Battlefield Ukraine

by James Rosone

  Kersschh. General Nikolaev heard a sound emanating from his radio. He grabbed the device and smacked it down on the counter to “fix” it--surprisingly, his harsh methods worked.

  He heard the voice of Lieutenant General Mikhail Chayko, the Commander of the 1st Tank Army and the ground force commander for Russian Forces in the Ukraine, on the other end. “General Nikolaev, my forces stand ready to execute Red Storm,” he announced excitedly. “We will remind the Americans and NATO that Russia is not be pushed around.”

  “Acknowledged, General Chayko.” Nikolaev felt that the excitement was a bit misplaced; he was not convinced that Russia would come out ahead. However, he dared not utter even a syllable of dissent.

  Chayko’s voice suddenly dropped lower and became much more serious. “Please ensure we have the required air support so that my armor units have a chance,” he requested.

  “Understood, General Chayko. We will do what we can to support your troops,” General Nikolaev replied. He liked Chayko. He was probably their most capable military commander, which is why he promoted him to take over command of the 1st Tank Army and all ground units in Ukraine.

  As he concluded his conversation with Chayko, Nikolaev reflected on the situation. “Well, the US and NATO did bring this on themselves. They promised at the end of the Cold War not to expand their borders further east, and now they are walking all the way up to the Russian border. They routinely fly surveillance flights along our border, as if they have the right to interfere in our affairs. Now the US demands that we withdraw from Eastern Ukraine, despite the election results…I guess it’s time for them to be taught a lesson. The Russian bear still has teeth and claws.”

  “Do they realize that Petrov will not back down this time?” he wondered. “He has directed us to hit the Americans hard and fast; he wants us to bloody them quickly and then force them to withdraw from Ukraine. If our missions succeed, then the only ceasefire they will achieve will be when Moscow has secured all of Ukraine as compensation.”

  *******

  Colonel Alexei Semenov, the ground force commander of the Pyryatyn region, had arrived the night before with the new Armatas. So far, he was impressed with what he saw. The unit commanders had their men and equipment ready for war; all they needed was to be given the order to attack, and he had finally received the directive to strike the NATO positions.

  He found his executive officer and took him aside. “Comrade, our glorious leader has given us the order. We are to attack immediately.”

  Colonel Semenov felt a certain satisfaction as the words came out of his mouth. “There, I have done it. I’ve just issued the first combat order of what should be a short and victorious war.”

  A sergeant walked into the house that was being used as a command post; he made a beeline for Major Lavra and whispered something into his ear. A moment later, Major Lavra was getting the attention of Colonel Semenov. “Sir,” he said, “we’ve just received word that one of our scouts spotted a Ukrainian armored unit moving towards the demarcation line.

  He pointed to a location on the map board that was about twenty or so miles from their current location.

  Colonel Semenov studied the map board, trying to determine whether or not they could destroy the enemy by the end of the day. Then he grunted, and turned to Major Lavra. “Have you spoken with our air force liaison officer yet about our air cover?”

  Major Lavra nodded. “I just spoke with the air force LNO, and he said they are initiating their air attack shortly.”

  Lavra put his hand up as if he had suddenly just remembered something important. “Also, I just received word that some of our soldiers spotted a small reconnaissance drone flying over our area, maybe twenty minutes ago. Some of the soldiers are doing their best to follow the drone back to wherever it originated from. It was a small infantry style scout drone, which means there must be an American or NATO unit operating very close to our position right now.” Major Lavra may have delayed telling Semenov about this unfortunate bit of news because he was concerned that they may have been discovered before they could launch their own operation.

  Colonel Semenov just nodded with a slight smile. “Get our helicopters heading towards that Ukrainian armor unit. I also want you to dispatch one of the companies to track that American unit down and destroy them. We have to assume that the Americans know we are here, and now they know how many tanks and troops we have. We must move quickly now, before they can react to us.” He was frustrated that the Americans may already know his intentions before he had a chance to act, but if they moved quickly, he could possibly still catch them unprepared.

  *******

  In the fall of 2016, a group of Russian hackers operating out of Belarus, codename Marten, tested out a botnet attack on Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Modern technology had brought many marvels, such as turning on lighting from a cell phone, starting cars remotely, or monitoring closed circuit security footage 24/7, but each of these network-enabled items posed a potential opening for the hackers to exploit. Marten found a backdoor to utilize this weakness, and hit a French-based hosting provider named OVH with a record-breaking Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, flooding the network with over one terabit of data per second (1 Tbps.). The botnet attack was more successful than they had hoped, shutting down large portions of the internet for a short time. The plans for a more formalized Operation Redworm had been born.

  A year later, on a quiet Sunday morning in September, the head of Marten received a message from the Kremlin. He alerted all of his team members, bellowing, “Operation Redworm is a go! This is not a drill. It’s time to sow as much chaos as possible. Get to work!”

