The assault on Jodhpur was arguably the first bitter battle the Imperial Army had encountered on the battlefields of the Southern Subcontinent, and it was quite dramatic.

As for the battle on the west side of Pelodi, it was a difficult battle at best.

According to the original plan, the 17th Panzer Division was indeed preparing to storm Jodhpur.

After all, after the situation spreads out, the Van army will definitely defend Jodhpur, so there is no other choice but to attack.

If I have to say, after the encounter with Pelodi, the tens of thousands of officers and soldiers of the 17th Armored Division who paid for themselves gave up their illusions. If the Central Army, even just the main force of the Central Army, is so capable of fighting, the next battle will definitely be even more difficult.

It was in this way that the 17th Panzer Division invested heavy troops and took Pelodi with the overwhelming momentum of Mount Tai.

After defeating Pelodi, Fu Weimin did not rush to let the main force advance towards Jodhpur, but delayed for a few days and made necessary adjustments to the deployment.

The main thing is to keep the 171st Armored Brigade and the 173rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade in Pelodi, let the 172nd Armored Brigade and the 174th Mechanized Infantry Brigade advance forward, and let the 175th Armored Brigade as a reserve to keep up, and form a second echelon with the 17A Temporary Infantry Brigade formed from the withdrawal of support forces.

In this way, the 171st Armored Brigade and the 173rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which had previously served as the main force, became reserves.

From this deployment adjustment, it is not difficult to see that Fu Weimin is ready for the worst and intends to use all his forces to attack Jodhpur.

Forming two offensive echelons is no joke.

Only by storming a military fortress, and the enemy has an absolute superiority in forces, it is necessary to take great pains to divide the attacking forces into several echelons.

This is the posture of fighting a war of attrition!

There is no doubt that if there were other options, the Imperial Army would definitely not consider a war of attrition.

Not to mention that even during the Second World War, the Imperial Army had only stormed three military forts, and in the end they used heavy artillery to reduce casualties. Two fortresses were bombarded into ruins, while the other was captured by the Imperial Army after dozens of days of shelling.

After the war, the Imperial Army no longer emphasized the ability to attack fortifications.

It's not that the army doesn't need the ability to attack fortifications, but in the face of increasingly powerful air power, military fortresses have lost their value of existence.

Especially after the Polish-Iraqi War.

Strictly speaking, the last time traditional defensive tactics shone through was the Polish-Iranian War.

In this war, the Imperial Army's ability to attack fortifications was challenged like never before, especially when encountering intricate underground tunnels. It was stimulated by the Polish-Iranian War that the imperial military intensified the development of offensive weapons after the war, and the air force was the most important. The point is, the huge investment has received a good report. By the time of the Posha Bay War, strong fortifications were no longer an obstacle to the attacking forces.

The Air Force's weapon for attacking fortifications is ground-penetrating bombs of various specifications.

Actual combat has long proved that ground-penetrating bombs made from scrapped naval gun barrels are a sharp weapon against strong fortifications, and with laser guidance, they can increase efficiency by hundreds of times. This means that fortifications built according to traditional military thinking will become worthless.

No matter how strong the fortifications were, they were all vulnerable to the burrowing bombs.

For example, in the Battle of Posha Bay, the Empire used two 1000-kilogram ground-penetrating bombs to strike a deeply buried target and destroy it. Even if the power of the 1,000-kilogram ground-penetrating bomb is not strong enough, the Imperial Air Force still has a 10-ton super bomb that can only be dropped by transport aircraft.

It's just that it still takes enough time to attack the fortifications.

Again, in the case of the Battle of Poshawan, it would take at least a few tens of days to destroy most of the fortified fortifications in an attack on a large fortified city.

If it's just a local war, then there's nothing wrong with that.

However, in the midst of a global war, this is the problem!

Otherwise, the Marines would not have used captured large-caliber mortars in the assault on Deogle.

In Jodhpur, the situation was the same.

Unfortunately, all the captured heavy artillery was in the hands of the 5th Marine Division. Besides, there are not many shells left, and there is definitely no way to meet the operational needs.

According to the battle plan submitted by Fu Weimin to the headquarters, the estimated combat casualties reached 5,000!

This is no joke!

Prior to this, the total number of officers and men, including the 5th Marine Division, had been killed or wounded in ground battles was less than 5,000.

