YaATW2KT: The Soviet's Aleutian Front

[sglancy12]

The Soviet Invasion of Alaska (and Canada) in the original TW2K canon is one of my favorite aspects of the Twilight War.

Why? Mostly because it's one of the few spots you can get a real Red Dawn moment or two: The Red Army on US soil!

Is it very likely as proposed in the original material? Um... no. Pretty much impossible actually. In the cannon, the Sovs hit sometime in the summer of 1997, before the limited strategic nuclear exchange. This is a USSR that has been fighting the PRC for two years, the US for one year... and the Pacific fleet never had much sea-lift capacity to begin with. Hell, the Soviet Navy never had much sealift capacity anywhere.

More problems include: the unlikely idea that soviet airborne would seize the area around Seward and the Arctic Mechanize units would cross so much of the Alaskan wilderness to get to Fairbanks and Anchorage. I mean, there are no roads out there and the Reds would have to cross hundreds of miles of wilderness... which alternates between bug-infested swamp in the summer and frozen waste in the winter.

How are they supposed to manage that with a supply chain that starts somewhere down around Vladivostok? Not counting the too-narrow trans-Siberian railroad before even getting to Vladivostok, the rest of that supply chain would be by sea. There are no rail lines or roads connecting the settlements of the Soviet North-east. The US Fleet out in the Atlantic might be mauled, but the fleet in the pacific would have only been fighting the sov's small Pacific Fleet with the aid of the PRC navy and the Japanese Self Defense forces. The Soviet Pacific fleet would have been squashed and in no position to execute an invasion... even if the Sovs just piled as many men as possible onto merchant ships, the US Navy and Naval Aviation would have slaughtered them in the water before they could make landfall at Anchorage.

... not to mention that most of the units involved in the canon invasion are third and forth line troops... but perhaps that explains why so many defected to NATO or went marauder.

Anyways... I WANT the soviets to invade Alaska. Why? Because it's fun! I want "Ruskies" on my doorstep, dammit! I want some Red Dawn action! If such an invasion is impossible as written, how do we fix it? What events could likely take place that would render a Soviet Alaskan invasion less technically (and logistically) implausible?

Well, I've got two things in my Alternate Timeline that could make the invasion of Alaska (and British Columbia) more plausible.

1) The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China are not at war... In fact, there is a Sino-Soviet alliance. This provides two benefits to the Soviet invader:

A) No Soviet Far Eastern divisions will be getting chewed up in the Manchurian meat-grinder. Plenty will be send into Central Asia, Iran and Europe, but this will still leave a great deal more Soviet hardware (and frontline troops) to throw at the problem of invading Alaska. More Soviet Divisions attacking means more heroic stands against incredible odds by US and Canadian forces.

B) The combined Sino-Soviet fleet is giving the US Pacific Fleet a hard time... not because the Chinese are storming the beaches of Oahu... but because large amounts of the US fleet is pinned down trying to keep South Korea from being blockaded AND because the Chinese are going all-out to take Taiwan. With the US Army tied down in Korea, the Persian Gulf and Europe, defending Taiwan falls to the US Navy. Overburdened with this Herculean task, perhaps attrition in the Pacific has led to a situation where, combined with a massive intelligence failure (which we in the US seem prone to now and again) a Soviet sea-borne invasion of the Alaskan coast could be achieved.

2) I've moved the Invasion of Alaska back until the winter after the Soviet Thanksgiving Day sneak attack. That way the US is reeling from the attack and the Soviets were ready for the US counter-attack. The window of vulnerability caused by the attacks might also give the Soviets a leg up on pulling off the invasion.

I know that this subject has been addressed before in other threads, but if you have already addressed this subject, could you please do so again, even if you just cut and past your earlier comments, or even comments by others that you think are most pertinent to the subject.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing