In the battle plan drawn up by Ding Zhennan, it was actually the sea that supported the large-scale ground offensive.

The key point is that the roads and railways connecting the empire and the Pakistan Railway not only have limited transportation capacity, but also bear the heavy responsibility of supporting the northwest battlefield, and cannot provide support for the southwest battlefield. In addition, it is difficult to ensure the smooth flow of traffic within Pakistan and the railway, and it is not easy to transport supplies to the south.

To this end, on October 17, the day after returning to the front, he went to Silan with several staff officers and found Liu Zunshan, who was preparing for the offensive operation here.

Now, he is a Marine Corps colonel and one of the few senior officers who was named by Ding Zhennan himself.

At the end of August, he came to the city of Cologne, and Ding Zhennan gave him the task of grasping the situation first-hand, especially the main battle equipment stored in Silan, and trying to send it to several major ports, so as to ensure that it could be used to arm the lightly armed marines immediately after the start of the war.

To put it bluntly, Ding Zhennan intends to use these "cellar" heavy weapons to form several main forces.

As for the personnel, the backbone is the retired officers and soldiers who were urgently recruited after the start of the war, and the others are from the reserve forces, and their personal qualities are no less than those of the regular troops.

The main force is the Marine Corps.

It must be said that in terms of the use of troops, Ding Zhennan has no view of the door.

There are three main reasons for arranging for the Marine Corps reserve to go to the Slans, and not to the Army's reserves.

One is to keep it secret, that is, the southern subcontinent has always been the main operational direction of the Imperial Army, so after the start of the war, the movements of the Imperial Army will definitely attract much attention, even if it is a reserve force, every move will arouse the vigilance of the enemy. On the other hand, the Marines are not so ostentatious. Even though the Southern Theater is dominated by the navy, the Marine Corps mainly cooperates with the navy in operations, and mainly faces the island-dominated southeast region and the southwestern and eastward oceans. On the side of the southern subcontinent, due to the influence of the equipment system, the combat efficiency of the Marine Corps is certainly not as good as that of the Army.

Second, it is convenient for coordinated operations and reduces the trouble of command and coordination. Although the empire has been promoting military reform and establishing a joint command system, contradictions between the services and arms still exist, and many reform measures have not yet been put in place, and coordinated operations are still a major problem. For example, in the Poshawan War, there were many vicious incidents in which friendly troops were accidentally injured due to different identification of friend and foe. As for inter-service coordinated operations, in many cases it is necessary to rise to the level of the theater command to ensure that operational orders are carried out.

Of course, the most important point is the third point.

No matter where the attack is, as long as it starts from Silan, it is mainly an amphibious landing, mainly fighting in the coastal plain area, and naturally the marines are the mainstay.

Don't look at the fact that the army has formed several light infantry units with amphibious combat capabilities, but to carry out amphibious operations, it still has to rely on the Marine Corps, or the navy needs to provide a landing fleet. It was clear that there was no reason for the Navy to abandon the Marines and fight in tandem with the Army's light infantry units.

In actual combat, the army's amphibious units are also mainly responsible for advancing inland after the landing to reduce the combat burden of the marines.

However, Ding Zhennan did not do things perfectly.

The reason is also very simple, there are too many main battle equipment stored in Silan.

Take the main battle tank, for example, there are 3,500 of them!

Although only more than 200 are ZT-99A, and the rest are all ZT-80s, and about a third are early models, which do not reach the level of ZT-80DG, for example, they are not equipped with 125mm tank guns, but so many main battle tanks, the Marine Corps simply can't use them up.

Theoretically, 3,500 main battle tanks can arm 10 infantry divisions, or 8 armored divisions.

According to Ding Zhennan's plan, three marine divisions will be formed.

It's not that there aren't so many reserves, as mentioned earlier, the Imperial Marines have a total of 5 reserve divisions, and all of them were mobilized after the start of the war.

The key is actually the lack of projection forces and support forces to support operations.

To put it bluntly, there are not so many landing ships and transport ships.

In addition, logistical support capabilities are also a big problem, that is, with the current maritime capacity of the empire, it determines the total number of troops that can be invested in the southern part of the southern subcontinent.

In fact, this had an impact on the overall battle plan.

If there are sufficient troops and sufficient logistical support, Ding Zhennan would prefer to attack a large city like Meng Mai and defeat his opponent in one or several large-scale battles, rather than using the existing forces in a scattered manner, not to mention the risk of turning into a war of attrition.

It is a pity that the operational objectives can now only be achieved through landing operations on a limited scale.

For this reason, it is necessary to avoid big cities like Mumbai.

