Moscow, Russia
1740 hours
March 6th, 2028
President Solokov was striding fast to meet with his top command in the Kremlin's deep bunker reserved for times of crisis. He had only been here a few times before, and never had he been this furious.
He walked into a room packed with generals, admirals, and advisers and immediately let loose. "How the absolute fuck did this happen?" he demanded.
The Russian Minister of Defense, Gurin, responded, "It seems that some of our commandos from the 42nd Naval Special Reconnaissance Unit which were based on Agersø Island went rogue and decided to take their own revenge for the loss of the Merkury and Stoikiy. Their message to Baltic Command stated that they were trying to assassinate the Danish prime minister, we can only assume they got their helicopters mixed up and the Polish president paid the price. No way of knowing for sure, the Danish frogmen made quick work of our unit, no survivors."
Solokov's face was growing red. "Amateurs playing politics, how the hell did we let them into an outfit like the 42nd. What's the latest from Poland?" he asked.
"The head of the Polish military, General Augustyn, has declared martial law, seemingly with full approval of the Polish prime minister and the rest of the government in Warsaw. They're paranoid, convinced war is coming and they want their general unrestrained. The Polish 9th Armored Cavalry Brigade and 15th Mechanized Brigade are leaving their bases and taking up positions on the border of Kaliningrad. The Poles are evacuating the border villages and are meeting with the Americans now to try earning their backing in the event of war," Gurin responded.
"The Americans and Poles know this wasn't endorsed by us of course?" Solokov asked. "How can we defuse the situation, perhaps push back the plan to force our way through the straits until we have clarity on any change regarding the U.S. position on the blockade?"
His generals and admirals looked at him, half perplexed, half clearly agitated. They were mostly from the old Soviet-trained cohort, tough old men who always wanted to blow something up at the slightest provocation and thought Russian willpower would win any war. They had been the ones who led Russia to invade Ukraine six years prior, and they deeply disapproved of Solokov's slightly more diplomatic style.
Gurin responded. "We have not informed anyone that the unit was rogue yet, it would be an embarrassment and create the impression we don't have full control over our military. As for the plan to push through the straits, delaying that past the 9th would start to put serious pressure on our already strained economy, but of course that's your decision."
Solokov thought he heard a condescending tone in those last words. He didn't have many friends in this room. If he had any, he was probably about to lose them as he said, "I will give a speech to tell the world it was a rogue unit, they killed a world leader for Christ's sake. As for the push through the blockade, let's take the temperature tomorrow and see if the Americans still refuse to get involved. If so, we go ahead on the 9th as planned."
As expected, all expressions were now agitated. One of his army generals spoke up. "What of the Polish deployments to the border of Kaliningrad? Rear Admiral Vasiliev does not have the ground forces to defeat a full Polish attack."
Solokov nodded. "Of course, what are our options to reinforce Vasiliev's position?"
Gurin spoke up. "Well the most obvious would be deploying the tactical nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, load the bombs onto our fighters and warheads onto the missiles. As well, the 20th and 58th Combined Arms Armies are in Mazyr, Belarus and approaching combat readiness for the planned push on Kyiv, but we can move one or both to the Polish-Belarusian border at Hrodna to show the Poles we are ready to attack through the Suwalki Gap if they try anything," Gurin said, referencing the forty mile-wide sliver of Polish territory that divided Belarus, a Russian proxy state that was essentially a forward base for the Russian Army, from Kaliningrad, a vital outpost of Russian military strength in the Baltic.
Solokov had to tread lightly here. He had to strike a middle ground between starting a war and undermining his officers. "Move the 20th and 58th, but we'll wait and see if the Poles continue their buildup, then we'll discuss the nuclear deployment." His generals and admirals nodded, half-satisfied.
