by James Rosone
The President nodded and appeared impressed with his background so far.
Duncan continued, “The Russians view our involvement in the Ukraine as encroaching on their territory and interests, especially when we signed that ten-year lease on the Pryluky Airbase outside of Kiev four months ago. It would be like Russia signing a military lease with Tampico, Mexico, less than fifty-miles from the US border.”
Duncan knew he needed to get to his main point, but he also needed to set the context. “Mr. President, at the end of the Cold War, America and NATO agreed that we would not expand the NATO borders closer to Russia. Throughout the late 1990s, and then through the 2000s and 2010s, the US and NATO broke that deal time and time again. We accepted the Baltic States into NATO, then Poland, Hungary, and Romania. We even tried to get the Republic of Georgia to join.”
“With the Ukraine interested in joining the European Union, if their application were accepted, then joining NATO would be a forgone conclusion. Mr. President, America broke our deal with Russia, and Petrov sees the continued advance of American bases ever closer to their border as a direct threat. I believe that President Petrov has placed a line of no-return over Ukraine. He chose to implement and enforce this no-fly zone after our raid on their Special Forces compound. If we push Moscow further, I am confident the Russians will escalate this conflict, which is something none of us want to see,” Duncan said, hoping that he had not pushed things too far. He knew he was essentially speaking against what most of the President’s advisors were telling him, but he felt he had an obligation to give the President the best advice possible, even if Gates did not like or agree with him.
Tom McMillan jumped right in after Duncan had finished speaking, angrily asserting, “With respect, Mr. Ambassador, whose side are you on?! It sounds like you believe we have brought this upon ourselves and we should just back down and give Petrov what he wants.” His voice was dripping with disdain.
Before anyone else could add more to the discussion, the President interrupted to say, “Ambassador Rice, thank you for your candid and frank opinion. I am still a bit new to the history of Russia and NATO’s past dealings, but I can see how the Russians may perceive our new base as a direct threat to them.”
McMillan’s jaw dropped a bit. “It almost sounds like the President is siding with Duncan,” he thought. “I was sure he would side with the war hawks. Maybe I misjudged him.”
The President continued, “Before we deploy military forces and talk about an appropriate response, I want to know why our intelligence was so faulty as to not know that the Russians would, in fact, shoot our aircraft down. I’ve been giving the intelligence community a lot of slack since I became President. I’ve also caught a lot of heat and had to endure endless leaks from them. Now, they colossally screwed up another situation, and because of that failure, people were killed.”
The President turned to Mark Jones, the Director for National Intelligence, Wilson, and McMillan, and looked each of them in the eye with an uncomfortably penetrating stare. “I want to know who was in charge of producing these intelligence assessments. I want to know who made the call that the Russians were just blustering and I want to know why they made that assessment. This is a huge mistake, and I want people to be held responsible for it,” the President said angrily.
Since the President was sworn into office, his administration had had to deal with countless leaks from the intelligence community, and even some of his own staffers. From phone conversations between himself and world leaders to questions he had been posing to the community at large, the press had been beating him up for months as inexperienced and incompetent. At the same time, his own intelligence community had been doing their best to undermine him at every turn.
General Wheeler, the SACEUR, tried to change the topic. “Mr. President, if I may--I would like to order additional fighter aircraft to our base in Poland and Ukraine. I would also like to begin developing a plan to neutralize the Russian air defense systems, should it become necessary.”
The President assessed General Wheeler; he had only met the man once, but he held great respect for him. “Please proceed with making whatever plans you feel are necessary to protect our troops and our allies. I do not want anyone to engage the Russian military, or attack their positions unless I give the order. Until we figure out this crisis within our own intelligence circles, and Travis is able to get a response back from the Russians, I do not want to engage them.” Gates wanted to make sure everyone understood that he was not looking to escalate things any further with Russia.
As the meeting broke up, the military went into high gear, alerting various units of a possible deployment to Europe and potential confrontation with Russia. In Europe, General Wheeler had all US and NATO forces go to threat condition Delta. Additional F-16s were being scrambled to the US base in Poland and Ukraine.
Twenty minutes after the assembly concluded, the Secretary of State had a one-on-one call with his Ambassador to Ukraine. “Duncan, I want you to assure the Ukrainians that we are still standing behind them, that we are working out this situation. However, please ask them to halt their military operation in eastern Ukraine until we can get things sorted with the Russians. I don’t want them to do anything rash that might escalate the situation further. Also, good job in the meeting. The President needs people to give him good, frank advice. I need that as well from time to time,” he said, ending the call.
Volodymyr
Kiev, Ukraine
Office of the Prime Minister
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman was looking over an economic development plan the European Commission on Economic Development had provided to his office on how he could look to improve the farming and logging industry of western Ukraine. In general terms, it recommended massive investments in the infrastructure of the region; paved roads, additional rail lines, and a widening of bridges to enable heavy trucks and additional vehicle traffic. The report also had some excellent ideas on shipping management and ways to bring their crops to the market faster and to more markets outside of Ukraine.
