“This also allows us to keep unit cohesion throughout the war. We won’t have units constantly losing good, experienced soldiers just when they are needed most. The Pentagon and I are in agreement that this will greatly cut down on the number of casualties as well.”
The President nodded his head in approval as did his NSA and the CJC. The rest of the Joint Chiefs also seemed reasonably pleased with the decision. That had been a major disadvantage during the Vietnam war; nearly all the experienced soldiers would rotate home and get out of the military, leaving just inexperienced junior soldiers who suffered a very high casualty rate.
Cyber-Warfare
Colonel Xian sipped on his tea as he observed his small cadre of hackers from his office, hard at work. The group, which mostly consisted of young men and women, sat there glued to their oversized computer screens with headphones on and energy drinks strewn about their work stations.
“Kids these days… sloppy and messy,” he thought as he looked at them. “If they were not such exceptional hackers, I would never tolerate such filth.”
Now that war had been declared against the Americans, his unit was free to carry out unlimited and direct cyber-attacks against a plethora of US targets. His specific unit had been tasked with going after the civilian sector of the US economy and making the daily life of Americans difficult. He had 36 highly-skilled hackers in his unit to accomplish this task, which he thought was more than enough. His first order of business was to break his team down into smaller groups and assign them specific regions in America to target. Their main targets were the American entertainment sector and the transportation industry, areas that continually lagged in cyber defense.
One group of hackers was specifically causing problems for Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube streaming services, hitting them continually with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and other malicious activity. A different group was hacking into various small towns across the US, shutting down traffic cameras or changing commuter rail times so that people would show up after the trains had already left. Their mission was to cause general chaos and anxiety for the American civilian population and let the people of the United States know that China, though many thousands of miles away, could reach out and touch them wherever they lived. Judging by the comments they were seeing on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media platforms they monitored, their attacks were having the desired effect. People were becoming increasingly angry about their mundane, boring online lives being interrupted.
As satisfying as it was to know his team was impacting the daily lives of the enemy, he wished his team was able to carry out more malevolent types of attacks, like shutting down the US electrical grid, but he had been warned to not even try that. His leadership feared that if they succeeded in taking the country’s grid down, the Americans would retaliate and do the same to China. As much as he hated to admit it, China had grown just as dependent on electronics and the power grid as the US had. It was almost as if an unspoken mutually assured destruction (MAD) doctrine had been implemented between the warring factions. There were still areas that were off limits, even during a time of war. After President Gates nuked Shenyang, the Chinese leadership was hesitant to test him further by straying from the unofficial electronic détente.
Just as he was about to walk out of his office to check on one of his hacker teams, the building suddenly shook violently, throwing him to the ground. In a fraction of a second, he saw the ceiling above him collapse down on top of him and his fiefdom, just as a large fireball consumed them all. Unbeknownst to Colonel Xian and his hacker group, the National Security Agency had acquired their physical location and sent that data over to the Air Force and Navy. A B-2 bomber, who had been carrying out a strike against a rail bridge nearby, was redirected to drop a JDAM on the Agricultural Bank of China. Within seconds of the blast, a myriad of persistent cyber-attacks taking place across the US suddenly ceased.
A Desperate Fight
The sounds of heavy machine gun fire and various explosions beat out a deadly rhythm in the distance as US and Russian forces continued to clash near the outskirts of the capital. As Major General Austin walked up the steps to the City Hall building, he could see the exterior of the building had been scarred by a few nearby explosions and riddled with bullets. Most of the glass windows had also been blown out. When his forces entered the city, a small contingent of Belarusian soldiers had tried to prevent the Americans from capturing it, but that fight had ended quickly and with deadly results for the soldiers who thought they could prevent the 4th Infantry Division from securing the city.
As the broken glass crunched against the boots of General Austin, he saw his staff hard at work, getting the new headquarters building set up. The last two days had been a mad dash to capture the city and cut off the Russian supply lines. The United States’ surprise attack into Belarus had caught the Russians off guard, and they were playing defense now. The rest of Three Corps and the Polish divisions had the Russian 6th Tank Army fully engaged further south, and now it was time to force them to surrender or slaughter them on the battlefield.
“What’s that status of that Russian airborne division at the edge of the city?” General Austin asked his G3.
“Colonel Pippen’s brigade is engaging them now,” the operations officer began. “They have that Spetsnaz brigade pinned down near Minsk International Airport. There is a lot of heavy fighting in that area. Colonel Pippen wants to know if we can give him more artillery support while his brigade continues to box them in.”
General Austin just nodded; they needed to keep those Spetsnaz guys cornered in the airport region. If they broke out into his rear area, they could cause him a lot of problems. It was foolish of the Russian commander to drop nearly his entire brigade on the airport without trying to also secure the nearby villages. They were paying for that miscalculation now.
“Where is the 3rd Armor Brigade at now?” asked Austin, hoping they had finally made contact with the Russian paratroopers that had been dropped behind his forces near Maryina Horka. If they were able to get themselves organized, they could pose a serious problem to his hold on Minsk.
“Colonel Eddy says they should be engaging the paratroopers within the next 30 minutes. His lead elements have already started to call in a series of artillery strikes. He did ask if there would be any air support available. What should I tell him?” asked the same operations officer.
Austin turned to his Air Force liaison officer (LNO) for an answer on the air situation. “We should have six F-16s on standby for air support operations within an hour. They will be in orbit over our current position for roughly 35 minutes before they need to return home for fuel. We also have six F-15s, which will stay in continuous orbit to provide fighter cover.”
“I thought we would have more aircraft than that for close air support,” said one of the other operations officers in response to what their air LNO just told them. They had been promised a lot more air support than what was apparently being provided.
“We have more aircraft in the area, but they are performing wild weasel missions, going after the SA-10s and SA-21s. We have to keep the Russian air defense suppressed or we won’t have any air support,” retorted the air LNO.
Holding up a hand to stop the back and forth, General Austin replied, “Send the F-16s to support Colonel Eddy’s brigade. We’ll use our aviation brigade to support Colonel Pippen’s brigade at the airport. Tell 1st Stryker brigade to be ready to roll to either position if additional troops are needed.”