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[MSpencer]

Part One: Preparations

30 Miles East of Rastenbourg, Eastern Atlantia
Defense Front East
République Démocratique Atlantien (RDA/DAR [en])
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Driving carefully up the windy road, a truck of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 15th Infantry Division continued on its way around the trees of the vast forest their division now occupied. Its occupants included three new staff officers, and a few replacements to fill the boots of the "traitors" and the ones who had legitimately deserted. Orders had been very strict to drive with lights off, and to conserve fuel when possible. Nothing but strict radio silence was permitted, and ahead, a sergeant wearing a bright orange vest and the distinctive uniform of the GE, even in the dark, waved them forward to a staging area.
All along the edge of the forest, three divisions of the IX. Infantry Corps began preparing their vehicles to take off from their "jump-off" positions, a term used by several now deceased advocates of manuever warfare. To their north, the rest of the 2nd Army, now replenished by conscripted reinforcements, recently trained armored troops rushed from their training early into their already completed vehicles, and the Gendarmerie de Campagne, a new organization run by committed and brutal fascists, and employing a combination of young conscripts, hardened police officers, and brutal officers and NCOs, designed to keep a lid on occupied territory, prepared to move at the start order.
On the southern front, Army Detachment Crepin-Artu, a combination of the 1st Army and the quickly constituted 10th Guards Tank Army, roughly the same strength as the northern group, prepared to swing along the southern front, using a combination of garrison forces and infantry to garrison the Casmirian mountains as their tanks sped through to "liberate" the occupied territory.
At the heart of this plan was ambition, a sense of unprecedented, pig-headed nationalism and a desire for what could only be construed as bitter revenge for past indecencies. The Belkans apparently did not quite know who they had put in power, an absolutely insane tyrant.

[MSpencer]

Preparations (II)

HQ, Air Fleet II
Ivanov AFB (Former Belkan Airbase)
Groupe D'Armée Nord
Defense Front East
République Démocratique Atlantien (RDA/DAR [en])
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In the old Belkan bomber base along the former border, the aircraft of Air Fleet II, consisting of close air support, tactical bombers, and interceptors, began arriving en masse from bases all over the country. Support vehicles, staff cars, and transport aircraft delivered supplies and personnel constantly over the groan and whine of jet engines. The cavernous hangars, designed for the venerable and huge Blackjack, easily accomodated smaller Atlantian strike craft and the swept wing, compact AEF-11B Condor, which was now serving as the primary interceptor for the attack. Tactical bombers, especially the AEB-43T Kingfisher, a dual turbojet bomber with excellent avionics and multimission adaptability, were prepared to take off at a moment's notice for supply interdiction missions, while close air support aircraft, heavily armed with AT weapons to overwhelm and blunt the Belkan armored force, stood ready on the tarmac to help ease the advance. Even more CAS aircraft prepared to drop massive amounts of ordnance on Belkan defensive positions, embodying the age old adage that fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of mankind. When the Start order was given, it would certainly be quite a show, much more so than any other Atlantian air operation ever. The Air Force, whose woefully inadequate logistical capabilities could be described as laughable, could not screw this up.
Offshore even, at the edge of territorial waters, the remaining fleet carrier and an assortment of light carriers prepared, along with the AES Sovereign (BCGN-02), to launch a massive strike at Belkan cities, bases, and ports along the coast. The plan was to achieve nothing less than absolute, total dominance over the situation, and to force at the very least, a bargain with ISAF, and perhaps the Belkans themselves for even more concessions.

[Ash]

It was true to say that the Belkans had dug in on the other side of the current border. It was also true to say that this was one hell of a defence. The same was true on all the Belkan borders, and amongst Belkan occupied territory. There had been several minor desertions, a couple of them trying to flee into Atlantian territory. One, a young Colonel who had not yet even pushed thirty, was offering a complete defection, but the general Belkan resolve held, and just about every conscriptable man had been mobilised, and a number of Belkan boneyards were bereft of vehicles to fill them.

