, to fight for those whose custody they were in. Motives were many and there was much suspicion about that. To give those men and women weapons and sent them back to fight against who they had just been fighting for wasn’t something that was preferred by the opposing sides. It would solve the issue of holding so many EPWs but it wasn’t regarded as the smartest move to make. There were high-profile captives who gained the attention of those holding them. If the conflict raging had been one fought against a foreign foe, those EPWs would have been ‘exploited’ with the other side worrying about what was happening to their POWs. The exploitation would have come to collect intelligence and for propaganda purposes. Fuller and Ferdinand, to say nothing of their civilian masters, didn’t want to do that at all, not to their fellow Americans. They had moral constraints themselves and also knew the uproar that would cause among those in uniform and also politicians. There were plentiful opportunities though with captives who knew a lot and could be very helpful. Information was sought from captives who wished to share it, to make themselves useful, but to force it out of others, even when it hung there so temptingly, wasn’t taken. In those early day of the conflict, that wasn’t done. Things would change in time though. The pressures of war would see excuses made and some bad things done on the quiet. Anyone who thought it wouldn’t was shown to be either a knave or a liar.

There was a Top Secret draft plan at the Pentagon for dealing with some of those worst traitors taken as captives as the conflict went on. For those holding the rank of a US Army Colonel and the equivalent in other services (O-6 rank) who had illegally entered into the service of the DAR Armed Forces, punishment was going to happen unless they could prove severe force being used to make them break all of their oaths to fight against their own country. Their punishment would be one of a final form in the end: they’d be shot. Only once the fighting was over would that be done, and too after there were military tribunals with justice seen to be delivered. It was to be something done to stop another armed rebellion of such magnitude in the future. The reason why that was kept secret was to not give those in command positions within the DAR Armed Forces, and Fuller too, a ‘Morgenthau moment’. Late in 1944, when Allied armies were closing in upon Nazi Germany, the then US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau had prosed a plan for the economic destruction of Germany post-victory. When leaked, it was used by the Nazis as a propaganda weapon to keep the country’s soldiers, and officers especially, fighting when all the odds were against them. To have those in the service of the DAR know that there would be the ultimate punishment for their actions, something confirmed rather than just a possibility, was believed to be quite counterproductive. Vice President Lee Mitchell had been tasked by his president to ensure it was kept under wraps after he pointed out how that plan if leaked could be manipulated within the DAR to make every single serving member of their military believe they might be shot for treason. They’d no longer serve the US Armed Forces once the fight was won, such was the agreement among those at the top of the Roberts Administration, but they weren’t going to kill hundreds of thousands of those who’d fought against them! The same plan for that punishment to be given to colonels, naval officers of captain rank, generals and admirals included among it military tribunals and the death penalty for those of other, lower ranks whose actions were especially egregious either during the building of the DAR Armed Forces or during the conflict. Again, nothing was to be done in terms of actual punishment among those taken captive while the fighting was going on, but the plan sitting in the Pentagon’s computers was to do just that.

Fuller and the DAR Armed Forces had no such official policy in the pipeline. There was no serious talk of that while their country was fighting to survive its infancy. Fuller wasn’t, as Ferdinand was, looking at the future reunification of the country where matters like that needed consideration. Some planning had been done to punish those who acted against the DAR in the most outrageous forms when it came to its military fight but nothing was official: there was too much else going on. However… the DAR took captives early on, and would continue to do so, who were unlawful combatants. A few were killed in extrajudicial punishment on the battlefield, ones which were far behind the lines, while others were held in secure custody. There wasn’t anyone who looked the other way when they tried to escape and nor was their much good treatment. Americans they were so Fuller didn’t have them tortured nor allowed for horrible things to be done to get them to talk yet they weren’t given EPW status and were not kept in custody alongside those who had been. Such captives as those were treated as one would a war criminal and punishing them to the fullest extent, especially once their number increased alongside brutal attacks being inflicted by others, became something more and more considered. A firing squad awaited them, something which was perfectly legal under internationally laws of war yet not something that was going to go down well at all should it be – and it would be – publicly revealed.

