Battlefield Ukraine

It Begins

Several birds were chirping in the nearby tree as a summer breeze moved the leaves in a hypnotic way. Technical Sergeant Jason Parker (“JP” to his friends and colleagues) turned away from his view of the nearby trees to put his cigarette out with his boot. Then he began to walk back to the drone trailer where he had spent most of his day. They had finally gotten things up and running about a week ago, just as the Ukrainian military operations started. It had been a very busy and frustrating week for many of the drone operators. On several occasions, they had spotted a cluster of enemy soldiers preparing to launch an ambush against the government forces. He had spotted individuals placing IEDs along the roads, but he was unable to directly engage the targets. Under the “normal” conditions he had become accustomed to in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, they would have engaged them with their hellfire missiles, but these were not normal conditions and they were not authorized to carry out direct kinetic strikes.

1^st Lieutenant Michelle Shay looked up as the door to their drone trailer opened, and saw that Jason had returned from his smoke break. “JP, we have another convoy getting ready to move. Can you do a quick scan of that village over there before they approach it?” she said drawing circles with her curser over the village in question. “Intelligence says that’s one of the separatist strongholds.” She was hoping this mission would go better than the last few had. The patrol they provided over-watch for on their last shift yesterday had been hit by several IEDs. Several people had been killed, and all they could do was watch.

JP sat down and got to work. As he began to analyze the various approaches to the village, he spotted several people crouched behind a small wall in front of a house that overlooked the main road. He zoomed in to get a better idea of what they were doing. “Lieutenant, take a look at this. It looks like one of those individuals there has an RPG. I’ll bet they have an IED planted somewhere down there as well.”

She squinted for a moment as she focused on the image. She saw it too. One of the individuals definitely had an RPG; it looked like they were setting up an ambush. She grabbed her radio to warn the command element, located a few buildings away. “Arch Angel, this is Angel One. We have a couple of individuals lying in ambush of convoy 017. We are sending you the images and coordinates. Please advise the convoy that they are heading towards a trap.”

“Angel One, acknowledged. We will relay your intelligence,” came the reply.

They quickly contacted the MRAP that had the American advisors in it. “Echo Five, this is Arch Angel One. We have probably ambush at grid… sending images of Tangos.”

Sergeant First Class (SFC) Trey Perkins looked at the image of the attackers. He could see two men, and one clearly had an RPG. “I don’t like this at all,” he thought. “Where are the IEDs?”

Sergeant Perkins signaled to the Ukrainian convoy commander for the group of vehicles to stop. Once they did, he showed the images and video to the Ukrainian Captain. “How should we proceed?” he asked.

SFC Perkins had deployed several times to Afghanistan and Iraq. Speaking from his previous experience, he advised, “I think we should approach the position with caution. We need to have everyone look for possible IEDs. Once we get in range of the .50 cals, have your gunner engage that insurgent hiding behind this wall.” He pointed to the location as he spoke. “Once that hostile is taken out, we should dismount your troops and have them fan out as we approach the village with the gun trucks.”

The convoy moved cautiously towards the village. As they reached the range of their heavy machine gun, one of the soldiers fired a short burst from the weapon, exploding the wall and killing the two attackers. The sixty soldiers traveling in the convoy dismounted from their vehicles and began to approach the village from several different angles. As the vehicles continued to move into the village, all hell broke loose. Despite the drones providing over-watch, they did not spot the series of IEDs that had been placed in the drainage system along the side of the road.

A total of four 152mm artillery rounds had been placed in the storm drains along the side of the road. As the Strykers and MRAP vehicles moved into the kill box, the separatists sprang the trap, remotely detonating the IEDs. The shockwave from the blasts threw several of the vehicles on their side, severely injuring the occupants inside. Shrapnel flew through the air, hitting the men who had been patrolling on foot next to the vehicles.

While the soldiers were still in a state of shock and trying to assess who all had been hit, the separatists opened fire. Many of the Ukrainian soldiers ducked for cover, while others began to provide medical attention to the wounded. Dozens of attackers suddenly emerged from buildings not far from the main road and opened fire on the remaining government forces with RPGs and heavy weapons. Their ultimate goal was to wipe out the government troops and steal whatever equipment they could before they dashed out of there.

