Red Metal

You can almost smell the battle smoke and dust flying as the Russian BTR's converge on the American and French held positions. The colorful characters entertain the reader throughout this page turner. Now I have some thoughts.################################## Possible Spoilers#################################The book was somewhat Marine-Centric with the an LTC Marine analyst leading the way from the Pentagon to a Rare Earth mine in Africa. He turns in his ink pen for an M4 as he heads to war. This only after going around an incompetent Navy admiral who happened to be his immediate superior.IMHO, the book glossed over some things. The Russians took out the U.S. Air Force base at Ramstein. Apparently without any aircraft getting off the ground. Lost communications was the reason. My first thought was "when pigs fly." The fight immediately was pushed to the tank crews and Polish resistance to prosecute. Only a few aircraft were able to join in the fight. You can read the list of characters in the front of the book to see what I mean.Four B1 Lancers were shot down easily by Chinese-made missiles thus transitioning the fight to the Marines on the ground. No electronic countermeasures by the Bones? My first thought was "when pigs fly." They Marines are supported by the brave female submarine captain who leads her ship close enough to do cause damage to some offloading Russian hardware and fuel supply ships thus giving the Marines a chance.Low flying helicopters and diving F-35 stealth fighters are getting shot down by Russian ZSU anti-air armor thus transitioning the fight to the Marine infantry. Is this even possible? I hope someone smarter than I am on Russian stealth interdiction and targeting low flying aircraft can answer that one. I've read that it's difficult to get a weapons great radar lock on a "low observable" aircraft like the F-35.Where I'm going with all this is that the authors, in my uneducated opinion, overused Murphy's Law and downplayed American air capability in order to produce a still great military tale based primarily on Army Tankers and Marines. For this reason, I'm not sure I'd call it similar to Clancy's Red Storm Rising, but it is a great read. If you're looking for F-15's and Raptors doing battle with Russian aircraft, this book doesn't contain them.

This book has the most comprehensive unclassified description of today’s real warfare capabilities of the U.S., China, and Russia that I’ve ever seen. The author, Mark Greaney, has an encyclopedic knowledge of these forces, their equipment, personnel, and tactics.At the very outset of the book, these events occur.In Taiwan a sniper kills the opposition candidate who advocates joining mainland China. The assassin leaves clues that he’s allied with the government in power. The world is furious with the government, and China masses its military near Taiwan and issues an ultimatum that they will invade if the government is re-elected in four months.The U.S. pulls out most of its forces from other regions around the world and concentrates them near Taiwan. A video goes viral on the internet showing the two most important and capable U.S. commanders for the Taiwan region in flagrante delicto. They’re married, but not to each each other, and are removed from office.While the U.S. has assembled nearly all its forces near Taiwan, the Russian Federation sends heavy forces to take over a mine in Kenya with most of the world’s deposit of rare earth minerals vital to military and other hi-tech equipment. The Federation also devises a spear attack into Stuttgart, where NATO’s command for Africa is located.Then Greaney goes on to vividly describe the consequences of these actions and many, many more. The scenes of combat are ultra realistic.The lives of the characters are richly described, and the book is flawlessly written, as usual for Greaney.Martin Fricke, Ph.D.San Diego

It's a lot like Clancy but.. easier to read. I loved Clancy and have read pretty much all his books. At times they were a bit heavy with details and minutiae. The action and multiple story lines reminds me a lot of Clancy. Military terms, details, specifics on weapons and machinery. Yet it went by fast. And the characters.. you get to know them well. This part felt more like Greaney. I really do like thIs collaboration. I got so into it I forgot to bookmark some of my favorites so I could go back and re read. I had to look for those parts afterwards. Just fantastic.

Because this is a long book, I was going to read it in sections, with other books in between, but I am 1/3 of the way through it and it is a "can't put this down" book. The story flows from one chapter to another and it is so good. Needless to say I am not reading in sections, I am reading it through. I am a 75 year old lady who remembers the end of WWII and the cold war. This is such a realistic story of what could happen any time now. It is what we lived with for so many years.Well, I have now finished the book. It was literally a "could not put down" book. So realistic, I wouldn't be surprised if something like this would happen somewhere in the world. And the ending, without giving anything away, was both wonderful and bittersweet. It makes me feel good about the men and women we have in the military, watching out for us each and every day.

Too many characters. Too much battle strategy. Gray Man has one main character, focus on him. This was all over the place. Hard to follow all the characters. Disappointing.