[gillan1220]

I wonder how the DAR flag would look like along with their naval jack and aircraft roundels. Also what is the current map of the U.S. in this timeline? I need a recap.

[James G]

Mar 24, 2021 8:10:13 GMT gillan1220 said:

I wonder how the DAR flag would look like along with their naval jack and aircraft roundels. Also what is the current map of the U.S. in this timeline? I need a recap.

Still unsure about insignia.
I'll do a (basic) map later today.

[gillan1220]

Mar 24, 2021 9:00:52 GMT James G said:

Mar 24, 2021 8:10:13 GMT gillan1220 said:

I wonder how the DAR flag would look like along with their naval jack and aircraft roundels. Also what is the current map of the U.S. in this timeline? I need a recap.

Still unsure about insignia.
I'll do a (basic) map later today.

This will get confusing once blue states in the Midwest and the East Coast join the DAR.

[James G]

Mar 24, 2021 9:31:04 GMT gillan1220 said:

Mar 24, 2021 9:00:52 GMT James G said:

Still unsure about insignia.
I'll do a (basic) map later today.

This will get confusing once blue states in the Midwest and the East Coast join the DAR.

Ah, there is no sign of that happening.
The secession wasn't done legally - and there is no legal way of doing that - nor with any real democratic mandate. Democrats in the East have been tripping over themselves to disown those who formed the DAR. If the US Gov goes over the top, and does something outrageous, even then the chances of further defections are near impossible. Civilian unrest is more likely than any more secession.    

[James G]

74 – A case of the slows

At a military briefing in the White House Situation Room, upon looking at the digital maps provided via a Pentagon feed, Vice President Mitchell asked if the second day of fighting along the Main Front had been ‘a case of the slows’. The ground taken on the first day was much larger than what was liberated from the control of the Democratic American Republic on the second. Many thought that a cheap shot. He was a former military officer of some note himself before he’d gone into politics: Mitchell knew better. In addition, in that briefings, and the previous ones, it had been carefully explained by SecDef Ferdinand, plus the new Chair of the Joint Chiefs, that on the first day when the offensive opened, there would be movement to contact. The DAR Army wasn’t positioned directly along the state lines/border trace but back behind them in a mobile defensive fashion. US forces had to push forward to meet them before they could overcome them and then get on with the task of going all of the way to the Pacific. Repeating earlier comments, Mitchell was told the reason why less ground had been taken and things had gone slower. He didn’t look that impressed and several of those attendees weren’t impressed with him either: he was showing off, he was up to something. That was their take on what he said and his whole demeanour when presented with the facts on the ground of the situation that US forces were facing when fighting their erstwhile brothers-in-arms.

Starting on the first night and throughout the second day, Army National Guard troops under the command of the II Marine Expeditionary Force in northern New Mexico were roughly handed by DAR Marines. The 28th Infantry Division had been sent to follow-up success made by 2nd Marine Division and reach the southern reaches of the Santa Fe Mountains. That would have opened up the way ahead towards the New Mexico state capital Santa Fe and also threatened the flank of Albuquerque towards where the US Marines re-positioned themselves to move against. The national guardsmen from Maryland & Pennsylvania in the two combat brigades committed failed to get as far as the town of Santa Rosa – a major communications point – on the attack themselves and then, after several hours of extensive shelling and missile strikes too, they were forced back in a counterattack by a portion of the 1st Marine Division. Those DAR marines with the New Mexico Corps used most of their strength to hold fast against the 2nd Marine Division from making a bigger attack of their own towards Albuquerque. That city had the huge Kirtland AFB outside of it (which shared the runways with the international airport) and the New Mexico Corps was loath to see such prizes lost. They fell back and back when the 2nd Marine Division came at them from the southeast they refusing to give in. There was no taking a big step back across the upper reaches of the Rio Grande for them. In addition, to secure their position, the DAR marines had the support of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. That was an army training unit based in peacetime at Fort Irwin in California. Pentagon intel. had claimed that the Blackhorse Cav’ was in Colorado. It showed up south of Albuquerque though and the firepower on offer as the New Mexico Corps used its operational reserves there to allow for the marines to hold on. Overall, while it would look to an outsider that nothing much had gone on in northern New Mexico, as the vice president suggested when seeing the before-&-after maps, once more there had been exceptionally severe fighting that had come at a big cost in terms of lives lost.

