Chapter 286: A heavy punch is necessary
Blackbird Heavy Industries has lost its intercontinental missile launch capability.
Not only were five missile silos destroyed, but many of the intercontinental missiles around the silos were also destroyed.
It is not easy for them to rebuild this capability in the short term, and they don’t have to worry about this problem for at least a few months. Whether it is rebuilding missile silos or replenishing the number of missiles, it is not a task that can be completed overnight.
Before the Space Marines destroyed the missile silos, according to statistics, at least 500 intercontinental missiles had been launched to various parts of the alliance. Most of the missiles were still aimed at Fuxing City, Weixing City, and the front-line troops; in addition, a total of 80 missiles fell on Beigu City, Gaota City, and Beigong City (the name of the Far North Industrial City).
Other places were not hit by missiles.
It is estimated that the areas further east, such as Skarlo City and Xiongya City, are beyond the range of the Blackbird's cruise missiles. Other places in the Northern Qinggu area are sparsely populated, and people will not use missiles to bomb farmland; some other areas in the Central Bank Province, High Tower Province, and Central North Province, although they have some industrial value and no air defense force, the industrial distribution is very scattered after all, and the intelligence is unclear, so it is not cost-effective to bomb them, so they have not been hit.
Weixing City and Fuxing City were attacked the most frequently, but most of the missiles fired at them were intercepted, especially Weixing City, which was never attacked again. That was because Gu Hang went there in person to help intercept the missiles that were not blocked by the Reflector air defense system.
However, when he went to Weixing City, Fuxing City was in trouble. After several waves of attacks, a small number of missiles still fell and hit the streets, residential areas and factories.
But in general, the losses were relatively controllable. Air raid sirens were sounded early in the sky above the two cities, and those who needed to evacuate did so, and those who needed to stay home did so. Even though some residential areas suffered war damage and two buildings were destroyed, the number of casualties was controlled within 50 people.
The worst situations are in Chatan City, Gaota City, and Beigong City.
Although Beigong City has some air defense systems left over from the former Far North Industrial Group, they are certainly not as good as the "Reflector" and their interception efficiency is not very good.
As for the North Valley and the High Tower, there was no air defense system there at all, so they were just bombed.
According to subsequent statistics, the three cities were bombarded by dozens of missiles, resulting in a total of more than 5,000 casualties!
This was after the first wave of missile attacks. All cities that sounded the alarm evacuated people, suspended work and production, and those who could hide in air-raid shelters did so, while those who couldn't went home and trembled in fear.
But even so, the alliance still suffered heavy casualties.
According to preliminary and rough statistics, the total loss of tax coins ranges from population to buildings to industries to goods...
Gu Hang felt very distressed.
The most distressing thing is the loss of population. Among the 5,000 casualties, even if more than 3,000 of them were only injured, at least half of them could eventually recover their productive labor capacity after a period of medical assistance, but this is still a huge loss.
But he still had to be thankful that the Space Marines did an outstanding job and eliminated the threat of the Blackbird's intercontinental missiles to the Alliance in the shortest possible time.
The bombing of 500 missiles brought a loss of 1 million tax coins. Of course, the ammunition reserves of the Blackbird were far more than that. If this number was really multiplied by 10, the loss would definitely be tens of millions.
Beigu City is the capital of Beiqinggu Province, and is the most important food processing center and food transportation hub of the alliance; Gaota City is an important resource collection and primary processing base, as well as an energy base of the alliance. The devastating blow to these two places alone would cost more than tens of millions, not to mention that Beigong City, after inheriting the legacy of the Far North Industry, can almost be regarded as the second largest industrial center of the alliance.
It can be said that the Space Marines' attack this time recovered at least 20 million tax coins for the Alliance and saved countless lives.
This incident also served as a wake-up call for Gu Hang and taught the alliance a profound lesson.
Under his instructions, Wei Xingcheng has begun to focus on expanding the production line of 'Reflector'.
Four models: vehicle type, air defense type, naval gun type, and rail type...all need to be put on the production schedule.