Warsaw, Poland
1000 hours
March 7th, 2028
General Augustyn was addressing the nation and the world for the third time since he had taken power the day before. He was an imposing figure, someone who seemed to hold off the frailty of old age with sheer iron will. He cleared his throat and began. "President Solokov has acknowledged it was Russia who assassinated our president, and yet he refuses to pursue justice. We have demanded he hand over the head of the Baltic Command, Rear Admiral Vasiliev, and the commanders of the 42nd Naval Special Reconnaissance unit that carried out this heinous act. We hold both responsible for this assassination and will not rest until they face justice.
"Perhaps the coward Vasiliev would like to come out of his bunker and face our army himself. He would be doing his country a great service. Poland remains fully supportive of the coalition's closure of the Danish Straits. If Russia tries to test our resolve we will show them our strength and we will not hold back. Our army is ready," he finished in a tone that suggested anything but hesitancy.
The Kremlin, Moscow
1230 hours
March 8th, 2028
Solokov's mood had not improved much as he attended yet another sour meeting with his high command in the Kremlin's bunker.
Defense Minister Gurin went on. "The full force of the Polish 16th Mechanized Division is now assembling just south of Kaliningrad and the 1st Legions Infantry Division is joining them, this Augustyn bastard is not backing down."
Another general spoke up. "It's because he doesn't think the re-deployment of the 20th and 58th Combined Arms Armies is a serious threat, we need to show him it's real, and we need to give Vasiliev the ability to incinerate those Polish forces with his nuclear weapons if they attack him."
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amosov, cut the general off. "We could alternatively take time for the events to settle, negotiate a re-opening of the straits, perhaps in exchange for a cessation of our invasion in Ukraine once we have taken Kyiv and the east."
Gurin gave him a look that could have cut steel. "What and lose trade through the straits for the year it'll take us to achieve that? The Danes, Brits, and Poles are challenging us and the Americans are refusing to join them. The coalition won't dare attack us if we push through the blockade with the full force of the Baltic Fleet, especially with our nuclear arsenal in Kaliningrad. The convoy will be ready tomorrow, we cannot lose time on this."
Solokov thought Gurin was probably growing too confident from last year's breakthroughs in Ukraine. Still, his economy could not lose trade through the Danish Straits, especially not for a full year. Oil and gas exports were the only thing keeping his government's budget just barely functional; the truly desperate state of his economy was not known to many outside this room. The arctic ports and pipelines were already at full capacity, there was no alternative, he simply had to open the straits to keep his country afloat but he had no major incentive to offer the Coalition to back down. An apology certainly wouldn't do. There was no diplomatic path forward, so it would have to be done through the threat of violence.
He spoke up. "Deploy the nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and transfer the permissive action link codes to Vasiliev in case communication is cut off. His explicit orders are that the weapons are only to be used on Polish forces if they attack and only on our own soil."
His generals looked proud for a split second.
Foreign Minister Amosov spoke up. "This will just encourage General Augustyn to behave recklessly! We can hold off on the Baltic convoy plan one more week to discuss this surely."
Solokov turned to him. "Right now the Americans, French, and Germans still refuse to support the Coalition, NATO is split. The more time we let pass the greater the chance this changes, then the battlefield situation becomes drastically different. If they convince the Americans to join we'll never make it through the Straits with threats of violence. This is the best chance we're going to get in the foreseeable future and we cannot wait a year to negotiate from a stronger position in Ukraine. It would destroy our economy.
"As for General Augustyn, he does not want to see his divisions incinerated by the hundred nuclear weapons he knows we have in Kaliningrad. We will make their deployment obvious. He also knows we will break Ukraine in the next two years and have our full army on his border, he doesn't want to be the one who shot first. I will proceed with my speech today to announce our convoy's planned and lawful transit of the straits tomorrow," he finished.
Usually it was Amosov and him against the hawkish generals, but he had no diplomatic cards left to play, so he reached for the sledgehammer and prayed no one would ask him to swing it.
The meeting broke up. Amosov shook his head and walked out dejected.