In the southern portion of that state, the US III Corps had the day before failed to trap the 40th Infantry Division on the eastern side of the Rio Grande as had been the intention. The 36th Infantry Division took a step aside with those Texan national guardsmen battered after all that they had faced. Using the 48th Infantry Division (Army National Guard units from across the Deep South) and regulars with the 1st Cavalry Division and 3rd Cavalry Regiment – the US Army components all heavy armour, combined arms units –, the southeastern portions of New Mexico were cleared of DAR military control. Holloman AFB was taken control of with some of the last evacuating units from there caught before they could get away. The White Sands fell into US III Corps hands just like that sprawling airbase did. However, the 40th Infantry Division had established itself behind a good position to fight from in the form of that river which ran all the way from the Gulf of Mexico, along the US-Mexico border where Texas was and all the way up into the Rockies. While moving forward engineers and supply units, once more those on the ground in southern New Mexico found themselves under repeated air attacks from the DAR Air Force. All of those jets making bombing missions from distant Arizona bases blasted them. That was done when the airbases were supposed to be ruins after multiple long-range US Air Force cruise missile strikes and there too was supposed to be fighter cover in the form of F-22s above. DAR activities against the E-3 AWACS aircraft controlling those F-22s plus also non-physical attacks against them too stopped them from providing that fighter protection effectively. Lasers fired at great range and electronic magnetic interference, all Top Secret weaponry which the Pentagon knew that the DAR had seized from places such as Area 51 and Edwards AFB, were employed in live experiments. No one told those on the ground what was going on with all of that as they fought to take, what a brigade commander with the 1st Cavalry Division called, ‘useless wilderness’.

Up in the Inland Northwest, the back-and-forth wrestling of control over the eastern parts of Idaho near to Montana went on for another day. The DAR’s Idaho Corps finally got the 2nd Infantry Division into battle and used them to support the national guardsmen with 41st Infantry Division elements in making a limited counteroffensive. Idaho Falls was retaken and US IX Corps elements pushed almost all the way back to the Montana state line. Moving northwards up the Snake River Valley once more, the Idaho Corps were back where they had started. It was a humiliation for United States combat arms. ARNORTH’s commander, General Corrigan, removed the IX Corps commander. With larger forces at his disposal and when he was supposed to be on the offensive, that corps commander allowed for the opposition to conduct an advance of their own when he was meant to be doing one himself. Most of the IX Corps elements in the fight retreated upon orders from their corps HQ. They were saved to fight another day but, after asserting he had no faith in his subordinate’s ability to command, Corrigan fired him. In the retreat ordered where the 2nd Infantry Division finally reached the front-lines, the IX Corps’ 173rd Airborne Brigade had its commander killed alongside most of his staff. That unit had done so well after flying back home from Estonia but was on the wrong side of an attack which their superior had his forces pull back from. The brigade tactical HQ was a mobile unit and in camouflaged to blend in with the snow white background yet was found by opposition electronic warfare units and raided by a flight of helicopter gunships. Battalion commanders afterwards did exceptionally well in recovering their situation and not being lost without higher control. The newly-appointed IX Corps commander was afterwards ordered by Corrigan to marshal his forces and arrange them properly: how they had been didn’t suit ARNORTH. There were two full divisions and two brigade-sized units spread too far apart and not able to support one another. Go back into Idaho, those orders ran, and liberate that state. On the other side, it had been no easy feat for the Idaho Corps to achieve what they did. The understrength 2nd Infantry Division hadn’t been able to get the air support it required as jets in DAR Air Force and US Air Force service fought each other more than provided their ground attack tasks. The whole rear area was a mess with militia members acting as guerrillas. Those unlawful combatants stretched through Idaho and into Oregon & Washington. They conducted sniping attacks, even using portable missile launchers to do that in dramatic fashion, against supporting troops behind the lines. IEDs were left all over the place by them as well. In addition, a CBS media team had gone rouge away from control of the US IX Corps Public Affairs efforts and stumbled into retaken territory. Those journalists were detained when their behaviour was erratic… even for members of the media. It turned out that the real camera team was missing – presumed dead – and instead members of the Patriotic Corps were passing themselves off as those journalists. When that was revealed, they exploded a bomb hidden in their stolen vehicle and opened fire with concealed weapons. Dealt with as terrorists would be, they were all killed yet only after they’d inflicted severe casualties on Oregon national guardsmen deployed into Idaho.