The specifications of these four models are arranged from small to large. The vehicle type is already in large-scale production, and can be used on the Lion tank and the Wind Falcon. The anti-aircraft type was only produced on a small scale before, and now the production must be increased. The naval gun type will also be produced, and will be used on the subsequent Alliance's "Traveler" spacecraft. Although this thing is not even the specifications of a patrol ship, it can at least be equipped with a naval gun type reflector.
As for the orbital type, it can be used for ground-based anti-orbital warfare. It can directly fire laser cannons from the ground into space, allowing the Alliance to fight back when encountering orbital attacks in the future. It can also be built on a star port and turn the star port into an armed star fortress.
In fact, Thadius has already received a task from Gu Hang to start preparing to cover the entire alliance orbital air defense system, and the main equipment to rely on is the "Reflector".
At the moment, the Alliance did not just take the beating from the Blackbird without fighting back, they also made an equal counterattack.
The Blade Tiger was in orbit, carrying out orbital bombardment on Blackbird City for a whole day, and only stopped when its stored ammunition was exhausted.
Unlike the Alliance's missile silos, the Blackbirds had no countermeasures to orbital bombardment. They had no anti-orbital firepower to fight the Razorback Tiger, nor did they have the ability to send a team of elite troops aboard a starship.
Then we can only get bombed.
It’s a pity that this is the Sharp Tiger, not the Quintet. Otherwise, Blackbird City would not have lost just the outer city, but the entire core city would have been blown to pieces, and the energy shield would have been useless.
However, it doesn't matter if you can't destroy it right away. You can just replenish ammunition and continue bombing in a few days.
The Alliance cannot make some large shells, such as the "Wrath of the Loyal Heir" and even the "Heat Hammer" on the Quintet, but the "Reflector" and "Defender" are no problem.
Especially the 'Reflector'. The 'Reflector' on the Blade Tiger is a naval gun type, but the technical specifications are universal. The Alliance is fully capable of providing the Blade Tiger with high-quality energy batteries, allowing them to continue bombing without hesitation.
So what if the core area is saved? There is a sharp blade tiger flying in orbit. If there are large-scale supplies being transported out, then blow it up; if a large-scale gathering of front-line troops is detected, then blow it up. I have the advantage of orbit, so this battle will be many times easier.
In fact, the war on the front line has officially begun.
The alliance's army has encountered the enemy's vanguard in the desert.
However, the scale of the battle has not been large so far.
The alliance's 250,000 troops have established a long defense line from south to north in the desert.
The entire Western Desert region is connected to the sea west of Beiqing Valley in the south and the North Sea in the north. The span is very large. Only 250,000 people are not enough to cover such a large defense line. If they really do that, the huge span of the defense line will spread the troops very thinly, and the poor roads will bring catastrophic difficulties to the alliance's logistical supply lines.
Under this premise, Major General Yan Fangxu, the highest commander on the front line, still adopted the strategy of "comprehensive monitoring and key defense".
The so-called "comprehensive defense" means arranging a large number of small scattered troops to patrol by car and setting up numerous sentry posts. This covers a good area, and the air force brothers drive the wind falcons to conduct cruise reconnaissance around the clock. In this way, we hope to prevent the enemy from crossing the defense line.
The so-called "key defense" refers to the deployment of troops on the desert highway in batches and layers, with multiple divisions as a unit, to build a three-dimensional multi-layer defense line to control the area from point to point.
In this way, Yan Fangxu controlled the 3,000-kilometer defense line from north to south with 26 divisions and brigades, totaling 250,000 people. The "key points" were on the main artery of the Desert Avenue and several oases in the north-south direction; as for the end of the 3,000-kilometer north-south longitudinal direction and the vast desert area, they could only rely on the air force and patrol teams to see.
Of course, the control over this animal is very weak, but Yan Fangxu has no other choice.
Compared to the area he needs to control, the troops he has are still too few.
More importantly, according to the information sent back by the personnel collecting intelligence in the enemy's rear, combined with the cross-border reconnaissance of the Air Force, Yan Fangxu found that the enemy did not seem to adopt the tactic of massing heavy troops and making breakthroughs. The enemy army was divided into many small groups, and seemed to be trying to infiltrate and penetrate the 3,000-kilometer vertical defense line.
