Thunder and lightning are combined, and torrential rain is like a curtain.

29.944 east longitude, 126.808 north latitude.

In this deep sea, where few commercial ships have set foot in the ocean, the humpback whale is like an arrow from the string, maintaining a speed of 130 knots.

According to electronic charts, 150 nautical miles further forward is the Miyako Strait, which is located between Ryuqiu Island and Miyako Island.

The Miyako Strait is about 150 nautical miles wide, and hundreds of nautical miles of it are international waterways, which can be used by civilian ships harmlessly. However, none of the ships wanted to take the middle deep-sea channel, and most of them passed by the edge of the island, which had lighthouses on both sides and navigation stations.

This provided convenience for the humpback whale, and Ye Qing prepared to cross the Miyako Strait from the middle, adjust its course at a fifteen-degree angle, and head towards the sea near Ogasa-endo Island, its final destination.

The total voyage of 500 nautical miles, about seven and a half hours for a turnback, is enough for the Humpback Whale to test.

In this way, when the humpback whale returned to Longxi Beach, Zhongyun also happened to usher in a new dawn.

……

The torrential rain covered a radius of hundreds of nautical miles, and in the distance over the Miyako Strait, the weather was still bright and starry.

At 11 p.m. local time, the Coast Guard's security headquarters in the Miyako Strait is conducting a routine night patrol.

The Japan Coast Guard has 11 maritime districts, and this one is responsible for the Miyako Strait, which is at the forefront of the 11 wards in terms of staffing and the number of patrol vessels. Because the Miyako Strait is a very important shipping lane, both for them and for China.

Over the years, Japan has been emphasizing the demilitarization of the Miyako Strait, trying to prevent warships or military aircraft from any country other than the United States from passing through the strait.

So patrols are indispensable, especially at night.

A PL-class patrol ship [Hayakawa], the latest ration of the Security Agency, is patrolling from south to north along the widest part of the Miyako Strait.

The PL class is a 1,000-ton patrol ship, which is the most technologically advanced and the shortest installation time of the Security Department, and has particularly strengthened its ability to search and identify ships.

The Hayakawa, the eighth of nine ships in the construction program, has been on the water for less than two years.

When the Hayakawa patrolled a third of the line and was approaching the central strait.

Captain Miyamoto Yangshan, who was in the command room, suddenly received a report from the radar operator that at seven o'clock ahead, nine nautical miles away from the ship, there was a large unmarked ship that was moving rapidly toward the middle of the strait.

Unmarked ships are deliberately concealing their illegal ships by turning off GPS positioning, not reporting travel routes to the national navigation station in the sea area.

Because of the problem of the curvature of the earth, no matter how advanced the shipborne radar is, the detection radius of the ship will not exceed 40 kilometers. Therefore, in the vast sea, not all ships like to obey the law, and not all legal ships are willing to keep themselves in a state of being positioned.

Of course, AWACS is not limited by the curvature of the Earth.

It's just that AWACS is more expensive than gold, and only a few countries in the world have it. How can Japan, which has dozens of early warning planes purchased from the United States, be willing to let them patrol the seas.

"Unknown international ship?" Captain Miyamoto Yangshan glanced at the electronic chart, frowned and asked, "Calculate the latitude and longitude and the speed of the ship." ”

The radar operator, who was sitting opposite, quickly reported the detailed data.

This is an illegal vessel with a radar signature of a civilian ship, which should be between 3,000 and 5,000 tons and sail at a speed of twenty-seven knots......

"The freighter could not reach a speed of 27 knots, and it appeared to be a large illegal fishing vessel. This speed is most likely their maximum speed, indicating that their destination is not far away. Captain Miyamoto Yangshan said with some annoyance: "Only Ogasa-Madojima has the richest fishing resources ahead, and these damn fishermen dare to steal fish during the fishing ban period." ”

"Radar lock-on, max speed to catch up with them, two nautical miles into the public radio channel warning, no stopping the boat, warning shooting. ”

The Hayakawa patrol ship in the night soon puffed out puffs of black smoke from the flue. The radar on the sea surface at the top of the island is fully powered and spins like a wheel.

The Hayakawa patrol ship has a maximum speed of 33 knots, and it only takes one and a half hours to catch up with a fishing boat with a speed of 27 knots.

Once caught up, the hefty fine could make the entire crew of the Hayakawa patrol ship bend over with laughter.

In the radar control room, on the pale green radar screen, there is already a triangle logo firmly locking on the illegal vessel, and the latest parameters are constantly corrected at 0.5 second intervals. It's a cat-and-mouse chase, and there has never been an illegal fishing boat that has escaped from the Hayakawa patrol ship.

"Didong~"

At this moment, the radar console suddenly sounded a chime indicating that a new target had entered the scanning radius.

At the same time, the radar computer automatically gives the distance parameter of 22 nautical miles between the two. At this time, within a radius of twenty-two nautical miles of the Hayakawa patrol ship, there was only the illegal fishing boat and an unknown new target that had just come into view.

