The attack on Castlegate lasted less than ten minutes. It was a vicious attack that resulted in 14 NATO soldiers killed and 23 injured. The four attackers that were captured turned out to be Russian Spetsnaz soldiers; another 43 had died during the incursion. The Russians never penetrated the facility, though they were able to substantially damage the external communications ability of Castlegate, which temporarily shut it down as an alternate command facility.
High above the skies of Myronivka, not far from the Dnieper River, an American Northrop Grumman RQ-4 “Global Hawk” surveillance drone was loitering 10,000 ft. above the countryside when it detected the movement of multiple Russian ground units heading towards the various American armored and infantry units along the demarcation line. The information was immediately relayed to the various ground commands, alerting them to the Russian advance.
Major General Mueller, the American ground commander, immediately sent a flash message to NATO and US European Command headquarters, warning them of the hostile Russian movement, and relaying to HQ that he was ordering his units to engage them. “The Russians are clearly moving to attack my forces,” he thought. “I’m not about to be caught flatfooted, waiting for the Russians to fire the first shot. My units are going to engage those Reds as soon as they are within range.”
MG Mueller yelled out to whoever was within earshot in the headquarters building, “Everyone, get on your IBA and helmets! We need to get ready; the Russians are on the move!”
“Yes, Sir!” came the refrain, and the men and women around him quickly scurried around to put on their body armor and then pass the word along to everyone else.
The army engineers, realizing that hostilities were likely eminent, began to place blast barriers around the buildings on the military portion of the Kiev International Airport airfield. While their forces would not be safe from a direct hit from a Russian bomb, these blast barriers would provide protection from flying shrapnel.
The advance party of the 2nd Armored Division had just arrived and was in the process of offloading their Abrams M1A2 main battle tanks. They had 24 of them, along with a complement of 16 Bradley fighting vehicles for support. General Mueller saw what was happening and grabbed one of his officers. “Hey, I need you to run down to the battalion commander and tell him to get his tanks on the road to Pryluky airbase ASAP. 2nd Cavalry has spotted a heavy formation of T-90s, T-80s and T-14s gearing up to cross the demarcation line, and they will need immediate armor support. I know it will take them close to two hours to get there, so time is of the essence.”
“Yes, Sir!” replied the officer, and he ran off to notify 2nd Armored Division of their new orders.
While the “Global Hawk” was notifying NATO forces of the changes in the ground troops moving towards the demarcation line, a French-operated NATO E-3 Sentry AWACS was operating over west Ukraine to monitor changes in air capabilities. Suddenly, it detected the takeoff of 32 Su-34 “Fullbacks” (which are twin-seat, all-weather supersonic medium-range fighter bombers). The Su-34s were notorious and feared in the military world; they were large aircraft that carried a substantial amount of air-to-ground ordinance, perfect for providing air support under heavy enemy fire. The E-3 also detected the takeoff of 23 MiG-31MB “Foxhound” interceptors, all heading towards Ukrainian airspace at supersonic speeds in a standard Russian attack formation.
In addition to the attack aircraft, the E-3 spotted eight Tu-160 “Blackjack” bombers, coming in swiftly at low altitudes across Belarus towards Polish airspace. When the radar operator saw the Blackjacks, his stomach sank; they were more frightening to him than the fighters. They were a supersonic aircraft, intended to swoop in fast and low and deliver devastating conventional or nuclear attacks. NATO considered them to be a first-strike weapon, like the B-1 Lancer bombers.
While the group of radar operators began to identify and track all the inbound aircraft, one of the operators announced, “A new group of aircraft has just appeared.”
The Air Battle Manager, Major Brian Nicodemus, walked over to the young officer and looked at his screen. He immediately saw one, then two, then a total of four groups of 20 Tu-22M “Backfire” bombers, about a hundred miles behind the fighters, moving quickly towards Ukraine. The Backfire was a supersonic, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber, similar to the Blackjack. It also carried a large number of conventional bombs (or up to ten cruise missiles).
Major Nicodemus balked at the new information. “The Russians are clearly launching a full-out air attack against NATO forces… they’ve caught us completely flat-footed,” he thought.
Brian immediately began to alert the aircraft that were flying Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over Ukraine. There were four American F-15s armed with air-to-air missiles and six German Euro Fighters that were flying a combat patrol near the Poland, Belarus and Ukraine border. The E-3 immediately began to vector the American fighters towards the group of Fullbacks, since they were closest to them. The German Euro Fighters were vectored to engage the group of Blackjacks that were streaking in quickly from Belarus.
The French Commander on the E-3 also issued an alert to the two NATO airbases in Ukraine, along with the bases in Poland and Germany. The US had four F-22 Raptors on a five-minute ready-alert in the vicinity of Krakow, along with six F-15s at the Pryluky Airbase and another six Euro Fighters at the Kiev International Airport. In the next five minutes, NATO would have another sixteen aircraft in the air to meet the Russians.
For their part, the Ukrainian air force also scrambled their own MiGs and Su-27s to join the NATO aircraft. In short order, twelve Ukrainian aircraft would be in the air to help defend their country from what was now clearly a Russian invasion. Fortunately, the Ukrainians had also deployed nearly a dozen SA-10 air defense missile systems around their airbases and the capital of Kiev. These systems immediately began to engage the incoming Russian aircraft with support from the E-3s.
The key to air combat in the 21st century was the ability of an air force to leverage the immense capability of an AWACs system, like the E-3s. Operating an AWACs allowed the fighters to operate with their search radars off, meaning they emitted no radar emissions, which would normally give their positions away. The AWACs could use their powerful search radars and vector the fighters towards the enemy aircraft, essentially sharing their radar screens with the fighters so they could see what they were seeing.
What the E-3 did not detect, at least not right away, was the six Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighters that had taken off thirty minutes earlier from deeper within Russia. These aircraft immediately began to head towards the NATO and American E-3’s that were operating in the area. Their objective was to blind NATO and prevent them from coordinating a proper air defense while their Su-34s attacked the American ground forces and the Ukrainian air defense units. The Backfires and Blackjacks were going for the NATO airbases in Poland and Germany, hoping to completely eliminate NATO’s air power, which was their most potent defense.
As the French E-3 was alerting additional NATO fighters and vectoring in the ones already aloft, one of the radar operators saw a brief blip of an aircraft no less than six miles from their position. His eyes suddenly grew wide as saucers as he suddenly realized that the aircraft that had appeared out of nowhere had just fired two air-to-air missiles at them. There was no time to react, or even to try to evade the missiles.