The young Russian tank commander was excited at the prospect of combat, even if it was only a lightly armored mechanized brigade they were facing. The officers in the company had been briefed to expect resistance and casualties but not much of either. Their greatest threat would be air-to-ground missile attacks and cannon fire from U.S. Thunderbolt ground-attack aircraft and from Apache, SuperCobra and Tiger attack helicopters. However, the division was equipped with extensive antiaircraft support weaponry, both surface-to-air missiles and next generation ZSU autocannon mobile batteries firing four thousand 23-millimeter armor-piercing incendiary rounds per minute. The NATO ground attack aircraft were expected to have little opportunity to engage the Russian heavy armored division before being ripped out of the sky.
The Russian military leadership was hopeful that the trans-Poland attack, the strongest of four across the European continent, would catch their NATO opponents at least partly by surprise. They had deployed the attack divisions carefully over a period of six months, avoiding any readily observable large scale movements. In many cases, the Russian military deployed the attack divisions to replace other forces they supposedly recalled for rest and training. However, the trucks and trains intended to return north with the withdrawing troops had actually returned empty. All the while, their political leadership and the president himself played a carefully orchestrated game of deception, pretending to negotiate with their European neighbors to provide increased shipments of oil and natural gas to stave off the coming cold.
The surprise attack was poised to explode across the frontier. The Russians had concentrated their forces at four strategic axes of attack with multiple divisions stacked in echelons behind the spearhead of each axis. Once the spearhead division on each axis had pierced the border defenses, the following divisions would fan out and race toward their assigned objectives. No manpower would be wasted on flank protection or defending supply lines. Each division was expected to be self-sufficient for two weeks of combat, after which they should control their objectives and commandeer all of their supply requirements.
The Russian military expected to have overwhelming firepower superiority for their ground forces and had focused on expanding the numbers and capabilities of their air defense forces to counter the NATO air superiority. Russian military doctrine revolved around heavy armor packing a massive punch both in strength and speed of advance. They expected to occupy the capitals of all the major NATO countries of continental Europe, including Turkey, within a month.
These countries would be reluctant to authorize strategic defensive bombings of their own lands and would be vulnerable to the Russian threat to lay waste to their industries and cities if they didn’t capitulate. Of course, the Russians had no intention of destroying the industrial base of western and central Europe. They intended only to expropriate it for their own purposes — to build a redoubt against the ice fields that would otherwise soon encroach on their own country. If the populations of their vanquished neighbors were left with few resources of their own to combat the coming cold, that was unfortunate but unavoidable.
Like most young Russians of his age, especially those in the military forces, Gregor viewed his president as a great hero, one who had been preparing for many years to reestablish Russia as a world power, the equal or the better of the United States. He had been schooled to believe that NATO existed only to see Russia reduced to the status of an impoverished third-rate power. He felt deep anger toward the perpetrators of this scheme. He felt no fear, only great pride and excitement, at the prospect of the powerful high-explosive shells from his 152-millimeter main gun tearing into the enemy before him. Any potential for remorse over or pity for those he was about to destroy had been thoroughly schooled out of him by the long-standing education and propaganda system of Russia’s unscrupulous president.
The Russian lieutenant, and thousands of other junior officers like him, received the order to commence the attack. The mayhem was about to begin. It wasn’t expected to last long, and Gregor, intending to have a clear view of the opening act, commanded his tank to advance to the top of the ridge to act as overwatch for the lead attack battalion, which had just passed through his ranks.
The Russian military planners were correct in several of their assumptions, though catastrophically wrong in others. They were correct that the NATO heavy armor forces opposing them were greatly outnumbered, and they were correct that mayhem was about to be let loose.
Back in Washington it was three o’clock in the morning. President Rushton had risen a half hour earlier, after a few hours of sleep, and descended to the White House Situation Room. The Russian military leaders had failed to achieve their intended element of surprise. President Rushton been advised late the preceding day that the Russian attack likely would be underway soon after midnight Washington time. He had decided to rise early to get the first reports and ready himself for a critical call to the Russian president.
President Rushton had considered carefully and discussed thoroughly with his national intelligence advisors, his military advisors and the leaders of his European allies, the likely reaction of the Russian bear to the arrival of Peregrinus. These discussions and the resulting preparations had begun immediately following the original public announcement, so, among other things, American satellites had been closely monitoring the expected Russian military preparations. The satellites were equipped with infrared capability and terahertz synthetic aperture radar. They had detected the movements and heat signatures of thousands of main battle tanks maneuvering into forward positions the previous night on several fronts, despite heavy clouds and precipitation.
Being forewarned would certainly give the NATO defensive forces a fighting chance, but would that be enough given the massive amount of Russian heavy armor compared to the relatively light armor and mechanized infantry constituting the bulk of the NATO forces? That is where another aspect of the preparations of the United States and its allies came into play.
