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Although after concluding that the attackers did not leave Manhattan and were ready to stay and fight to the death with the US military, Robert adjusted his combat deployment, used more unmanned reconnaissance planes and carrier-based fighters in the combat direction, and reduced the surveillance of nine C-17 transport planes, but the US military has rich military resources, considering that it may be civilians who leave by transport planes, Robert still arranged for several unmanned reconnaissance planes to follow and track, and from air bases deployed in Europe, and the aircraft carrier "Carl Vinson," which has just entered the Atlantic Ocean from the Strait of Gibraltar, dispatched more than a dozen reconnaissance planes to patrol the flight path of the transport planes in turn. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

As expected by the US military, after taking off, the transport plane flew straight to the Atlantic.

The nine C-17s have enough fuel and light loads, and all have a maximum range of more than 11,000 kilometers, and the first few can fly 12,000 kilometers from LaGuardia Airport to fly non-stop to the African continent and even Iran in West Asia.

When it came time to attack, Robert didn't pay much attention to the transport planes.

In fact, after the capture of LaGuardia airport, previous speculations have been confirmed. The last C-17, which did not have time to take off and was blown up at the airport, had no passengers and no pilot. This would not have been the case if the attackers had intended to leave the United States on a transport plane.

In Robert's view, rescuing the hostages on the other nine transport planes was a matter for the future.

The immediate priority is to retake Manhattan and eliminate the enemies entrenched on the island.

During the battle in Manhattan, the U.S. military encountered many unexpected things, such as not encountering the attackers head-on, and no large-scale fighting. Until the attackers began to blow up the buildings on the island, the American troops did not meet with decent resistance, which made the American commanders very puzzled.

Although this situation was not taken seriously by Robert, many staff officers took notice.

Unless the attackers intended to leave Manhattan among the civilians, they would have flown away on a transport plane, leaving only a handful of recalcitrant enemies who were likely to be killed in the bombing, and a few of whom might have left Manhattan among the civilians.

Identifying the attackers from among civilians is a very troublesome task.

The point is that if there were as many as a thousand attackers, it would not have been possible for them all to mix with the civilian population, and some of them would have left Manhattan and the only way to do that was to take a C-17 transport plane provided by the U.S. military.

In this way, trying to intercept those transport planes becomes a key factor in catching the attackers and finding out the real culprits.

Before Robert returned to Washington for a special meeting of the president, a staff officer raised the issue, hoping to intercept the transport plane immediately, and if not make a forced landing, he had to try to shoot it down.

Because he was in a hurry to get back to Washington, Robert only asked his staff officer to arrange forces to continue tracking and monitoring the transport fleet.

In Robert's opinion, under the tracking and monitoring of the reconnaissance aircraft, the nine C-17s could not escape at all. Once he's done with the other more pressing and tricky things, it's not too late to pack up the transports.

It's a pity that in just these few hours, the situation has changed dramatically.

Because the transport plane had already flown over the Azores at this time, the unmanned reconnaissance plane that had taken off from the US mainland returned home, and the reconnaissance plane that took off from the aircraft carrier continued to track and monitor. According to the arrangements made by the US military, when the transport plane arrives at a distance of 1,500 kilometers from the Portuguese coastline, a reconnaissance plane deployed at a certain air base in Spain will take the place of the carrier-based reconnaissance plane and continue to track and monitor the transport plane group.

According to the report of the US military reconnaissance plane, when the transport plane group reached the sea area about 800 kilometers northwest of the Madeira Islands, it suddenly split into three formations, and five minutes later, one of the transport planes in each of the three formations turned away and left the surveillance range of the US reconnaissance plane.

The change came so suddenly that the USS Vincennes aircraft carrier battle group, which was operating about a thousand kilometers to the east, simply did not have time to react.

At that time, there were only three F/A-18F fighters with reconnaissance pods attached to the high-altitude surveillance transport aircraft.

When the transport plane group was divided into three formations, the three reconnaissance planes moved separately, and as a result, when the transport planes flew out of the formation again, the US reconnaissance planes were too busy. Although the captain of the "Vincennes" immediately gave the order to dispatch three reconnaissance planes again, after these reconnaissance planes took off, it took at least an hour to catch up with the transport planes, and this hour was enough for a lot to happen.

By this point, the unexpected situation was not completely over.

Approximately half an hour after the transport aircraft dispersed, the six C-17s that continued to fly eastward dispersed again, three of them in a new formation and turned southward about 450 kilometres west of Madeira, while the other three turned around and turned westward.

Now, the US military is in big trouble.