In central Colorado, their airhead opened by the Red Dawn-style parachute drop around Colorado Springs was one built-up. The rest of the 82nd Airborne Division, along with corps-level assets, were airlifted into there in a herculean effort for the XVIII Airborne Corps to establish it’s forward position there. No further parachute drops were made after the first as more men and gear could be flown in, safer too, than dropped. C-17s made rapid turn-arounds at Peterson AFB / Colorado Springs Airport and also the Air Force Academy Airfield. The usefulness of Butts Army Airfield in the grounds of Fort Carson had never been expected to be a great deal as part of the airlift. When it was lost in a DAR Colorado Corps counterattack, it wasn’t good news yet not exactly fatal for the mission: that lone runway was small. The 4th Marine Regiment made that counterstroke when they came up from the south towards Colorado Springs. With the target for their mission surrounded by civilian areas, preforming the task assigned was made difficult as they couldn’t use their firepower to full effect. The same problem was there for the defenders too yet such restriction hurt the 4th Marine Regiment more. Even using their supporting attack helicopters in a targeted fashion wouldn’t work: most of their AH-1Zs were engaged in the sky by AH-64D Apaches and air defence weapons (airlifted into Peterson) on the city’s edges. Taking Butts was as far as the DAR marines got. They were forestalled from getting any further ahead in the night attack they made and then couldn’t move forward when daylight came either. In engaging them like they did, the paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne only slightly expanded their area of control. They made it secure though. Flight operations of combat aircraft were able to go ahead from the two available airheads which had been captured. There were some long-range missile attacks made which last-ditch CIWS defences didn’t stop though. Those did more to negatively affect the position than the 4th Marine Regiment. Where that Colorado Corps unit was deployed like it was against Colorado Springs meant that it wasn’t able to support the 25th Infantry Division in getting deeper into Colorado as they followed the course of the Arkansas River upstream, where the road links ran too. The 35th Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions didn’t make significant leapfrogs forward during their second day in Colorado but did take ground. They forced their opponents back closer to the Pueblo area with the XVIII Corps having that airhead in the rear to use as part of that corps’ advance. The skies were full of US air power, less so DAR aircraft. Peterson was a real loss to the DAR Air Force with so many aircraft caught on the ground there. Moreover, other bases supporting the air effort above the state, those to the north of them, were facing the threat of being overrun too requiring air efforts up there.