The Colonel urged the Atlantians to delay their attack, or at least to work a combined line with the ISAF as a whole. He explained, by a short-range transmission from an undisclosed location somewhere inside Atlantian territory, that there were others who wished to turn coat and/or rebel. But the events had to go on at once.

"If you think what has been happening in Casmire and in Clandonia and Atlantia is bad, it is nothing compared to what I have seen in San Salvacion and Farbanti. Mass executions occur daily, and people dare not leave their houses. I am one of only a few who know that Asheliev Holdan is dead. And most of those that do were his murderers.
I am calling to inform you to hold off your attack temporarily. Thousands of us want to free our nation and those conquered, but the men need hope of success before they will dare turn against Cheroklev. They are afraid. If they don't believe that Cheroklev can be deposed, they'd rather serve him and live than betray him and later be executed. I beg of you, on behalf of my men and the innocent people of Belka, contact the ISAF. Coordinate your attack with them. A similar message was sent to Casmire nearly a month ago, but...nothing has been done. Please help us. Message ends.

[MSpencer]

Preparations (III)

RAS Cartago (DDGN-22), Lead, DESRON 3
Attached to Groupe D'Armée Nord
Naval Force North
République Démocratique Atlantien (RDA/DAR [en])
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Aboard the RAS Cartago, final preparations were being made for a massive attack upon Belkan targets. The entire DESRON, short for Destroyer Squadron, was ready to deliver accurate, overwhelming missile fire in concert with the submarine force. The northern group was directed to move upon confirmation of a signal sent 12 hours before the start order. They were to infiltrate Belkan territorial waters, hardly a task for state of the art surface ships with specific orders detailing them to do such. Upon arriving in the target area, the Cartago, with her escorts, would then open up fire upon selected land, civilian, and nautical targets. Belkan ships were to be engaged in self-preservation, and aircraft, including civilian aircraft breaching the 20 mile perimeter, were to be targeted without warning and destroyed. Incendiaries were to be used against "soft" targets, anything from houses to cities to fields to power plants. Communications hubs would be targeted, and collateral damage was shrugged off as a casualty of war. Air defense installations were priority #1 for the RAS Determined and RAS Devastation, two of the recently refitted Overlord-II SSGNs. Most targets were pre-planned based on open-source satellite data and accurate maps, allowing for little degree of error.
The technology would work perfectly. There was no doubt, machines do not break, they work as designed as long as they're correctly engineered and tested. The Atlantian Navy... the Republican Navy as it was now known, had stood the test of the Pythogrian conflict, and the submarine fleet had been hardened by a few hit and run attacks on Clandonian shipping. Air power was decisively well trained among the naval forces, with an emphasis on air to ship and air to ground capabilities. The attack plan would call for surface to surface strikes, followed by a crippling of the air defense network, and especially power plants. Without power plants and communications centers, Belkan long range radars would be useless, their EWRs blind to incoming strikes, and their long range SAMs useless. The loss of power would take a toll on fixed installations, forcing them to go to backups, which would take time and fuel, and would reduce efficiency. Targeting of civilian and port targets would ensure that Belkan forces would be thrown into disarray to defend, help, and evacuate civilians, and would also serve to demoralize already demoralized troops and officers. Civilians would flee in terror, bombs and missiles would rain from the sky, and the Belkan forces along 2nd Army's axis of advance would be facing chaos on their right flank as they tried to stop the advancing tanks. A quick amphibious assault on the already destroyed landscape would ensure quick encirclement using armored and infantry formations from the Marines, as well as lower level independent commands to sieze and hold towns and cities, and especially, logistical lines. The loss of the RAS Atlantis to the traitors was regrettable, but the RAS Pedosia would pick up the slack.