It's not that it's more difficult to attack Mengmai, but after the occupation, more resources will need to be spent to maintain order, which will also increase the burden of logistical support.

With a population of more than 20 million, the city alone is the largest city in the Southern Subcontinent and one of the most populous cities in the world. The problem is that of these 20 million residents, at least 15 million live in slums, and most of them are in extreme poverty with an average daily living expenditure of less than 0.5 gold dollars. Obviously, the invasion of Mumbai would have to deal with the 15 million poor people, and at least solve their survival problems, such as providing them with 600,000 tons of food every month.

Even if you don't count other necessities for survival, such as fuel for power generation, just 600,000 tons of food per month is enough to make the imperial authorities retreat. Even if the empire is not short of food, and the strategic reserves are as high as hundreds of millions of tons, it is impossible to increase this consumption for no reason. What's more, the delivery of so much grain from the empire itself means that the amount of war supplies sent to the front line will have to be reduced by 600,000 tons without increasing the number of transport ships.

For this reason, Ding Zhennan chose small and medium-sized coastal cities, and there were either ports nearby or deep-water bays where ships could anchor.

Initially, five targets were chosen, all on the west coast of Van Roh, from south to north: Nagaykoyle, Udibi, Dapor, Tana and Dammam. With the exception of Tana, the other four are all small towns, but they are all near big cities, and all of them are more suitable for landing.

In fact, this is also another task of Liu Zunshan.

Find out the defensive deployment of the Van army in these five locations, especially the situation of the rear reserves, and provide a reference for formulating battle plans.

The key is actually ground reconnaissance.

Although after the Van Luo Kingdom entered the war, the Imperial Air Force was no longer constrained, and dispatched strategic reconnaissance planes, including the "Night Phoenix," to frequently enter the airspace of the Van Luo Kingdom to obtain first-hand information, but the reconnaissance planes were not omnipotent, and it was impossible to obtain complete and detailed battlefield information.

For example, it is difficult for reconnaissance aircraft to distinguish between well-camouflaged false targets.

At the tactical and tactical level, it is necessary to rely on other reconnaissance methods, such as sending scouts to the front line to gather information about the enemy.

It is precisely in this way that in the era when reconnaissance planes and reconnaissance satellites were flying all over the sky, the imperial army still retained reconnaissance units and developed into special forces.

In the Imperial Marine Corps, there are specialized special forces, the "Sea Dragon Reconnaissance Detachment".

The unit was formed during the Polish-Iranian War, and initially its main task was only to guard the military port.

In fact, during the Polish-Iranian War, because of the negligence of the port guard force, the ships parked in the military harbor were attacked by frogmen of the resistance group, resulting in the death of hundreds of officers and soldiers, and the scrapping of 3 destroyers, and the Imperial Navy made up its mind to form a professional special forces.

Until then, special forces had always been the "patent" of the Imperial Army.

Interestingly, the detachment is subordinate to the Navy Command, managed by the Special Service Service under the Navy Command, and has nothing to do with the Marine Corps in terms of establishment and personnel.

Strictly speaking, only half a rank below the Marine Corps command.

It's just that the "Sea Dragon Detachment" has always been managed by the Marine Corps, and the selection is carried out within the Marine Corps, and it is also under the direct command of the Marine Corps.

Of course, its main mission has long since evolved into amphibious infiltration and tactical reconnaissance.

After more than 20 years of development, the scale of the "Sea Dragon Detachment" has expanded dozens of times, and the scope of tasks has been correspondingly expanded.

In the city of Coron there was a brigade, as well as a special station.

In fact, in the past few decades, Cologne City has been the headquarters of the "Sea Dragon Detachment" in Fanyanyang, and many officers and soldiers have made their homes here.

For this reason, in the "Military City" on the outskirts of Cologne City, there is also an exclusive community of the "Sea Dragon Detachment".

The reason is simple, big cities have better infrastructure and life is more comfortable.

In addition, the city of Coron has the only runway in Slan that is more than 3,000 meters long, so large transport planes supporting special forces are deployed here.

Throughout the month of September, the 3rd Brigade stationed in the city of Coron was in frequent sorties.

In addition to relying on the large transport aircraft of the Air Force, submarines are also used to carry out infiltration reconnaissance missions.

"Overall, the conditions in Udebi are the best."

When Liu Zunshan emphasized this point, Ding Zhennan just nodded and did not express his opinion.

