A few hours in the afternoon, Bai Huawei and Liu Zunling used the information they had already obtained to make a simple deduction of the current situation.

As the two had guessed before, the Nuland Navy sent the main force to attack the Aliu Islands, which was to force the Imperial fleet to go north and go to the North and East to fight a decisive battle.

Comparatively speaking, the Guia Ocean is more suitable for a decisive battle of the fleet.

As mentioned earlier, there is not a single decent island in a radius of several thousand kilometers between the Khowaii and Aliu Islands.

This vast sea area is capable of accommodating several fleets.

The first battle of the Nuland Navy in World War II was also a strategic turning point in the Guia Theater, where the Battle of the Guia was fought.

In that naval battle, each side committed several task forces, and more than 500 ships and almost 5,000 combat aircraft of various types participated in the battle.

Even so, the area of war is only in the western part of the Guina, which is only a quarter of the size of the Guina.

Relatively speaking, in the southern part of the Khowaii Islands, it is not so ideal.

To the south of the Howai Islands lies not only the island of Jotun, but also several islands north of the Lane Islands, all of which are large enough to deploy aviation.

As long as the Imperial fleet retreats to the sea west of the island of Jodon, it will be able to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

If the Nuland fleet wants to take the initiative to find the Imperial fleet for a decisive battle, it must first attack the island of Jotun or break through the island chain defense in other directions.

It can be seen from this that no matter how it is fought, after the battle begins, the combat intentions of the Nuland Navy are no longer a secret.

In fact, the "island chain defense line" extending from the Aliu Islands to the south, through the Howai Islands, the Lane Islands, and the Marquesas Islands, to the Tuamotu Islands, is aimed at the Nuland Navy, or the strategic defense line established by the Imperial Navy in order to dominate the Guia Ocean and control the Guia Ocean. To the west of this line of defense is the core of the Empire, while to the east is the periphery that can be abandoned.

This is also the main reason for the activities of Task Force 41 in the southwest of the Howaii Islands, that is, west of the island of Jotun.

As long as it was on the west side of the island chain defense, even if the Nuland army bombed all the military bases on the Howaii Islands into ruins and destroyed the port of Jotun, it would not be able to deal with Task Force 41, at least not without being detected.

Crucially, as long as Task Force 41 is still operating in the Guia Ocean, the victory of the Nuland Navy will only be a flash in the pan.

Without decades of painstaking management, the Nuland Navy simply could not have gained a foothold on the seized islands. With sufficient military superiority and regaining control of the Guia Sea, it only takes a powerful counterattack to recapture the islands captured by the Nuland navy.

In addition, there is a very crucial factor.

The intelligence provided by the MIA showed a time difference of about six hours, and the photos were taken by reconnaissance satellites at around 9 a.m.

Even if the bombers were to launch an attack immediately after receiving the information, it would have been delayed for several hours.

In addition, the ebony base in the Aliu Islands has been destroyed, and the airfields on the western islands of the Khowaii Islands have been occupied by transferred anti-submarine patrol planes and fighters, so they can only use bombers deployed in the rear, such as the mainland of the island and the North Malaysia Islands, and the delay is even longer.

In theory, it would be nice to be able to launch an attack in the early hours of the morning.

For an aircraft carrier battle group capable of continuous navigation at a speed of 30 knots, it can run at least hundreds of kilometers in most of the day.

This means that it is impossible to rely on the intelligence provided by reconnaissance satellites to launch a counterattack.

In fact, this is also the key to why the Imperial Navy has not paid much attention to reconnaissance satellites, at least at the tactical level, and has not completely relied on them.

It's not that satellites are bad, it's that the technology is not advanced enough.

If anything, the Imperial Navy was actually the first to discover the value of reconnaissance satellites.

More than 20 years ago, shortly after the end of the Polish-Iranian War, the Imperial Navy found that it was necessary to pay more attention to anti-aircraft carrier operations.

Shortly thereafter, both houses of parliament introduced a bill limiting the number of active aircraft carriers of the Imperial Navy to 15.

In other words, the Imperial Navy could no longer win by numbers, so a more effective tactical means was needed in future naval supremacy battles.

First of all, it is necessary to establish a new and highly efficient investigative system.

It was at this time that reconnaissance satellites were taken seriously by the Imperial Navy.

At that time, Zhou Yongtao, who was still serving in the navy, took the lead in proposing the establishment of a set of maritime surveillance systems that would mainly focus on reconnaissance satellites and cover the whole world.

Unfortunately, this is just a good wish.