After 0.5 seconds, the radar corrected the information, and the distance was still 22 nautical miles.

At the same time, the radar operator reports the location of the new target to the command center, allowing them to contact a nearby navigation station to assist in checking whether there are any registered ships passing through that location.

Few ships choose the central waters of the Miyako Strait for navigation, because to the north is the endless North Pacific Ocean. Since the Hayakawa patrol ship patrols at night, it will naturally choose the sea area where there are few ships, and focus on those ships who are unwilling to take the normal course.

The navigation station is all electronic, and on a huge electronic chart, all the recorded movements of passing ships are listed. Therefore, the other party gave a reply in less than ten seconds that there was no record of the passage of ships in the target area.

Well, another ship with illegal navigation.

While setting the target as locking onto the target, the radar operator thought to himself that the ship was heading in their direction based on where the target appeared. Then they chase the illegal fishing boat and turn around to catch it by the way.

Lock on to the target, and the time until the radar gives detailed information does not exceed a second.

The radar operator was about to report to the captain, but the next moment, he heard a screeching siren from the radar console.

"Warning~"

"Warning~"

"Unknown ultra-low-altitude flying object was discovered. ”

The radar operator stared at the warning message on the screen with some confusion.

Tens of seconds earlier, the unidentified vessel had just entered the radar detection range, and the two were twenty-two nautical miles apart.

Now the radar computer gives detailed data, and the radar reflection characteristics of the unknown target cannot be used to identify whether it is a civilian or military vessel, or even that it is not a ship at all.

Speed......

The speed is 130 knots, 66m/s.

At this time, the operator recalled in a panic that the Hayakawa was the most advanced patrol ship installed by the Security Agency. The ship is equipped with an OPS-28D sea surface radar, which is directly copied from the Atago-type frigate, which can not only search and identify surface ships, but also have the ability to identify ultra-low-altitude vehicles, that is, sea-skimming anti-ship missiles.

An object with a speed of 130 knots and a advance of 66 meters per second, what can it be if it is not a flying object?

Everyone in the command center stopped their work and looked at the radar operator in a daze.

"Damn, what's going on?" the Hayakawa patrol ship is a small ship, and the electronic equipment control system is concentrated in one cabin. Captain Miyamoto Yangshan ran to the radar console that kept warning him, his expression was extremely ugly, he really thought that this patrol ship had encountered an unknown enemy.

"This ......" the radar operator was shocked, and at this moment he also saw the information about the volume of the flying object given by the radar. Although no match was found in the database, the computer vaguely gave the judgment that the object was more than five thousand tons.

"Could it be...... Is this a ship?" muttered the radar operator, but the next second, when the radar updated the data, the unidentified object suddenly disappeared.

"Huh?" the operator and the captain rubbed their eyes, and the two tracking targets had become one, and the illegal fishing boat was still in the queue, but the targets on the edge seemed to never appear.

After the alarm disappeared, the silence in the command center lasted for half a minute.

The radar has updated the data sixty times, and the target that the radar can't identify has never appeared.

The target could not disappear instantly, and no ship could reach a speed of one hundred and thirty knots.

Flying machines are even more unlikely, they are so large in size, unless they are alien ships.

"Captain, maybe...... It's the radar that's malfunctioning. The radar operator subconsciously tapped the device.

"I...... Captain, if you are not sure, you can contact the headquarters and ask them to send a helicopter to search. ”

Captain Miyamoto Yangshan furrowed his brows, his heart was more inclined to radar false alarms. It's uncommon, but it's not uncommon, and last year a patrol ship on Kunashir Shimabe made one of the biggest jokes about radar false alarms.

The Kunashir Shima District is close to the Kuril Islands, which in turn is particularly close to Russia. During a patrol, the local patrol ship's sea-facing radar suddenly detected a circular unidentified target with a diameter of 800 meters, hovering at an ultra-low altitude.

At that time, the radar operator was far less calm than his subordinate, and the guy hurriedly grabbed an emergency call to report to the headquarters, saying that a UFO had landed in the waters of Japan.

In the end, two of the noisy air fighters took off urgently, and after the fuel was almost gone, the ghost shadow did not find one.

If it weren't for the fact that someone didn't bother to look at the patrol ship's onboard surveillance footage, it might have become an unsolvable mystery.

What is the result?

As a result, the wind and waves reached level 6 that day, and a piece of tin foil for baking bread in the patrol ship's galley was somehow blown over the radar by a strong wind. The good electromagnetic reflectivity of tin foil made the radar that could have detected the volume misjudged, and was finally reported as a UFO by the rookie operator who was not calm.

Of course, the captain of the ship, Miyamoto Yangshan, could not let his patrol ship also appear such a ridiculous joke, but the radar detection time of tens of seconds still made him weigh it in his heart and grab the radio phone.

"This is the Hayakawa patrol ship, and we spotted a target anomaly during our patrol. We are unable to determine the target, so we ask that the headquarters receive the location of the abnormal target and conduct a helicopter search operation. ”

"The search range is fifty nautical miles. ”