American military doctrine had been evolving away from heavy armor for several years, well before Jim unexpectedly stepped into the role of commander-in-chief. The recent previous presidents had been convinced by their advisors of the need for changes to America’s war-fighting capabilities in the evolving global political environment. Ironically, though Jim was likely better able to grasp the military reasoning behind those required changes than his predecessors had been, it would have been too late if the changes hadn’t been initiated until he took office. He had certainly been quick to support those changes, and to encourage their acceleration, and so they were well underway by the dawning of Peregrinus.
The changes to America’s military forces were twofold — two separate but complementary changes — and they had been mirrored to a greater or lesser degree by most of the other NATO members. The changes were firstly a modest but meaningful expansion in army combat personnel after many decades of decreases in combat strength following the Vietnamese war and even after the Iraq conflicts. By the middle of the last decade the army had shrunk to half a million, of which roughly 40 percent were combat personnel deployed across thirty-two combat brigade teams, plus various independent regiment-sized units, including special operations forces. The army reserve and army National Guard could field about another half as many combat brigade teams. The Marine Corps could field another hundred thousand combat personnel allocated among four autonomous divisions, three special operations battalions and four aircraft wings.
Over the following decade, four additional independent combat brigade teams fielding about 4,500 personnel each had been gradually added to the army’s strength with little fanfare or profile. This represented about a 10 percent growth in army combat personnel, not by itself a very intimidating increase.
What was even less known about the new units than their existence and strength, was their weaponry and tactical mission. They were designated as mechanized infantry, which in fact they were, but they were designed first and foremost to be defensive t
ank killers. Every four-man fire team in all four brigades consisted of two conventional infantry men armed with rifles, or possibly one of them carrying an M249 belt-fed 5.56 millimeter squad automatic weapon and charged with defending the other two squad members who wielded the latest generation FGM-148H Javelin fire-and-forget rocket-propelled guided missile.
The missile of the Javelin carries a tandem warhead with two high explosive sequential shaped charges focused by metallic cylinders to concentrate the resulting stream of high-velocity molten metal into a narrow diameter armor piercing lance. The first charge is intended to defeat any composite or reactive armor protecting the target. The second charge is then able to penetrate the target’s primary armor. The Javelin is designed to destroy enemy main battle tanks and, though not yet proved, is believed to be able to penetrate the thick frontal armor of even the Armada. However, the weapon’s primary attack mode against a tank is not a direct frontal trajectory; rather, it will climb immediately to five hundred feet and then scream down from above to strike the thinner topside armor of the tank.
Once launched the Javelin will home on an infrared designated target at two thousand miles per hour. The missile, with its seeker head, is fully independent, leaving the crew free to take cover, change position, or prepare another shot. Its flight time is less than two seconds out to an effective range of a mile. There were over a thousand such weapons in each of the new brigades. Now one such brigade was positioned across each of the four Russian axes of attack.
Supporting each of the new tank killer mechanized infantry brigades was a full regiment of one hundred tank killer helicopters, AH-1Z Vipers or AH-64 Apaches. Each of these was armed with an automatic cannon firing five hundred armor-piercing shells per minute and an air-to-ground missile system using a fire-and-forget laser target designation system. The helicopters were existing units previously attached to other more conventional ground forces but in a similar tank killing role to that with which they were currently tasked. The main difference was a new attack doctrine. Previously they would fly extended missions in a high overwatch position, attacking enemy armored units when called in to support U.S. infantry or armored units encountering enemy armor, or if they could spot enemy armor themselves.
In their new role, the tank killer helicopters were strictly limited to pop-up fire, drop-down tactics. Their air-to-ground tandem warhead high-explosive Hellfire missiles could be fired while the helicopter was rising or descending with equal accuracy as if standing still or moving forward. In this attack mode they would rarely be visible to enemy forces for more than a couple of seconds, not long enough to be targeted by counterfire from surface-to-air missiles. Their combat survival rate using the pop-up tactic was expected to be much greater. The pop-up tactic was only suitable for defense of a fixed position or line, not for a forward moving offensive, but in that anti-armor defense role, the new tactic was very effective indeed.
The NATO defense was of course not wholly dependent on the four new anti-tank brigades, though they were the primary shield against Russia’s overwhelming main battle tank advantage. There were also extensive conventional divisions from the many NATO countries but especially Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain, as well as the remainder of the United States Army Europe headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany. These forces had all been augmented over the last decade as Russian belligerence increased. They comprise NATO’s own main battle tanks, including the formidable though aging U.S. M1A2 Abrams tanks. The remainder of the NATO defense was positioned either to support the frontline anti-tank brigades or to defend other key locations. Multiple regiments of deadly 155 millimeter howitzers were positioned well behind the anti-tank brigades but close enough to reach several miles beyond the front lines of the four attack axes. However, among the senior NATO commanders, there was no illusion. If the four new and little-known frontline brigades could not stop or at least seriously cripple the armored spearheads aimed at the European capitals, it was unlikely that the remaining forces could repel the Russians.
