“Better than 2 for 1 then,” Bondarev grunted.
“In machines, yes,” Arsharvin said. “But not in pilots. We lost 12 pilots! The Americans lost just six, killed or captured! Six men! That’s two to one in their favor!”
Bondarev was quiet a moment. He was well aware of his losses. Had been sitting in his hospital bed writing to as many widows and parents in the few days after the battle as he had in three years over Syria and Turkey.
“A human pilot will beat a machine every time, we have proven it in testing against our own Okhotniks over Armavir, we proved it again in combat over Syria,” Bondarev insisted.
“But not in these numbers, not against Fantoms armed with their new Cuda missiles, and you aren’t just fighting machines Comrade Major-General,” Arsharvin said, clearly frustrated. “Their ‘hex’ data linked combat formation means there is one pilot to every six drones. They can choose to fly and operate weapons systems, or let their drones operate semi-autonomously. One pilot to six drones Yevgeny!” Arsharvin threw his hands in the air. “Every one of our drones requires two crew and we can’t train them fast enough to keep them fully manned.”
“I was fighting with my hands tied,” Bondarev pointed out. “Not allowed to commit my Okhotniks, not allowed to engage until we were almost at guns range. The odds were all in the Americans’ favor. They won’t be next time, I promise you.”
“If there is a next time,” Arsharvin said. “Lukin is in Vladivostok with a bunch of other generals and politicians looking at the same numbers I sent to you.”
Bondarev frowned, “The way I see it, we’re committed now. It’s not like there’s anything to talk about,” he said. Getting down on his haunches, he tipped forward, balancing on his toes. His right calf muscle screamed in protest, but he embraced the pain. When the time came to return to duty, he would be ready.
Arsharvin winced, “If you’re a politician, there’s always something to talk about my friend. We haven’t yet moved on Nome, so for now it’s still just about Saint Lawrence. Moscow aren’t just spooked by the capabilities of the US air forces. They aren’t getting the sympathy or even the neutrality they expected from the UN after the US attack. And my sources in the Kremlin tell me President Navalny is personally rattled by the brutality of an opponent who apparently had no qualms about the mass murder of fifty of their troops and several hundred of their own citizens at Savoonga.”
It was to be Devlin’s third meeting with the Russian Foreign Ministry in as many weeks, but the first with their Foreign Minister since a ceasefire was declared, the day after the ‘Battle of Bering Strait’.
Whether her superiors had really expected Russia to fold in the face of a demonstration of US airpower and withdraw from Saint Lawrence, she couldn’t say. But she did know they had been fazed by the unhesitating Russian willingness to defend their ‘no-go’ zone. Just as she was aware the Russians were fazed by the US willingness to do whatever it took to defend its territorial rights.
Devlin had been shocked too. She had emerged from Carl Williams’ office to the news that US Pacific Command had ordered the effective destruction of the Savoonga cantonment, accepting that with that decision there would be inestimable loss of civilian life. Russia was claiming that in addition to 200 of their own troops who died in Gambell and at Savoonga, the attack had resulted in 80 US service personnel and 1000 civilians dead or wounded. Russian media had been quick to broadcast video footage of shocked civilians, being treated at a medical center at Savoonga, asking why? Why had their own government attacked them? Some couldn’t believe it, but one Yup’ik elder was more sanguine, “America hasn’t given a damn about us the last two hundred years, and this just proves it still doesn’t give a damn.”
In the court of international opinion, the US had tried to hold Russia responsible, claiming it had provoked the attack by opening fire on ‘US aircraft patrolling inside US territory, outside the illegal Russian no-fly zone.’ Russia in turn had claimed that the massive US provocation that was ‘Operation Resolve’ had been timed together with a stealth missile or aircraft attack on its ‘legitimate peacekeeping forces’ in Gambell, and followed by the massive cruise missile attack on Russian and civilian targets spread across Saint Lawrence Island.
The US had made no mention of the Russian attack on Little Diomede.
International sympathy had split across traditional lines, current allies siding with the super-power they were aligned with, and no neutral states stepping outside their comfort zones to get in between the two combatants. The UN Secretary-General had called for urgent de-escalation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board had moved their ‘Doomsday Clock’ to thirty seconds to midnight, the closest it had been set since 1953 when the US and Russia both tested hydrogen fusion bombs. Her Russian counterparts had one clear goal in any conversation Devlin had with them; to find out whether the US was willing to use nuclear weapons to defend its territory. If Russia still refused to withdraw from Saint Lawrence, even after the scorched earth approach the US had taken with non-nuclear weapons, would it truly consider using tactical nuclear weapons and risk planetary scale nuclear destruction?
Devlin had been ordered to reply that the US demand for the remaining Russian troops to withdraw from Saint Lawrence was still valid, and that any attempt to reinforce the island would be met with ‘the necessary force’.
But the same thing still puzzled Devlin now as had puzzled her before. Would Russia really risk nuclear destruction just to test American resolve in the Bering Strait? It remained the only theory the State Department could anchor the Russian aggression to, and the people inside State who propounded it were arguing now that Russia had gone too far to back away, that the loss of nearly 200 ground troops on Saint Lawrence and numerous front-line aircraft could not be ignored and domestic political pressure would stop them from backing down.
It was a stalemate. Russian forces remained in control of the island’s population centers of Gambell and Savoonga. Russian aircraft still patrolled overhead and Russian warships plied the seas up and down the Strait turning away any US shipping or aircraft that approached. They were letting the much-reduced trickle of internationally flagged ships through, but any US flagged or owned ship was being warned and if it did not turn back, boarded and forcibly turned around. There were no more viable military targets on Saint Lawrence for the US to attack and attacking Russian warships in the waters of Saint Lawrence would have been a major re-escalation.
What Devlin was going to the Foreign Ministry to tell her Russian counterparts today was that a US carrier group centered around the latest (and in fact probably the last) of the US supercarriers, the USS Enterprise, had just departed San Diego. Its objective: a ‘freedom of navigation’ transit through the Bering Strait.
Devlin had always thought of herself as a peacemaker. So she was surprised by the emotion boiling in her chest. A peacemaker should be feeling dismay, sadness or perhaps resignation. She felt something very different. It was outrage. As she sat in her car looking out at a rainy grey Moscow afternoon, she had one defiant thought.
Try to turn the USS Enterprise around, you bastards!