Russian Baltic Command, Kaliningrad
1014 hours
March 9th, 2028
Rear Admiral Vasiliev had a piercing headache and was in a furious mood. He had never been so embarrassed, never felt things so utterly out of control. Two of his corvettes were at the bottom of the sea and one of his elite reconnaissance units had gone rogue and killed the Polish president like a bunch of amateurs. He would have already lost his position and likely been in a Siberian prison if it weren't for the possibility of imminent war and the Kremlin's belief that removing him would hurt the Baltic Fleet's combat capability. The only way for him to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison now was to either conjure up a tremendous victory in these terrible odds or to die a hero's death.
He ran through his head again how he could replicate Peter the Great's triumph against the Swedish Navy in the Battle of Gangut, but nothing came into his mind as he looked at his tactical display showing the convoy forming. Seven oil tankers, twenty-two major surface warships, three dozen auxiliary ships, and two submarines. Solokov had publicly stated that any attempt to stop the convoy would be met with a swift and violent response; he was calling the Coalition's bluff.
But Solokov was assuming that they actually were bluffing, and with two of his corvettes now acting as coral reefs, Vasiliev wasn't so sure. Solokov seemed to think he could intimidate the coalition into backing down with nuclear threats, hence the nuclear-armed Tu-95 bombers flying constant circuits north of the U.K. hoping to scare the only nuclear state in the Coalition into inaction.
But if the Coalition decided to fight, the odds were in their favor and Vasiliev knew it. Russia had always been a land power, and the navy's status reflected its lack of funding priority. He should have had twenty-eight major surface warships ready, but four were undergoing maintenance and at least two were tasked to protect St. Petersburg at all times. He barely had numerical advantage only because NATO was so fragmented, and he knew the Danes and Brits outgunned his ships in quality.
In the air he would only have three fighter squadrons. His Su-30 and Su-34 squadrons would be outgunned against their NATO counterparts, the alliance prioritized having a technological edge, especially in air warfare. Thankfully Moscow had ordered the transfer of its premier Su-57 squadron to his command, but it was still just one squadron. He cursed the Northern Fleet for its sorry state up in the arctic, it was supposed to be Russia's strongest, but it had become a collection of rusting harbor decorations with all of the government's money going towards the Army and Air Force's campaign in Ukraine. If he could just somehow sink a Danish ship and scare the Brits and Poles away from attacking them, he could force open the straits and reestablish Russia's fearsome image, possibly avoiding a lifetime of misery in prison.
Then he glanced at the tactical map of the ground situation and his heart sank deeper. He watched the dots indicating nearly a thousand pieces of Polish armor and twenty thousand troops dispersed wide and holding as close as ten minutes striking distance from his border guard. They were waiting for a clash in the Baltic Sea to justify an attack, he knew it. He had eighteen thousand troops in Kaliningrad, mostly conscripts, Rosgvardia national guard, and green marines; the Polish vanguard would be shock troops with far superior kit. It wouldn't be a long fight.
He wasn't sure about Moscow's strategy. It was true the Poles didn't have the full backing of the U.S. for a ground war with Russia, but General Augustyn might gamble that his country's NATO status and the U.S.'s treaty obligation to defend Poland would keep Russia from incinerating it in retaliation for an attack on Kaliningrad, which was true. Plus the Poles hadn't forgotten history that quickly, and they had a chance to deal a significant blow to their greatest historic threat, the Russian Army, while most of it was bogged down in Ukraine.
So then in Vasiliev's calculation the only thing that actually deterred a full Polish assault was his arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons and the fact he was authorized to use them against Polish forces if they attacked him. They were small yield weapons, less than fifty kilotons, bombs that were used to take out groupings of a few thousand troops but didn't have the apocalypse-level destructive force of strategic weapons with yields ten to twenty times the ones he had.
But the small size of tactical nukes was also their strength, because a defensive use of such weapons was highly unlikely to trigger an American or British reprisal attack. Since they could actually be used without ending the world and because there was such a massive gap in strength between his forces and the Poles, there was no way they would attack him. He would obviously be put in such a dire position that his nuclear weapons would be the only way to survive. Everyone knows that you don't push a man with nukes into a corner.
