by Andy Farman
He punched a few more keys.
“Anyway, elsewhere in the PTO, 25th Armoured Brigade, 6th Armoured Cavalry Regiment and 51st Infantry Brigade arrive in Australia tomorrow night from Korea, they are light a good deal of equipment that was destroyed in place. 8th Fighter Wing, from Kunsan AFB, is now at RAAF Tindall in the Northern Territories, south of Darwin. They are sharing with 75 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. The Aussies there are flying F/A-18 Hornets; the 8th has two squadrons of F-16 Falcons, so ordnance is compatible. We got a lot of their equipment out of Kunsan on RAAF, Indonesian, RNZAF and Singaporean transports, as well as our own so spares and ordnance-wise, the 8th are okay.” The screen view changed to that of Australia and General Shaw continued.
“The Aussies found evidence of seven planned amphibious landing sites, all along the eastern coast of Queensland and New South Wales. Our 5th Mech will be arriving in Brisbane in seven days; the Australians want them based there, for the time being anyway. 25th Armoured Brigade, 51st Infantry Brigade and 6th Armoured Cav Regiment are outside Melbourne, MAC, the Singaporeans, Indonesians, and the Royal Thai Airforce are busting a gut ferrying ammunition and spares from the States to them. We are also assisting the Royal Singapore Air Force units that escaped being overrun on the first day, only by being in East Timor at the time, it’s a squadron of C-130s , a half dozen Chinooks along with a mixed bag of RF-5S Tiger Eyes, F-16C and Ds . They arrived with only what they could throw aboard or was hanging off the hard points.”
“Every little bit helps Henry…what are the PRC doing now, where are their forces?”
“Japan and Taiwan have been occupied, as has the Island of Leyte in the Philippines. Fighting is very heavy on Luzon, the PRC are about twenty-five miles north of Manila. The Filipinos are making them pay for every yard….but they are being ground down, the PLA are too big. Good news is that they didn’t get a foothold down south in the islands; the invasion of Cebu was defeated…utterly, with a little help from the Singaporeans who, quite by chance, were in the area at the time. It won’t end there though; the PLAN will try again. The second biggest island, Mindanao, hasn’t been touched…it’s got a big Muslim community and they have been trying for independence for years. I reckon the PRC are trying to strike a deal with the Muslim guerrilla forces, to join forces and attack the Philippine armed forces there from within and without on the promise of independence in return for base rights…at least until they own the Pacific and Asia.”
Taking a gulp of coffee the President shook his head as he listened to that last opinion and then interjected.
“If the Muslim’s have any sense they’ll see that a huge PRC presence will be even harder to kick out than the Fils, and they have no reason to trust China. If I were them, I’d throw in my lot with the Philippine government in return for independence when the war was won.”
“Do you want the bad news, Mr President?” General Shaw asked him.
“It would be pointless my saying no, now wouldn’t it?”
“We have lost contact with the enemy carrier group, since they launched their killer-sats our coverage has gone to hell. The PRC have launched another five of them...and four of ours and NATO’s RORSATs have now been taken out. However, the French have another three ready to go up at Guyana Space Centre, and we are launching three more on Titan boosters from Canaveral tonight. The F-15s are still carrying out launches against the enemy satellites, with about a 70% success rate. We have taken eight of theirs off-line permanently…so it is not entirely one sided Mr President.”
“Anything else major on that front Henry, if not then let us move on?”
The screen changed again, this time to depict the ETO, the European theatre of operations.
“The fighting in Belorussia has ended, just before dawn this morning radio contact ended with the Belarus armed forces. Radio intercepts would seem to indicate that the Belarus fought and died in place, there was no mention of prisoners either.”
The President shook his head slightly; not able to fully comprehend that human beings could treat life with such contempt. After a moment he spoke.
“It is curious, is it not, that they exchanged prisoners in Leipzig and those men of ours that they had were treated according to the Geneva Convention?”
“I would assume that the Russian airborne division’s commander was allowed to fight the battle as he saw it…kinda hard to enforce policy on a unit behind the lines.” The General brought up the map of Germany
“Anyway, we have noticed something odd in Germany…as you can see we have realigned along our new line, enemy recon units have already caught up, they are now probing, to gain Intel whilst the main forces catch up. Probably by this time tomorrow the assault will again be underway...but if you look to the rear areas sir, you will notice only a third of their available air have moved up in a position to give close support. We don’t know why, could be a problem with aviation fuel, ordnance or spares…I am a pessimist, that way I’m never disappointed, so I am betting it is something sneaky they are hatching.”
The President leant forward, looking hard at the screen and the military symbols upon it, as if trying to divine the secrets the other side held.
Pechenga, northwest Russia: 0530hrs, 10th April.
Security was tight for a radius of 100 miles around the cluster of airbases, total radio silence was being enforced and police, ambulance and even the taxis that had them installed, were ordered to switch them off. The Russians wanted no loose lips mentioning the aircraft that had flown in that night.
Across the border in Norway, the Norwegian signals intelligence analysts were alerted, not by any unguarded transmissions, but by the total lack of them.