Attached to the US VII Corps for operations in the north of Colorado was the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Like the Blackhorse Cav’ in DAR Army service, that Tennessee Army National Guard unit was a small combined arms brigade despite its name. Texans assigned in peacetime were down in New Mexico taking away a third of the usual strength yet it was still a potent force. The XVII Corps commander employed them during the first night and they advanced through that as well as during the next day. Instead of following the trio of thrusts made by the corps’ divisions, the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment was sent forward between the 10th Mountain & 29th Infantry Divisions. They struck into Colorado from out of the very western portions of Nebraska and went south into Colorado’s Weld County. Weld Co. was out of the way, not somewhere paid attention to properly by the Colorado Corps’ HQ staff. There was a lot of open ground, tank country even in the winter. White-painted M-1A2s and M-2A3s went across it slowly in the dark – the snow hid dangers through the grasslands and farmland to heavy armoured vehicles – yet sped up once light returned to the sky. They reached the South Platte River and crossed that water barrier without much trouble. That saw the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment end up behind two of the 4th Infantry Division’s three brigades: that DAR unit had each brigade facing off against separate VII Corps divisions. The supply lines were cut by the activities of Tennessee national guardsmen. They seemingly had a lot of fun blasting anything of military value in sight which they came across on the roads and nearby in supposedly ‘secure’ rear areas. They they went towards Denver International Airport. The DAR Air Force was using that air facility to a great extent. The approach of the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment was detected late but with enough time for a countermove. Attacking aircraft including armed drones engaged them. Abrams’ and Bradleys alike were hit by missiles and also the cannons of DAR A-10s. They were meant to have their own air cover but that had been redirected right at the wrong time to assist with the XVIII Corps at Colorado Springs before being later returned. A stop was put on the advance and a tactical withdrawal was made back to the South Platte where the reach of ground-based air defences had been established. A huge bulge had been formed in the 4th Infantry Division’s positions. Withdrawal orders came for those two exposed brigades, which were carried out once it got dark. It was meant to be organised with the Colorado Corps pulling them back closer to Denver and making sure that if the VII Corps sent that armoured raiding unit forward again, a disaster would be averted. Disaster came during those retreats down Interstate-25 & I-76 though. Significant US Air Force attention was well-directed by forward air controllers on the ground (protected by Green Berets) and also stand-off sources including RQ-4B Global Hawks avoiding DAR electronic targeting against them. In came F-15Es and F-35s to engage targets from distance before A-10s and AH-64s finished up. A good portion of the 4th Infantry Division was massacred when the Colorado Corps tried to tighten its position. That command lost much of its subordinate unit, the only significant one around. The way ahead to Denver was open for the VII Corps afterwards and northern Colorado was left within the grasp of coming under ARNORTH control.

[James G]

Gold: Democratic American Republic
Green: United States of America
Pink areas: US-taken territory from the DAR

(click on map to enlarge)

[James G]

75 – Glow-worm

It was called ‘Glow-worm’. What was first believed to be a bug in the system, something going wrong somewhere that needed a fix with a small bit of new code written, turned out to be a computer virus of quite the proportion. The NSA identified the virus as something of their creation which the intention had been to use against an overseas adversary at some point. It took them some time to own up and confirm that their creation was being used against the United States, but once they did, the Pentagon was briefed on what Glow-worm was all about… and what it was capable of. There were heads in hands rather than any screaming and shouting, at first anyway. The NSA didn’t know who had stolen it and how, but the virus was in the hands of the Democratic American Republic. They had employed it against the US Armed Forces. It had gotten into the system somehow and there was no control over it by the DAR Armed Forces. Glow-worm was a AI-driven computer virus and did its own thing. SecDef Ferdinand asked for the kill-switch. If the NSA created it, they must know how to disable it? Or, failing that, how could it be combated. Few answers came in return. The NSA had crafted a monster but couldn’t provide a way to bring its reign of destruction to an end. Ferdinand was told that things were only going to get worse with regard to Glow-worm. It was spreading itself further every second as it taught itself how to better do its task. Temporary problems, small issues and little bugs were only going to get worse. In the end, there would be a complete shut down. The virus would eventually kill everything it touched yet only after causing all sorts to chaos first as it spread relentlessly. The briefers who went to the Pentagon to deliver that bad news, chosen by the NSA Director himself who didn’t dare go (he had ‘important meetings’), considered themselves lucky to get out of there alive. The rage from those in uniform came eventually but by then they were packing up their equipment and on the way back to Fort Meade. The Joint Chiefs were livid at what had been allowed to happen and were out for blood as further understanding was gained of just what Glow-worm was going to continue to do.

