[chico20854]

August 22, 1997

In North Korea, the US 2nd Infantry Division links up with the lead battalions of IX Corps, concluding its two-week long march south through enemy-held territory.

Unofficially,

The Native Canadian Ranger Regiment intercepts and eliminates a third Spetsnaz team in the northeastern Canadian Arctic, this one near the Pelly Bay air defense radar site.

The British Ministry of Defense evaluates the report received from the Falklands. After consultations with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary once again calls the Argentine ambassodor in and demands the immediate withdrawal of Argentine forces. Once again, the ambassador professes ignorance but transmits word to Buenos Aires.

Heavy trucks arrive in the 13th Army area to load tanks and armored vehicles for transit to the nearest railheads, over 250 km to the north in Mongolia.

In the isolated Torun Pocket, cut off behind NATO lines since June, the commander of the 4th Guards Tank Army reorganizes his remaining units, disbanding the 41st Independent Tank Regiment and 510th Independent Guards Tank Regiment and assigning those units' surviving tanks and crews to the 20th and 25th Tank Divisions, respectively.

The Warsaw Pact offensives, supported by tactical nuclear strikes on NATO supply dumps and static artillery positions, continue to make slow progress. East of Bialystok, Poland, lead regiments of the 7th Tank Army attempt to force a breakthrough along the boundary between II British Corps and the American V Corps. The British, under pressure from the 23rd Army on its northern flank and spoiling attacks from a mixed force of KGB, MVD and Army troops to its front, have little to commit to their southern flank. The American corps tries to cover the area with its 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and attack helicopters from the 12th Aviation Brigade, but the long frontage and need to remain dispersed to avoid a nuclear strike mean that there is more a screen than a front line in the area and the Soviet troops gain several additional kilometers of ground.

The American freighter Santa Isabel, which dropped away from Convoy 418 after experiencing engine problems (the ship was built in 1967) is attacked and sunk by a Soviet raider, the destroyer Ostorozhnyy. The destroyer, even older than its quarry, was recently reactivated and sailed from the Kola after the conclusion of the Allied offensive and slipped through the GIUK Gap in ice flows near the Greenland coast.

After a rushed three weeks, the Portugese 15th Infantry Regiment's operational battalion arrives at the Lisbon Naval Station, where three American transport ships (the Cape Domingo, Pioneer Crusader and Cleveland Freedom) are awaiting to transport the 1st Mechanized Brigade to Turkey.

The American carriers John F Kennedy and America continue their attacks on Italian naval targets.

The Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense discovers that the electronics plant in Tblisi, Georgia that is supposed to be manufacturing the new guidance packages for the SS-23 missiles is still awaiting the production drawings, which due to an administrative error, were never sent from Moscow. They predict that they can have a prototype together in 10-12 weeks. The Colonel-General is quite upset, to say the least. The Tblisi plant has reallocated its production line to producing radars for Su-27 interceptors in the interim.