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I'll lay out a basic plan for how to invade the Baltics (as Russia) in the near future
and get away with it.
Parental advisory: Please do NOT try this at home. I mean it!
Before the invasion
Sleeper agents and malware infections particularly at infrastructure and (electrical power) utilities companies were prepared.
There were but a few early indicators that could have served as warnings about the timing of the invasion:
Russian corporations chartered RoRo and other ships as well as heavylift aircraft such as An-124 for not very profitable endeavours for more than a year to desensitise Western intelligence, and finally there were two spikes in such chartering activities; one was a test to see whether the West would react and the second was for the actual invasion date. This way the West was deprived of many RoRo ships that could have sealifted especially UK land forces and also of many most valuable heavylift aircraft that could have supplemented the military heavylift aircraft to speed up Western counterconcentration of forces.
Many Western pundits and 'experts' expected "hybrid warfare" of Russian troops without national patches (as on the Crimea and in the Eastern Ukraine) and armed ethnic Russians living in the Baltic countries to be important parts and early indicators of an invasion, but almost no such thing happened. Instead, the Russian public was merely prepared by more or less bogus reports about Estonian men raping ethnic Russians and other events that supposedly proved that Russians were in danger in the Baltic region and painted the Baltic states' governments as dysfunctional, corrupt and fascist.
One such event shortly before the invasion was staged to provide a final (fake) motive for invasion.
Likewise, Western pundits and experts had expected that a major exercises would be used to conceal final invasion preparations, but the only Russian exercise planned for the time of the invasion was a VDV (airborne forces) exercise. The land and air forces had been drilled for quick deployments by rail and air respectively during the preceding years, though.
Secrecy was ensured by Russian military planning for many contingencies, including scenarios against NATO. Western intelligence services were content to have infiltrated this and enjoying redundant and thus confirmed insider reports. These plans made at the regular HQs were but a cover for the real invasion planning which was done by a staff of a mere hundred officers. They drew on preparations done for the HQ plans, but developed a very different plan while being confined at and in fact locked up in a remote previously vacated mining settlement with no military past. This plan would lack the early warning indicators that the HQ's plans had.
This plan was held back until days before the invasion, and even then all but a few orders were still sealed and encrypted. The leaders of the regular military forces that led the invasion only learned about their orders in the evening before the invasion.
Putin himself made the preliminary decision on the invasion date only a week early, and gave the order for the actual invasion date only hours before it began. Reliable early warning was impossible. Even if NATO/EU had reacted on suspicions, they would have been desensitised to the threat of invasion by it never happening while they were expecting it. This game couldn't end other than in favour of the invader because but one party was intent on invasion, and it was in no hurry.
The invasion
The time of invasion was on a Sunday, 0100 local time. It was February and all rivers and lakes in the Baltic region as well as the Gulf of Finland were frozen.
The token foreign NATO forces in the Baltic region were blown up by air and missile strikes within 20 minutes, including the puny air policing fighter flights.
A salvo of Iskander and Klub missiles launched from 'supply' containers stored in Kaliningrad knocked out the majority of Polish Air Force F-16C/D fighters, destroyed many Leopard 2 tanks and knocked down all heavy duty Vistula bridges, while much of the rest of Polish military was spared from this early strike because much of it was obsolete or in disrepair anyway.
Artillery of the Russian forces in Kaliningrad did hit the
foolishly close Polish army bases of the 9th Armoured Cavalry Brigade, 20th "Bartoszycka" Mechanized Brigade, 15th "Giżycka" Mechanized Brigade, though. Guided rockets were used to hit buildings and vehicle parking/storage areas early on, whereas later on unguided munitions were used to keep any presence and activity in those military bases very hazardous.
Task forces of the Russian army reached those Polish brigades at daybreak, and defeated the still not combat-ready troops swiftly. A third of the Polish army was defeated within hours, and the Polish air force became largely irrelevant.
Belarus was not actively involved in the scheme. Secrecy would have been too much of a challenge, and the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko was rather intent on building a dynasty with his son rather than recreating the Russian Empire, which no doubt would have swallowed Belarus. Belarus did help Russia passively, though. Russia was able to use military bases in Western Belarus that -under the cover of this country's neutrality - proved valuable as forward electronic listening posts. The bet was that NATO would not want to pull Belarus into this conflict, for this would widen the front, escalate the conflict, constitute an aggression and offer Russia many more bases as well as adding the army of Belarus to the conflict at a time when NATO member Poland would be desperate about protecting its capital Warsaw.
The VDV reinforced the isolated Russian brigade at Kaliningrad through airlift of an entire brigade before dawn, with most personnel jumping at low altitude to save on airfield capacity.
The main thrust into the Baltic region was aimed at crossing the only major obstacle - the Daugava River - as soon as possible.The distance to the Russian border was little more than 100 km, but the Russian 6th Army was located around Saint Petersburg, and even the all-wheeled task forces of both the 138th Guards and 25th Motorised Rifle Brigade first had to travel more than 300 km within Russia.
