McMillan’s jaw dropped a bit. “It almost sounds like the President is siding with Duncan,” he thought. “I was sure he would side with the war hawks. Maybe I misjudged him.”
The President continued, “Before we deploy military forces and talk about an appropriate response, I want to know why our intelligence was so faulty as to not know that the Russians would, in fact, shoot our aircraft down. I’ve been giving the intelligence community a lot of slack since I became President. I’ve also caught a lot of heat and had to endure endless leaks from them. Now, they colossally screwed up another situation, and because of that failure, people were killed.”
The President turned to Mark Jones, the Director for National Intelligence, Wilson, and McMillan, and looked each of them in the eye with an uncomfortably penetrating stare. “I want to know who was in charge of producing these intelligence assessments. I want to know who made the call that the Russians were just blustering and I want to know why they made that assessment. This is a huge mistake, and I want people to be held responsible for it,” the President said angrily.
Since the President was sworn into office, his administration had had to deal with countless leaks from the intelligence community, and even some of his own staffers. From phone conversations between himself and world leaders to questions he had been posing to the community at large, the press had been beating him up for months as inexperienced and incompetent. At the same time, his own intelligence community had been doing their best to undermine him at every turn.
General Wheeler, the SACEUR, tried to change the topic. “Mr. President, if I may — I would like to order additional fighter aircraft to our base in Poland and Ukraine. I would also like to begin developing a plan to neutralize the Russian air defense systems, should it become necessary.”
The President assessed General Wheeler; he had only met the man once, but he held great respect for him. “Please proceed with making whatever plans you feel are necessary to protect our troops and our allies. I do not want anyone to engage the Russian military, or attack their positions unless I give the order. Until we figure out this crisis within our own intelligence circles, and Travis is able to get a response back from the Russians, I do not want to engage them.” Gates wanted to make sure everyone understood that he was not looking to escalate things any further with Russia.
As the meeting broke up, the military went into high gear, alerting various units of a possible deployment to Europe and potential confrontation with Russia. In Europe, General Wheeler had all US and NATO forces go to threat condition Delta. Additional F-16s were being scrambled to the US base in Poland and Ukraine.
Twenty minutes after the assembly concluded, the Secretary of State had a one-on-one call with his Ambassador to Ukraine. “Duncan, I want you to assure the Ukrainians that we are still standing behind them, that we are working out this situation. However, please ask them to halt their military operation in eastern Ukraine until we can get things sorted with the Russians. I don’t want them to do anything rash that might escalate the situation further. Also, good job in the meeting. The President needs people to give him good, frank advice. I need that as well from time to time,” he said, ending the call.
Volodymyr
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman was looking over an economic development plan the European Commission on Economic Development had provided to his office on how he could look to improve the farming and logging industry of western Ukraine. In general terms, it recommended massive investments in the infrastructure of the region; paved roads, additional rail lines, and a widening of bridges to enable heavy trucks and additional vehicle traffic. The report also had some excellent ideas on shipping management and ways to bring their crops to the market faster and to more markets outside of Ukraine.
General Popko rushed into the PM’s office and immediately interrupted his train of thought. “Mr. Prime Minister, there has been an incident with the Russians,” he said with a sense of urgency the PM had not seen often from Popko. He could tell something serious must have happened.
The PM stood up slowly, “What kind of incident?” He was not sure if he really wanted to know, but he also realized that he had better stay on top of whatever it was.
“About forty-five minutes ago, four NATO aircraft entered the no-fly zone that the Russians are trying to impose. There were two American and two German aircraft. The Russians hailed them multiple times, warning them to turn back; then they locked the aircraft up with their ground radars and warned them again. When the NATO aircraft continued to ignore the warnings, the Russians fired at them,” the general spoke quietly, almost as if he wasn’t sure to believe what he was saying himself.
“Did they shoot down the NATO fighters?” the PM asked. Suddenly, his stomach hurt.
The general nodded. “Yes Sir. They shot down the four NATO aircraft, killing two of the pilots. The other two managed to eject and were recovered by the search and rescue teams. The Russians also shot down all seven of the American and NATO surveillance drones.” Popko was in a daze himself; he was still trying to come to terms with what this all meant.
Groysman’s throat suddenly felt dry. He took a sip of water, and then asked, “What about a response? Did the NATO aircraft respond to the attack?”
“Once the Russians had fired on the NATO fighters, Allied forces fired four HARM anti-radar missiles towards the Russians in retaliation. Unfortunately, their missile interceptors shot all four missiles down,” the General explained. He was clearly angry that the Russians had committed this latest act of aggression.
Volodymyr’s thoughts began to race. “How will the Russians respond to this? How will NATO and the Americans react to this? What do I need to do right now to get things ready in case this escalates?”
“General, right now we do not know how NATO or Russia is going to act in response to this situation, and unfortunately, we are stuck in the middle. I want you to issue an order to all our units in the field to stand down military operations for the moment. I also want you to raise the alert level of the rest of our military. While I don’t want to antagonize the situation any further, we need to be ready in case the Russians respond by invading us or carrying out further attacks. Should NATO decide to attack Russia in response, we should also be ready to support them in that effort.”
JIOC
Lieutenant General James Cotton walked across the cobblestone pathway from the Headquarters building to the Joint Intelligence Operations Center (JIOC) building on Patch Barracks. He wanted to get the ball rolling on the latest orders from the President and the Pentagon. He had just returned from Kiev less than two weeks ago, so he had a good idea of what things looked like on the ground at the US/NATO airbase.
LTG Cotton had been the Deputy Commander of US European Command (DCOM) for roughly nine months. The DCOM typically ran EUCOM while the actual commander, who also wore the hat of NATO commander, worked out of NATO’s headquarters in Mons, Belgium.
LTG Cotton walked up to the second floor of the JIOC and entered the operations room. It was laid out almost like a college auditorium in that it had several rows of seats and tables that gradually descended to the first floor which had a small stage and podium. The wall, however, was fixed with nearly a dozen 72” TV monitors, showing various images. One of them was displaying a live radar map of the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, which was monitoring all of the military aircraft in the region, both Allied and Russian. Another screen was a video conference image between their room and Major General Richard Mueller, the US/NATO ground commander in Ukraine (he had just arrived on the scene a couple of days earlier as the US began to beef up their presence in the country). On another monitor, the Commander of US Air Force Europe, who was currently located at the Ramstein Air Force base, was joining in on the video conference. On a fourth monitor, they could see the Pentagon Operation Center, which was a buzz of activity. A fifth monitor was transmitting from the Combat Information Center (CIC) of the USS George H.W. Bush carrier battle group, which had just entered the Mediterranean a couple of days ago. A sixth monitor was showing the operations center at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE), where the military leaders of NATO were seated.