Battlefield Korea

More Bad News

General James Cotton was not having a good day. The Navy had just given him a report on a second attack against the NATO convoy six hours ago. There was no way around it-it was appalling. A Russian Oscar II nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine had delivered yet another devastating attack against a desperately needed supply convoy. Not only had the Essex (a Wasp class Marine Amphibious assault ship) been lost, they lost two of the four roll-on, roll-off transports and two additional heavy transports. The loss of the sailors and Marines was bad enough, but the equipment loss would hurt them more.

General Cotton walked into the operations center to discuss the equipment and manpower issues with his operations staff and several officers from the supply and logistics group. As he sat down, a steward brought a fresh pot of coffee to the table, along with several mugs. The steward kindly poured the General a cup of piping hot coffee as the others joined him at the table.

Cotton daydreamed for a moment over his mug of java as he waited for everyone to file in. Once everyone was seated, he was jolted back to reality, and without even the usual pleasantries he blurted out, “How bad are these losses from the convoy going to be? What exactly did we lose?”

An American naval officer from the US Navy Military Sealift Command (who managed the logistics and supply aspect of Reforger) spoke up to answer this question. “The roll-on, roll-off ships that sunk were carrying a mix of Abrams battle tanks and self-propelled artillery guns, equipment that is typically too heavy to transport by air. We lost an entire battalion of Paladin artillery guns, and two battalions of main battle tanks. Intermixed with those armored vehicles was another 60 Stryker vehicles.”

Groans from the other officers filled the room.

“And the freighters? What did we lose when they went down?” General Cotton asked, wanting to get all the bad news upfront.

The naval officer shuffled through a few papers to find the one he was looking for. “The freighters we lost were transporting roughly 132,000 tons of munitions and 43,000 tons of MREs and other military equipment. It was roughly about 38 % of the munitions and 26 % of the MREs and other military equipment the convoy was transporting that we lost.”

The naval officer continued to be the bearer of bad news. “Then, there is the loss of the Essex; 346 Marines and 124 sailors were killed when the torpedoes hit. Roughly twice that number were injured. We ultimately lost the ship entirely. One of the other Amphibious assault ships sustained two missile hits, which killed another 160 sailors and Marines. It also destroyed nearly half of their helicopters when one of the missiles detonated inside the hanger deck. If those missiles had been the older Shipwreck missiles, the convoy probably would have lost a few more ships.”

General Cotton pondered the bad news. “These are some tough losses, but not insurmountable. The Navy is already hard at work getting Convoy Bravo ready to sail from New York Harbor in a few more days, and that convoy was going to be more heavily guarded than the last one.”

“OK, there is nothing we can do about the convoy,” Cotton said. “So, let’s focus on the other tasks at hand. What is the status of the counter-attack? Are we still on schedule?”

A Dutch officer responded to General Cotton’s question. “The German 1^st Panzer Division arrived last night and moved to the jump points this morning. The French 3^rd Armored Division will arrive tomorrow, and should be ready to join the offensive if we achieve a breakthrough-otherwise, they are going to act as the reserve force.”

A British general asked, “What does that bring our troop count to, with the French division?”

The Dutch officer looked at the unit strengths and did some quick addition. “It brings the NATO troop levels to roughly 68,000 troops, with another 53,000 Ukrainian soldiers.”

“What do we want to do with the units that broke out of Kiev?” asked the same British general. “There are around 7,600 NATO troops that made it out of the city, and roughly 19,000 Ukrainians. Nearly all those units are at 40 % or less troop strength though. How do you want to use them, General Cotton?”

General Cotton thought about that for a minute. “I want those units to return back to Germany to regroup and reequip. They’ve been fighting nearly non-stop since the start of the war almost six weeks ago. They need to be taken off the line for a while and allowed some time to rest.”

Cotton turned to his operations officer and added, “When those units get back to Germany. I want every soldier and officer given a seven-day pass of R&R. These men need to rest and decompress so we can get them ready for combat again. Make sure promotions and awards are handled, and give them top priority for replacements coming in from the US. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Sir. I’ll see to the orders myself,” the colonel answered with a smile, assuring the boss it would be handled. These guys were heroes in the eyes of the NATO leadership, and they planned on making sure everyone knew it, too. The NATO member states needed a poster child for victory, and it had been determined the group that broke out of the Kiev pocket was going to be it.

Turning back to face his air boss, General Cotton asked, “How are we doing with taking out the Russian SAMs?”

The British Air Marshal who was in charge of NATO’s air power cleared his throat before responding, “We lost 47 aircraft during the rescue operation, and most of the aircraft losses were due to Russian SAMs. These SA-21s are brutal; they are mauling our attempts to take them out. We are trying a couple of new tactics. For one, we’ve dedicated a lot more surveillance of the suspected sites. As we identify their positions, we are starting to use a lot more standoff cruise missile strikes against them. These strikes are forcing them to have to use a lot more of their missiles to try and intercept the cruise missiles, which is going to start having a supply and demand effect on them. We also aren’t risking aircraft when we do these types of attacks.”

“When it comes to wild weasel missiles, we are strictly limiting those now to direct air support missions. When we have a large air mission going, that’s when we have the weasels go in. We are working with a variety of Special Forces units to help us track down and then neutralize these sites. The SF teams are either calling in a cruise missile strike or just taking out the sites themselves; they’ve had some success disabling the radar systems with their .50 caliber sniper rifles.

The air marshal sighed briefly before continuing, “It’s hard going right now General, but by God, we’ll get those SAMs thinned out.”

General Cotton nodded. He knew it was going to be a tough road ahead gaining air superiority from the Russians. The US (and NATO in general) had woefully underestimated the capability of the SA-21. The US believed its electronic warfare capabilities would be enough to spoof the Russian SAMs, but within the first few hours of the war, they quickly learned how inadequate those defenses were-they were paying for it now.

Cotton tapped his knuckles on the desk as he thought of how to respond to the leaders around him. “I’m going to be straight with everyone,” he began. “I’m under a lot of pressure from Washington to hit the Russians and hit them hard. Aside from General Fenzol’s force busting their way out of Kiev, the Russians have been hitting us non-stop. The President wants us to start hitting back.”

He stood, looking each person in the eye as he tried to motivate them to action. “We have over 100,000 troops marshaled and ready. We are going to go ahead and move forward with Operation Thunder and try to push the Russians back to the Dnieper River. We’ve been planning this for a few weeks; now it’s time to execute.”