At that time, Fu Weimin was still organizing the grassroots officers and soldiers of the assault force in Polodi, and held a swearing-in meeting, and the officers and soldiers of several brigades were all daredevils.

It is precisely because of this that Ding Zhennan specially told Fu Weimin to fight steadily in Jodhpur, not to rush to victory, and to preserve combat effectiveness as much as possible.

As a result, Fu Weimin got off the donkey down the slope and immediately adjusted the battle plan for attacking Jodhpur.

From this point of view, Fu Weimin's posture of attacking Jodhpur and fighting to the death with the Vatican army was mostly done for Ding Zhennan to see, and his fundamental purpose was to hope that Ding Zhennan would lower his target and reduce the burden of the 17th Armored Division, so as to preserve his combat effectiveness.

Don't forget that after the capture of Jodhpur, there was also a siege of Jaipur.

Of course, Ding Zhennan must have been able to guess Fu Weimin's intentions, so he sent a report to advise, just so that Fu Weimin could give an explanation to his officers and soldiers.

The point is that after making adjustments, there is really no need to storm Jodhpur, or there is no need to rush it.

If the 17th Panzer Division rushes too fast, it may disrupt the strategic deployment, and the gains outweigh the losses.

According to the adjusted deployment, the assault force of the 17th Panzer Division reached the outskirts of Jodhpur on 3 December and completed the encirclement two days later.

It is said that it is a siege, but it only controls the main traffic arteries, which is not tight.

What followed was a long and protracted firefight.

By 10 December, the fire strike reached its climax.

True, it was the artillery deployed in Deogle that joined at this time.

A few days ago, the artillery on Deogel's side was mainly supporting the Fifth Marine Corps to encircle and annihilate the southern cluster, after all, it was the Marine Corps that occupied Deogle.

Those more than 20 long-range rocket launchers played a crucial role.

The distance from Deogle to Jodhpur is only 150 kilometers in a straight line, and even if it is far from the Vatican position, it will not exceed 200 kilometers.

At this distance, it is already possible to use satellite-guided rockets that have just been delivered to combat units.

Without a doubt, that's the key.

As mentioned earlier, under the impetus of the third military revolution, the empire spent tens of billions of gold dollars to build the world's first satellite navigation system. It was on this basis that the Imperial Military invested in the development of various precision-guided weapons and ammunition based on satellite navigation systems.

This includes guided rockets.

Compared with other guidance methods, satellite guidance has two outstanding advantages, one is lower price, and the other is that there are no special requirements for the carrying platform.

Although there are some shortcomings, and many of them are difficult to overcome, such as easy interference, and the guidance accuracy is not excellent, but relatively, these shortcomings can be tolerated, especially in a global war with extremely large ammunition consumption, and the low price itself is a powerful combat power.

It is precisely because of this that after the outbreak of the Third Global War, satellite-guided munitions, which were not valued in the first place, immediately became the object of pursuit of front-line troops. At the request of the combat units, the arsenals in the rear are also working at full speed to produce various types of satellite-guided munitions.

Strictly speaking, it is actually the production of satellite guidance components, as well as assembled control seekers.

The rocket uses the control seeker.

In order to reduce the difficulty of use, the Imperial Army has always insisted on the use of a unified standard interface, and the fuses of large-caliber rockets are all placed at the front of the bomb body. The original intention of this design is not only to facilitate the operation and use of front-line officers and soldiers, for example, when the operation of the fuze can be temporarily adjusted according to the actual situation, and the gunner can use simple tools to complete it, but more importantly, for safety reasons, the fuse is installed when it is needed to ensure that the rocket will not detonate due to accidental factors in the state of transportation and storage.

Obviously, the late modification was certainly not considered at the time of design.

Because the fuse is front-mounted, it is possible to set the working mode of the warhead by replacing the fuse, and other functions can be added by replacing the body on which the fuse is installed. For example, if you install four rudder surfaces controlled by a guidance system on the outside, you will become a guided rocket.

In fact, all guided rockets are controlled by canard wings mounted on the nose of the projectile.

Relatively speaking, the structure of satellite-guided rockets is the simplest, requiring only a satellite signal receiver and a related linkage control system.

Crucially, the rocket can be modified by the front-line troops themselves.

The method is also very simple, replace the original fuze segment with a satellite guidance and control section, and install a special battery before use.