NATO had been informed the day before of the signals blackout and the pieces fell into place; SACUER now had a good idea as to where the missing aircraft had gone. Either Russia was planning an invasion of Scandinavia, or they were intending to put submarines into the Atlantic once more, replacing those sunk by NATO.
The four divisions the present convoys carried were not enough to make a marked change in the balance of firepower in Europe, they were due in port late the following night or sometime in the early hours of the next day, but the four others that had just left on the new convoys could make the difference.
Britain’s principal fast jet trainer, the BAE T. Mk1 Hawk has a wartime role as a point defence fighter. The eighty-eight aircraft in RAF service were quickly converted to this war role when hostilities with Russia looked imminent. They can carry only two AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles on under-wing hard points, and a 30mm Aden cannon pod on its centreline hard-points, but they are extremely manoeuvrable.
At RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, the Red Arrows display teams aircraft were no longer wearing their red livery, and they along with No. 100 Squadron from RAF Leeming, near Northallerton in North Yorkshire received orders to fly to Andøya and Banak in Norway within two hours. With all RAF front line units fully engaged with events in Germany, the Hawks would provide local air defence to the Royal Norwegian Air Force’s maritime and anti-submarine bases, their ground crews and logistic support would follow soon after. 100 Squadron found themselves sharing space with Flyvevabnet airframes and crews; the Royal Danish Air force F-16’s of 727 Eskadrille had arrived from Skrydstrup an hour before they had.
The Charles De Gaulle was warned to expect an attack anytime soon and Spain’s VTOL carrier Principe de Asturias steaming off central Norway turned about and put the pedal to the metal, heading north to add her twelve AV-8B Harriers to the Task Force. The deck of the helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc was going to be very crowded, HMS Illustrious was too far away to be of any help but her Sea Harriers weren’t. The Fleet Air Arm pilots got to sample the not unpleasant aromatic mix of garlic and Gauloises cigarettes in her wardrooms.
Ordnance was going to be complicated for the Sea Harriers; they were going to be reliant on the Spanish carrier for reloads.
HMS Temeraire had been lurking in the seas northwest of Mu
rmansk to provide early warning for the North Cape Task Force since the day after the war broke out. She had accompanied Britain’s sole remaining diesel powered submarine, HMS Ulysses, standing off to seaward whilst the last of the Upholder class boats carried swimmers to within a mile of the coast, before moving further east, closer to the approaches of the Russian port. She now reported upwards of twenty fast attack craft, ten frigates and eight destroyers grouped off the coast.
Canada’s Victoria class SSK’s, HMCS Chicoutimi and HMCS Windsor along with the USS Twin Towers were released from convoy escort duty and headed north.
The sound of jet engines rolled across the sleeping countryside, six regiments of fighters, seven Regiments of fighter-bombers, four of bombers and the S37 Golden Eagles lined the taxiways of the airfields, weighed down with ordnance. The A-50 tankers and AWACs were already aloft, east of Murmansk but not yet radiating.
Off the coast, twenty-four Tarantula class missile boats in two ranks, five miles apart, had set off at midnight, making low turns in order not to broadcast their presence but they now opened their throttles. The twenty-three destroyers and frigates increased speed to twenty-four knots, their job was to act as a third wave if required and to occupy waters off the North Cape once the NATO ships had been sunk or driven off. Far behind them, emerging from the safety of the port came the submarines; they would not be taking part in the fight if all went according to plan.
The S37s headed east to top off their tanks before turning northeast, as they left the tankers the Backfires and three regiments of Flogger Js moved in to top off their own fuel tanks.
An A-50 had been on station at the Backfire and Golden Eagle holding area since midnight, trying to burn through the task force jamming whilst producing its own. Ideally there would have been more than one aircraft performing this task, but losses in the A-50 fleet meant that until the older Mainstays could be brought out of mothballs, they had to make do.
The remaining regiments that lifted off from the fields headed west with the fighters taking the high ground, and the fighter-bombers hugging the earth.
Back at Pechenga, airbase security had detected a burst transmission whilst the crews were still heading out toward the dispersal area and their aircraft two hours before. It had been only of one hundredth of a second duration but had given them a bearing of 312’, but nothing to indicate how far away. At the very least they needed another cross bearing to narrow down the location of the transmitter, so they drove out of the base to the northwest in a BTR-80 festooned with antennae. Logic dictated that if the transmission were anything to do with the base then it had to be within optical range, so out of sight of the perimeter a company of troops mounted APCs of their own and waited.
Sergeant Ramsey, and three marines from the SBS, Special Boat Squadron, had dug their hide into a steep section of hillside just thirty hours before. They had reached the site two miles from the airbase after a forced march, having been diverted from their task of watching for sign of an overland invasion of Norway.
Whilst submerged, HMS Ulysses had brought them in several days before, creeping slowly past the Russian coastal patrols with the RM commandos on its outer casing. They had then swum for the cliff face a mile off the submarine’s starboard side and scaled it before moving inland.