I have only given this book two stars not because it is not a good story – it is, rather akin to Gripping Yarns. But the claims that it is well researched etc are just so wide of the mark if one has a bit of background or time to do a bit of checking up. I will detail a few examples of why this book goes into the fantasy bracket, rather than the techno-thriller bucket.The French Army in Kenya. The French Army has never been in Kenya, it has always been safely inside the UK sphere of influence. It was originally part of the Empire from the late 1800s until independence in 1964, after which it joined the British Commonwealth. The French “bit” of Africa is over in West Africa and consists of a huge amount of desert. It is also keeping the French armed forces fully tied up trying to contain various Islamic fundamentalist Jihadists wandering the desert pathways. The UK is involved over there providing strategic airlift to France, something they lack themselves. In addition to these points it is also worth pointing out that the UK has a battalion training in Kenya for something like 6 months of the year, so if the Kenyans were to request anyone’s support, it would naturally be the army that has experience working in their environment and with their army.Russian Army Structure. The authors make a great deal about the Russians employing a Brigade for their strategic Operational raids into Germany and Kenya. Throughout the narrative, however, the authors continuously refer to Regiments as part of the brigade. I suggest a quick Google search of Russian Rifle Regiment to get some background. A MRR is in every other army’s terminology, a Brigade. It consists of 3 or 4 combat battalions with supporting arms. A Motor Rifle Division consists of three or more MRR plus supporting arms (artillery, engineers, AD etc). It is therefore quite clear that the Russian forces in each theatre are a strong divisional sized formation with a full range of supporting arms.Russian hacking. The authors have the whole gamut of NATO communications taken down by elite hackers. Unfortunately this is just not going to happen since NATO secure communications are not connected in any way to the internet so cannot he hacked by the Russians. So in the event of a Russian attack NATO forces would be in communication with each other and their Supreme Operational HQ at Mons in Belgium from the very first moment, and certainly by the time the Russians bounce the early Polish forces.Russian Air Attacks. As the opening stage of the Russian attack, Russian Air Force aircraft penetrate NATO airspace to attack satellites over Germany. There is some hat tipping towards the NAEW force in Germany, but it does not get off its backside. This is a travesty of the real situation. NATO maintain an Air Policing Mission at all times (24/7) over the eastern border. This consists of at least two two ship patrols north and south and backed up at all times by at least one AWACS. While it is possible for Russia to attack satellites over Germany they would e unable to do this with detection and a rapid escalation of the NATO postureAmerican counter attack. This is formed by a scratch force of logisticians and maintainers at Grafenwohr. I remain confused how a Brigade level force of non-tankers are able to continuously engage with and effectively defeat a formation 3 to 4 times larger composed of combat arms specialists. I was a military maintainer so am happy for my side of the house to get some recognition, but steady boys.Route in Africa. For some reason the authors have the Russians, with Iranian support decide to invade and take over Djibouti. After securing the port and surrounding area the Russian Brigade (actually read as Division) sets off for Kenya. Unfortunately the only usable road out of Djibouti takes the traffic to Addis Addaba, the capital of Ethiopia. There is no way around this as south and south-east from the port is the Ogaden desert. For reason unknown, the Ethiopian army is not involved is trying to stop a Russian force invading their country. No explanation of this is given and no side bar demonstrates that the authors understand this. If you ever visit Ethiopia you will discover that the infrastructure does not support the sort of forces being deployed here, and getting a force of this size and complexity over the Ethiopian escarpment would be a major achievement in its own right. Given that Mogadishu in Somalia is not defended by an army and is very close to the northern border of Kenya, one has to wonder why that was not the chosen drop odd spot – easy to reach, no local opposition and shorter travel to destination.My last comment is about the NATO response. There is none, even though SACEUR would have the following forces at his disposal from day one: French Rapid Reaction Corps at Lille, German Dutch Corps at Munster, Westphalia, UK 1st Armoured Division North Germany, EuroCorps at Strasbourg, plus additional US Forces throughout Germany – and that is just the army boys. As already identified above, NATO secure comms would have been buzzing from the moment the Russians crossed into Poland and SACEUR in Mons would have taken very strong and immediate action to marshal Allied forces and respond quickly.US Marines. I thought the whole Marines thing worked well, the dialogue was robust and punchy, just what you expect from good troops of this type. The combat sequences were very authentic and well written and I had no problem with that aspect of the story. It is a pity that the strong effort here was let down by poor research on these other points.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. The characters are at least memorable and there are numerous intense combat scenes in it that stood out.On the flip-side, the actual premise of the book (essentially Russian army units invade all the way into Germany, with no-one stopping them, aided by hackers magically switching off air defences and so-forth) is truly ridiculous. Hacking is not magic and cannot simply switch off firewalled systems, the Russians could never get that far that quickly. Also, the MacGuffin of the story (rare earth metals that can only be extracted from a few mines) is basically wrong - "rare earth metals" are not actually as rare as the story makes out. I don't think the comments from some reviewers about this story being "expertly researched" and so-forth are entirely deserved.All the same this was an entertaining read.

I have long been a fan of Mark Greaney and approached this book with interest since it is a departure from the Grey Man template and has no single leading character. Initially I thought I was not going to enjoy the read, but how wrong I was. This book has everything that I need in a novel. Well researched, plausible and well planned plot, characters you can engage with and non stop action. Russia, trying to gain control of an area of rare earth minerals in Africa embarks on a series of subterfuges to cover their intentions and leading to battles on several fronts, Europe, Africa and cyber. The book moves between each theatre along a time frame. The book is lengthy, deep and totally engrossing. I also have the whispersync option and the narration is extremely good. A fantastic read.

This is simply the best book ever from Mark Greaney and he's now surpassed the great Tom Clancy (with whom he co-wrote books).I had previously thought that his one weakness was the lack of technical knowledge of military hardware and tactics, compared to Clancy but the input of a USMC Lt. Colonel has fixed that in spades.A fast paced, entirely believable novel about Russian ambitions present day that is a guaranteed page turner from start to end.I read it in just two long sessions and can't wait for more books in this ilk from Mark Greaney.There's a new king of the techno-thriller and that's Mark Greaney. The other so called 'Clancy' novels by Cameron are a very poor imitation of Clancy’s writing style and best avoided.

How the two authors managed to fill such a large book with so much continuous action amazed me. This is a book which really is difficult to put down, so much takes place from presidents high level strategy to lowly but heroic Polish militia on the ground and everything in between on the ground, in the air and at sea. There were some interesting semi technical descriptions of modern weapons and how fearsome some of them are. One of the best books I’ve read, very impressed.