  The clicking of keys in the room immediately drowned out all other noise. They began scanning the web for unsecured IoT devices, and quickly hit pay dirt. The internet was covered with a plethora of IoT devices (printers, heating/cooling systems, vehicle dashboard systems, household appliances, etc.) that had not received regular patch updates to their security. Marten indiscriminately began taking control of these devices. Within 24 hours, they had collected a botnet army of nearly 18 million devices. One of the members broke the botnets down into smaller attack groups, so that they could create a series of attack waves. This would make it significantly harder for the US and NATO to respond when they eventually figured out what was happening to their IT infrastructure.

  With botnet army ready, Marten launched the first series of attacks. The first attack hit a group of internet service providers in the EU, UK, and US with an IoT botnet DDoS attack that was nearly 1 Tbps strong. The bandwidth that was syphoned away through this attack reached unheard of levels, degrading the performance of the internet in those regions to the point of making it unusable in those regions. Next, they infiltrated individual service providers servers, summarily locking them out using a crypto-locker tool they had developed.

  With phases one and two of Operation Redworm complete, Marten turned to an assault on the power grids in Poland, Ukraine, and Germany. The goal of that particular attack was not to destroy these power grids to the point of creating an unrecoverable blackout situation; rather, they simply wanted to take them offline for the first few hours of armed conflict, throwing the US and NATO forces into chaos just as they were trying to organize a resistance.

  While the attacks against the internet service providers and power grids were happening, a separate assault was launched against the US and NATO satellite systems. They attacked the Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) within hundreds of GPS satellites, causing them to burn out. Within minutes, the Russians had effectively destroyed the globe’s entire GPS satellite system (or at least, any GPS that was being accessed by the enemies of Russia).

  In Europe, there was an immediate effect of chaos as large-scale blackouts and internet outages prevailed. The US as a nation would not fully realize what had happened until later; it was still night-time in America, and most of its citizens were blissfully sleeping, unaware of the attack that had just
occurred.

  While skirmishes had taken place up to this point in isolation, historians would later argue that Operation Redworm was Russia’s opening act of war.

  Geben Sie Ihren Zweck

  Geilenkirchen, Germany

  NATO Air Base

  Since they had finally received their attack order, Major Victor Schepin’s Spetsnaz team was anxious to get things going. It was just about time for them to execute an attack plan that had initially been drawn up during the height of the Cold War. The men of his unit were spread out in three vans, and each van had four members armed to the teeth, ready to carry out their mission. They were going to hit the NATO base at Geilenkirchen, which was responsible for providing the bulk of NATO’s E-3 Sentries (commonly known as AWACS); this would be a critical base to incapacitate in the early hours of the war.

  Despite the Cold War having ended, the Russians still maintained a small contingent of Spetsnaz units operating in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. They even had a team that was still operating in the UK. At the height of the Cold War, there were over thirty individual teams operating behind enemy lines, ready to be activated and carry out their mission at a minute’s notice; now that number was much closer to twelve.

  Major Schepin checked his watch and saw that they had only a minute left. He signaled for the driver to proceed to the gate. While there was no official declaration of war between NATO and Russia yet, the guards at the NATO base were on alert and had been augmented by additional security. Instead of the standard three guards at the gate, there were now six of them. Beyond the guards, Major Schepin could see the runway and the aircraft hangers. Two of the E-3s were on the tarmac with a ground crew around them, getting them ready to fly.

  As their repair van approached the gate, they rounded some cement vehicle barricades that had been placed there to force vehicles to slow down in order to navigate around them. As they neared the guard shack, they readied their weapons. They would have to be quick and neutralize the guards before they could sound the alarm and alert the rest of the base security.

  Dieter depressed the button on his driver side window, lowering it as he approached the guard. “Papieren. Geben Sie Ihren Zweck,” barked the guard, asking for their identification papers and the purpose for their visit.

  Dieter smiled at the guard innocently enough, then, instead of reaching down to pull his papers out, he pulled out a pistol outfitted with a silencer from the center console and shot the guard right between the eyes. As the guard’s body collapsed to the ground, Major Schepin opened the front passenger side door, bringing his silenced MP-5 to his shoulder and firing a quick three-round burst. He successfully hit the guard nearest him in the upper chest, dropping the man immediately.

  The cargo door behind the driver opened up and two additional Spetsnaz soldiers leaped from the van, their silenced MP-5s at the ready. Each man fired several quick bursts at the guards in the guard shack before they could even react to what was unfolding. Dieter, the driver, fired several quick shots, hitting the final guard in the back as he was running to hit the alarm button on the side of the guard shack. In less than thirty-seconds, all six guards had been killed before they could alert anyone else on base or prevent Major Schepin’s team from gaining access to Geilenkirchen. One of Schepin’s men ran up to the guard shack and opened the gates so that the other vehicles in their group could follow them onto the base as well.

  Their next goal was to drive towards the flight line and destroy all seven NATO E-3 aircraft. The remaining eight aircraft of the squadron were deployed at other bases and would be handled by other Spetsnaz teams. One of the vehicles in Schepin’s crew headed towards the flight line to destroy the aircraft. The second vehicle headed towards the building where the crew were usually located. The final vehicle headed towards the fuel depot, where they would place explosive charges to destroy the airport’s fuel farms. The operation went off without a hitch.