After the initial arguments, even Zhou Yongtao had to admit that even with all his might, the Imperial Navy would not be able to create such a system. Just building a space-based system composed of dozens of reconnaissance satellites will cost hundreds of billions of gold dollars, and the annual maintenance cost will exceed 100 billion. At that time, the imperial navy had an annual military budget of less than 100 billion, and only more than 20 billion was spent on equipment.

Crucially, there is a delay in the intelligence provided by reconnaissance satellites, which is largely of no tactical value.

In actual combat, it is still necessary to rely on traditional reconnaissance platforms such as reconnaissance planes.

In addition, reconnaissance satellites are also susceptible to external factors, such as weather.

In some special cases, reconnaissance satellites are not as good as submarines.

Of course, the main reason is that it is too expensive to afford.

At the military level, the need for reconnaissance satellites of the Imperial Navy is not very urgent, and there is no reason to use valuable resources to develop reconnaissance satellites.

It was only in the last 10 years that the Nuland Navy became a strategic adversary in the true sense of the word. In the decades before that, the Nuland Navy had been a threat at best. As for those navies of the Western Continent Group, not to mention that at that time, even now, they could not enter the eyes of the Imperial Navy.

Comparatively speaking, the Global Navigation Satellite System dominated by the Air Force is more valuable.

It can be seen that if the intelligence provided by the reconnaissance satellites has no tactical value, then the commander of the Nuland fleet will not be worried when it comes to deployment.

In fact, no fleet commander would send out all the carrier-based aircraft on the basis of a few blurry photographs taken by reconnaissance satellites hours or even more than a dozen hours ago. In fact, after receiving the information, the reconnaissance planes were the first to be dispatched.

It is precisely because of this that Bai Huawei and Liu Zunling decided that the Nuland navy's attack on the Aliu Islands was to lure the snake out of the hole.

The two then analyzed the possible next steps.

First of all, Task Force 41 will go north overnight.

Because several islands to the east had already been bombed, and the Aliu Islands were northwest of Honu Island, Task Force 41 was to enter the Guia Ocean from the west of the Howaii Islands. In order to obtain the cover of shore-based aviation, especially the support provided by anti-submarine patrol aircraft, when choosing a route, it will try to get as close as possible to the transit island. If there is more definite information, such as the fact that the Nuland fleet is heading south at the same time, then Task Force 41 will begin to prepare for the upcoming fleet decisive battle while passing through the Transit Island.

The point is that the anti-submarine patrol task will be left to shore-based aviation.

At this time, Task Force 41 was vulnerable to submarine ambushes.

Is there a Nuland submarine near Transit Island?

Although under normal circumstances, the Nuland submarine would not venture close to the Transit Island, let alone ambush the Imperial Navy's aircraft carrier battle group near the Transit Island, as long as the preparation time is sufficient, the captain of the submarine dares to take the risk, and it is not difficult to deploy several submarines near the Transit Island.

For a well-planned and well-prepared assault operation, combat units will definitely be deployed in advance.

In addition, the "Los Angeles" class attack submarines are capable of lurking under the surface of the sea for dozens of days. In the case of low-speed navigation or sinking on the bottom of the sea, the noise emitted by the "Los Angeles" class attack submarine is very weak, and even the most advanced passive sonar may not be able to detect it.

A large-scale search with active sonar is tantamount to looking for a needle in a haystack.

As long as one "Los Angeles" class slips through the net, it can use heavy torpedoes to send three "Chen Bingxun"-class large aircraft carriers to the bottom of the sea within a few minutes.

In fact, it is only necessary to hit 3 aircraft carriers, or even 2 aircraft carriers.

Bai Huawei bets that on the west side of the transit island, there are more than 10 large attack submarines of the Newland Navy waiting for the rabbit.

In this regard, Liu Zunling did not object.

Fortunately, the Imperial Navy Command made a similar inference and took the necessary action.

Shortly after dark, a message came from the command of the Navy.

The Air Force has dispatched strategic bombers to launch a strike on the Nuland mainland as planned, but it will not be able to obtain the relevant battle report until tomorrow.

Because the northerly route was chosen to make full use of the tactical aviation deployed in the Arras area, and the target of the attack was mainly military installations on the west coast of Newland, the bombers on the mission did not penetrate deep into the North and East Ocean, and therefore did not encounter the carrier-based fighters of the Nuland Navy.

In addition, it is not only air-launched cruise missiles that hit Keith Island and Ebony Island, but also cruise missiles of the Nuland Navy.

Some of them are also submarine-launched cruise missiles!

This is not a random inference, but the local garrison found some missile wreckage, and the Ebony Island garrison even scooped up a submarine-launched cruise missile that did not explode.

To this end, the command of the Navy has already ordered the strengthening of anti-submarine capabilities in the Guia direction.