That computer virus had been unknowingly infiltrated into US Armed Forces computer servers when there was the remote seizing of US Space Forces assets following the DAR taking them ahead of the Second American Civil war erupting. There had been back-slapping aplenty in the Pentagon then when all those satellites came to their control. They used them at once to prepare the way for the massive missile strike against the DAR to open the offensive to ‘liberate the West’. When all of those air-launched & sea-launched cruise missiles slammed into targets across the DAR, there had been many of those which it was later discovered were off-target: almost fifteen per cent. The misses were all over the place with no pattern to them. Internal investigations had taken place to try to work out why. There was suspicion at once that the DAR was behind that somehow with the belief that they were making use of some of the fancy ‘toys’ taken from facilities such as Area 51. There were plenty of examples of that with all sorts of experimental weapons employed including lasers and the most-modern electronic interference. Of the latter, the DAR Armed Forces, yet also the US Armed Forces too, made use of equipment to undertaken False Sky narratives. AWACS aircraft and ground-based air defence control centres were fed – remotely or physically – a lie into their radar screens. Operators would see crowded skies or empty skies. They would be tricked into not seeing particular aircraft and led to believe that there were others flying which certainly wouldn’t. False Sky had been done by the United States to its opponents in conflicts including that against China, and the Israelis had done similar things to their adversaries too. So much of that was psychological warfare: radar operators couldn’t trust their screens and a fighter pilot’s faith in radar operators was likewise lost once they realised there was nothing in front of them. More cruise missile strikes against the DAR were made after the first big one, using lesser quantities of ALCMs, JASSMs & Tomahawks. The miss rate increased. The Pentagon looked at everything they could with the belief that their targeting was off due to a problem or enemy action. Nothing could be found wrong though despite how hard the look was made. Soon enough cruise missiles didn’t just miss their targets but instead were deliberately crashing themselves in crazed kamikaze fashion. Mass attacks couldn’t be made due to the scale of the failures to strike DAR targets: the number went up above forty per cent. One of Ferdinand’s people first proposed the theory that there might be something like Stuxnet behind it all. In conjunction with Israel, Iran’s nuclear programme had been targeted by that malicious computer worm in the late Noughties with effects felt for many years throughout the Teens. Plentiful damage was done no matter what the Iranians tried to do to counter that. With the finger pointed at the DAR – though there had been some fears that a foreign power was behind it –, it was known that it wasn’t a Defence Department weapon at play. The CIA denied they had anything like that in service, especially not something that General Fuller and his traitors out West could have got their hands on. The ‘no’ from the NSA hadn’t been convincing enough when first heard. DHS Secretary Miller had been approached by Ferdinand and, once he understood the issue, he forced the NSA into a ‘no, but, maybe, well, possibly, yes’ answer which came. They first denied that what they had crafted for foreign use had been stolen and that it was what was effecting US Armed Forces cruise missile targeting yet reversed course after more pressure was applied. When the truth finally came out, the NSA blamed Pentagon cyber-security efforts. They claimed that those were weak and allowed Glow-worm to penetrate the external firewalls and then keep on going through the internal ones as well. However, it was later revealed that the NSA had run a test of Glow-worm beforehand… a supposedly harmless one, against the US Armed Forces. The virus had had a test run and broken through the defences. When it was employed for real, by an opponent who the NSA said that they weren’t responsible for losing it to, that was someone else’s fault, it did the same once again to the systems it had learnt to overcome. The new US Marine Corps Commandant told the Chair of the Joint Chiefs that he wanted to send some of his marines over to Fort Meade on a combat mission. He was joking, sort of anyway. The thought of ‘revenge’ had driven him to conduct a draft plan of action in his head to kill everyone there and burn the place to the ground.

Glow-worm was designed to evolve, just like Stuxnet had been. It had gone after cruise missile targeting first to send many off-course and then moved to crashing those missiles. It didn’t take much imagination for those in the Pentagon to foresee what was going to come down the line. The NSA briefers confirmed that the virus was all over the Pentagon’s computer servers and would start attacking other systems. Weapons would be first before communications and other electronic systems. At its own pace, doing its own thing, Glow-worm would just keep on eliminating the ability that the United States had to make modern war. Tests were run everywhere to look for signs of the virus, tests which the NSA had said wouldn’t detect it. They were done and found nothing. The virus was out there though. In a highly-selective National Security Council briefing, where only the principals (Cabinet secretaries etc.) attended, President Roberts was filled in. His first question was about America’s nuclear weapons: its ICBMs in silos and SLBMs aboard submarines. That was something that Ferdinand had lost sleep over too. There was no sign at that point that they were affected yet there was a good chance that they were. The issue with Glow-worm wasn’t just that it caused problems for warfare waged against the DAR. It made it likely that all weapons used against all opponents, even ones to hold the balance of terror via mutually assured destruction, were at some point going to be rendered useless too. If word got out… The whole thing was classified Top Secret and there were those at the Pentagon and the NSA tasked by the president, on his personal instructions, to fix the issue. How the heck were they supposed to do that!?