The modified rocket is slightly longer than the normal model, but it doesn't have much effect.

Compared with ordinary rockets, satellite-guided rockets, in addition to higher accuracy, also have a purely unexpected gain.

Longer range!

During the acceptance test, the Imperial Army found that the control rudder surface of the head of the guided rocket had a certain lifting effect, which could slightly increase the range of the rocket. Because the accuracy is guaranteed and the error does not increase with the increase of range, the value of the guided rocket to increase the range is obvious. Later, when the relevant development was carried out, the engineers of the Imperial Army found a better means of extending the range.

Increase the range of the rocket by changing the trajectory of the flight.

Ordinary rockets use a more typical parabolic trajectory, and compared with artillery shells, only the front section has a relatively straight powered flight section.

To increase the range of a normal rocket, either use increased wings or reload more propellant.

In the former, it will seriously reduce the stability of the flight, resulting in a significant increase in error, and after increasing the range, it will become more unacceptable.

No matter how far you hit, it's useless to hit inaccurately!

The latter, which inevitably affects the mass of the payload, that is, the warhead, which leads to a decrease in the power of the rocket.

Because the error has not been reduced, after the power is weakened, the rocket's destructive ability will inevitably plummet, and the strike efficiency will naturally be much worse than before.

With a guidance system, it's different.

According to the tests conducted by the Imperial Army, guided rockets can use steeper ballistic trajectories, quickly climb to tens of thousands of meters after launch, fly at high altitudes with thin air and lower drag, and increase the range of the rocket without increasing propellant and increasing the wings.

Of course, the problem of reduced accuracy does not exist at all!

In addition, this idea of increasing the range has been adopted by the Navy and is ready to be used in new naval guns.

It was in this way that the Imperial Army was able to procure a large number of satellite-guided rockets without increasing the burden, and also increased the range to 200 kilometers in one fell swoop.

These so-called guided rockets are actually modified from ordinary rockets on the front line.

As for performance, it was proven during the shelling of Udaipur.

Although the accuracy is slightly worse, the average error reaches 15 meters, but within the acceptable range, after all, the maximum range is an order of magnitude higher than that of ordinary rockets. As for the problem of vulnerability to interference, it has not yet been exposed, perhaps because the Vatican army does not have the ability to interfere with satellite signals. Relatively low price, as well as extremely powerful power, make satellite-guided rockets very popular.

To a large extent, large-caliber guided rockets are bombshells in the hands of army artillery.

Solid targets that used to have to be destroyed by aerial bombs had to be called in the air force can now be carried out by artillery, and artillery support arrives more quickly.

Of course, for front-line troops, satellite-guided rockets have an advantage of greater combat value.

There is no need to arrange for a scout to go close enough to the target and take a laser designator to illuminate the target.

The number one value of this advantage is not the ability to reduce the casualties of the front-line troops, but to greatly increase the combat efficiency of the artillery.

Don't underestimate that.

Previously, when laser-guided munitions were used, they needed to be deployed to carry out the guidance mission before they could launch a strike.

Because the guide personnel may not be able to maintain the state at all times, and the risk of deploying in front is extremely high, it often appears after the target is discovered, but there is no guide nearby, and the artillery or aviation unit carrying out the strike mission can only be in a hurry, watching the opportunity to open fire slip away in front of them.

With satellite-guided munitions, this problem does not exist.

It is precisely because of this that not only artillery, but also aviation fell in love with satellite-guided munitions, especially satellite-guided bombs, which are cheap and can be used at will.

In the days leading up to December 10 alone, Air Force combat planes dropped tens of thousands of satellite-guided bombs on Jodhpur, sweeping away all the discernible military targets on the ground. Otherwise, the 17th Panzer Division would have called for artillery support.

The continued massive shelling did have an immediate effect.

By December 14, just four days, the long-range rocket artillery battalion that had returned to the name of the 17th Armored Division proved with its actions that the name of "King of War" was not blown out. Under the continuous heavy shelling, Jodhpur was almost in ruins.

In fact, this also proves a problem in disguise.

The city is indeed a military fortress.

If there had been no early artillery strike, and an immediate ground attack, the 17th Panzer Division would have suffered extremely heavy losses after entering the city.

However, the continuous fire attack still failed to completely eliminate the Vatican army in Jodhpur.

It's still a tough battle!