By the time Lieutenant Aleksevich’s tank reached the top of the low ridge along with the other ten tanks of the 2nd company and the other two lead companies of the 1st battalion, the 4th battalion lead tanks were just crossing the Polish border, five hundred yards in front, having accelerated to their top speed of fifty miles per hour as soon as they had reached the bottom of the ridge. On both flanks the fifty-five tanks each of the 2nd and 3rd battalions were beginning to pour over the ridge and surge toward the border slightly behind the fourth battalion. It was an impressive sight — 165 T-14 Armada main battle tanks on a tight thousand-yard-wide front pounding across the two thousand yards separating the two ridgelines. Gregor’s heart swelled with pride. The assault appeared to be unopposed. Then all hell abruptly broke loose.
From his position, the lieutenant observed multiple discharge flares from the top of the opposing ridge all along the battalion wide front — more than he could count. He also noted several dozen helicopters come briefly into view from behind the ridge, spouting missiles and cannon fire briefly before disappearing back behind the ridge, and he could hear the shriek of heavy artillery rounds in the hundreds screaming overhead at the same time. Russian antiaircraft batteries positioned adjacent to his tank punched missiles and cannon fire at the helicopters, but none could establish a lock on their target before the helicopters ducked behind cover. Several surface-to-air missiles and a few thousand rounds of thirty-millimeter cannon fire flashed over the opposing ridge to fall harmlessly in NATO’s rear area.
Before Gregor could make sense of the scene in front of him, he, along with the other fifty-five tanks of the 1st battalion were ordered to attack, providing covering fire for the 4th battalion and then passing through to the point of the spearhead. As he ordered his tank down the ridge and onto the battlefield, the helicopters reappeared and the lieutenant suspected that the multiple large explosions on both flanks immediately to his rear meant the end of most of the air defense units supporting the regiment. Apart from that, the helicopters appeared to be ignoring the regiment of tanks racing toward their ridge. In fact, the Apaches and Vipers, with the long range of their Hellfire missiles, were concentrating their fire on the regiments to the rear of Lieutenant Aleksevich, while the NATO artillery fire bases, as well as cruise missiles from several submarines stationed in the Baltic Sea, were hammering the divisions lined up behind the 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division.
The U.S. brigade, with its supporting helicopter regiment, was spread out across a ten-thousand-yard front spanning a couple of miles on either side of the anticipated axis of the Russian attack, with additional conventional armored regiments extending the flanks yet further. This was to guard against a rapid flanking maneuver by the Russian armor, either prior to the initial engagement or as a response to the strength of the defense. Consequently, only about a tenth of the brigade was positioned directly in front of the thousand-yard-wide initial thrust by the Russian 1st Guards Regiment. This meant that only one hundred of the brigade’s one thousand anti-tank squads were on the ridgeline directly opposing the two hundred and twenty tanks of the 1st Guards Regiment. However, another one hundred squads on either flank were close enough to the Russian line of advance to bring their Javelins to bear on the tanks, especially once they closed to within a thousand yards of the ridge.
As Lieutenant Aleksevich raced toward the opposite ridge, he searched desperately for a target for his main gun to bring counterfire against the NATO forces that were wreaking havoc on his regiment. He sought a tank or any armored vehicle, but could find no such target either with his periscope set to a maximum magnification optical view or on the infrared receiver. He could occasionally glimpse a few dismounted infantry moving out of sight immediately after the bloom of a missile launch, but they were gone by the time he could traverse the 152millimeter cannon the necessary degree or two. He took to discharging the main gun at the top of the ridge even without a clear target and hosing the ridgeline with his
7.62 millimeter coaxial machine gun. Though he couldn’t tell himself, this tactic was actually quite effective. It kept the anti-tank Javelin squads hunkered down with much reduced opportunity to set up a shot on the rapidly approaching tanks. Had it been adopted by more of the Armada crews it would have made for a substantially more even outcome to the battle.
As it was, most of the young Russian tankers had their hearts set on knocking out one or two of the M1A2 Abrams tanks, or maybe a few of the U.S. Stryker – A1 light armored fighting vehicles. By the time the tank commanders and their company and battalion commanders recognized the need to suppress the U.S. anti-tank squads, it was too late.
The nearly three hundred Javelin squads within range of the 1st Guards regiment line of advance generally got off three or four Javelins each before the tanks closed to within five hundred yards of the NATO line of defense. It was a sophisticated weapon with very few misses and a high kill rate, even against the heavily armored Armadas. With roughly one thousand Javelins targeted at the two hundred and twenty tanks, the result was an almost complete decimation of the Russian tank regiment. Nearly all the Armadas took at least one hit and many took three or four. Even one hit was usually sufficient to disable an Armada, though a few that took a single glancing shot off the frontal armor were able to continue, and a very few, by the fortunes of war, managed to make it to the opposing ridgeline unscathed. Gregor Aleksevich’s tank was one of those. In no small measure, he was the author of his own salvation, having significantly reduced the rate of Javelin fire from his front.
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