No matter whether this group of Blackbird's mechanical army wants to penetrate directly into the heart of the alliance when they are infiltrating, or use encirclement and annihilation tactics in the environment of the Western Desert, they must not be allowed to succeed.
For this reason, Yan Fangxu had to adopt this strategy to deal with it, and the two sides gradually began to fall into the quagmire of small-scale wars.
From a single point of view, the scale of the battle was not large, mainly fighting at the squad level, and the highest level was only the company level. However, the frequency of the battle was very high, and when it was really fought, the number of casualties and equipment was not small.
However, Yan Fangxu couldn't stand this situation anymore.
He is planning a big operation.
…
The Political Commissar of the Central Army Group, Brigadier General Mikel Nelson, asked Yan Fangxu worriedly, "Isn't this a bit too radical? The Governor-General gave us a clear instruction that we should take a defensive stance as long as the war does not spread to the Alliance's homeland? As a result, you are now ordering our army to launch a full-scale offensive to the west, and you also want the Xifeng Brigade to form an armored cluster and advance 300 kilometers in two days?"
While Nelson was questioning, his eyes never left the battle sand table placed in front of him and Yan Fangxu.
This virtual sand table is also a high-end product, which was imported by the Governor through Gu's Company. After the parameters are entered, multiple servo skulls calculate together, and through special imaging technology, it can display three-dimensional image combat maps of different scales, supporting zooming in and out.
The virtual sand table covers almost the entire Western Desert region and the western part of the northern border, from the bay in the south to the cliff strait in the north. The information of the alliance's army is also reflected here, in the form of models of small people, small cars, and tanks, with the unit's number flag inserted on them.
At the same time, opposite the legion, there were red flags one after another, representing the enemy's army.
Of course, this information is not updated in real time, but relies on the staff team to summarize the data sent back from various fronts according to specific technical rules and input them into the system. Intelligence about the enemy must be collected through various reconnaissance methods. Since there is no guarantee of authenticity and we don't know the specific number of the enemy, we can only make up a code name and mark the enemy's approximate strength and troop composition.
At present, densely packed attack arrows have been drawn on the virtual sand table of this chapter.
These arrows represent Yan Fangxu's plan.
Almost all divisional and brigade-level units were required to advance. The most exaggerated of them was the 1st Brigade, the 3rd Brigade, the 46th and 47th Brigades, which assembled into an armored cluster on the West Desert Avenue and advanced 300 kilometers westward along the avenue, passing through countless red flags and signs, and finally arrived at an oasis called "Tail Scorpion".
It is said to be a key logistics supply center for the Blackbird Army.
Blackbird's cyborgs, robot dogs, drones, unmanned combat vehicles, unmanned self-propelled artillery... these things don't need to eat, but ammunition supply is still necessary. Moreover, their demand for fuel, electricity and other energy logistics is much higher than that of human armies.
Destroying the enemy's reserves in this regard can indeed greatly reduce the difficulty of the battle and can be regarded as a brilliant achievement.
but……
The difficulty is too high.
Nelson hesitated.
But Yan Fangxu has his own views on this.
"You are right. The Governor's order is indeed to defend. But, Nelson, we must see the essence through the phenomenon. What is the purpose of the Governor asking us to take a defensive position? He hopes that before the arrival of the Astra Militarum, we must control the losses in our independent battle with the Blackbirds, and then let the Astra Militarum come to solve the problem. It does not mean that we can just defend forever."
"But the current situation obviously does not support us doing so."
"Those iron monsters didn't dare to fight us in groups, and even let go of their control over the desert road, instead infiltrating and interpenetrating in small groups. In order to stop them, our soldiers also divided into small groups and fought bloody battles with them in the desert one after another."
"This is not our advantage at all. In the past half month, we have lost more than 4,000 people. We cannot continue to bleed like this."
"We have to deliver a powerful blow so that we can defend it."
(End of this chapter)
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