Udebi is north of Mengolore, west of the Western Ghats, and more than 300 kilometers north of Goa. Because it happened to be in the narrowest part of the western coastal plain, as long as it was controlled, it would cut off the coastal lines of communication, so that the main force of the Vatican army in the north could not move south from the coastal plain. If you go south from the inland, you will have to face complex mountainous terrain in addition to bypassing the Western Ghats.

In addition, Mengolore, which is far from the competition, is actually only a medium-sized city with a population of just over 1 million.

That is, there are no large cities with a population of more than 2 million near Udebi.

That's why the Vatican army didn't deploy too many troops in the vicinity.

However, the problem should not be ignored.

The remoteness also meant that after a successful landing, it would still take a lot of time to expand the offensive area, and pushing inland would still have to face the Western Ghats. If troops were to be used on the coastal plains, then the defense line of the Vatican army would be stormed either to the north or to the south.

In addition, Udebi is in the northeast of the Lakshadweep Islands.

That is, the landing fleet had to pass through the Lakshadweep Islands.

For security reasons, it was necessary to attack one island capable of deploying aviation in advance, and incapacitate the Vatican troops on the other islands.

Obviously, this is not an easy task.

In order to protect Mumbai, the Vatican army attached great importance to the Lakshadweep Islands, and they had worked hard here for decades, even if they were limited by the size of the islands and could not garrison heavy troops, it did not mean that they would give up their hands. The point is that the Lakshadweep Islands are very close to the Van Roe mainland and are within the cover of tactical aviation.

To the southeast of the archipelago is Trivan.

This place is an important military town in the south of the Van Luo Kingdom, and it is the number one fortress carefully built by the Van army to resist the military threat from Silan.

If you want to attack the Lakshadweep Islands, you must attack Trivan.

There is no doubt that Ding Zhennan has been avoiding a strong attack on Trifan.

If nothing else, because it is located at the southernmost tip of the Southern Subcontinent, and the three directions of the southeast and west are oceans, even if you lay Trivan, it is meaningless.

With Slan, the Empire doesn't need to get another military fortress nearby.

"Now, on the Western Front, there can only be a feint."

"What!?" Liu Zunshan probably felt that he had heard it wrong.

"A feint on the Western Front and put the main offensive to the east."

"This ......" Liu Zunling was slightly stunned before he said: "Have you thought about it a long time ago, the previous arrangements were all to deceive the enemy?" ”

Ding Zhennan smiled and said, "You can say that, but the main thing is that time is limited. ”

"If that's the case, I'm even more confused."

"Is there anything you don't understand?"

"Since there is not enough time, it is even more important to go straight to Huanglong."

"What do you mean by 'Yellow Dragon'?"

Liu Zunshan was stunned again, obviously asked by Ding Zhennan.

"Our ultimate goal is to complete the most important strategic mission before the Van Luo authorities decide to surrender, and completely eliminate the threat from the southwest, at least within a range that can be easily dealt with, so the 'Yellow Dragon' you are talking about is definitely not referring to a certain city or place."

Liu Zunshan nodded, but didn't answer.

"It is indeed far away to put the main direction of attack in the east, but as long as it can be completed, then combined with the deployment we have made in the southwest battlefield, we are sure that we will achieve the operational goal within half a year. Strictly speaking, this is also the only way to completely defeat the Van Luo Kingdom within half a year and ensure that the strategic goal is achieved. ”

"No other way?"

Ding Zhennan just smiled, and Liu Zunshan didn't ask much.

In fact, just a few months ago, Liu Zunshan had a little prejudice against Ding Zhennan, feeling that this unattractive guy was not qualified to be reused by Shi Zhiliang, let alone act as Li Tianling's rival. It's just that after winning the Poshawan War, to be precise, after the end of the first battle, Liu Zunshan's opinion of Ding Zhennan took a big turn, and it can be said that he was so impressed.

Of course, Liu Zunshan himself is the kind of person who goes straight to the point, and he especially admires talented commanders.

"Okay, how are we going to fight?"

"Fight according to the original plan, launch an offensive on the west, with a focus on Trivan, and if necessary, seize the forward base in the Lakshadweep Islands. The southwest battlefield side will take simultaneous action and invest enough troops to at least contain the Vatican army over there. ”

"Army combat units are already in place?"

Ding Zhennan nodded, and then began to say, "No matter what, let's fight in the west first." Wait until the Navy has completed the deployment adjustments before launching the main attack. ”

At this moment, Liu Zunshan suddenly understood.

Even if his brain is not bright enough, his reaction speed is always slower than others, and he can hear another meaning of this statement.

Ding Zhennan focused on the east, preparing to launch a strong attack on the east coast of Fanluo Kingdom, and a left and right flanking attack was also related to Bai Huawei!