Red Storm Rising - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Islamic terrorists from Azerbaijan destroy a Soviet oil-production facility at Nizhnevartovsk, Russia, crippling the USSR's oil production and threatening to wreck the nation's economy. Contemplating concessions to the West to survive the crisis, the Politburo instead decides to seize the oil fields in the Persian Gulf by military force.

According to the Carter Doctrine, any attack on the Gulf is an attack on strategic interests to the United States, necessitating a military response. To prevent a combined reaction by NATO, the Soviets launch a KGB operation to carry out a false flag operation framing West Germany for an unprovoked attack on the USSR; afterwards, the Soviets plan to invade Europe in response to that “attack”. With West Germany occupied, and NATO defeated, the Soviets hope that the U.S. will not rescue the Arab oil states when it attacks them, as it can meet its oil needs with Western sources. The Politburo arranges a bomb blast in the Kremlin that kills some visiting schoolchildren, blaming a West German exile for the attack.

The KGB operation has limited success: the planned attack on West Germany is detected when a Spetsnaz major is captured in Aachen. The officer's capture gives NATO time to mobilize its forces and preserve the alliance. Nonetheless, the operation scores some success, as several governments, notably those of Greece and Japan, publicly claim that this “German-Russian disagreement” does not warrant involvement. Thus, the Soviets face no opposition in either the Pacific theater or the Mediterranean region.

NATO aircraft manage to sharply reduce Soviet ground superiority on the first night of the war by using first-generation stealth planes and tactical fighter-bombers to eliminate Soviet Mainstay AWACS aircraft and tactical fighters. The NATO forces achieve air superiority and destroy many key bridges over which much of the Soviet Army had yet to cross. The Soviets advance at great cost, having dramatically underestimated NATO defensive firepower. Germany becomes the epicentre of the conflict; here, NATO forces are slowly driven west while inflicting significant damage to the encroaching Soviet Army.

Simultaneously, the Soviets seize Iceland in a covert surprise attack, capturing the NATO air station at Keflavík and disrupting the GIUK-SOSUS line to allow the Soviet Navy to operate in the Atlantic Ocean undetected. In addition, the Soviet Navy takes steps to protect its ballistic missile submarine fleet in costal waters behind minefields and ASW assets, allowing the full use of its attack submarines to engage and destroy NATO shipping rather than escorting strategic assets. In essence, the Soviet Navy is able to act as an offensive weapon contrary to pre-war NATO expectations, becoming a major strategic threat against resupply convoys coming from North America with both aircraft and submarines. This advantage is put to immediate use as a NATO carrier battle group, led by USS Nimitz, USS Saratoga and the French carrier Foch, is successfully attacked by Soviet Badger and Backfire bombers, the latter firing Kingfish missiles. The Soviets use Kelt missiles as decoys set to transmit as if they were Backfires on the predicted attack vector, far out from the main air fleet. The American carriers' F-14 interceptors are committed against the decoys, leaving an insufficient number of Crusaders from the Foch and the ships' surface-to-air missiles to defend against the bombers approaching from another direction. Foch is sunk, the amphibious assault carrier Saipan explodes, taking 2,500 Marines with her, and the two American carriers are forced to spend several weeks in drydock at Southampton, England.

In West Germany, the battle becomes a war of attrition that the Soviets expect to win through slow and sustained advances. With the death of the Soviet political favorite CinC-West in a NATO air attack on the Soviet rear lines, the more competent CinC-Southwest and his second-in-command, General-Colonel Pavel Leonidovich Alekseyev take over on the German front. Alekseyev commands a successful Soviet attack on the town of Alfeld, finally giving the Soviet Army the breakthrough it needs. As the OMG (Operational Manoeuvre Group) forces start to deploy, NATO looks likely to lose all of Germany east of the Weser River.

When a brilliantly timed naval attack on Soviet bomber bases with submarine-launched cruise missiles cripples the Soviet bomber force, the Soviets lose their most effective convoy and fleet killing weapon. The U.S. Marines take this opportunity to stage an amphibious assault on Iceland backed by NATO navies, retaking the island and closing the Atlantic to Soviet forces. A failed bomber raid on the NATO naval forces attacking Iceland (in which the remaining Soviet naval cruise missile bomber fleets are nearly wiped out) essentially means Victory in the Atlantic, opening the USSR to direct attacks from carrier strike groups against its Northern strategic areas and the free flow of convoys across the Atlantic. Simultaneously with the sudden reversal in the Atlantic, SACEUR, a renowned poker player, makes an audacious gamble in the face of a final Soviet offensive that pushes NATO ground forces to the breaking point, launching an unexpected flanking manoeuvre that places heavy NATO forces in the rear of the Soviet spearhead, cutting their last frontline units off behind two different rivers and interdicting their supplies. Intelligence gained from a prisoner on Iceland finally reveals the dire fuel situation in the USSR to NATO, who promptly switch bombing tactics and wipe out significant forward fuel depots, essentially immobilising the last of the elite Soviet formations. With the Soviet advance decisively halted, NATO catches its breath and prepares to move into a general offensive against the increasingly ineffective Soviet C category reserves being moved forward.

With the conventional situation in Europe turning against them and their strategic situation increasingly bleak due to the drawdown on national oil reserves resulting in a crippled economy, the Politburo are moved to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons at the front to regain the initiative. Alekseyev, realizing that a tactical nuclear exchange would almost certainly lead to a strategic nuclear exchange, seeks and obtains control of his theatre's nuclear weapons as part of their planning; ostensibly for practical matters of tactical targeting but in reality to ensure they are never used. In the face of this nightmare scenario, General Alekseyev joins forces with the Chairman of the KGB and the Energy Minister, Mikhail Eduardovich Sergetov, in staging a coup d’état, replacing the Politburo with a troika consisting of Sergetov, Agriculture Minister F. M. Krylov, and longtime Politburo member Pyotr Bromkovskiy (an elderly and respected World War II veteran) whilst the Chairman of the KGB is allowed to be executed by a Major, revealed to be a parent of one of the children who was killed in the Kremlin bombing.

With the Government back under control, Alekseyev flies back to Germany and personally negotiates with SACEUR to bring an end to the war, forestalling the launching of NATO's counter-offensive with an agreement of a cease fire and withdrawal to pre-war lines, apparently ending the war. The story of the aftermath of the conflict is left untold.