Seven of the eleven nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in US Navy service had been assigned to the Indo-Pacific Command ahead the secession of a good portion of the West. Two of them were in the final stages of repairs made after damage inflicted by Chinese missiles during the Taiwan Conflict and on the West Coast. A third was undergoing the RCOH refuelling & overall procedure on the East Coast. Due to the tensions with Chinese activity in the South China Sea against the Vietnamese, plus their major naval sortie to protect that at distance, there were three more carriers at-sea in the Pacific: a fourth was in the Indian Ocean. USS Midway was the lone carrier that the fledgling DAR Navy gained control of. Once the USS John C. Stennis, a name change had come in 2022 to that vessel due to the complicated persona of that deceased politician. Other names had been suggested, but the 46th President had been swayed with the argument to keep things ‘non-political’ and rename the vessel after a battle which reflected the history of the US Navy rather than call if after someone else where there might be more objections: everything about that name change was political though. The Midway had been near to Palau, behind the Philippines. Another, USS Theodore Roosevelt, had been positioned near to Wake Island with the third up (USS Gerald R. Ford) in the Northern Pacific. Should another conflict have started with the Chinese, the Pentagon had planned to have them converge upon the Western Pacific and have another go at China. No re-run of 2027 happened though. The Midway’s battle group commander gave his allegiance to the secessionists. It took some doing for him to retain command of his force – efforts within the other at-sea naval forces to side with the DAR failed for those involved – but it had been achieved. Towards Hawaii the Midway (DARNS Midway it had become with the ‘USS’ designation dropped) had sailed to help protect the island chain which formed one of the first wave of states to leave the union. There were other ships in the DAR Navy and submarines too, along with the control over all of those naval bases along the West Coast and in Hawaii, yet Fuller didn’t do all that he could of with his new navy. The two carriers at Everett and in San Diego weren’t put to sea. DARNS Abraham Lincoln and DARNS Ronald Reagan (those in Las Vegas wanted to change the name of the second carrier) would have required significant manpower to sail them, alongside forming battle-groups of escorts which also needed sailors. Fuller saw it all as a potential drain in terms of manpower and also wanted to use the air power he had from carrier air wings on land. He feared that there was too much to lose in operating carrier groups in a set-piece fashion fighting the US Navy. Keeping Midway near to Hawaii, using submarines in the unseen defensive role and employing land-based air power was his strategy for the Pacific. DAR Navy senior officers were furious yet he had the political backing to achieve that.

The US Navy was left in a mess itself. They lost their Pacific bases and there were all sorts of loyalty issues which first needed resolving before any real fighting could be done. The Chinese threat loomed large and then, going out in the middle of winter in an act of pure insanity, Russia sailed its Pacific Fleet too. There were serious commercial maritime economic disasters unfolding as cargo ships couldn’t/wouldn’t go to the West Coast and had to turn back around. Air evacuation of foreign civilians out of the DAR saw flights leave that illegal country and go over the ocean. Iran took the opportunity to sortie naval forces into the Arabian Sea to complicate matters in the Indian Ocean, made worse when a container ship ‘accidently’ ran around in the middle of the Suez Canal. Pentagon instructions were at first for the US Navy to continue with its assigned tasks of being prepared to fight against China if necessary, Iran too, all while in the mess it was left in. It took some time for sense to be seen with regard to how crazy that was. It couldn’t be done. Allies in Europe, already stretched with the stand-off against Russia, and others such as Australia & India, agreed to help with Middle Eastern security tasks as their interests too were threatened by Iranian action including the container ship that they allegedly knew nothing about. The Russians were having difficulty keeping their flotilla in the North Pacific at sea and the Chinese showed no sign of further action following their small-scale fight with Vietnam in late 2028. New orders for Indo-Pacific Command, which had been re-established in Alaska after the Hawaii HQ was lost, were to turn their attention towards the DAR. That meant abandoning the Western Pacific. US Army, US Air Force & US Marine Corps elements had pulled out in ‘28 of so many of their forward positions in once-friendly countries. The US Navy eventually joined them in late January 2029. The Roosevelt received new orders and so did the Ford: the same one went to the USS John F. Kennedy (a brand-new Ford-class carrier) in the Arabian Sea. They were to go into combat against those who had broken all of their oaths of service and betrayed their country. The US Navy set off for war. Forces would be marshalled, including Atlantic units coming through the Panama Canal, first and then action would be taken. Those in-the-know aboard the carrier groups – the command staff – considered the fact that they’d be ‘paying a visit’ to Pearl Harbor and how history was going to repeat itself somewhat there.

