"Peaceful deterrence" became the "end of war", and the Normans once again showed the world their sinister intentions by any means. For this day, they took great pains, and they don't know how many days and nights they secretly prepared. In order to conceal his true intentions, he did not hesitate to create an incident of "spaceship relics" in the north that almost concealed the entire planet. Once the plan to hide from the sky and the sea succeeds, the Federation fleet has become the fat on their lips, how can they easily let go?

With Admiral Blatter leading the Union army to fight and retreat, the Normans launched a seemingly crazy and subtle surprise attack very decisively. The light and swift ships were like well-trained hounds, biting at the back of the Federation fleet, and when they pursued a certain distance, they fired cigar-shaped thunderbolts like they had used to defeat the Wessex army in the last war. After many years of post-war improvements, it was clear that the power and efficiency of this flying mine were superior.

For the Normans, the federal side was not unprepared. Drawing lessons from the last war, they worked in peacetime to gather intelligence on all aspects of the imaginary enemy. Even after the formation of joint staffs in various countries. They did not put their swords in the warehouse and put their horses in Nanshan, but carried out intelligence work in a more secretive and flexible way. Thanks to these efforts, the Commander of the Federation Fleet and his corps knew that the enemy's mines had evolved to the point of remote control using radios, capable of tactical maneuvers within a certain range, and that the remote-controlled equipment and operators were on top of the ships that launched them. To reduce the threat of these mines, either a jamming attack on the ship that launched them or a radio jamming is used, preferably both.

Under the all-out efforts of the Union troops to block the fire and the radio interference that disappeared, none of the Normans' lightning attacks hit, but this method of aggregation was obviously not the only magic weapon that the Normans relied on. As the Federation fleet focused its attention behind it, squadrons of Norman fighters swooped down from high altitude. Bombs that did not have their own power rained down, and after this sudden shower, four or five Federation ships were hit. Although these bombs were much less powerful than those flying mines, they were not pleasant to rest on any flying ship. There are two medium-sized ships that have been damaged and their speed has been drastically reduced, and if they are left behind, then what awaits them will undoubtedly be a devastating blow, but if they are helped, the Federation fleet under the command of Admiral Blatter is very likely to have a decisive battle with the enemy under extremely unfavorable circumstances, which is also what the Federation does not want to see. In terms of the size of the trade-off, it was not difficult for the calm commander to make the right judgment - the Federation fleet continued to retreat into its hinterland, and the damaged ships gradually broke away from the array, but instead of raising the white flag, they fired at the enemy ships as best they could.

While the two fleets were engaged in a fierce battle in the northwestern part of the Federation, a ghostly fleet emerged from the layers of dark clouds near the eastern coastline of the Federation, which had survived the previous two wars. They weren't that big, but when shells and bombs whizzed in, the inhabitants of the seaside towns from Middlegar to Niederwell were in a state of shock like never before.

Over the years, in order to defend itself against a possible Norman attack from the east, the Union army has upgraded its eastern coastline, built a number of modern forts and airfields, and deployed mobile fleets and patrols, but these efforts are as fragile as paper shells in the face of the Normans' carefully planned attacks. The sight of tranquil seaside towns that had not been touched by war for more than 100 years was horrible, with smoke and flames rising from the enemy's rage.

Combat planes deployed at airfields and concealed bases in the eastern part of the Federation were dispatched, and the fierce winds could not stop their brave hearts, and the torrential rain could not extinguish their burning fighting spirit, and they rushed towards the Norman fleet as if they were dauntless in the last war, just as they had defeated a powerful enemy with fearless will in the last war. Thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of these pilots, the Norman fleet withdrew from the federal airspace a few hours later, but the attack channel on the back of the belly had been opened, and the Federation was in a situation of being attacked on the back of the enemy.

In the north, the Federation fleet retreated to the protective circle of its own fighter force at the cost of nearly half of its ships, and the Normans temporarily halted the pursuit, but when night fell. They once again attacked the deep federal airfields and air bases, and the Wessexians slaughtered a fleet into the federal airspace without declaring war. By this time, the Norman-led conspiracy was clear: the military coup d'état carried out by the Wessexians was also apparently controlled by the Normans, and now two of the former three great powers of the Norman Empire in the west of Wessex in the north have joined forces to flank the Confederation.

Those small states, either neutral or on the sidelines, no matter which side they are on, will not help to change the pattern of war.

