[chico20854]

May 2, 1998

A New America expedition to ruins of Blytheville Air Force Base stumbles across an army unit busily excavating a cache of undamaged cruise missiles from a rubble-buried storage bunker. The New American commander, showing more initiative than sense, attacks the unit. His unit suffers 60% casualties, but a truck convoy with five ALCMs already loaded on board is overrun and captured. The army unit suffers light casualties and attributes the attack to marauders.


Unofficially,

The American airborne force in Alaska comes under Soviet attack as the 110th Guards Motor Rifle Division dispatches a detachment from the 558th Guards Motor-Rifle Regiment to dislodge the blocking force. To the south, the combined force of the 22nd Guards Motor-Rifle Division and the 99th Guards Air Assault Division move south into British Columbia, sending scavenging parties far and wide to secure food and fuel to sustain the attacking force.

In the skies over Czechoslovakia, two RF-16Cs of the 26th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing collide while swerving and weaving to throw off a pursuing MiG-29 of the Czech 8th Fighter Regiment. The pilots had only flown three missions in the prior two months, none of which had included flying with a wingman. The loss of the two precious fighters shows how rapidly proficiency of fighter pilots deteriorates when pilot skills are not used.

The American freighter Gulf Shipper is attacked by pirates in small boats off the Horn of Africa while on a voyage to secure food supplies for the Iranian civilian population.

Another car bomb tears apart the downtown of a South African city, this time the provincial capital of Bloemfontein. Authorities strongly suspect that it is the work of AWB terrorists, whose compatriots still control vast swathes of the countryside despite a massive active counterinsurgency by SADF forces.