It was still dicey providing air support to the infantry. The F41s could operate at a higher altitude and because of their speed and stealth, the enemy laser and Surface to Air Missile (SAM) batteries were useless against them. The F41s were attacking every laser battery they could find, but they were never going to get them all…the PLA had tens of thousands of SAMs, not to mention shoulder-fired missiles, which were also able to pack a punch. In either case, the invasion was going to be costly.
******
General Tyler Black walked into the operations center and went straight for the coffee stand. He had been awake for nearly twenty hours after visiting several of the battalions of newly-arrived soldiers. He had made it a point to spend at least three days a week touring the various battalions, talking to the soldiers, sergeants and junior officers to get a feel for the mood of the soldiers and their morale. He tried to offer words of encouragement and give them hope that the war was finally ending. He told them the President and General Gardner were in negotiations with the Chinese government, but if they did not surrender, he expected them to do their duty and bring this war to an end.
The war in Alaska had taken a lot from General Black. He had lost so many soldiers, and ultimately, they still lost. If it had not been for the Navy, they might still be fighting the Chinese there. He wanted payback for the invasion of America. He wanted payback for the Chinese providing all the weapons to the IR and starting this war. Too many young men and women had died. Too many more were still going to die if President Stein ordered them to invade.
As he stood there for a minute holding his coffee, he lifted it up to his nose and took a big sniff, letting the aroma fill his lungs before he took a long sip. In seconds, he felt the warmth of the liquid move down into his body; within minutes, he could already start to feel the caffeine slowly starting to kick in. Once he had his fix, he looked around to see if he could find General Gardner.
General Black spotted him talking to one of the Air Force generals and began to walk towards him. He had just finished up his conversation when he saw him approaching. Gardner and then extended his hand, “General Black, it’s good to see you. We have lots to discuss,” he said.
They walked down the hallway towards General Gardner’s office, which sat just off of the operations center. Gardner liked to be near the heart of the war, which these days meant being near the operations center, which was filled with TV monitors of drone feeds, headcams and an endless feed of data from all sorts of sensors and maps.
As they sat down to talk, General Black was the first to speak. “The troops are in high spirits. They are eager to get this fight going, if that is what it’s going to come down to.”
General Gardner smiled for a second as he replied, “That’s good to hear, Tyler.” His face then reverted into a stone-cold, serious expression. “I just got done talking with the President and the National Security Council about twenty minutes ago. We’ve been given the order. We are to begin preparations to invade.”
He paused for a minute to let his long-time friend collect his thoughts before he continued, “The President has given me some leeway in when we can begin the operation, but he wants it to begin within the month. We can pick the date, time and location, but he wants us to move forward with the four-pronged approach we briefed him on.” General Gardner was somber. This was a big decision. They were about to commit millions of soldiers to one last major campaign of the war.
The two generals had known each other on and off again for the last fifteen years, but had really become close over these past five months. When General Gardner was given his fifth star, he immediately requested General Black to be his field commander. General Gardner knew that he was not going to be able to be at the front leading his soldiers as much as he wanted to, and he needed someone he could trust to be in that position for him. He had seen how Black had fought tooth and nail against the Chinese, and he admired that. He had finally found someone as aggressive as he was.
General Black took a deep breath in and then puffed it out as if he were blowing out an imaginary candle. “This is going to be a tough one, Gary. Have you already determined which front we will hit first and what troops we are going to use?”
“Yes. We are going to go after Shanghai. Using the Raptor troops, I want them to hit Nantong first, then cross the Yangtze River and capture Changzhou. I want that area completely sealed off. Then I want to use our airborne and heliborne troops to hit Shaoxing and drive towards Hangzhou on foot with the Wolverines. They need to move fast and secure the docks and the airports. Once the docks are secured, you need to get reinforcements into those guys quick and firm up their position. We are not going to attack Shanghai right away. I want to get the area completely surrounded and cut off from further supply,” Gary explained as he showed Tyler the plan on his tablet map. He went over the numbers of troops, timeline for reinforcements, number of aircraft assigned for ground support as well as helicopters and Razorbacks available. He also went over the direct fire support the Navy would be providing with their battleships.
General Black leaned back in his chair. “That is going to be a tall order, Gary.”. He knew there were a lot of concerns. They still did not have nearly as many Raptor suit troopers as they wanted, and wouldn’t for nearly a year. The private sector was cranking them out as fast as they could, but they could only produce so many a month. Presently, they were manufacturing 150,000 a month.
Gardner nodded, aware of the difficulties. “I’m going to have the Air Force start hitting the rail and road systems in the area tonight. They are also going to start going after the pre-identified targets we went over last week. We will let the Air Force and the Navy pound them for the next three days, then they will shift to our second objective, Taiwan. After the third day of them hammering Taiwan, they will shift their focus back to Shanghai and we will invade. This will hopefully throw them off a bit.”
“When do we hit the other objectives?” asked Black, knowing those attacks would come sooner rather than later. The goal was to overwhelm the PLA by hitting them at multiple points, forcing them to have to pick which front was going to be the priority.
“This is the tough part — hitting the next objectives is going to place an enormous strain on the Navy and our sealift capability. We will hit Taiwan within the next four months, using regular infantry. All of the Raptor troops are going to be needed in Shanghai. They are already going to be heavily outnumbered. As to the other objectives…I am not sure just yet. I want to hit Tianjin with the EHDs. We are going to be seriously outnumbered in that invasion, and I think the drones are going to be our best bet. We will follow them up with regular infantry once they have established a beachhead.”
Standing up and stretching his back, General Black looked his friend in the eye and said, “I know that you’ve done everything you could to prepare for this moment. Now it’s time to put the plan into motion and let the rest of us execute it. We will see it through to victory and bring this terrible war to an end.”
He left General Gardner’s office and began to marshal several the operations officers and senior NCOs around him to get things started. From that moment on, the operations center was beehive of activity as the greatest military invasion in history began.