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Back War with Russia Save as PDF
Chapters (60)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Foreword
  4. Preface
  5. Prologue
  6. PART ONE
  7. Kharkiv, Ukraine
  8. The President’s weekly defense and foreign policy meeting, The Kremlin, Moscow
  9. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC), Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), Belgium
  10. Briefing Room, Boryspill Air Force Base, Ukraine
  11. The Kremlin, Moscow
  12. Washington, D.C.
  13. Residence of DSACEUR La Belle Alliance, Erbisoeul, Belgium
  14. North Atlantic Council Conference Room, NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  15. Banks of River Daugava, Riga, Latvia
  16. Ādaži Training Camp, Latvia
  17. Riga, Latvia
  18. National Defense Control Center, Moscow
  19. Ādaži Training Camp, Latvia
  20. NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  21. National Armed Forces Joint HQ, Riga, Latvia
  22. Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), Mons, Belgium
  23. Central European Time 1600 hours, Eastern Standard Time, The White House, Washington, D.C.
  24. Lielvārde Air Base, Latvia
  25. Lielvārde Air Base, Latvia
  26. Camp David, Catoctin Mountains, Maryland
  27. British Embassy, 5, J.Alunana Street, Riga, Latvia
  28. The Russell Arms, Butler’s Cross, Buckinghamshire
  29. HMS Queen Elizabeth Middle Slip Jetty, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth
  30. National Defense Control Center, Moscow
  31. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC) SHAPE headquarters, Mons, Belgium
  32. Somewhere in the forest, Gauja National Park, Latvia
  33. 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, London
  34. HMS Queen Elizabeth in the Baltic Sea
  35. Control Room, Kilo Class submarine Krasnokamensk, Baltic Sea
  36. PART TWO
  37. Prime Minister’s Office, House of Commons, London
  38. The Presidential Dacha Barvikha, Odintsovsky District of Moscow Oblast
  39. The White House, Washington, D.C.
  40. NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium
  41. Gauja National Park Forest, Latvia
  42. PART THREE
  43. “The Tank,” Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
  44. North Atlantic Council NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  45. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Cheltenham, England
  46. GCHQ, Cheltenham, England
  47. Forest south of Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad, Russia
  48. Headquarters, Kaliningrad Special Region, Kaliningrad
  49. The President’s Office, The Kremlin, Moscow
  50. Forest south of Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad, Russia
  51. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC) SHAPE headquarters, Mons, Belgium
  52. Command Bunker, Iskander Missile Battery Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad
  53. Over Wroclaw, Poland
  54. Forest north of Pravdinsk Iskander Battery, Kaliningrad
  55. 25,000 feet above Kaliningrad
  56. Close to the Pravdinsk Iskander Battery, Kaliningrad
  57. Epilogue
  58. Glossary
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. Notes

“Thanks for that, Colonel . . . Excellent briefing. Now let me be sure I’ve got the troop numbers right.” She checked her notes and ran through the list she had made. “That’s around forty thousand for the 82nd and 101st Divisions. As well as that there’s the 4th Infantry Division with two brigades, plus the two brigades in Germany, which amounts to close to thirty thousand. Then you mentioned the Marine Expeditionary Force, which you said had a division, an aircraft wing and a logistics group—all amounting to about twenty thousand personnel.” Dillon paused while she totted up the figures. “I make that ninety thousand.”

While Bear was impressed at President Dillon’s readiness to get stuck into the detail, he was slightly surprised at her fixation on numbers. A legacy of being a CEO he supposed, where the bottom line was paramount.

Then she turned to MacWhite, “You said that the usual military planning figure for an offensive operation is three to one, so I can see we’ve got the force levels and, no doubt, the equipment which goes with it. But the challenge will be the execution, I guess?”

MacWhite nodded. “We can deploy the manpower but we’re going to have to outsmart the Russians at their own game. What we’ve shown you is the conventional capability that we can deliver. And assuming our allies can pull something together to fight alongside us, that’s a powerful force by any standards. However, the key to success, and the only way we’ll beat the Russians, will be by being cleverer than them. We have to neutralize their strength with our unconventional capability. And SOF, sorry, ma’am, that’s Special Operations Forces, are going to be the key here. I’d rather do that off line with you, if you don’t mind.”

Bear knew that, as an ex-Special Operations Forces commander, MacWhite was naturally reticent in discussing how SOF would approach such a challenge. As he’d once said to Bear, it was not a leak to the enemy he feared, but the inevitable political memoirs that would be bound to follow, which, in describing one solution to a problem, would limit the US from using the same solution in the future.