He was flexing the weapons as well. In peace time the warheads were stored in bunkers and the permissive action link codes for activating them were with the Kremlin, but Gurin and Solokov had ordered the deployment of warheads and transferred the codes to him. Twenty-three Iskander missiles were loaded with nuclear warheads and ready to launch at a moment's notice, while another thirty-two nuclear-tipped missiles were waiting to be loaded. Then half of his thirty-eight air-launched nuclear bombs were loaded onto Su-24 and MiG-31 fighter jets that were keeping their engines warm and constantly moving positions on the tarmac. They had been obvious with the preparations, they knew Poland could see it.
So then why was General Augustyn's placing so many troops on his border? There was no way he could neutralize all of Vasiliev's nuclear weapons, Kaliningrad's air defenses were too strong. The second they saw Polish missiles in the air he would give the order and his jets would take off. He checked the link to his nuclear forces for the fifth time that hour, validating their readiness to target and strike the Polish formations in seconds. Everything worked, the Poles must simply be posturing. Strange, he didn't think of General Augustyn as the type to make empty threats.
"Convoy in position sir" His officer reported, cutting Vasiliev's line of thought.
"Tell them to get underway, scramble the fighters," He said back. He didn't want this fight, not at these odds, but Solokov and Gurin seemed convinced they could not back down and that their threats would succeed; the world was watching to see what Russia was made of. Regardless, he needed a victory to save himself.
He reassured himself that the coalition wouldn't start the first large-scale naval battle of the 21st century. Well, it was time to see.
Coalition Command - Secure Comms, Copenhagen, Denmark
1630 hours
March 9th 2028
It had been a long three days. Russia was steadfast in its determination to try breaking the blockade with the combined force of its Baltic Fleet, seemingly convinced that the Coalition countries would not fire first without U.S. backing. But the Coalition could not back down now, one of their leaders had been assassinated and fifty of their sailors had been killed. They had promised to defend their sovereign waters. If they stood down now there was no telling how far Russia would try to push them next.
So in partial disbelief the leaders of Denmark, the U.K., Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania found themselves listening to the Danish commander placed in charge of the rapidly assembled Coalition forces ahead of a battle that would have seemed impossible a year ago, but now seemed impossible to avoid. The commander went on, "The Russian Convoy is forty minutes out from the exclusion zone, Coalition command is reporting all air and naval assets in position"
British Prime Minister Robinson spoke up. "Chances of success?"
"For the naval component we have high confidence in operational success, our surface action group is composed of twenty one major surface warships split into four battle groups, in addition five of the UK's Astute class attack submarines, and about three dozen auxiliary ships. The Russians have a slight edge in numbers at twenty-two major surface warships but we expect our overwhelming advantage in submarines and air power at six squadrons to Russia's three to be decisive. We predict a surface attrition rate of roughly 50%, casualties in the low thousands," the commander responded as if he was reading a math equation.
"And if Russia deploys the Northern Fleet against the remainder of our forces?" Danish Prime Minister Jørgensen asked.
The commander responded. "Difficult to say without knowing the future status of our forces, but we should consider it a difficult fight."
Robinson spoke again. "Regardless we'll maintain significant deterrent capability and will have more time to bring the Americans on side. Now what is the decision of General Augustyn regarding this possible ground component?"
The Polish Defense attache attending the meeting answered. "The General has decided that under the coalition's mutual defense agreement, an attack on Coalition forces in the Baltic Sea will justify a retaliatory ground offensive into Kaliningrad on the grounds that the Russian Baltic Fleet is based there and its missile batteries will certainly attack Coalition forces, as well as the fact that it was the Baltic Command that killed our president of course."
Prime Minister Robinson responded quickly. "I'm still not in agreement that a ground offensive is a proportional response, even if it's where the order for the assassination came from and where the Baltic Fleet is based. An air campaign would be more measured, more… proportional," he finished. Jørgensen and him had been debating this with General Augustyn for three days now to no avail but he tried to press the issue one more time.
