[chico20854]

March 18, 1998

Facing dwindling stocks of fuel and fuel at the Alternate Miltiary Command Center at Raven Rock, Maryland, the remaining Joint Chiefs decides to relocate to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where the assets of the US Air Force Academy, Fort Carson and NORAD headquarters can be used to sustain continued operations. They do not inform President Munson, at another bunker in central Virginia, of their decision.

Unofficially,

The Canadian Naval task force in the St. Lawrence is slowed by an engineering failure of the aged frigate Margaree, which costs the task force a day's transit.

With it looking increasingly unlikely that the supply of fuel in Europe will be sufficient to support operations of the remaining USAF Europe force structure, an inter-theater transfer of excess units is organized. Reflecting the biases of the pre-war active duty leadership, the departing units are Air National Guard and USAF Reserve - the 183rd Tactical Fighter Wing (Illinois National Guard), which is transferred to the CENTCOM area of operations, the 125th Tactical Fighter Squadron (Oklahoma Air National Guard), transferred to AFRICOM from Turkey along with the 169th Tactical Air Support Squadron (Illinois National Guard) from East Germany and the 180th Tactical Airlift Squadron (Missouri National Guard), whose C-130s have been under threat from the chaos of the Dead Zone outside the wire surrounding their base at Weisbaden Army Airfield. The entire evolution is supported by the tankers of the 134th Air Refuelling Wing (Tennesse and New York Air National Guards), which has been resupplied with fuel by a small tanker dispatched to its operating base Lajes in the Azores.

After three days of attacks on the outpost in the Carpathians, the division commander of the 97th Guards Motor-Rifle Division sends a reinforcement column tobreak the siege. The column, composed of a (reduced) motor-rifle company mounted in BTR-80s, a platoon of four T-86 tanks and a pair of ZSU-23-4 air defense vehicles escorting a dozen supply and fuel trucks, is ambushed by the Romanian attack force's rear guard, who were emplaced along the mountainous road leading to the Soviet outpost to deal with just such an eventuality. Using RPGs, mines and AT-4 ATGMs scavenged from last year's battlefields the Romanians knock out the Soviet tanks and anti-arcraft vehicles before raking thte column with machinegun fire. The surrounded motor-riflemen fight valiantly, but they are sitting ducks in the remote canyon and soon are overwhelmed.

In the Far East, the Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Rifle Brigade's transit around Lake Baikal is blocked by a tunnel destroyed by an American nuclear strike, stranding it on a remote hillside above Lake Baikal.