[MSpencer]

Preparations (IV)

Strategic Planning Division
HQ Groupe D'Armée Nord
Rastenbourg, Atlantia
République Démocratique Atlantien (RDA/DAR [en])
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Hunched over the glass table, surrounded by bullet-proof, sound-proof, smudgeless glass and a multitude of computer workstations was General de Benouville, the disproportionately short, dedicated political protége with a knack for something that could possibly be called strategy. No one would ever know that it was his staff, and a competent young general of the old regime which had come up with the plan for the invasion of Belka quite a long time ago, but that mattered very little now. The room he was standing in had once served as the headquarters for the 1st Army after a successful victory against the Free Republic of Belka years before. It had then been thrusted into a defense coordination role, one which it was later adapted for. The new "decorations", glass surfaces, new computers, flags here and there, portraits of the leader and of the illustrious Party members, and a full on war portrait of Tassigny, Gouin, and his deputy de Chalenfourt standing in front of glorious, smiling, happy, unblemished, unwounded soldiers and their sparkling vehicles all adorned with flags, were fairly new additions, put in only after the facility's future was secured. The building was unassuming, a two story house in a small village, with a very large hidden bunker underneath. The construction dated back to the days of static defense, and it was designed such that in the event of a successful attack by Belkan forces, the bunker could be completely hidden, or the house above could be detonated on top of the entrance.
Despite the original purpose of being a headquarters for a centralized command, sending out wireless broadcasts, encrypted radio messages, and runners, bicyclists, and staff cars while generals stood around an old oak planning board, the bunker was now being utilized by a cohort of no less than 35 high level staff officers, their staffs, a full general, two lieutenant generals, and was detailed with the laborous task of coordinating not only Army Group North's attack, but also Army Detachment Crepin-Artu's attack in the south. Despite the fact that Army Detachment Crepin was really an Army Group, it remained on the books as an Army Detachment. Army Group North was really nothing more than an understrength Marine corps, a few boats, and the 2nd Army, although the latter was quite overstrength and had "borrowed" a full armored corps from the defense command.
The burden of planning out air operations also fell on the small planning group, and despite the competence of liason officers, when the entire apparatus was run by an incompetent meddler in the field of grand strategy who should not have had the job to begin with, the situation would naturally degrade. Additionally, General Crepin-Artu, the commander of his own Army Detachment, was an over-worked idiot by all standards. He had been publically dressed down by the then General Teitgen when he was a Colonel for military incompetence, and had been threatened with discharge. Unable to contemplate even the most basic of complicated principles of warfare, he ascribed his success to ridiculous political reliability, and despite his obvious support of the coup attempt, nothing could be proven. He was now in charge of half of the Atlantian forces on the Eastern Front, something overlooked by the horrible higher commands.

It was lucky then, that the newly "re-clarified" Field Marshal Molders now commanded Army Group North. It was not necessarily his choice, it was either to help his country win a war that had been coming for some time, or face execution. Politics meant nothing, but death was permanent. The apparatus of the armed forces now rested solely on the shoulders of three people, a fool, an incompetent, bumbling moron who could be considered borderline retarded, and a "politically unreliable", competent and able officer of the old breed.
Planning, however, would still go on until stated otherwise.

[MSpencer]

T -2:22 - 1 October 2006

Headquarters, XXXII. Mechanized Corps "Victorieux"
1ére Armée "Republique"
Army Detachment Crepin-Artu
Three Miles from the Border
République Démocratique Atlantien (RDA/DAR [en])
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In a little over two hours, the greatest operation ever undertaken by the Atlantian military would begin. The XXXII. Mechanized Corps, serving as the middle spearhead of the southern half of the offensive, would have the dubious objective of pushing through the Belkan defenses in what would amount to a massive charge upon fortified positions, then quickly reconstituting and making a drive directly into occupied Casmire. The idea was to quickly cross the Chezflaun and perform an immediate bank to the right upon reaching the Casmire territory, hitting the ocean and using corps forces as well as infantry units to shore up a corridor. The operation would trap any forces in the pass, allowing them to be softened up by air and naval power, with the main targets being oil and general supplies. Such an action would free up the mechanized forces of the 1st Army, allowing them to push further east until they hit the mountains, thus restricting the Belkan use of the more developed areas and forcing them to utilize mountainous terrain to keep their Casmirian forces supplied.
With the utmost quiet possible, the tanks of the 2nd Armored Division began to prepare to start their engines and charge across the border at the go signal. Per order of the Commandant des Chars, ammunition was now being loaded and fuel supplies brought up from the service units. Arrayed all across the border, the other attacking forces all began the same task, ready except for the fateful order from high command.