General Popko rushed into the PM’s office and immediately interrupted his train of thought. “Mr. Prime Minister, there has been an incident with the Russians,” he said with a sense of urgency the PM had not seen often from Popko. He could tell something serious must have happened.
The PM stood up slowly, “What kind of incident?” He was not sure if he really wanted to know, but he also realized that he had better stay on top of whatever it was.
“About forty-five minutes ago, four NATO aircraft entered the no-fly zone that the Russians are trying to impose. There were two American and two German aircraft. The Russians hailed them multiple times, warning them to turn back; then they locked the aircraft up with their ground radars and warned them again. When the NATO aircraft continued to ignore the warnings, the Russians fired at them,” the general spoke quietly, almost as if he wasn’t sure to believe what he was saying himself.
“Did they shoot down the NATO fighters?” the PM asked. Suddenly, his stomach hurt.
The general nodded. “Yes Sir. They shot down the four NATO aircraft, killing two of the pilots. The other two managed to eject and were recovered by the search and rescue teams. The Russians also shot down all seven of the American and NATO surveillance drones.” Popko was in a daze himself; he was still trying to come to terms with what this all meant.
Groysman’s throat suddenly felt dry. He took a sip of water, and then asked, “What about a response? Did the NATO aircraft respond to the attack?”
“Once the Russians had fired on the NATO fighters, Allied forces fired four HARM anti-radar missiles towards the Russians in retaliation. Unfortunately, their missile interceptors shot all four missiles down,” the General explained. He was clearly angry that the Russians had committed this latest act of aggression.
Volodymyr’s thoughts began to race. “How will the Russians respond to this? How will NATO and the Americans react to this? What do I
need to do right now to get things ready in case this escalates?”
“General, right now we do not know how NATO or Russia is going to act in response to this situation, and unfortunately, we are stuck in the middle. I want you to issue an order to all our units in the field to stand down military operations for the moment. I also want you to raise the alert level of the rest of our military. While I don’t want to antagonize the situation any further, we need to be ready in case the Russians respond by invading us or carrying out further attacks. Should NATO decide to attack Russia in response, we should also be ready to support them in that effort.”
JIOC
Stuttgart, Germany
US European Command
Joint Intelligence Operations Center
Lieutenant General James Cotton walked across the cobblestone pathway from the Headquarters building to the Joint Intelligence Operations Center (JIOC) building on Patch Barracks. He wanted to get the ball rolling on the latest orders from the President and the Pentagon. He had just returned from Kiev less than two weeks ago, so he had a good idea of what things looked like on the ground at the US/NATO airbase.
LTG Cotton had been the Deputy Commander of US European Command (DCOM) for roughly nine months. The DCOM typically ran EUCOM while the actual commander, who also wore the hat of NATO commander, worked out of NATO’s headquarters in Mons, Belgium.
LTG Cotton walked up to the second floor of the JIOC and entered the operations room. It was laid out almost like a college auditorium in that it had several rows of seats and tables that gradually descended to the first floor which had a small stage and podium. The wall, however, was fixed with nearly a dozen 72” TV monitors, showing various images. One of them was displaying a live radar map of the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, which was monitoring all of the military aircraft in the region, both Allied and Russian. Another screen was a video conference image between their room and Major General Richard Mueller, the US/NATO ground commander in Ukraine (he had just arrived on the scene a couple of days earlier as the US began to beef up their presence in the country). On another monitor, the Commander of US Air Force Europe, who was currently located at the Ramstein Air Force base, was joining in on the video conference. On a fourth monitor, they could see the Pentagon Operation Center, which was a buzz of activity. A fifth monitor was transmitting from the Combat Information Center (CIC) of the USS George H.W. Bush carrier battle group, which had just entered the Mediterranean a couple of days ago. A sixth monitor was showing the operations center at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE), where the military leaders of NATO were seated.
“Everyone, listen up,” barked General Jack Wheeler, trying to get everyone’s attention. “I just finished speaking with the President, and he has authorized us to move all US and NATO forces to Threat Condition Delta. He has further directed me to take whatever measures are deemed necessary to protect our forces, short of engaging the Russians. We are authorized to defend ourselves if fired upon, but again, but we are not to provoke the Russians.”
Wheeler paused for a moment and surveyed the audience; he definitely had everyone’s attention. “I’m directing the Bush carrier battle group to take up position in the Black Sea. Should the situation calm down, I will redirect the battle group to the eastern Mediterranean to continue with their previous mission.” Should things heat up with the Russians, having the Bush carrier group in the Black Sea would provide NATO with not just additional combat aircraft, but several ships capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. The 3,500 Marines accompanying the battle group would also come in handy should they need additional ground forces.
General Wheeler directed his attention to the US Air Force Europe Commander. “I want the Air Force to immediately start flying Combat Air Patrols (CAP) over our major NATO bases. I want the F-35s armed and on ready alert to go after those SA-10s and SA-21 sites, if we are given the go order. I also want our AWACs up and running around the clock--we need those eyes in the sky. Until we are told otherwise, I want our air force to be on a war footing, ready to respond to any further Russian aggression,” he directed.