The three F/A-18F fighters that had previously been on a tracking and surveillance mission had been in the air for nearly three hours and had to return to the aircraft carrier within fifteen minutes, or the remaining fuel would not allow them to return to the carrier. The three F/A-18Fs that have already taken off each carry three auxiliary fuel tanks and two reconnaissance pods, and have a maximum range of more than 3,500 kilometers, but in order to catch up with the transport plane that changed course in time, it can fly at supersonic speed for half an hour, thus shortening the maximum range to 2,500 kilometers. Excluding the fuel required for return, the three fighters could only fly with the transport aircraft for a maximum of half an hour. Taking into account environmental factors, such as unfavorable wind directions, the three fighters could not even fly with the transport aircraft.

The solution is not impossible, such as refueling in the air when the reconnaissance plane returns.

It's just that the three F/A-18Fs that were previously lifted off no longer have enough fuel to hold out until the tankers arrived, and they must return to the aircraft carrier as soon as possible. More importantly, it will take three hours for the transport planes taking off from the European continent to reach the waters of the Azores at the earliest to replenish fuel for the reconnaisance planes returning home, so the three reconnaisance planes that have just taken off from the aircraft carrier must control their speed when pursuing the transport planes, otherwise there will not be enough fuel to meet the refueling plane.

Sending reconnaissance aircraft from the continental United States?

The US military did this, but the transport plane was east of the middle line of the Atlantic, thousands of kilometers away from the US mainland, not to mention that the US military has long had no supersonic strategic reconnaissance aircraft like the SR-71, and even if it did, it would not have enough time to catch up with the transport plane, and the US military's subsonic reconnaissance aircraft could not do anything.

As a result, there was a tracking and surveillance gap of about fifteen minutes after the six C-17s suddenly dispersed and turned.

When there was really no way, the US military had no choice but to break the plan drawn up by Admiral Robott and immediately dispatch an E-2D carrier-based early warning plane patrolling more than 400 kilometers west of the aircraft carrier battle group to track the transport plane with the radar on the early warning plane, determine the flight path of the transport plane, and provide assistance for the subsequent tracking and surveillance.

It must be admitted that the radar on the E-2D is very advanced.

The C-17 is a large strategic transport aircraft, which does not use any stealth measures, and the RCS area reaches several hundred square meters, which can be detected by the phased array radar on the E-2D even from a distance of seven hundred kilometers.

The arrival of the E-2D temporarily allowed the US military to bite those transport planes, but what happened afterwards made all the wishful thinking of the US military fall through.

About half an hour after the six C-17s turned, that is, about 650 kilometres from the E-2D, the three C-17s, first turning southward, suddenly lowered their altitude over the western part of the Canary Islands, and then the three transport aircraft that switched to the west also lowered their altitude.

As a result, six transport aircraft disappeared from the radar screens of the E-2D.

The E-2D's radar can indeed detect large targets at a distance of 700 kilometers, but there is a prerequisite that the target must fly at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters. If the target flies at an altitude of less than 5,000 meters, the detection range of the E-2D will be greatly reduced due to the curvature of the earth's surface. If the target flies at an ultra-low altitude below two hundred meters, the detection range of the E-2D will even be shortened to just over a hundred kilometers.

When the AWACS aircraft lost the transport plane, the US F/A-18F immediately accelerated.

It's just that it takes at least an hour to reach the distance of intercepting a target with a reconnaissance pod, and even if you get to the distance of detecting a target with a fighter's fire control radar, it takes forty-five minutes.

For so much time, the transport plane was enough to get rid of the tracking and surveillance of the US military by changing course.

The situation was reflected layer by layer, and finally sent to Archibald. At that time, Robert had already left Washington and was on his way back to New York.

If you lose those transport planes, you may lose the last clue to find out the real culprit behind the scenes.

Archibald did not dare to delay and immediately approached Norris and asked the president to make a decision.

Norris is not stupid, Manhattan has been reduced to rubble, and the US military has not found a single attacker, not even a single body of the attacker. If it fails to seize this clue, the United States will not even have a reason to retaliate on a large scale, let alone make the enemy pay.

In any case, those transports must be recovered!

After listening to Archibald's briefing, Norris immediately asked Sternberg to contact the diplomatic missions of nearby countries and ask them for help. Norris then called Turner over and told him to use all the CIA's resources to find out where the transport planes might have landed.

All of a sudden, the search for nine "missing" transport planes became a top priority for the US authorities.

The problem is that it is definitely not an easy task to find nine large transport aircraft over the vast ocean that can fly thousands of kilometers.

These transport planes could land, crash, or even disintegrate and explode in the air.

Even with all military and intelligence resources used, the hope of finding these transport planes is still very slim. But this incident proves a speculation that the attackers have long since left Manhattan and did not stay to fight the American army to the death. In this way, the large-scale military operation launched by the U.S. military not only failed completely, but also eventually led to the desperate gamble of the remaining attackers, and the destruction of Manhattan was destroyed.

(To be continued)