Hearing the bad news of the resumption of the war, almost everyone was stunned, although they had always been wary of the Norman conspiracy and had made a lot of preparations for it, but they were unwilling to face the cruel reality for a long time. In Weiss's mind, this was undoubtedly a Pearl Harbor-style raid, but he underestimated the "appetite" of the Normans, and in just a few hours, the fortresses of the western frontier of the Free Federation were bombarded like never before - the Norman army seemed to have mastered the technology of the Zenith, and used huge, cigar-shaped flying thunderbolts to create a sky-shattering attack effect, these terrible bombs, one could destroy a large fortified fortress, twenty or thirty were enough to raze the entire fortress to the ground.

After the start of the war, the Normans adopted a new leap attack tactic, which caught the Union army by surprise at the strategic and tactical level, with the fleet as the lead and the combat aircraft as the support, with a jump of about 200 to 300 miles, focusing on attacking the air base of the Union army, occupying it with airborne troops, laying defensive lines around it, and then supporting their own ships and aircraft to move here. Outside of these jump points, the Normans did not invest heavily in heavy troops, but mainly harassed and bombed from the air, and constantly sent more ground troops and anti-aircraft fire to the jump points. In this way, although their advance speed is similar to that of the previous war, or even slightly slower, but their forces are more concentrated, and several jump points can be formed into one or more fronts, dividing the area under the control of the Federation Army.

Because of the lessons of the last war, the Union commanders did not fight the Normans for a city, but preserved their vitality and organized a large retreat of their troops in depth. In this way, in just one week, the Normans had cut thousands of miles from the north and west to the Confederation Forte.

The experience of the first two wars has made the inhabitants of the Federation not feel a deep sense of despair about the current state of affairs. However, when the Norman army crossed the furious sea and appeared on the eastern coast of the Union, panic began to spread, and it was not clear how much Norman could project and how many troops could be deployed on the newly opened Eastern Front. The appearance of Norman ships, planes, and marines was like a terrible virus that invaded the human body and quickly caused a strong reaction. The Union army rushed to the eastern front, and it took only a day and a half to drive the landing Norman army into the sea, but this was only a tentative attack by the enemy. After that, the Normans not only did not stop their activities on the Eastern Front, but intensified their attacks and harassments.

As the administrator of Lorraine, Weiss played an important role in the Union's wartime mobilization system, and under his leadership, the Lorraine government was the fastest to come. Wartime mobilization was carried out, all production that could be incorporated into armaments was transferred to the track of war, registered reservists were organized for wartime drills, and of course, most importantly, they cooperated with the army to the best of their ability to maintain order on the ground, and after the garrison units were transferred to the front, the newly formed reserve units became the cornerstone of maintaining stability in the rear.

For Lorraine and Weiss, the next day was almost a myriad of bad news, although the reform and preparation of the Union army made them more capable of fighting than in the previous war. The manpower and material preparations were also quite adequate, but the unprecedented bad situation once again put them in a situation of exhaustion.

In this little-foreseen war, Lorraine was positioned not only as a local fortress against the invasion of the Norman army, but also as an important pedal to support the flight troops to attack the hinterland of the Norman Empire. The federal military's top brass has already taken note of this counterattack as an alternative.

On the seventh day of the war, a force of Union bombers had already made a tentative attack on the eastern border towns of the Norman Empire, and although they were strongly resisted by the Normans, only four days later a larger counterattack began on this front.

"Devil's spear", this is how the Union soldiers and civilians describe the new weapon of the Normans. In the last war, the Normans thwarted the Wessex fleet with this aerial thunderbolt based on artificial star stone technology. Nowadays, although this upgraded version of the weapon does not play a more useful role in the battle of the fleet, in the attack on the ground, they are more terrifying than the large-caliber naval guns, and it is simply the legendary demon throwing the great killing weapon to the world. Such a big guy can hold tens of thousands of pounds of high explosives, and its power is several times that of the current largest caliber naval guns, and their use is not limited by the tonnage of the ship and the caliber of the gun, even a lightweight cruiser can carry several or even dozens of weapons of this specification, projected from twenty or thirty miles away, beyond the effective range of the anti-aircraft fire of the ground forces of the federal army, so as to have the striking force of unilateral violence.

In peacetime, the Union Army, while concerned about this type of weapon, neglected its upgraded air-to-ground strike capabilities. However, adequate intelligence gathering is invaluable in wartime, for example, the Federation can basically determine the location of the factories needed to produce this weapon, except for the two places in the rear that cannot be attacked, and the most productive places are basically located in the central and eastern regions of the Norman Empire, and it is still possible to use long-range bombers to attack. In order to eliminate this threat to the enemy as much as possible, the Federation Army planned an unprecedented raid with long-range bombers and attack aircraft as the main force, which was named "Thunder in the Night Sky".