General Wheeler then looked at General Cotton and said, “I want the 2nd Cavalry Regiment issued alert orders and ready to deploy as a brigade within 48 hours to Kiev. Tell them that if they are given the order, they will have 24 hours to arrive in country and to plan.” Several of the colonels in the JIOC with General Cotton were taking copious notes as they began to dispatch orders to their subordinates to get things moving.
The meeting went on for another hour as General Wheeler continued to issue orders, bringing NATO and US Forces to the highest state of readiness since the Cold War. Poland, Germany, and the UK all began to scramble their air forces, providing combat air patrols over critical NATO bases and ports.
Mobilization
Rostov, Russia
While NATO began to mobilize their forces in response to the shoot down of their aircraft, the Russians began to move their own forces to the border of Ukraine in preparation for the next phase of their operations.
Major General (MG) Aleksandr Chayko was walking through the marshaling point, viewing the various vehicles of the 137th Reconnaissance Battalion, which would be responsible for leading the way during the next phase of Operation Red Storm. MG Chayko had taken over command of the 4th Guard’s elite “Kantemirovskaya” Tank Division roughly seven months ago, at the outset of Operation Red Storm. Since taking over command, he had been given unfettered resources to get his command ready for direct combat against NATO, should the need arise. His division was equipped with 320 T-80U main battle tanks (MBTs), 600 BMPs (Russian infantry fighting vehicles) and BTR infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), 130 self-propelled artillery guns and 12 multiple rocket launcher vehicles. As he toured the facilities and saw the various machines, carefully cleaned and maintained by his men, he was proud to be leading this elite armored division. However, he wished they had more of the modern, up-to-date equipment that they would need in order to defeat what everyone thought of as an undefeatable army.
MG Chayko took assessment of what would make the biggest difference in their fight, and then sent a message to his direct superiors, the Commander of the 1st Tank Army and the General of the Army. He requested to replace as many of his T-80s as possible with the newer T-14 Armata MBTs and T-15 IFVs. These were the most powerful tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in the world, and clearly superior to the American Abrams and other NATO tanks. Despite the Russian defense industry moving to full production of the Armata line of vehicles, they had only been able to field roughly 120 of the T-14s and 65 of the T-15s. All of them had been sent to the 4th Guard’s Division to be swapped out with the T-80s and BMP-2s. Chayko needed all of his divisions to be fortified with the newest equipment available as they readied for war.
One of the new tools his division had was a series of drones that had just been introduced to the Army. The ZALA was a small micro-drone used by his reconnaissance units and the infantry; it would provide them with exceptional real-time intelligence as they advanced forward.
However, the crown jewel of the new drones was the Zhukov. It was a rather large drone, with a sleek futuristic-looking design that looked like something out of a Hollywood movie with its tilt rotors. The Zhukov could perform a multitude of functions, ranging from surveillance to tank hunter, and it could also be used for precision strikes. In addition, it was fast…it could travel up to 190 mph with a range of 320 miles. Because of its tilt rotor propulsion, it was very maneuverable compared to a traditional drone, though it could still be shot down by a conventional aircraft or air defense system. The Zhukov carried six AT-15 Springer anti-tank missiles, similar to the American Hellfire missiles. What made the Zhukov so deadly was that in addition to the anti-tank missiles, it could also be fitted with air-to-air and anti-ship missiles. This made the drone a triple threat against the ground, air and naval forces. His division had nearly two dozen of them available, and he planned on using every one of them when t
he time came.
Ever since he had taken command and been read in on Operation Red Storm, Chayko began to drill his troops mercilessly. They received increased time at the rifle and tank ranges, and they began to conduct rigorous training in urban warfare. Some of the best young officers and Non-commissioned Officers (NCOs) across the army had been transferred from other divisions across the army to fill his ranks. He also began to push his men physically, insisting that they become as physically fit as possible in the lead-up to the start of the operation.
Chayko knew his division was going to be the lead division to head into Ukraine, and if there were a confrontation, they would be the first unit to encounter it. Aleksandr thought the plan was bold, but highly risky. Invading Ukraine and capturing territory would not be hard; holding it against a NATO counterattack, should one come, would be the challenge. The entire plan counted on the Americans and NATO agreeing to the new Ukrainian border and not risking a larger war.
As his reconnaissance unit finished their final preparations, he felt excited and anxious. “I wish I could be with them as they cross the border,” he thought, “but whether or not I like it, my place is here at the headquarters unit, managing the battle.”
Pulling the Trigger
Moscow, Russia
Kremlin, Office of the President
As President Petrov surveyed the faces of the advisors seated at the conference table before him, he felt confident in what he was about to say next. “Gentlemen, it is now time to initiate Operation Red Storm,” he announced. “Our military is in position, and so are our political operatives throughout eastern Ukraine. Our agitators are going to start their operation in Kiev tomorrow morning.”