25 November 2010
Jilachi Staging Ground
Deserts were hardly the most hospitable of environments even at the best of times, doubly so in the face of what was to be a bloody fight between multiple brigade and division sized elements, but the Jilachi Desert was in the way of Osea's thunder run to Cinigrad and by god anything that stood in their way was going to be flattened. In the waning night time hours, Blaze and the rest of Wardog awoke to get to their aircraft. Despite the dozens of air raid alerts in the past twelve hours, they had managed to get sufficient sleep for the long couple of days ahead of them, a series of operations codenamed DESERT ARROW and DESERT LIGHTNING.
"It's too early for this shit." Samurai yawed as she and Blaze stepped up into their aircraft. The airfield they were staging from possessed another fifty aircraft on top of Wardog's complement of aircraft, F-15Cs, F-15Es and F-16Cs for the most part with a token presence of EF-111s.
"Canopy." Blaze called out as she hit the canopy lever.
"Clear." Samurai tucked her arms into the pressurised safety of the cockpit.
Opposite their end of the flight line, a venerable horde of AH-64 attack helicopters and CH-47 transport helicopters were loading cargo and spinning up for the operation ahead. Thirty Apaches, thirty Chinooks and a half dozen Air Force Pavehawks, each providing local aerial firepower, logistics and combat search and rescue, respectively.
"Talk about going into the fire and flames." Chopper sounded off. "We're flying into the hottest place on the continent!"
"Well Chopper, if you get shot down and end up in the sand, you can tell us what sweating your ass really feels like." Blaze joked with her second in command.
"Categorically Captain, getting shot down is your thing." Zoomer shot a joke back at Blaze, earning a smile from her and a laugh from both Chopper and Samurai.
"You've got me there." Blaze conceded. "Are we all ready to go?"
"Yup." Chopper.
"Yes, ma'am." Grimm.
"Yes." Nagase.
"Do we all remember the plan?" Blaze asked.
"Eliminate anti-air vehicles, command posts and radars." Grimm.
"Knock out enemy artillery pieces as they're found." Nagase.
"Escort a flight of Bones to bomb a Yuke field HQ." Chopper. As if it was ever in doubt, Wardog Squadron knew what they were doing, right down to the letter.
"Good shit, Wardog. Let's get it done." Blaze complimented his squadron, switching radios. "Thunderhead, Wardog Squadron is ready to depart."
The Air Force and its wide fleet of strategic and tactical aircraft were the main hard hitters of Osea's striking power, but no force on Earth could truly complete a mission without the infantry and relevant equipment to take and hold ground. Given that they were striking into the Jilachi Desert and its associated savannah regions, there was a lot of ground that needed to be taken and then held, so appropriately the attacking Osean force had a lot of manpower and hardware to send into the fight. Fifteen thousand men, fifteen hundred armoured vehicles and over a hundred howitzers and self propelled guns.
"Anvil 2-0, Anvil 2-4, ready to execute."
One of those fifteen thousand men had a relation to one of the fifty pilots assigned to the operation. Sergeant Paul Grimm was that man. Where his younger brother, Hans Grimm, was a fighter pilot in the Air Force, Paul Grimm was an armoured vehicle crewman in the Army. Specifically, he was the vehicle commander of an M2A3 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, joined by his gunner in the turret, his driver in the driver's compartment and seven infantry grunts in the troop compartment.
Sitting up with his head poking out of the commander's hatch, Paul was waiting for the go order, as were the crews and mounted infantry of the fifteen additional Bradleys in Paul's company, all formed up in a giant conga line next to the motor pool. The sound of idling engines and the smell of a mixture of diesel and gasoline was pervasive in the air, not helped by the distinct lack of moisture in the arid environment of the Jilachi Delta. In the distance Paul picked up the faint noise of an Abrams gas turbine spinning up as if a tank was moving.
"All Anvil callsigns, this is Anvil Actual, start rolling, I say again, start rolling. Anvil Actual, out."
Paul grinned behind his mask as the path ahead of them slowly started to clear out. He stood up in the hatch and waited for an order to be passed down through his platoon commander.
"Anvil 2-1, roll us out."
"Driver, roll out, follow 2-3's tail." Paul ordered his driver, a nineteen year old boy just barely out of armour school, Private Zach Burns.
