Operation Grand Master - 4 - Preparing for Hell

The first of several Aerial Reconnaissance Missions has been launched over the territory of the Holy American Empire. Volumes of data are already being assimilated via satellite and SKINT intelligences however the importance of true real time reconnaissance is not be downgraded which is why 3 RAVEN Stealth UAVs each took off from MOB1, MOB2, MOB3 and FAB St Helena. Flying at close to 70,000 ft of altitude these stealthy UAVs are designed for 36 hours of flight endurance. They would also be finalizing final target lists for the Air Support Missions that are soon to be launched. 

The feeling of most of the RAVEN Controllers aboard the various warships of the Cochin Expeditionary Force is shock, absolute shock. They had file satellite imagery of the Holy American Empire before its civil war and comparing the landscape of that magnificent country to the apocalyptic landscapes they are watching now makes all of them have a slight shudder.

The General Officers Commanding the various Regiments and Divisions readied either in forward deployment or in theater reserve are also steeling themselves for the hell they are about to venture into. Holy American Empire was at a time one of the most powerful nations in the world, a veritable super power with Global reach, a technological giant and a military hegemon. The battles waged here were undoubtedly of a Darwinian process of the most brutal kind, the kind of perdition from which only the toughest and the most brutal survive. The Kingdom had taken upon itself the mandate of providing a measure of stability and peace in this conflict torn region, but the Royal Cochin Army would be going up against some of the toughest and war hardened militias in history. The wars that happened here were not the cosmetic rollings of sheer numbers that defines most of the wars in this planet's recent history. These were not the puny wars in which defenders rolled over dead at the first sight of trouble. No, these were real wars, those embers are the remains of real warriors pitting equal technology, equal numbers against one another when wit, courage and sheer Darwinian luck is the only thing that decided whether one would survive to see another daylight or what passed for daylight in a landscape torn asunder with a thousand fires.

The real time imagery seen by the RAVENs are being distributed to all the warships. Two days after the last soldier is permitted to talk to his family back in the Kingdom these imagery would be streamed in all the communal TVs in all the dormitories, the bunks and messes in all the warships, transport ships and bases of the Kingdom in Atlantic Ocean. The sheer brutality of the war zone they would be entering would be shown to all the soldiers so that they can get acclimatized to it, so that the first soldiers landing on shores of South America would not be benumbed by the inhospitable region. The CEF command would let two days of these videos to sink in thoroughly before the Officers start briefing the soldiers about Operation Grand Master.