[chico20854]

October 16, 1997

XVIII Airborne Corps and I MEF launch limited counterattacks to tie down Soviet troops.

Unofficially,

With the increasing risk of nuclear attack, the deployment of the 301st Port Security Unit from New England to Korea is put on hold.

The first two new truck companies are stood up - the 476th at Fort Eustis, Virginia and the 297th (Heavy) at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

Colonel Tumanski's Spetsnaz team scores another (minor) victory, overrunning a Royal Observer Corps outpost and seizing communications gear and documents for their examination.

Berlin-Schoenfeld International Airport is struck by Soviet tactical nuclear weapon, destroying the headquarters of the 917th Tactical Airlift Wing (Air Force Reserve) but few aircraft, several of which are serving in Iran while many of the rest had been dispersed following the initiation of tactical nuclear warfare in July.

The American XI Corps launches a counterattack on the Soviet 1st Shock Army, which has been pursuing it all the way from the Ukrainian border. The 50th Armored Division (New Jersey National Guard) advances through the blast zone of a series of artillery-fired strikes, exploiting the disruption of those strikes and an ATACMS-N strike on the army's rear headquarters and creating a gap between the 2nd Guards Motor-Rifle Division and the 60th Tank Division. With the guardsmen holding the flanks, a task force rushes eastward, linking up with the outer pickets of the 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment. The task force quickly loads up the exhausted cavalry troopers into its trucks and APCs and the entire formation retreats back to friendly lines near the German border by dawn on the 17th.

The Battle of Svyatoi Nos. 30 miles off the eastern tip of the Kola Peninsula, the American attack submarine Olympia is under attack by two surface anti-surface groups, boxed in with shallow water to the west, a minefield to the east and a surface group to the north and south. The American boat is out of anti-ship missiles, and takes the bold move of launching its remaining torpedoes at the attacking ships while launching a series of three (all it had on board) Sea Lance-N missiles in sequence to blast a path through the minefield. The move is successful, the torpedoes sinking the pursuing destroyer Admiral Golokovo (the Red Banner Northern Fleet's last modern surface combatant) and two corvettes and allowing the American submarine to slip away.

A group of experts from the Soviet Ministry of Oil and Gas arrive in Romania to begin assessing the condition of the Romanian oil industry and the potential to exploit it to support Soviet war aims. Soviet troops are protecting the refineries and patrolling the major oil fields but the occupation authorities have been unable to round up the industry's former workforce, who they are loathe to trust with such a strategic asset in any case.