Digging the hide near the airbase had taken seven hours, carefully removing heather and turf before cutting into the hillside. The spoil was carried down to a nearby stream where the waters carried away the evidence, until they had just enough space for the four of them. A camouflage net was pegged firmly into place, braced with branches sawn off by folding saw, and the turf and heather replaced over it
Sgt Ramsey finished typing into a palmtop and pressed send when the wheels of the first aircraft left the tarmac, they had already sounded the alarm when the base had come to life and it had been obvious something major was afoot. With that out of the way the marines settled back to await the aircraft returning, when they would then send a damage assessment.
To the east of the marines’ OP a BTR-80 turned north, placing itself between the hill and the Norwegian border. They now knew to within a half-mile from where the transmission had originated, it was time to call in the beaters to flush the spy or spies into the open.
Heading west, nine regiments of Su-34s and Mig-31 Foxhounds headed for the northernmost Norwegian airbases at Bodø, Bardufoss, Banak and Andøya, the CAPs comprising of four F-16s turned in to intercept them.
From Banak and Andøya, two squadrons of RAF Hawks rose to meet them, with the Danes F-16s and the Norwegians out of Bodø.
The Russian fighter-bombers, three regiments each of Su-25 Frogfoot and Mig-27 Flogger Js made for Banak, Bodø and Andøya, with the intention of rendering the maritime, ASW and fighter bases un-operational. The mission of the Russian fighters was principally to prevent the NATO fighters from intervening in the attack on the Task Force, protecting their own fighter-bombers was secondary.
One hundred miles south of the Task Force, NATO JSTARS and AWAC had been orbiting for over a day with radars at standby, now they fired up those radars. French AE-6B Prowlers with the task force had begun active jamming two days before over a wider area than normal, denying the enemy a fix on the ships. Norwegian ground stations already had the inbound fighters and with their data link to the AWAC and JSTARS they also had the fighter-bombers winding their way through mountain valleys toward the targets, well inside Norwegian airspace.
The Su-25 Frogfoot fighter-bombers bound for Banak skimmed the Norway/Finland border, turning southwest with the intention of coming in on the RNAF Sea King helicopter base from the south. The Flogger Js on the mission headed northwest, dropping down to wave top level to cross Laksefjorden. On the western side of the fjord they turned southwest, over-flying the town of Veidnes as they flew down the valley that linked the fjords of Laksefjorden and the long Porsangen fjord which led to Banak at its southern end. As they emerged from the valley three of the Royal Norwegian Navy’s surface-to-air missiles, launched from fast missile patrol boats, brought two Flogger-Js down in the frigid waters.
Four shore batteries protecting the ASW helicopter base engaged the northern attackers with the NASAMS, surface-to-air version of the US AIM-120L. The Floggers’ low-level attack plan went out the window as they discharged flares, chaff bundles and went ballistic to escape the mountain edged confines of the fjord.
For the aircraft going after the more southerly targets, they infringed Swedish sovereignty by over-flying that country. The Swedes were not best pleased; their SAM batteries engaged the high flying fighters whilst their CAPs of Jas-39 Gripen’s got stuck-in amongst the fighter-bombers.
Russia had made a habit of violating Swedish territory over the years, and the Swedes had responded with diplomatic notes. The Russians had been betting that in a shooting war, the Swedes would not even put pen to paper.
For the first time since 1814, Sweden was at war.
With a massive air battle developing over Scandinavia, three of Russia’s S37s headed west on a heading of 220’, a course that would intercept the AWAC and JSTARS. The E-3 Sentry could not see them with its radars but it was watching them anyway via the E-8 JSTARS FLIR, forward looking infrared. The E-8 had no enemy vehicles to track, but in the cold northern climate its FLIR, which helped distinguish between dummy targets and the real thing, was watching three warm tracks appear over the horizon at sea level.
The Charles De Gaulle launched her Dassault, Rafale M and Super Etendards. The Rafale M was gradually replacing the ageing Dassault Super Etendard, but the carrier still carried eight and these aircraft hugged the wave tops as they raced east, seeking the Russian surface warfare vessels. Two pairs of Rafales were vectored onto the S37s whilst the remainder sat on deck alert or remained on CAP.
Sgt Ramsey was pulling his sleeping bag from his Bergen, when the marine he had relinquished the telescope to hissed an urgent
“Sarn’t!”
Around the perimeter of the airf
ield, all trees and brush had been cleared away to a distance of 400m, heading across this security zone now; Eight BTR-80s were making their way toward the hill where the marines lay. Ramsey was not a great believer in coincidence; he had a bad feeling in his gut as he looked east towards the horizon. In the next half hour the first traces of dawn would be appearing, he now planned to be well on the way to the Norwegian border by the time it was light.
“Pack up…leave your maggot Harris, we’ve been pinged!”
In under two minutes the OP was abandoned, Harris had unzipped his sleeping bag, pulled on his fighting order, picked up his M-16 and followed the rest out, leaving his sleeping bag as instructed. The team barely paused as they retrieved the four Claymore mines that had covered the front, flank and rear of their position. The ‘IRIS’ set and sensors, their infrared picket fence, were left behind with the camouflage net and thermal screen, time was of the essence, the equipment wasn’t.