"Moving." Zach pressed his foot down on the accelerator pedal and the IFV started rolling.
While the Army was committing two full armoured brigade combat teams to the present mission and the Air Force a total of sixty aircraft, it wouldn't have been a proper fight without the assistance of the Army's older sibling, the Marine Corps, contributing a full Marine Expeditionary Force, MEF for short, and attached supporting assets. Five thousand personnel, a hundred armoured vehicles including older M1A1 Abrams tanks, AAV-7 armoured personnel carriers and LAV-25 infantry fighting vehicles.
"So much for tropical beaches." Dunn sighed, M16A4 resting in his arms as the tracks of his AAV-7 rolled across the dry savannah grasses.
"At least it isn't gonna be pissing down rain." Moore, M249 between his legs, said reassuringly. Dunn shook his head. Between the pouring rain that had been hammering them during the Bastok landings and the arid desert heat of the Jilachi Desert, Dunn wasn't sure which extreme of weather he hated more.
"Don't get shot." Dunn surmised. "I don't want to drag your ass through the sand."
Moore snickered. "I would never take a hit."
"For both our sakes, I hope not."
With the soldiers and the marines beginning to depart the staging area to begin the operation, the airmen and pilots started taking off. Wardog Squadron was the first group of aircraft to get airborne, afterburners lit to get off the runway and into the holding pattern as quickly as possible. Blaze looked out towards the horizon and into the darkness that was the early morning sky. A quick glance at her watch indicated that it was 0500. The sun would be up in half an hour, more than enough time for them to travel from the holding formation and well into enemy territory.
Squadron after squadron, Wardog was joined by the rest of the fighter wing meant to participate in the operation. As soon as the EF-111s entered the holding pattern, with the Army's CH-47s and AH-64s following the massive convoy of armoured vehicles, the fighters and electronic warfare aircraft departed from the staging area and towards the AO. It didn't take long for Blaze's RWR to be saturated with various radar pings from all kinds of systems, varying from low-end Tors to the top of the line S-400 batteries.
"Fireball Squadron, commencing radar jamming." Fireball 1, the lead EF-111, informed the rest of the formation as the wing of fighters and electronic warfare support aircraft pushed the area of operations. Blaze found herself pondering if the six Ravens embedded with the wing were capable of dealing with the anti aircraft threat, but as they pushed deeper and deeper into the supposed effective range of the S-400 batteries defending the facilities in the area, there was no indication that they were being locked onto or fired upon.
"Grimm, take point." Blaze ordered as they got closer to the AO. The tacky Viper pilot had no less than twelve Mavericks slung under his wingtips. Grimm started pulling ahead of the trio, ending up ahead of Blaze.
"Copy." Grimm rattled back as he took the lead spot, Blaze, Nagase and Chopper falling in behind him. The Mudhens were all packing a mixture of Mavericks and JDAMs, Mavericks to deal with mobile targets like AA vehicles and self propelled guns, JDAMs to deal with static positions like SAM batteries or entrenched artillery guns in trenches and bunkers. Naturally they were all carrying a small number of air to air missiles for defence against enemy aircraft. Enemy aircraft such as the MiG-35s scrambling from the local airfield in the AO to defend against the incoming Oseans, as the ever so helpful AWACS Thunderhead was quick to point out.
"All squadrons, Thunderhead, new contacts, bearing 330 to 350 for 300, Angels 10, inbound hot." Thunderhead rattled off the relevant BRAA - Bearing, Range, Altitude Aspect - information for the attacking Oseans.
"Here we go." Samurai muttered, putting on and sealing her oxygen mask against her face.
"Uh huh." Blaze pressed her back against the seat, ready for the fight to come. "Wardog, maintain heading."
"Javelin and Badger Squadrons, turn 340 to engage bandits." Thunderhead ordered the leaders of the two F-15C equipped squadrons to engage the enemy.
"Javelin 1."
"Badger 1, copy."
The twenty F-15Cs within the fifty strong strike package broke away from the rest of the wing to take on the brunt of the Yuktobanian response. The remaining Mudhens, Vipers and Ravens pushed on ahead of the division sized ground element. Blaze watched the approaching Yukes carefully, making sure they didn't close to within firing range of the more heavily laden strike aircraft. Luckily they didn't come anywhere close, Javelin and Badger Squadrons intercepting the MiG-35s before any of them could lob off an R-77 or two.
