Perimeter Defense
09-08-2005, 13:02
Wheee, my first thread, my third (I think) post, and my inexperienced ass.
No one would have expected that by the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the Eastern Alliance would be in full control of more than half of the world's territory. Unforeseen was the aggrandizement of this formerly small but doubtless mighty faction for the reason that the intrinsic presupposition among the world's militaristic superpowers was that North Korea and PRC were, quite simply, weak.
As we already know, the US was initially wary of the two because of whatever capabilities they may have had, but that vigilance disappeared as it entered yet another economic boom 2007 and up. By this time, their already inherent complacency had penetrated the majority of their functionality, and they thus ignored the growing threat. The signs were already being seen in 2010; strange satellite photographs indicating massive movements of troops and armor, a sudden influx of trade activity between NK and PRC in the form of unknown industrial products - and when it was already too late, the rapid, efficient deployment of MiGs through radar floors and gaps toward major military installations and even cities.
On Black Tuesday, 12 April 2011, a small number of grainy photos reported missing close to seven hundred aircraft, fighters and bombers, normally stationed in multiple airbases around mainland China and NK. The report, however, came slightly too late for most of the outposts concerned, as the originally unknown industrial products emerged as tactical nuclear warheads and brought so much light to so many of their enemies' cities and warbases.
The Grand Unified Federation of Perimeter Defense was established in 2023 as a faction of allied states creating defensive haloes of nations around Europe, the Americas, the forward regions of Russia, and most of central Asia - the enemies of the Eastern Alliance. An entirely militarized nation, Perimeter Defense was originally the defensive initiative for whatever remained of the United Nations; however as the war between the Alliance and the UN members grew in size and consequence, "Perimeter Defense" became a misnomer as the countries under attack poured resources into it and offensive operations to reclaim lost land greatly increased in frequency.
Operation Ad Ultimum began September 21, 2027. This unprecedented invasion of one of the main territories of the Eastern Alliance in western Antarctica consisted of nine hundred thousand troops, the first major offensive that Perimeter Defense took against the Alliance. The assault began in the very cold morning as the F-35s dropped out of optical cloak and saturated ground defense with GBU-200 JDAM-governed explosives. LIDAR emplacements found those ghost planes and presently removed them from the airspace, but by that time the tanks had also dropped optical cloak. Armor advanced quickly, and by the end of the day had erased three kilometers of Alliance defense - at the unacceptable cost of two hundred troops.
Brigadier General Jessica Rhinehart stepped out of her APC when the railguns stopped firing. She looked around and saw her division tanks reappear in short cycles of iridescence as the light filters of their optical cloak devices deactivated. She looked up and saw the Mi-101 stealth gunships thowing off cruise missiles at targets beyond even the enhanced eye could see. And looking further up with her binoculars, beyond the low-flying helicopters into the cirrus cloud formations, she saw a slow-moving flying solar panel that was once Helios, and was now Watchtower One. She took a step onto the snow.
She said to herself, "Here we go." Thence the longest war began, for only now had the scales been tipped, and slaughter became conflict, futile defense became war.
High above the atmosphere, a middle-aged man was surveying the white plains where war began. General Liu Xing-Hua saw the battle below in his seat on the station Tiananmen. Almost two decades ago he had been down there himself, fighting with men and women into whose eyes he had to look, whose lives he had to personally take. Now that feeling was gone in a way that was a gain than a loss, for now he could kill without pulling that trigger, without thrusting that bayonet, without even giving the order through speech. It had been 13 years now since he last fought, and he wanted to see how things were. He held out his hand, called a set of holographic controls, and zoomed in on a large building in the Federation's claimed territory, where he saw a young woman overseeing some kind of generator. He zoomed in some more and saw her markings, recognizing them as those of a general. She looked up - from her perspective she was looking at Helios - and he saw her eyes, and in no time he knew that this officer was not soft at all. She held up a pair of binoculars and obfuscated her eyes, and he terminated his console.