While attention was on carriers and the big plans for them, there was a quiet but firm continuous watch maintained by the US Armed Forces upon NB Bangor. Part of the bigger NB Kitsap in Washington state where the Puget Sound was, that naval base had been taken by Fuller’s forces when he built the DAR Armed Forces. A whole battalion of security-rolled US Marines had done nothing, nor had the nearby alerted battalion of US Army Rangers at Fort Lewis, to stop that because President Walsh had refused to order Americans to kill Americans. All of those nuclear weapons stored at Bangor had fallen into DAR hands. In addition, there had been a pair of strategic missile submarines taken over as well. USS Maine and USS Nebraska – again, the DAR Navy wanted to rename them – were in-port when other Ohio-class boomers were absent. Nebraska had been loaded with its full arsenal of Trident SLBMs and ready to sail when it was ordered to halt and then command transferred from the US Navy to the DAR Navy without anyone firing a shot: Maine had no Tridents aboard yet could be loaded if needed. Fuller didn’t send the Nebraska to sea. It stayed where it was, tied alongside. The destructive potential in its missile tubes remained even there. He, plus the DAR Minister for Defence & Security, each knew that unless President Roberts lost his mind, he wasn’t going to attack the Nebraska while it was where it was so close to the city of Seattle. There was no intention for those Tridents ever to be used by the DAR either. That reasoning, a gamble others might have said, was based on the fact that nothing would happen while the boomer was where it was. If it sailed, things could change. Not all members of the Council of Thirteen had agreed yet nuclear weapons made most of them very uncomfortable and so they agreed to leave the Nebraska where it was. Off in distant DC, Roberts and Ferdinand were off the same mind: they didn’t want to attack that nuclear-armed submarine while it was so close to Seattle, and Vancouver across in Canada too, for fear of the consequences of doing that. Should it make a run for it, things would be different. There were plans ready to go into motion to stop the DAR having a boomer out at sea fully-armed. While that was all good for a strategy of a stand-off in the vein of mutually assured destruction, Glow-worm messed with things once its presence was revealed. The distant reconnaissance relied upon satellites which the coverage from them began to show ‘bugs’ in them. Many terrors in the minds of those at the Pentagon turned to other satellites soon too being affected – those for nuclear attack warning from overseas especially – but those with the Bangor Watch mission didn’t know how long they could reliably keep the Nebraska under observation. The Chair of the Joint Chiefs authorised a way around that. To keep tabs on that boomer in-port and armed with all of those weapons of armageddon a ‘special ops’ tasking was made for the Bangor Watch. It didn’t solve the problem and was a quick fix, but it was better than nothing. Plentiful hope was on Glow-worm being overcome as well.

[gillan1220]

Now here comes the dilemma of the USN's loyalty. I take that the DARN is using the old USS Midway musuem ship in San Diego and refitted it? Or is this a new USS Midway? I'm glad the USN didn't lose their Gerald R. Ford-class carriers. Would have a been a big blow if one came into the possession of the DAR. Is the third one, the USS Doris Miller, already in service by this time?

One thing I was correct is that America's adversaries are taking advantage of the situation.