  *******

  Near Castlegate

  Captian Hermann Wulf pulled out another cigarette and lit it, pulling in a long drag, letting the smoke fill his lungs as his body absorbed the nicotine it so desperately longed for. As he exhaled the smoke through his nose, one of his staff sergeants walked up to him, signaling he wanted a smoke as well.

  Captain Wulf tossed his pack to the sergeant and retrieved his lighter for him. “Many thanks, Captain,” the sergeant said as he handed him back his pack of cigarettes.

  “Are the troops ready?” Hauptmann Wulf asked. Their unit had been placed on alert twenty-four hours ago as the Russian NATO deadline neared. They did not know if the Russians would try to attack Castlegate, but the German government and SACEUR were not going to take any chances. They had moved Captain Wulf’s company to a position near the NATO facility to help beef up the security.

  Just as the sergeant was about to respond, the radio in their vehicle crackled to life. “We see a suspicious-looking vehicle from the right tower,” said one of the scouts, observing the only entrance to Castlegate.

  Wulf did not want his unit to draw undue attention or give themselves away, so he had placed a couple of soldiers in hidden positions, covering the various approaches to the facility. He also kept his armored vehicle hidden, only a couple of blocks away.

  Just as Captain Wulf reached for the radio to inquire what the scouts were seeing, they heard an explosion and then the unmistakable sound of automatic machine gunfire.

  Without thinking, the sergeant yelled out to the soldiers outside their vehicle, “Mount up!”

  Captain Wulf grabbed the radio and yelled, “All vehicles, converge on Castlegate!”

  He also made a quick call to their headquarters letting them know, “The facility is under attack!”

  The GTX Boxer armored vehicle lurched forward as the driver began to head towards the NATO facility. The rest of Wulf’s command quickly followed in their vehicles and raced to assist the soldiers who appeared to be under some sort of attack. It took less than three minutes for their vehicle to reach the facility and when they arrived, they could see four utility vans parked awkwardly near the road leading to the facility. As they moved past the utility vehicles, a barrage of bullets hit the armored shell of their vehicle, bouncing off harmlessly.

  The Boxer armored vehicle was unique in that it was equipped with a remote-controlled turret operated by a gunner within the vehicle. When the vehicle started to take fire, the gunner immediately began to look for where the bullets were coming from and started to return fire with his 12.7mm automatic heavy machine gun.

  As the vehicle came to a stop, Captain Wulf ordered the back hatch lowered, and eight soldiers immediately rushed out. The first soldier that exited the vehicle turned to the right of the vehicle and started to run forward, charging the attackers. He only managed to travel four steps before he was hit multiple times in the chest, collapsing to the ground, dead.

  Captain Wulf was the last man out of the vehicle. He could see that several of his soldiers were pinned down by nearly a dozen attackers who had turned their attention to focus on his force. The other attackers had continued to try and fight their way into the NATO facility. As the rest of Captain Wulf’s unit arrived, the attackers quickly became outnumbered and overwhelmed. Before long, the Russians were all either killed or captured.

  The attack on Castlegate lasted less than ten minutes. It was a vicious attack that resulted in 14 NATO soldiers killed and 23 injured. The four attackers that were captured turned out to be Russian Spetsnaz soldiers; another 43 had died during the incursion. The Russians never penetrated the facility, though they were able to substantially damage the external communications ability of Castlegate, which temporarily shut it down as an alternate command facility.

  *******

  Ukraine

  High above the skies of Myronivka, not far from the Dnieper River, an American Northrop Grumman RQ-4 “Global Hawk” surveillance drone was loitering 10,000 ft. above the countryside when it detected the movement of multiple Russia
n ground units heading towards the various American armored and infantry units along the demarcation line. The information was immediately relayed to the various ground commands, alerting them to the Russian advance.

  Major General Mueller, the American ground commander, immediately sent a flash message to NATO and US European Command headquarters, warning them of the hostile Russian movement, and relaying to HQ that he was ordering his units to engage them. “The Russians are clearly moving to attack my forces,” he thought. “I’m not about to be caught flatfooted, waiting for the Russians to fire the first shot. My units are going to engage those Reds as soon as they are within range.”

  MG Mueller yelled out to whoever was within earshot in the headquarters building, “Everyone, get on your IBA and helmets! We need to get ready; the Russians are on the move!”

  “Yes, Sir!” came the refrain, and the men and women around him quickly scurried around to put on their body armor and then pass the word along to everyone else.

  The army engineers, realizing that hostilities were likely eminent, began to place blast barriers around the buildings on the military portion of the Kiev International Airport airfield. While their forces would not be safe from a direct hit from a Russian bomb, these blast barriers would provide protection from flying shrapnel.

  The advance party of the 2nd Armored Division had just arrived and was in the process of offloading their Abrams M1A2 main battle tanks. They had 24 of them, along with a complement of 16 Bradley fighting vehicles for support. General Mueller saw what was happening and grabbed one of his officers. “Hey, I need you to run down to the battalion commander and tell him to get his tanks on the road to Pryluky airbase ASAP. 2nd Cavalry has spotted a heavy formation of T-90s, T-80s and T-14s gearing up to cross the demarcation line, and they will need immediate armor support. I know it will take them close to two hours to get there, so time is of the essence.”