As a result, most of the anti-submarine patrol aircraft deployed on the western islands of the Khowaii archipelago will be sent to the Guia Ocean to carry out search missions.

Offshore anti-submarine tasks were entrusted to the ships of the Navy, primarily anti-submarine patrol boats deployed on transit islands.

This kind of small warship, which is only a few hundred tons, does not have anti-submarine warfare capabilities worth mentioning at all, and the number is very small, with only about 10 ships deployed on transit islands.

If it were not for Zhou Yongtao's "600" plan, which also demanded that the total tonnage of the ships be maintained at more than 4.25 million tons, these small ships built during the Polish-Iranian War and in service for nearly 30 years would have been sold to shipbreaking yards at a low price.

In addition, anti-submarine helicopters can be used.

In order to find out the deployment of the navy, Bai Huawei also asked the communications staff officers to use high-frequency satellite communication equipment and contacted the headquarters of the Zhenbao Harbor garrison.

By the second half of the night, the command of the Fourth Fleet sent a definite message.

On the side of the Khowaii Islands, up to 6 anti-submarine patrol aircraft of 1 squadron can be dispatched, and they can be dispatched after dawn at the earliest.

Fortunately, the Navy Command has not yet ordered Task Force 41 to go north.

In the second half of the night, the Nuland Air Force dispatched bombers to launch a second wave of bombing of the Khowaii Islands, and the target of the attack was expanded to the islands in the western part of the archipelago.

In this battle, the Imperial Navy dispatched heavy fighters, and with the assistance of large early warning planes, electronic reconnaissance planes, and tanker planes arranged by the Air Force, they carried out a remarkable interception of the incoming enemy planes, and achieved brilliant results in shooting down more than 30 enemy bombers.

According to the message from Jumbo Harbor, the Navy adopted a completely new set of tactics that night.

Let electronic warfare planes replace large AWACS aircraft, detect enemy AWACS aircraft through passive detection, and direct heavy fighters to launch an attack.

Only after the enemy's AWACS aircraft were expelled did the AWACS aircraft direct the fighters to intercept the bombers.

It's just that this interception operation was not able to intercept all enemy aircraft.

Crucially, most of the Nuland bombers attacked from the north and were not intercepted.

As a result, regular airfields on the western islands, including those on the transit islands, were bombed and temporarily incapacitated.

Although several field airfields were preserved, the field airfields could only allow fighter planes to land alternately, and could not support the continuous operation of the air force.

Fearing a heavier blow after daybreak, the Navy Command had made adjustments and began to draw troops from the south.

If nothing else, dozens of fighter jets deployed on the island of Joton will take to the skies after dawn and fly to Transit Island.

At the same time, the Navy's engineering units will do their utmost to repair the bombed airfields and get them back into service.

In fact, this reflects a problem from the side.

The defense line on the islands is extremely fragile relative to a strong offensive force, and the military bases built on the islands can be easily destroyed.

Even an island like Honou Island, which has a large population and well-developed infrastructure, cannot withstand high-intensity air strikes.

Obviously, even if it is defense, it must have the fleet as the absolute core.

Supporting the entire line of defense was the 41st Task Force, which had not yet participated in the battle.

The two successive rounds of air strikes were mainly carried out by the Air Force's strategic bombers, and cruise missiles, which were expensive and had a very outstanding cost-effectiveness ratio, were mainly used, and the Navy's carrier-based air force was not allowed to appear on the battlefield because it was necessary to leave a force to deal with the 41 st Task Force.

As soon as Task Force 41 is exposed, or incapacitated, the Nuland Navy will immediately let the fleet strike.

For example, support the Marines in attacking the Aliu Islands or the Khowaii Islands.

It's just that now, what really worries Bai Huawei is not that it will be attacked, but how long the 41st Task Force will be able to hide.

Do not forget that there are Nuland's reconnaissance satellites overhead.

Even after leaving the port, Bai Huawei tried his best to let the fleet move under the cumulonimbus clouds, and he was lucky, the weather in the past few days was not very good, and he would always find some dense cumulonimbus clouds, but the only ones that could block it were those reconnaissance satellites that used optical equipment, and the impact of the clouds on the radar reconnaissance satellites was not very great, at least it was impossible to ensure that the aircraft carrier with obvious signal characteristics was not discovered.

From the point of view of probability, sooner or later, Task Force 41 will reveal its whereabouts.

Of course, this "sooner or later" is a relative concept.

After the entry of the Nuland Republic into the war, the first thing the Imperial Air Force did was not to send bombers to launch a counterattack, but to conduct anti-satellite operations.

It's just that it is certainly not possible to destroy all the Nuland satellites at once.