The two American LNOs were a bit shaken from the explosion that rocked their MRAP, but otherwise unhurt. As soon as the shooting started, the two Special Forces soldiers grabbed their weapons and assisted the Ukrainians in repulsing the attack. The two Special Forces soldiers killed several of the separatists, rallying their Ukrainian partners until one attacker came around the corner of a building a block away and fired an RPG at the vehicle they were using for cover. The explosion killed them both instantly.

The ambush lasted nearly an hour, until additional government reinforcements arrived to help evacuate the wounded and secure the village. Many on both sides had lost their lives or been injured, however, the real tragedy of the day was the innocent civilians who had been caught in the cross-fire. In all, 18 townspeople had been killed and another 14 were wounded.

Brigadier General George Luka was not a happy camper as he sat in his office reviewing the latest after-action report from one of the US advisor teams. Yesterday’s attack had resulted in two MRAPs and two Stryker vehicles being completely destroyed, and the ambush killed nearly two dozen Ukrainian soldiers. Though he was upset about the loss of those men and women, Luka was probably more disturbed by the loss of the American Special Forces Captain and Sergeant First Class who had been killed in the ambush. In all, the US had already lost 13 advisors since the beginning of the military operations nine days ago.

From the very beginning, the Ukrainian forces had hit heavy resistance once they crossed the demarcation zone. In the first week, they encountered stiff fighting in the city of Dnipro while securing the critical bridges crossing the Dnieper River. However, once the Ukrainians secured the city and the bridges, they established Dnipro as their forward operating base for the rest of the operation.

It was not until government forces started to approach the outskirts of Donetsk that the fighting intensified to the point of forcing a stalemate. The rebel forces began to make heavy use of conventional and rocket artillery to hammer the government forces. This forced the Ukrainians to introduce attack helicopters and ground attack aircraft.

Unfortunately, the Russians had supplied the rebels with several 2K22 Tunguska anti-aircraft self-propelled vehicles (also called SA-19 "Grisons"). These were the Russians’ newest anti-aircraft vehicles, which had a mix of 30mm guns and surface-to-air missiles. The introduction of the SA-19 was a rude surprise to the Ukrainians, who quickly lost four Mi-24 “Hind” helicopters and five Sukhoi Su-25 “Frogfoot” ground attack aircraft. The stalemate and loss of critical aircraft and helicopters was causing some concern among the NATO advisors, especially since they were less than two weeks into the operation.

As General Luka was reading over the latest reports, he heard a knock on his door and looked up to see Chief of Station, John Williams. He waved him in and indicated for him to take a seat at one of the chairs in front of his desk. Then he asked, “What are your thoughts on yesterday’s attack?”

Luka looked at the COS, hoping he had better news than what this latest report indicated. “It looks like the Ukrainians got stomped… again,” he grumbled, disappointed in the ability of their proxy to be able to execute a battle plan and root out these attackers. The CIA and DOD had spent a lot of money and man hours training their counterparts. They had hoped things would have gone better up to this point.

“I do not think the Prime Minister can continue to sustain these losses without some sort of victory,” John said, stating the obvious. The civilian populace was growing concerned with the number of soldiers and civilians being killed, and so was the international community.

“I spoke with some folks from SOCEUR. They told me if the enemy air defense weapons could be neutralized, air support could start to make a difference and would turn the tide,” General Luka explained, hinting that he would like to use the Special Forces assets in Ukraine a bit more aggressively and liberally than just as advisors.

John thought about this for a minute. The challenge in using SF units in direct action was that if they get caught or killed, it would be a political win for the enemy. “If I could, perhaps we can use some SAD units… plausible deniability and all. We know where the vehicles are at, it’s just a matter of getting close enough to destroy them.”

General Luka did not like using CIA direct action teams for what was obviously a SF mission, but he also knew he was under strict orders to not widen the conflict beyond the use of providing military advisors. The fact that several military advisors had already been killed, some in direct combat, was becoming a problem. “I’m not comfortable with having your teams carrying out this type of mission on your own. What if we could get the Ukrainian Special Forces unit to accompany your men? This way, your guys are still in a ‘advisor’ role,” the general offered.

“Hmm… I think we could work with that,” John replied.