At 18,000 meters and Mach 1.8, this is the safety zone of the best performance J-8 fighter jet manufactured by China at present.

Although this kind of aircraft can theoretically fly out of Mach 2.2 and 20,000 meters in the performance of altitude, in the process of normal use, this limit index should be avoided as much as possible.

No matter how the J-8 is criticized in the future, at least there is one thing that no one will object, that is, it is an excellent high-altitude and high-speed interceptor.

And this is also the original intention of its design.

The double 18 standard is still within the affordable range for it.

The white J-8A is called a man-rocket, which can be said to be worthy of its name. If you look at it diagonally, you will see that its fuselage is almost like the arrow body of a rocket, with a regular cylindrical shape.

The two delta wings and the large tail became the only thing that stood out on the fuselage. The slightly backward nose air intake makes it impossible to install a high-power radar with advanced performance, which is already a third-generation machine hegemony in the sky in the 80s, so that the former Chinese Air Force is already a little powerless.

But today, it is destined to be the time for the eighth master to show his skills again.

The white-painted Eighth Master had reached its intended altitude and accelerated the plane's speed to Mach 1.8 at an altitude of 18,000 meters, and its pilot was quietly waiting for orders from the ground command center.

And under the belly of this eighth master, there is something that is said to be a cruise missile but does not look like a cruise missile.

Normally, the so-called cruise missiles. It is essentially an unmanned suicide plane powered by an aircraft engine. A weapon that performs low-altitude covert flight based on technologies such as inertial guidance, GPS, and terrain matching, and finally bombs the enemy's strategic location when the enemy's radar cannot detect it.

And another weapon corresponds to cruise missiles. It is launched from a high altitude by a high-speed bomber, powered by an unpowered or smaller engine, gliding to approach the target quietly but slowly, and finally hitting the target accurately by laser or television guidance.

These are two weapons with different design ideas, but now they seem to be combined in the strange weapon mounted on the belly of this eighth master's plane.

The folded glider looks very weighty, and the large aspect ratio gives it plenty of gliding power, allowing it to stay in the air longer and glide farther.

It is different from the general launch of gliding bombs outside the defense zone. Looking at its body, it is obviously a cruise missile, especially the twin small turbojet engines in the rear, indicating that this missile weighs about two tons. It should have a range of at least 0.8 km or so at Mach 200.

If you add to this the range of its gliding, it is believed that the total range of 500 km will not be a problem.

With an order from the ground, the fuselage of the J-8 fighter suddenly shook. Immediately after that, the missile mounted on its belly broke away from the hook and fell down some distance. Then the folding glider carried on the back of the bomb opened. He adjusted his stance in the air and flew towards the northern sky.

At the same time, a modified command armored vehicle broke out of concealment in the woods somewhere in the north, drove into an open area at the top of the mountain, and unfurled its antenna, which was a full ten meters high.

On the sea, the Project 132 missile destroyer turned on its anti-aircraft search radar and sent the monitored data to the ground command center.

After receiving the positioning signal of the command armored vehicle, five positioning UAVs rose into the air. With the three base stations on the ground, a highly redundant positioning network was formed, which accurately located the position of the command armored vehicle in one minute.

The missile data monitored by the No. 132 missile destroyer was continuously transmitted back to the command center. It is then transmitted to the front-line command armored vehicle navigation node, which in turn navigates the cruise missile.

......

"This, this is really ......"

Located in the command center of Shanhaiguan, as the projector continuously transmits data streams here, everyone present is a little dazzled.

No one could believe that they had really come up with such a missile in just ten days.

If it is in a normal state, it will be impossible for a missile to go from project approval, research and research, research and development, to finalization in a few years.

But this impossibility happened, after ten all-night battles, no blueprints, no theoretical research, and no reliability analysis, a group of scientists almost intuitively assembled a missile directly in the workshop.

The actual charge of a two-ton missile is only 500KG, and the other space utilization rate is extremely bad in terms of design, dead weight and unreasonable structure abound, and the only guarantee is that it will not disintegrate in the air.

Its missile-mounted computer uses a Motorola 68,000 CPU, 128K of RAM, and 10M of 3.5-inch disks — meaning it's actually stuffed inside an Apple-made Macintosh computer.