The defense attache held his ground. "Kaliningrad's air defenses are strong and we only have two tactical air wings. We cannot gamble that your air force will be strong enough to support an air campaign after the coming battle, nor that Vasiliev will be kept in Kaliningrad. He killed our president, this is about him, the moment Russian high command pulls him out, our offensive suddenly becomes a land grab rather than justice, we will lose our framing. We cannot let the murder of our leader go unpunished and the perpetrator is twenty miles from our border," he finished.
Robinson still felt it was a disproportionate response and he wondered what the strategic calculations in Warsaw had been. Russia would probably conquer the entirety of Ukraine in a few years' time, which would double Poland's border with the Russian Army. If NATO was still divided at the time, then it was entirely plausible that the Russians would fabricate a crisis or false flag attack to justify an attack on the Suwalki Gap and finally seize the land corridor to Kaliningrad that they had dreamed about for decades. It was a lot easier to fight the Russian Army now while it was bogged down in Ukraine. So, Robinson speculated, General Augustyn was seizing an opportunity to weaken his country's main threat while missiles were already flying and while he could justify it as revenge to thunderous applause from the Polish people.
But Robinson also wondered about Moscow's decision making, even the more patriotic Russian officers knew that the Polish Army would make quick work of Kaliningrad, it was years into one of the largest military buildups in the world and was a completely different entity than it had been ten years prior, full of the best equipment money could buy. Solokov must be relying solely on the hope that Poland would be deterred by the tactical nuclear weapons in the exclave, but that was a hell of a gamble on one line of defense.
Robinson thought he would raise this point again. "What about the tactical nuclear weapons? Presumably Vasiliev has been given the codes for arming them," he asked.
"We have a high degree of confidence that the nuclear arsenal in Kaliningrad can be neutralized without a risk, and in the unlikely event that they get a few missiles off the ground we have equal confidence in our interception capabilities. As well, there are ten thousand U.S. troops in Poland, Russia wouldn't dare bring the U.S. into the war," the Polish attache responded.
Robinson had seen the British military assessment on the Polish-American "STRIKEOUT" plan for eliminating Kaliningrad's tactical nukes and knew British analysts agreed it had a high chance of success. He still felt he had to push back on the argument that a land battle with Russia was a logical idea, but they had run out of time to debate it, everyone in the Coalition would be forced onto Poland's side after the upcoming clash in the Baltic Sea. That was how General Augustyn wanted it. Robinson found himself missing President Owczarek, the Polish leader never would have made such a brash call.
The Polish attache continued. "Our intelligence assessment is that Russia will attack across the Suwalki Gap immediately following our attack on Kaliningrad to relieve their forces there, but we are confident we can hold our defensive lines. Destroying the Russian 20th and 58th Combined Arms Armies will also give Ukraine some much needed relief," the Polish Attache said, seeming to forget that it was a Ukrainian special forces team that had in large part started the immediate course of events that led to the assassination of their president. Convenient.
Prime Minister Jørgensen interrupted. "What's the latest from the Americans on their defense commitments?"
Robinson spoke up. "They're telling the Russians that any attack on NATO soil must be proportional and contained to assets involved in the battle at the straits, otherwise they will trigger the Article Five mutual defense pact of the Atlantic Charter. I spoke to President Ashbridge and he essentially said we bear full responsibility for what happens in the Baltic Sea," he finished.
The Danish Commander cut in. "The Russian task force is thirty minutes from the exclusion zone, I need to return to my command."
Jørgensen nodded to him, "Well, looks like this is really happening then, damnable Russians couldn't just back down for once. Good hunting commander, we are here for you whatever you need," she said.
The attack on the convoy was planned for one minute after it had completely entered the exclusion zone, and forty seconds after warning shots were fired.
