Red Storm Rising

Red Storm Rising is a war novel by Tom Clancy and Larry Bond, published on 7 August 1986.

The book begins with an act of sabotage, when militants from Soviet Azerbaijan destroy an oil refinery and leave the Soviet Union facing an economic collapse it cannot conceal. Rather than accept the shortage, the Politburo resolves to seize the Persian Gulf and its oil, and the plan it settles on requires the West to be neutralised first. What follows is a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact fought with conventional weapons across the North Atlantic, Germany and Iceland, told through soldiers, sailors and aircrew on both sides. The novel keeps its attention on the mechanics of the fighting, such as tank formations, submarine hunts and the repair of a damaged airfield, and on the calculation that stops either side from using nuclear weapons.

It is one of two Clancy novels that stand outside the series about Jack Ryan, and it grew out of his collaboration with Larry Bond, who had designed the naval wargame the authors used to test their scenarios.