"Ready a shuttle," he ordered. "I want to see this myself."
No one would have expected that by the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the Eastern Alliance would be in full control of more than half of the world's territory. Unforeseen was the aggrandizement of this formerly small but doubtless mighty faction for the reason that the intrinsic presupposition among the world's militaristic superpowers was that North Korea and PRC were, quite simply, weak.
As we already know, the US was initially wary of the two because of whatever capabilities they may have had, but that vigilance disappeared as it entered yet another economic boom 2007 and up. By this time, their already inherent complacency had penetrated the majority of their functionality, and they thus ignored the growing threat. The signs were already being seen in 2010; strange satellite photographs indicating massive movements of troops and armor, a sudden influx of trade activity between NK and PRC in the form of unknown industrial products - and when it was already too late, the rapid, efficient deployment of MiGs through radar floors and gaps toward major military installations and even cities.
On Black Tuesday, 12 April 2011, a small number of grainy photos reported missing close to seven hundred aircraft, fighters and bombers, normally stationed in multiple airbases around mainland China and NK. The report, however, came slightly too late for most of the outposts concerned, as the originally unknown industrial products emerged as tactical nuclear warheads and brought so much light to so many of their enemies' cities and warbases.
The Grand Unified Federation of Perimeter Defense was established in 2023 as a faction of allied states creating defensive haloes of nations around Europe, the Americas, the forward regions of Russia, and most of central Asia - the enemies of the Eastern Alliance. An entirely militarized nation, Perimeter Defense was originally the defensive initiative for whatever remained of the United Nations; however as the war between the Alliance and the UN members grew in size and consequence, "Perimeter Defense" became a misnomer as the countries under attack poured resources into it and offensive operations to reclaim lost land greatly increased in frequency.
Operation Ad Ultimum began September 21, 2027. This unprecedented invasion of one of the main territories of the Eastern Alliance in western Antarctica consisted of nine hundred thousand troops, the first major offensive that Perimeter Defense took against the Alliance. The assault began in the very cold morning as the F-35s dropped out of optical cloak and saturated ground defense with GBU-200 JDAM-governed explosives. LIDAR emplacements found those ghost planes and presently removed them from the airspace, but by that time the tanks had also dropped optical cloak. Armor advanced quickly, and by the end of the day had erased three kilometers of Alliance defense - at the unacceptable cost of two hundred troops.
Brigadier General Jessica Rhinehart stepped out of her APC when the railguns stopped firing. She looked around and saw her division tanks reappear in short cycles of iridescence as the light filters of their optical cloak devices deactivated. She looked up and saw the Mi-101 stealth gunships thowing off cruise missiles at targets beyond even the enhanced eye could see. And looking further up with her binoculars, beyond the low-flying helicopters into the cirrus cloud formations, she saw a slow-moving flying solar panel that was once Helios, and was now Watchtower One. She took a step onto the snow.
She said to herself, "Here we go." Thence the longest war began, for only now had the scales been tipped, and slaughter became conflict, futile defense became war.
High above the atmosphere, a middle-aged man was surveying the white plains where war began. General Liu Xing-Hua saw the battle below in his seat on the station Tiananmen. Almost two decades ago he had been down there himself, fighting with men and women into whose eyes he had to look, whose lives he had to personally take. Now that feeling was gone in a way that was a gain than a loss, for now he could kill without pulling that trigger, without thrusting that bayonet, without even giving the order through speech. It had been 13 years now since he last fought, and he wanted to see how things were. He held out his hand, called a set of holographic controls, and zoomed in on a large building in the Federation's claimed territory, where he saw a young woman overseeing some kind of generator. He zoomed in some more and saw her markings, recognizing them as those of a general. She looked up - from her perspective she was looking at Helios - and he saw her eyes, and in no time he knew that this officer was not soft at all. She held up a pair of binoculars and obfuscated her eyes, and he terminated his console.
"Ready a shuttle," he ordered. "I want to see this myself."