[MSpencer]

Centro Ocean
North of Belkan Coastline
T -4:16 OPN OURAGAN
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During an early morning patrol on a lonely, frigid morning in October, Flight 301 from the AES Atlantis had picked up a large concentration of suspected enemy warships just on the Atlantian side of the border with the Belkans, about twenty miles out from territorial boundaries. The only submarine in the area, an older Swordfish class, was sent to investigate the sudden appearance of this rather large group of surface assets.
What was found was rather surprising, if not baffling. The sole remaining RDA fleet carrier, three light carriers, and the majority of the surface fleet were present. For six hours, the AES Empress, crewed wholly by loyalists who had defected to the FAF, watched over the group with her communications buoy picking up lightly encrypted comms chatter and listening quietly as motor launches shuttled between boats and helicopters ferried VIPs to and from the carrier at the center of the formation.
The carrier was a hulking beast, a gigantic silhouette against the rising sun. Rotors whined and jets screeched as the last remaining full air wing of the Marine Républicaine swirled about, providing lax air cover and mostly transferring betwen what must be a break-away group in their battleplan. It would no doubt be a failure: most of the good tacticians and the majority of the fairly decent ones had been sent to the camps as traitors.
Command had promised the CO of the Empress, Commander Bingen, support, support which arrived one hour after he had reported that the battlegroup in front of him was poised to undertake a strike operation against Belkan targets within five and a half hours.
About four hours before the scheduled attack was supposed to begin, jets roared overhead. They were not the friendly RDA jets that the Marine Républicaine sailors were hoping for, instead, as the noise grew intolerably loud, missiles flew off their racks aboard the fleet defense ships, the RAS Ardant du Picq and the RAS Sines. Guns blazed as relatively silent Exocet missiles skimmed the surface of the waves. All but one were destroyed quickly, with the last striking the RAS Deuseigneur, an older destroyer, dead amidships. The explosion tore apart the superstructure of the ship, her older, blocky design crumpling under the devastating effect of the antiship missile. The aft hangar section, containing a single helicopter which was presently hovering above the landing pad, exploded in a fiery blast of jet fuel and ordnance. Fire teams rushed from sealed compartments onto the deck as klaxons blared in the distance.
Aboard the carrier at the center of the mess, airplanes flew off the deck, climbing rapidly, while others suffered "burn outs" and other engine or catapult related incidents, and flew right into the water. Within ten minutes only six airplanes had launched, while two had crashed, and other carriers had been slow to respond.
The attack had clearly not ended, the high pitched whine of incoming missiles sounded up again, as seven TASMs, launched likely from a battlecruiser, began their glide phase into the target area. CIWS systems whirred as 20mm rounds flew at the large projectiles. Two were picked off, and then another, and then another, but three had flown through the inefficient and poorly maintained fleet shield. One struck the Deuseigneur, blowing off the bow section, and sending fire teams flying off the deck. Ammunition exploded, and a fireball shot up into the air, visible from miles away. The bow had been hit just below the bridge, and the entire forward section had sunken into a gaping hole in the hull of the ship caused by the devastating warhead. Almost simultaneously, the added weight snapped the hull in half, and the ship collapsed in on itself, sinking into the abyss.
The two other missiles struck the RAS Pedosia, the carrier at the center of the mess. Struck slightly below the flight control tower and bridge, the ship lurched as the hull was penetrated above the waterline and then again very close. The missiles had missed one of the ship's fuel reservoirs by mere feet, but the flight deck was not impervious to the devastating blow. In front of the carrier's main tower, the deck caved, and an unmanned helicopter slid off the deck, crashing into the waves below.
Miles away, aboard the AES Monarch, staff officers and naval planners launched into a frenzy of communcation and delegation, with orders being sent to both surface, subsurface, and aerial assets. Just next to them, the AES Levasseur, the nuclear destroyer whose namesake had once delivered a devastating blow against the Clandonian Navy over two hundred years ago, fired off another salvo of three TASMs, in concert with the AES Perseverance. On the aft deck of the Atlantian battlecruiser, the vertical launch tubes opened up and fired a deadly salvo of seven more TASMs. Within minutes the fascists would be in for a surprise.