"This could be precarious." Grimm spoke up from out ahead, referring to the situation they found themselves in, entering the firing range of an S-400 battery while fighters were tied up to their flank. If either side folded, they'd be under fire from up ahead or off to the side. Neither possibility became reality while they closed the distance to the SAM batteries and the Eagles beat off the assault of Fulcrums, but it was a pressing thought in Blaze's mind. The worry of being targeted by SAMs was reduced somewhat when the Ravens started lobbing their payloads from standoff range at the various S-400 radars.
"Fireball 1, magnum."
"Fireball 3, magnum."
Blaze saw smoke trails shoot out towards the enemy from the wingtips of the Ravens, anti-radiation missiles intended for search and fire control radars. Coming up in the distance meanwhile was the first of many targets that were meant for Wardog and the other squadrons to engage, an entrenched enemy position backing a massive ridgeline. Out beyond that ridgeline were the main targets and objectives for the operation, the regional headquarters for Yuktobania's Eastern Field Command and a large airbase. But the objectives had to wait for until later, for right now Wardog Squadron had a variety of targets to smack down.
"I'm seeing a lot of targets on the deck." Samurai was scanning for things to hit with explosives via the targeting pod. "Tors, Tunguskas, Buks, tanks, SPGs- fuck me, it's half the goddamn Yuke Army down there."
Blaze cycled through her weapons until she had JDAMs cued to her trigger.
"Put a marker on any Tors you see." Blaze instructed Samurai before looking towards her wingmen. "Chopper, mark up and engage any Tunguskas you see. Edge, same for Buks, Grimm, go after the SPGs after we're done with the SAMs. Stack them up, knock 'em down."
"Copy that!" Grimm.
"Marking targets." Samurai did her work with the LITENING pod, marking GPS coordinates for all of the medium range SAMs supporting the ground forces on that ridgeline.
"Roger." Nagase.
"Copy!" Chopper.
"Six Tors, marked." Samurai informed Blaze. Wardog Squadron was a mere ten kilometres away from the ridgeline and the battalion sized group of enemy surface to air vehicles, within the range of the radar guided Tor and Buk if they hadn't been jammed by the Ravens, but just teetering on the edge of the range of the laser guided missiles carried by the Tunguskas. Upon hearing that all of her specific targets were marked, Blaze's grip on the stick tightened in anticipation.
"Targets uploaded?" Blaze asked her WSO.
"On your trigger." Samurai replied, the same answer as always.
Blaze pulled back on the stick and the nose came up, pulling through twenty degrees as Blaze smashed the trigger on the back of the stick, a row of six JDAMs departing from pylons with the GPS coordinates uploaded to their guidance computers. Carried forward by the upwards momentum of their launch platform, six five hundred pound bombs spiralled towards their targets.
"Blaze, pickle six." Blaze declared, banking away and out of the maximum range of the Tunguskas as Chopper came in to hammer the 2K22s with his own weapons, the same kind of strike that Blaze had launched, six JDAMs, pitching the nose up and lobbing the GPS guided bombs up in an arc towards their target.
"Chopper, pickle, pickle!" Chopper was quick to turn away from the anti-aircraft pieces he was targeting, banking away with Blaze away from the danger zone. Nagase followed through with her attack a few seconds after her flight lead and flight second in command, tossing her bombs at the handful of the longer range Buk launcher vehicles.
"Edge, pickle six!" As soon as four of Nagase's bombs were off the rails she was turning out of the danger zone by following Blaze and Chopper's leads. Flying parallel to the enemy's anti aircraft umbrella, Blaze had the target pod facing their direction looking for the splash of bombs and the subsequent fireball that would have indicated a destroyed vehicle. At first there was nothing and then out of the blue there was a line of flashes that popped up in quick succession right on top of all six 9K330 Tors, blowing up the six vehicles in a flash of sand, fire and ugly black smoke.