In order for the Macintosh computer to operate smoothly in complex environments, its protective device alone weighs up to 10KG. In addition, an autopilot, a high-precision mechanical gyroscope, radio altimetry and magnetic compass, and a separate battery pack. These devices are also expensive and complex, leaving a measly 1.2 tons of fuel for the missile.

The cost of this missile has set a new record -- 4 million yuan for a single missile.

But fortunately, this is the data with the addition of R&D spending. If the cost price is calculated alone, its cost is also about 1.5 million yuan, which is definitely beyond the psychological tolerance limit of the Chinese army.

In the 80s, when the average monthly salary per capita was about 100 yuan, a shot was 1.5 million yuan, and I am afraid that the army would rather form a regiment to carry out the task of this missile.

But that's just the price of the missile, not counting the cost of the entire system that it can carry out its mission. The entire base station positioning system, relay drones, mainframe machines for real-time computing in the command center, and even warships for naval telemetry, the cost of these things is dozens or hundreds of times the price of a missile.

When these devices are combined to form a system, the advantages of the system that erupt are enough to easily shock people.

"Did we really make this?" Even the researchers who realized all this with their own hands were a little incredulous.

"yes, how we did it, it's unbelievable......"

Hu Wenhai stood in front of a projector screen, and a rudimentary electronic map marked the real-time location of the cruise missile. All the data is transferred to the mainframe computer in the command center, and China's mainframe technology is barely able to support the computational requirements of this scale. Although perhaps in 20 years, a single home computer will be able to blow up the entire system. But in this day and age, this is truly a feat.

"Report to the commander-in-chief, the missile has arrived at the intended location, please instruct!"

The navigator next to him, who was responsible for receiving the radar information from the No. 132 ship, stared at the screen and suddenly reported loudly to Hu Wenhai. The emotion in his words made his voice seem a little hoarse.

Hu Wenhai was unhurried, first glanced at the watch on his wrist, and then nodded to Bai Shi, who was sitting on the console next to him.

"Ready to enter second mode!"

"Mode 2 ready!"

Bai Shi inserted a key into the main control console, if Heng Jianyun was standing here, he would definitely feel inexplicably familiar. This scene seems to be inexplicably similar to the drone that turned into a thermobaric bomb that he heard about that day.

With a wave of Hu Wenhai's hand, Bai Shi turned the key half a circle, and then shouted: "Mode 2 starts!"

At this time, the cruise missile was already flying accurately in the air at a distance of about three hundred kilometers. Suddenly, with a slight explosion, it blew off the bolt on its back and smoothly abandoned the glider. Then he ignited the small turbojet engine in the tail, ejected the small aspect ratio wings hidden in the body of the bomb, and plunged into the ground like a falcon!

"Altitude 10,000 meters, altitude 8,000,6,000 ......"

The navigator kept reporting the radar data returned by the No. 132 ship, and it can be seen that in a short period of time, the missile has entered a low-altitude flight state from an altitude of 10,000 meters.

"The radar has lost its signal!"

The navigator's words not only did not worry everyone, but caused a burst of cheers in the command center!

The missile loses its radar signal, which means that the missile has entered the blind spot of radar search, and truly realizes the original intention of the cruise missile design -- low-altitude covert penetration.

"Convert the guidance station and let the front-line command node take over the guidance!"

"Yes, transfer control!"

On the antenna of the relay node on the hill, a signal of the transfer of control was quickly received, and the guidance signal for the missile that had been reduced in altitude continued in the high mountains.

With a range of 500 km, it takes about half an hour to forty minutes for a Tomahawk cruise missile to fly such a long distance. And the early gliding time of this missile took a full half an hour. After igniting the engine and entering the low-altitude penetration state, it still flew for fifteen minutes before reaching its target.

In the endless northern prairie, there is an abandoned air force airfield. It was built in the early years at a time of tension with the Soviet Union, but was later abandoned due to financial problems.

Today, however, a convoy appeared near it, set up various observation equipment, and then waited quietly as if waiting for something.

Suddenly, there was a faint roar in the sky. Immediately after that, a figure from far and near, skimmed the sky, which was almost a tree high, and smashed on the runway of the airport!

The 500KG explosives rang loudly, and the observation team in the distance suddenly burst into cheers! (To be continued......