[MSpencer]

As the RAS Pedosia continued to struggle to keep itself under control, the next salvo of missiles, twenty in all, streaked towards the confused battlegroup. The response from the air defense systems was ferocious, SM-2s flew off the racks, and by the time the missiles had gotten close to gun range, only ten remained. CIWS systems tore at the incoming cruise missiles, but all in vain. Six flew past with impunity, two hitting the damaged carrier's flight deck, punching a gaping hole in the armor plating. Belowdecks, fires now raged, blotted out by an even larger explosion as one of the fuel reservoirs was finally breached. Fire streaked up from the now gaping hole, as secondary explosions, largely munitions and fuel bunkers, took their toll on the structural integrity of the vessel. Above the chaos that gripped the centerline of the vessel, the abandon ship order was given. Another explosion, this time a set of fueled, armed aircraft on an elevator, shook the huge vessel. Crewmen scurried across what was left of the flight deck towards exterior access stairways, and those on the now isolated bow, unable to traverse the raging inferno, climbed down a hastily assembled rigging, meant for only the most dire of disasters. The ship's dual nuclear reactors, in danger of going critical, were hastily shut down as the engines came to a gradual halt. Flooding was rampant on the lower decks, only exacerbated by the fire up above and the lack of primary power, condemning the efforts of the repair teams.
The other four missiles hit their mark, the rather unfortunate RAS Cartago, the brand new destroyer whose service life had only been two years. CIWS was able to defeat one of the deadly ASMs, but the rest found their mark. The first struck the aft compartment right above the waterline. The missile slammed home exploding against the lightly reinforced metal skin. The structure crumpled under the explosive force, sending a plume of flame into one of the more lightly protected areas of the ship, engineering. Within seconds, a fire raged, causing secondary explosions which crippled the engines and caused widespread flooding. The final two missiles hit at about the same time, at nearly the same point, directly amidships. The powerful detonation could be felt all throughout the ship as it bucked to starboard, and then finally stabilized. Secondary explosions from fuel tanks for the onboard NH90, and ammunition for the 76mm gun only widened the now gaping hole rapidly filling with water. The ship quickly listed to port, and sank. Of the crew of 394, only sixty survived, saved only by pure luck.
The losses would be intolerable for the Marine Républicaine, the only remaining nuclear carrier damaged beyond repair, only held up by what now looked like a desperate, but temporary measure by other ships to keep the flooding and fire under control, and the loss of two destroyers. The plan, orchestrated by the commander of the Free Atlantian Navy, was only beginning, but it was now clear that Operation Ouragan's naval component would be halted indefinitely.

[MSpencer]

Less than two hours later, the trap snapped shut. The AES Monarch, along with the majority of the Monarch Surface Action Group, had circled around the enemy through Atlantian territorial waters, and were now close enough to the enemy to effect a devastating strike. Coordinated with a massive airstrike from the AES Atlantis, the ships of the Monarch's battlegroup began their fateful charge towards the center of the firestorm.