"That's gonna leave a mark." Samurai remarked, grinning from behind the WSO console as Chopper's bombs followed up the strike on the Tors by making contact with the six 2K22 Tunguskas, violently and mercilessly blowing the self propelled anti-aircraft gun and missile vehicles apart along with their crews and supporting elements. As soon as the Tunguskas had been dealt with, Blaze turned back in towards the ridgeline, unsurprisingly finding Grimm already ahead of her, pushing the Yuke artillery dugouts with his massive payload of air to ground missiles.
"Archer, rifle. Rifle, rifle… rifle."
Blaze looked over at Grimm and his Viper, witnessing as Maverick after Maverick was sent down range at the various self propelled guns and howitzers the Yukes had staged. One by one, artillery guns exploded in the backdrop of the four Buks Nagase had targeted being blown sky high by JDAMs, totalling eight destroyed pieces before Blaze decided to step in.
"Archer, weapons tight." Blaze ordered Wardog 4. "Save some for the other Viper squadrons."
"Wilco, weapons tight." Grimm stood down, pulling away from his act of terrorising the Yuke artillery corps and merging back in with Wardog Squadron as they overflew the ridgeline and deeper into the AO. With the first wave of frontline anti air dealt with, Blaze looked at her RWR, noticing scattered groups of more Tors and Tunguskas, but no S-400 radars, which meant that Fireball Squadron's standoff attack with their HARMs had either knocked out or forced the various search and fire control radars offline. That still left the S-400 TELs, transporter erector launchers where the missiles themselves were fired from, and the command post from where the batteries themselves were controlled.
"Thunderhead, Wardog, requesting permission to seek out and destroy S-400 battery assets, over." Blaze asked the AWACS, wanting to go after the core components of the main anti air threat.
"Negative, Wardog." Thunderhead shot down Blaze's request. "Proceed to the field headquarters and destroy AA in the target's vicinity. Angel Squadron will be on point in ten minutes."
"Wardog Lead copies, Bones on station in ten, moving to destroy AA at the HQ." Blaze verified her new orders. "Wardog, head 040 and follow me."
A field headquarters by most definitions of the words usually involved tents or other temporary setups for the command post of a battalion or bigger unit, but the field headquarters in this instance was a massive permanent facility of air conditioned buildings that could house well over a thousand personnel, the members of the battalion and divisional headquarters for the Yuktobanian Army unit stationed in this part of the country. Wardog Squadron was flying towards the massive complex at speed, passing over a paved road on the way there.
"Blaze, seeing a convoy on the road below us heading away from the headquarters." Nagase pointed out the presence of vehicles on the highway.
"Sam?" Blaze asked Samurai to swivel the targeting pod to look below them.
"Tally." Samurai almost immediately spotted the convoy Nagase was referring to. "Softskin vehicles, trucks and jeeps, definitely military."
Blaze pondered the presence of a convoy of softskin vehicles moving away from the headquarters facility. Most likely it was troops being sent forward to defensive positions, but there was also the chance that the trucks and cars were carrying command staff away from the headquarters in anticipation of an attack. She knew that they didn't have enough air to ground weapons to attack them, but softskin vehicles were vulnerable to cannon fire.
"Archer, peel off, give the convoy a gun pass and meet back up with us over the HQ." Blaze delegated the convoy attack task to Grimm.
"Wilco!" Grimm rolled over and performed a split-S turn to pull out of formation and turn towards the convoy of unarmoured cars and trucks, descending from fifteen thousand to three thousand feet while putting the gunsight symbology on his HUD and closing the distance. As he got to within a mile of the convoy, Grimm dropped the nose, squeezed the trigger and then pulled through the convoy with a long burst of twenty mil. The incendiary effects of the rounds fired from the M61 Vulcan did enough damage to set the fuel tanks on some of the vehicles on fire. The trucks and jeeps that caught fire immediately pulled off to the sides of the roads while the undamaged vehicles stopped, their occupants presumably dismounting and abandoning the targets. Satisfied with the damage he had caused and the chaos he had sown, Grimm ascended back up to fifteen thousand feet and turned around to join back up with Wardog Squadron.
Meanwhile, back at the ridgeline, the second Grimm involved in the battle was seated in the turret of his Bradley, scanning the terrain ahead of his platoon with the giant box shaped commander's thermal sight mounted on top of the turret. Towers of flame were visible in the sight, showing in excruciatingly high resolution exactly where air defence vehicles, howitzers, self propelled guns and now tanks had been popped open, either by artillery fire from their own self propelled guns or by anti-tank missiles from both planes and attack helicopters.