Exclusion Zone of the Baltic Sea, Danish territorial waters
1710 hours
March 9th 2028
The last rays of an orange sun were being swallowed by the winter grey of the Baltic sea under snowfall as the Russian convoy steamed straight through the imaginary line of the exclusion zone. The Coalition had chosen the Danish island of Bornholm for the fateful battle, where Danish waters stretched wide between Sweden and Poland, creating a wall of NATO sovereignty as far away from the Danish capital of Copenhagen as possible. They placed the island in between three of their surface battle groups and the incoming convoy, using it as a shroud. The coalition had extensive mobile radars deployed on Bornholm that instantly relayed Russian ship positions back to the coalition fleet, while the island served as a natural shield against the radars of the Russian warships. The Russians were compensating with four A-50 airborne warning and control aircraft to track coalition movement from the sky, but those were high priority on the Coalition's target list.
The last of the Russian ships was inside the exclusion zone now, with the convoy spread thirty to forty nautical miles from Bornholm. The coalition had been constantly hailing the convoy over radio, warning them to stop or face fire. All of it was being published online to show the world that the Coalition had tried their best. Now twenty seconds had passed since the last ship entered the exclusion zone, time for the final warning. Coalition ships let loose with their 4.5-inch Mark 8 naval guns. The rounds could only cover half the distance to the convoy, but their purpose was as a warning anyways. The convoy kept coming, calling their bluff.
The one minute mark passed. The Coalition's military commander gave the order, and the graying sky was instantly illuminated as a barrage of a hundred missiles streaked across the sky. Naval Strike Missiles, Harpoons, Joint Strike Missiles, and Long Range Anti Ship Missiles all simultaneously launched from dozens of Danish and British F-35s, F-16s, Typhoons, frigates, destroyers, and land batteries from Poland and Bornholm.
The Russians responded with their own barrage three seconds later. Their frigates, destroyers, cruisers, Tu-22 bombers, and land based missile batteries in Kaliningrad let loose with a volley twice the size of the Coalition's. For just over a minute the sky was full of the bright exhaust plumes of hundreds of missiles crossing each other's paths.
Four Russian frigates and two destroyers were the first victims, but as everyone's eyes were in the sky they were struck from below by three of the UK's Astute submarines, dealing fatal blows with a volley of Spearfish Heavyweight Torpedoes, ripping the insides of the ships to shreds. The impacts happened within seconds of the coalition's air and surface launch, and just like that a quarter of the Russian battle group was wiped out.
The Astutes gave away their position and were immediately engaged by two Lada-class Russian submarines and three Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft flying nearby. They had little room to maneuver, the Baltic Sea was shallow and ill suited for such large submarines. But the surface engagement chased ahead. Both fleets desperately tried to save themselves in the few seconds they had to intercept the incoming barrages screaming death. The ships and fighter squadrons that had been equipped for interception launched volley after volley of interceptors. NATO's sensors and missiles were all being coordinated by the "Tyr" AI system for handling saturation missile barrages just like this, honed with years of telemetry data from Ukrainian interceptions of Russian missiles.
Explosions ripped through the sky as giant chunks of flying metal slammed into other flying chunks of metal. Then seconds later the sky was filled with streaks of close-in weapons systems desperately trying to track and destroy the dozens of missiles that slipped through the interceptors. It was a desperate frenzy to fill the sky with as much ordnance as possible in a few split seconds. Then missiles started to slam into ships, making them fiery balls of strewn metal, the explosions filled the grey sky and melted falling snow.
Eight of the coalition's ships were ablaze or in the process of rapidly sinking. Another three were damaged but under their own power, and ten remained unscathed but out of ordnance. The Russian ships fared far worse, they didn't have years of telemetry data on NATO missiles to study and hadn't fully incorporated AI into their interception systems. Their status as a land power started to show as eleven Russian frigates, cruisers, and destroyers lay ablaze or sinking from the barrage. The remaining five major surface ships broke formation and started to scatter. Auxiliary ships raced towards their sinking comrades to save them. The British Astute submarines had made quick work of the two Russian Lada-class submarines, but a Russian Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft had scored a lucky hit with a depth charge and sunk one of the Astute's before it was shot down.
