I stood in the war room with the three leaders I needed to make it all happen. Generals Zerfirov and Muller and Admiral Gena. The three wore mixed faces, ranging from Muller's veiled excitement and Zerfirov's guarded enthusiasm to Gena's mopy anxiety.
"Sir, this is a massive force commitment, I don't know if we will be able to maintain our supply lines that far." Gena grumbled for perhaps the sixth time.
"It'll work out Gena, have a bit of faith in yourself and subordinates." I clapped him on the back.
"Sir, this is two massive surface action groups and a pair of sizable armies we are talking about! Deploying them into a potentially very hostile city on the other side of the largest ocean on the planet! How could I not start stressing?" he moaned, clutching at his hat.
"Stop worrying so much, we'll be sourcing most of our food and fuel from the local supply network, you'll just have to ensure enough ammo ships make it through to keep us going." Zerfirov joked. Gena glared at the three of us and collapsed into his seat.
"To hell with it, you'll just overrule me anyway. Let's just get this shit show on the road shall we?" He murmured softly.
I nodded… I'll have to make sure Gena gets some leave, probably a lot of it… that or start splitting his command… Maybe both? I'll see what I can do to lessen his workload a bit, it seems to be catching up to him though.
"So… I understand the ultimate objective is Manila… but other than arranging some logistical understandings between the three of us…" Siska gestured around as the three of them looked at me expectantly.
"I'll be joining you in Singapore for this operation. It's currently under the overarching name the system gave it. Red Comet. For now we'll focus on transiting the 10th and 12th armies to Singapore, avoiding Hawaii as much as possible." I turned to the map on the wall, for once not showing California or the west coast of the United States. But a broad map of South East Asia.
"Surface action group Angel will move into the South China sea once it finishes escorting 10th army to Singapore, from there they will conduct recon flights over The Spratlys and Palawan. Once surface action group Demon arrives to assist they'll move further north east and reconiter Mindoro and Luzon. We'll create our amphibious landing plans based on that intel." I looked at the three of them.
"As it currently stands, we should be completely staged in Singapore by February 7th at the latest, and we can get boots on Luzon by the 9th via airborne insertion from either Surface action groups Angel or Demon, a few Spetsnaz squads to confirm reports from the air… best I figure we should be prepared to land in force around February 15th."
The three nodded, agreeing in theory with what I was saying. The surface action groups were built around their pairing of capital ships, a kirov class battlecruiser and a Orel class aircraft carrier. The Kirov, a missile slinging monster of a cruiser was fairly well know to me… but the Orel? It was a paper design from the late 60s, essentially a downscaled version of a USN carrier of the day with its own complement of heavy over the horizon missiles to hurl at enemy ships on top of a decent airgroup of some 60 aircraft and helicopters.
Between the two SAGs there would be two soviet fleet carriers, the Resolution and Revenge, and the modified kiev my wife had named Querido amor. Two powerful battlecruisers, the Alexander and Peter, backed by some forty destroyers and nearly thirty frigates. That realistically was more firepower that any Russian surface fleet could muster since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Then I had 10th Naval Army, 4 naval infantry divisions, mostly brought along to ensure any beach landing was easy enough to manage but mostly because frankly, they were easier to transport across the Pacific than their heavier tank formations of the other armies. And then, to round it out and ensure I had that classic soviet armor and artillery, 12th Volksarmee group. Two tank divisions, three motor rifle divisions, one of the artillery divisions I think it was the 1157th… Were being attached temporarily to buff out their firepower.
Then that was being supplemented by whatever forces the Pacific alliance could scrape together, likely a few under strength infantry or tank divisions. Maybe they'll have some airpower we'll be able to use if we secure an airfield or one of the international airports. Worst case scenario I'll just have a fighter regiment shipped over later into the campaign if it looks to be dragging on to give the squadrons aboard the Resolution and Revenge a break.
Maybe I might want to bring some sapper brigades, Li hadn't sounded too confident about being able to supply engineers for building a forward operating base. Maybe I should look into ensuring there was one just off the mainland, just in case… the system had a habit of making simple looking quests difficult for no reason.
That being said the submarine fleet would be moving into position, they wouldn't be directly participating in most of the campaign, instead watching the routes our convoys would take for leviathans and putting the damn things down. And just in case, four typhoons were being ordered just off the Philippine pacific shelf if it turned out that the city needed a bath of the nuclear fire.
Crap… I'll have to tell Lana to cancel my flight lessons till I get back.