The eventual crossing of the river was greatly eased by it being frozen enough to walk on it. Russian army engineers laid metal carpets to distribute the mass of vehicles on the ice and thus allowed light motor vehicles to cross the river almost immediately. They also dragged pontoons over the ice and linked them up to allow heavier vehicles to pass the river. No bet was made to capture bridges intact, though a battalion-sized Spetznaz air assault was conducted to try to secure a bridge at Daugavpils. This one was destroyed later on the first day by a large salvo of Royal Navy cruise missiles, though.
The 6th Army's thrust towards the Lithuanian-Polish border and Kaliningrad Oblast was supported by "go" drugs and completed within 60 hours. All opposition they encountered were token "tripwire" forces (that had suffered badly under the initial missile barrage), as well as the weak Lithuanian and Latvian regular and paramilitary forces. The push was this quick because the capitals were not taken directly, but circumvented. Both Latvia and Lithuania had much of their feeble land power concentrated in their capitals.
The Russian Air Force demolished what little manoeuvre forces existed in Latvia and Estonia during day one and two, and allowed Russian paramilitary troops that had been flown to Saint Petersburg with civilian aircraft to flood into all three Baltic states and to occupy them within days. These troops weren't in control everywhere, but they were dominant everywhere. The civilians were under a curfew.
A notable air assault took place on the Estonian islands. They were accessible by land over the ice anyway, but the presence of VDV forces was meant to deter NATO from establishing a foothold there.
Supporting actions
The Finnish government was informed on the first morning that Russia would perfectly respect and guarantee Finnish sovereignty if both Finland and Sweden abstained from any support to NATO or EU, much less turning hostile themselves. The Finnish government then contacted the Swedish government and reached an agreement to mobilise and wait for further developments. No NATO air power was allowed into Swedish air bases.
Agents badly damaged the majority of the few dozen NATO and British E-3 Sentry (AWACS) aircraft on the ground with small guided missiles and mortars as well as by sabotage.
Electrical grids failed in Poland, Germany and Denmark due to sabotage by agents and malware, and a combination thereof. The electrified railroad lines in Germany and Poland became useless for days due to sabotage of the signal system and power outages.
Cruise missiles launched from a freighter that departed from Murmansk into the Baltic Sea knocked down all Oder river bridges and destroyed dozens of Typhoon aircraft on German Luftwaffe airbases in their hardened shelters (which had been under observation by agents) and in airbase maintenance hangars.
The Russian intelligence had a ship placed over the Eurotunnel that quickly drilled to the Eurotunnel and emplaced a one kiloton nuclear mine right on top of it, then plugged the hole. The explosion occurred hours later, opened the tunnel and flooded it. The UK could not send its military assets or supplies through this tunnel any more for months to come.
Additional bargaining chips
The airspace over Kaliningrad had become too dangerous for airlift operations after two days, but the transport aircraft assembled were not left unused. A parallel invasion of both Iceland and
Svalbard was launched with VDV forces that enjoyed the best cold weather training and equipment.
Afterwards, an entire S-300 regiment, coastal defence missile batteries and field artillery were flown to Reykjavík. It would take many weeks for the U.S.Navy to amass enough amphibious warfare capacity in the North Atlantic to liberate Iceland. An airborne invasion was out of question because the airborne forces available to NATO lacked both armour and reliable artillery support.
Securing the flanks
Georgia was overrun by Russian forces from the Southern Military District in a repeat of 2008, and the government of Turkey was promised by Putin that Turkey would not be attacked and Russian forces would leave Georgia - save for Abchasia and South Ossetia - within a month if Turkey promised to limit its article 5 support to NATO's cause to what it could do from home, and not tolerate any foreign air power in its country. Caliph Erdogan agreed in secret, being fed up with European and American politicians who previously had criticized him for human rights abuses and for his foreign policies.
The air war
The air war was waged by NATO from bases in Germany and the Czech Republic mostly, and heavily dependent on tanker aircraft. Radar planes such as E-3 and E-8 - if still available at all - were pushed back by Russian long range missiles (S-400 surface to air missile system and various fighter-launches long range missiles). This limited their use to the area controlled by friendly ground forces and the Western Baltic Sea.
Hardly any long-range intrusions into Russian-dominated airspace were attempted by NATO despite its material superiority: The risk that NATO combat aircraft would be attacked with surprise by Russian aircraft (which benefited from the few Russian AEW&C aircraft and the many S-300 and S-400 regiments' radars) was too great. There weren't very many targets more valuable than individual tanks in range anyway. Too few tanker aircraft were available - in part because they kept suffering losses to Russian agents in particular during take off and landing since they had to make use of civilian airports while combat aircraft were based on the crowded active and former Cold War military airbases, most of which were in rural and thus more easily secured areas.
Russian satellites began to emit signals to jam both GPS and Galileo signals, making both satellite navigation systems largely useless in the theatres of war. Powerful land-based lasers were used to dazzle and permanently blind espionage and scientific earth observation satellites. Even radar satellites were jammed.
The United States did quite the same to Russian satellites, of course.
Aircraft losses were atrocious on both sides during the first week, but afterwards NATO had defeated the integrated air defences that had been set up in Kaliningrad Oblast and Lithuania enough to force them into survival mode; with few radars and modern missiles left, the area air defence were only activated on particularly promising occasions and Russian combat air patrols typically circled along the Russian border.