At this point the battle moved to the skies, both fleets were out of missiles and in full damage control. Up above there was one Royal Danish Air Force and five British Royal Air Force squadrons in the sky; two of the British squadrons had been tasked completely to anti-ship or interception missions and had already withdrawn, having expended their full armament devastating the Russian fleet. The four remaining Coalition squadrons, numbering seventy-eight fighter jets, were up against the three Russian squadrons, at sixty-two jets. They had been holding each other at nearly eighty miles to avoid the crowded skies but now they dove at each other. The Russian jets were struggling to track the Coalition's fighters, their four A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft that had been providing a battlefield picture had all been shot down at the beginning of the engagement.
Two of the British Royal Air Force Typhoon squadrons were equipped with dozens of Meteor missiles, one of NATO's premier air-to-air weapons that the Russian air force still lacked a counter to. The Typhoons closed the distance to seventy miles, fired their full complement of Meteors and then broke off. The Russian jets couldn't respond, their own missiles were outranged, they were forced to go evasive. At the same time the last two Coalition squadrons, composed of British and Danish F-35 stealth fighters, moved in on the battle's northern edges from Swedish airspace for closer shots with their AMRAAM air-to-air missiles carried in their internal bays to preserve stealth.
Everywhere the sky was full of bright flares and even brighter explosions as the flares failed to stop the incoming missiles. The Russian Su-30 and Su-34 squadrons were torn apart. The Su-57s, Russia's stealth fighter, fared much better. They turned to engage the F-35s that had given their positions away when they had fired their armament, letting loose a volley of R-77 missiles at the F-35s and waited for their sensors to confirm the hits. They watched as the missile's radars became confused and their sensors failed to find heat signatures and started to drift. The pilots didn't understand, then their computers screamed to alert them of inbound missiles launched only fifteen miles away from an entirely different direction to the F-35s on their radars. The Su-57s went evasive but they were already within the no-escape zone of the incoming missiles; the premier Russian jets erupted into geysers of metal and fuel.
They had been tricked by BriteStorms, electronic warfare jamming drones generating false radar signatures of entire F-35 squadrons as the real F-35s had rapidly shifted their position after firing their first volley. Within minutes only twenty-four Russian jets of the three squadrons remained, they broke and made a dash at full speed to retreat within range of Kaliningrad's air defenses. The coalition jets didn't pursue, having expended their munitions and having only lost twelve of their own.
On land the picture was quite different. The Russians had been building an industrial deep-strike capability during its years of shelling Ukraine. They launched 2,400 one way suicide drones and 260 missiles from batteries in Kaliningrad that saturated Polish and Danish air defenses and struck almost every airbase in Denmark and Poland. The bases were now a pockmarked mess with runways and support buildings torn to bits. Few aircraft were lost as they had almost all been in the air but the Coalition squadrons would have to return to refuel and rearm in the U.K. now, being dragged back with refueling aircraft. Both Germany and Sweden had declared landing off limits under threat of being added as targets to the Russian barrage.
The Coalition leaders, all with their eyes glued to their tactical maps, shifted their gaze to the Polish border with Kaliningrad for the part none of them besides General Augustyn wanted.
Three Miles South of Chernyakhovsk Air Base, Kaliningrad
1725 hours
March 9th 2028
The order came through, it was a particular song playing on the designated satellite radio station. Operation STRIKEOUT was greenlit. The garbage truck rolled off the road from where it had been loitering near Chernyakhovsk, home of the Russian 152nd Missile Brigade. The two men driving waited ten seconds, then initiated the first procedure, an obscure panel on the top of the drivers cab opened to reveal a satellite communications terminal immune to the jamming that was pervasive throughout Kaliningrad the past several days. Their truck and twelve others scattered throughout the territory connected to a Polish spy satellite and downloaded the precise coordinates of Russian radar and communication arrays that were relaying data to the twenty-four nuclear Iskander missile batteries and nuclear armed jets. The data immediately transferred to the computer hidden away in the truck's decrepit and rusting insides which calculated launch angles relative to the truck's location.
The rust was all for show and they knew it, the trucks were kept in immaculate working order. STRIKEOUT had been planned by Polish and American military intelligence for over a decade, although Poland had always maintained the ability to launch the operation independently. Five years prior the garbage service of Kaliningrad had made an order for a fleet of vehicles to a company outside the Russian city of Omsk. The ferry service delivering them from St. Petersburg was a shell company owned by the CIA. All of the trucks were swapped halfway on their journey. The garbage crews and truck mechanics were locals who had been recruited by Polish intelligence and had spent the past five years working an innocuous job which gave them routine access to all civilian roads in the exclave, including those bordering the military bases.
The truck computers received a precise order from the satellite and simultaneously the top panels on false sections of each garbage truck's container slid open, revealing two-thousand-pound missiles that burst into the sky and then initiated correcting bursts sideways to angle themselves pointing exactly at the latest positions of the radars and antennas.
The missiles were in the air for 3.2 seconds, Russian radar crews were on full alert and detected the missiles with a two second delay. The crews reached to alert command.
Too late.
The high-powered microwave weapons being carried by each missile activated and unleashed a concentrated electromagnetic field that enveloped the overlapping areas targeted, inducing a high voltage surge in every exposed electronic circuit. The most important systems were all hardened, every serious military had ensured nuclear strike assets like missiles and nuclear-capable fighter jets were protected against electromagnetic pulses, or EMPs. But what couldn't be hardened were the radars and communication antennas; they were inherently exposed to electromagnetism. Mobile missile launchers and constantly moving fighter jets were excellent ways of making an adversary's targeting difficult, but they also required non-hardline communication to give launch orders.
Four seconds after STRIKEOUT's EMPs were launched into the air the Russian military in Kaliningrad lost its ability to detect aerial objects with radar and communicate via radio. Hardline communication between command and the bases was still functioning, but reserve radars wouldn't be up and running for several minutes. In that time the Russian garrison was blind to the sky. Even if Rear Admiral Vasiliev panicked and ordered a pre-emptive strike it would take several minutes for each base commander to physically relay the orders to the missile and fighter jet crews scattered throughout the bases. A few minutes was too long in modern war.
Sixteen seconds after the EMP bursts, the Polish military command confirmed phase one success and initiated phase two of STRIKEOUT. The Polish RQ-180 surveillance drones and MQ-9 Reaper strike drones loitering on the border turned and crossed into Russian airspace as HIMARS mobile rocket batteries unleashed their complement of seventy four Army Tactical Missile Systems at the latest positions of the Russian missile batteries and airstrips of the bases hosting the nuclear-armed fighter jets. They weren't even aiming for the jets themselves, without functioning airstrips they just became useless pieces of metal with nuclear bombs strapped to them.
One hundred seconds after phase two's launch, Kaliningrad's bases became a maelstrom of fire and flying metal. Within three minutes, Polish RQ-180 drones were within range of all targets and were collecting battle damage assessment data, looking for any Iskander missile transport erector launchers missed. Five had been moving during the HIMARS strike and remained unscathed. The RQ-180 drones painted each with lasers and the MQ-9 Reapers turned them into fireballs with their arsenal of Hellfire missiles.
General Augustyn waited twenty minutes for the second battle damage assessment to come in confirming total loss of the Baltic Command's ability to launch nuclear weapons; he had to be sure. It came. He gave the attack order to the Polish 16th Mechanised and 1st Legions Infantry Divisions, and a minute later a thousand tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored personnel carriers leapt forward as twenty thousand soldiers pushed alongside the armored columns and pierced Kaliningrad's border defenses in fifty different locations. Volley after volley of rocket artillery screeched over their heads and slammed into Russian command and control and defensive positions.
Time for vengeance, General Augustyn thought.