Blue Flight
1st Carrier Air Wing, Free Atlantian Forces
T -2:30 OPN OURAGAN
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As the chaos unfolded miles ahead as the salvo of missiles condemned the Pedosia and sank the Cartago, the AEF-11C strike aircraft of the AES Atlantis ducked low to the deck and went supersonic. Underneath the lower bound of radar, the aircraft, along with twenty others of the lone carrier in the distance, would be utterly undetectable until they launched their missiles.
Coming up within target range only minutes later, the multirole fighters of the Free Atlantian Forces quietly picked targets, fired their pair of missiles, and then banked away, accelerating as the inevitable return fire from the fleet defense ships came streaking towards them. Of the thirty seven missiles fired, one would suffer a malfunction and another would have completely unresponsive launch avionics, almost all were fired at targets of opportunity. There had been no time for identification using radar intercept, only for a quick lock and a quick fire.
Miles away, the three cruisers of the strike group, Sines, Cataan, and Ardant, began to designate targets and fire off their SM-2 complements, but mostly in vain. Their launch capabilities, compared to those of well trained ships with better systems, such as the now lost RAS Cartago, were hardly up to par, and as a result, highly ineffective against the unassailable barrage that now tore across the sky at supersonic speeds. Already, the targeting of the strike planes had ceased, and now the main prerogative was survival. The RAS Gouin, RAS Order, and RAS Discipline, the three light carriers of the Oporto class which had been renamed, launched fighters in vain, mainly in the hopes that they would have enough fuel to strike a deadly blow at the enemy, and perhaps return to a friendly airbase, or neglecting that, simply survive.
And finally, they had arrived. As shocked sailors, negligent of their duties, stood on deck in abstract horror at the spectacle unfolding on the huge carrier at the center, the all too familiar hissing sound gripped the air, followed by a catastrophic explosion. The RAS Gouin, the ship which had just recently been adorned with the admiral's flag, ignited in an apocalyptic blast as six Exocets slammed through her hull and hit home, igniting the aviation fuel reserves and ordnance in a terrifying spectacle of modern destructive power. All across the fleet, similar incidents unfolded. The de la Porte du Thiel, the Sines, and the Discipline all blew apart in front of positively stunned and terrified sailors. Within minutes, the Sines was the only ship left fully afloat, listing severely to port and being hectically evacuated.
It was at this time that the Monarch had finally reached optimal firing range. Along with its escorts, the Levasseur and Gloire, it opened up in a stunning barrage of TASM fire as the sleek and elegant ship slid across the waves. In response to the threat, fire streaked from the only remaining combat ready ship, the RAS Réquin, but clearly even this was uncoordinated. The vertical launch tubes let loose a salvo which was pathetic in number and poorly targeted, and easily picked apart by the Gloire's state of the art air defense system. One slipped through, regrettably, striking the Levasseur midquarters and leaving her dead in the water as the crew rushed to make hasty repairs. The return salvo devastated the last remaining belligerent ship. As twelve TASMs were sent forth into the crucible that was the flaming mass of now decimated modern warships, only point defense was left to stop them, hardly enough. The Réquin, much like her sister ship, went up in a plume of smoke as the hull was breached and the superstructure wrecked by no less than six missiles. Despite this, she remained afloat, critically damaged.
It was with this that the Atlantian victory was finally closed. Leaderless, and with no fighting ships available, the remaining ships, a cruiser and a single remaining carrier, had no choice but to surrender completely. The Battle of the Southwestern Centro Ocean had been an astounding success for Atlantian forces. At its end, enemy losses numbered six sunk, two disabled and heavily damaged, and two captured, all for moderate damage to the AES Levasseur and three lost fighter aircraft.

[MSpencer]

FROM: FM J.M. TASSIGNY, PRIME MINISTER
TO: MILITARY COMMANDERS (DISTR. LIST)
RE: OPN OURAGAN

OPN OURAGAN HAS BEEN PLACED ON HOLD STATUS PENDING REEVALUATION BY HIGH COMMAND. FAILURE TO OBEY THESE ORDERS WILL RESULT IN EXECUTION.