Camouflage, deception, numbers and short range air defences made it very difficult to reduce the Russian ground forces that were still facing mostly Polish forces with few German, American, French and Czech forces in between. The American and French forces were mostly on wheeled armoured vehicles only and suffered badly whenever they attempted offensive manoeuvres or were reconnoitred for Russian artillery strikes. The German forces awkwardly avoided Kaliningrad Oblast and were deployed to protect Warsaw, mostly facing Belarus. This was driven by political directions from Berlin, since the German government only slowly digested the news and hoped for a quick, seemingly self-evident armistice as had been demanded by the UN General Secretary. German Typhoons had mostly flown defensive combat air patrols, being short on modern missiles and weakened by the early strikes. Some German Tornado ECR aircraft had participated in the reduction of Russian SAM radars, but soon ran out of missiles - just as other NATO air forces. Anti-radar missiles had to be flown in from distant carrier groups, Pacific and North American bases to replenish the quickly exhausted supply. There were too many Russian radar decoys and too many Russian radars were switched off in time to avoid a missile hit.
The war at sea
There was no real war at sea in the Baltic Sea. The German, Dutch and Danish navies focused on closing the Danish waters and thus the entry/exit of the Baltic Sea, for Russian submarines.
The war in the North Atlantic was all about the Russian navy trying to protect its SSBNs north of Russia and NATO SSNs sprinting to blockade missions around Iceland and Svalbard. No attempt was made to destroy SSBNs, since this would threaten a second (retaliation) strike capability and might thus lead to a preventive nuclear strike.
French, British and American SSBNs left ports and went on patrols for deterrence of strategic nuclear attacks.
A frustrated U.S.Navy launched hundreds of cruise missiles at targets on Iceland, Svalbard, in and around Murmansk and in the Caucasus region with little effect. This had been anticipated and much valuable equipment had been moved, replaced in place by decoys.
Probing by Russian air power including the sinking of an escort on air defence picket duty forced the single U.S. carrier group in the Atlantic to focus on self-defence until additional carriers would arrive and bolster naval air power strength. The only carrier that arrived in the first week was the HMS Queen Elizabeth, which had no fighter aircraft yet and served as little more than an alternative refuelling point for naval helicopters.
The end
Within a week Russia had occupied what it wanted to conquer and gained enough bargaining chips. It was about time to end the conflict before superior NATO conventional forces would arrive despite all delays and crush the thin defence mounted by the Russian army and air force.
A threat was made:
Invade Iceland and nuclear weapons would be used on ship targets and ultimately on Reykjavik itself.
Invade Svalbard and nuclear weapons would be used on ship targets and land forces.
Try to reconquer any Baltic state and tactical nuclear weapons would be used on land and air power targets.
The mini nuke used to flood the Eurotunnel was mentioned as evidence for Russian readiness to use nuclear munitions.
The President of the United States, the UK's Prime Minister and France's President were too stubborn or proud and didn't signal their readiness for a truce in the demanded time window.
As a consequence, a Norwegian destroyer was engulfed by a 10 kt nuclear explosion at sea. The Russian armed forces previously visually confirmed the ship identification with a swarm of drones too large to be shot down with missiles and too distant to be destroyed by guns. Putin directly ordered that only a single small power warship would be destroyed, not a nuclear powers' warship.
The risk of escalation towards mutual destruction became unbearable, especially considering that but a few million people lived in the Baltic region, and those would likely suffer more from continuation of the war than from a truce. There was nothing to be gained from war for NATO.
Finally, a compromise was made: Russia evacuated Iceland and Svalbard, but kept the three Baltic countries occupied. There would be no formal peace treaty since there was no formal declaration of war, but Russian control of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became a fact.
Post-war
Both NATO and Russia entered a decade of arms racing, with NATO recovering from the blows and addressing its weaknesses. A line of dispersed military bases would be established from Poland to Romania, and a series of arms control treaties would be negotiated with Czar Putin to cool the continent down again.
Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were under the terms of the truce free to leave their countries. Many Lithuanians emigrated to Poland, Germany the United States and Canada. Many Latvians emigrated to Germany, the United States and Canada. Almost a majority of ethnic Estonians fled to Finland. Poland received huge assistance from the EU to host the Lithuanian refugees and rebuild after the war's devastations.
NATO was dissolved by members leaving it because NATO 2.0 was founded, this time excluding Turkey and of course Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
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The entire invasion scenario rests on surprise and the few Russian land forces (that were either in the region or deployable by air) being able to outweigh what forces NATO has in the region and can deploy in time. The window of Russian conventional superiority was measured in days in the air and at most weeks on the ground. Reconquest could only be prevented by means of nuclear munitions and 'diplomacy'.
On one hand a limitation of the conflict (keeping Finland, Belarus and Turkey out) kept it somehow manageable from the Russian perspective, while on the other hand an escalation (Iceland, Svalbard, Georgia) beyond the region of interest provided bargaining chips.
NATO was too much surprised to collect bargaining chips of its own.
S O
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