"Fuckin' hell, ain't gonna be anything left for us by the time we get there." Paul Grimm's gunner, Specialist Michael McNealy, remarked on just how hard the Yukes were getting their shit pushed in.
"Categorically I think that's a good thing." Paul retorted as they hammered onwards to the ridgeline. "Keep an eye out for ATGMs."
"Rogie." McNealy replied, the turret slowly swinging from side to side as the gunner scanned in an arc ahead and to the side of the Bradley in accordance with their position on the left most side of the platoon.
"All Anvil callsigns, Anvil Actual, halt, halt, halt." The company commander's voice came in via the radio.
"Driver, halt!" Paul ordered Zach, the young private down in the driver's compartment. Quickly the Bradley came to a halt in the coarse sand, the IFV's diesel engine chugging and idling along with the rest of Anvil Company. It didn't take long for Paul to understand why they stopped. A scant three kilometres ahead of them, there were a multitude of explosions as the artillery assault on the Yuktobanian positions amplified. In between the massive line of armoured vehicles and the ridgeline, large puffs of thick white obscuring smoke slammed into the ground and spread out into the air. Artillery fired smoke shells, launched from howitzers in their rear echelons.
"All Anvil callsigns, Actual, move forward, weapons free on targets within your lane of fire."
"Driver, forward!" Paul instructed his driver. The Bradley lurched forwards, the tracks rolling underneath them. While McNealy looked forwards with the gun, Paul turned to face the back of the turret basket, opening a small door through which he could see into the troop compartment.
"We goin'?" The leader of the infantry squad riding along in the back of the Bradley, a Sergeant, asked the vehicle commander.
"We'll be on the X in two minutes, get ready to rock!" Paul informed the squad leader before turning back into the turret, leaving the turret basket door open behind him. Looking through the thermal imager revealed nothing but a giant white wall in front of them, the multispectral effects of the smoke screen laid to cover the battalion's advance.
"Can't see shit." McNealy commented, his face pressed up against the gunner's sight.
"Yeah, well, get ready to light up any ATGM posts that you see." Paul retorted, reaching up and closing the commander's hatch.
"Weapons free?" McNealy asked.
"Weapons free." Paul answered.
The force of a reinforced mechanised infantry battalion rolled through the thick smoke screen, the sound of dozens of heavy diesel engines and gas turbines making the force sound like an angry beast that had just been awoken. Bradley IFVs and Abrams MBTs, more than sixty of them across the battalion, churned up the sand beneath their tracks. As the Bradley appeared on the opposite side of the smoke screen, Paul found that the layer of smoke obscuring their movement had been much thicker than anticipated. They were within three hundred metres of the enemy trenches!
"Gunner, HEI, troops!" Paul gave a fire command to McNealy, who swiftly brought the twenty five mil chaingun of the Bradley on target.
"Identified!"
"Fire!"
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk! At what was effectively point blank for an autocannon, McNealy pulled the trigger and started sending high explosive rounds down range at the trenches that they were approaching at breakneck speed. Paul saw an RPG round fly out from further up the trenchline, slamming into the turret cheek of an Abrams and detonating harmlessly. On the flip side, the main gun, autocannon and coaxial fire was lethal to anything Yuktobanian that stood in their way, armoured or not. As the line of Bradleys got to within a hundred metres, the radio crackled to life once more.
"Anvil, all vehicles stop, disembark, disembark!"
"Driver, halt!" Paul barked over the intercom while he turned around to get in touch with the squad leader, the Bradley rocking to a halt. "Good to go, good to go!"
The squad leader gave the thumbs up to Paul before turning to bark orders to his own men as the rear hatch of the IFV dropped, allowing the infantry to get into the fight. In the meantime, Paul closed the turret basket and sat up in his seat.
"Switch to coax, keep their heads down!"
McNealy nodded, switching from the M242 chaingun to the M240 coax that was standard on every Osean armoured vehicle and laying down a continuous stream of 7.62mm rounds that ripped over the trenchlines, keeping any surviving Yuktobanians suppressed and pinned down while two hundred armed and angry infantrymen rushed forward from cover behind the Bradleys and into the fray.