On the side of Fan Yanyang, in addition to the Diego base that was taken from the Bran Kingdom in World War II, the most valuable military value is Silan.

Of course, this is also in line with the overall strategic direction of the empire.

Although it is located next to the Southern Subcontinent and separated by only one strait, Slan is the closest island to the Southern Subcontinent and is large enough.

In addition, Slan is an independent nation-state with several deep-water ports.

Historically, especially after the Imperial Navy advanced into the Fanyan Ocean, Silan has always been inclined to ally with the Empire and obtain the protection of the Empire.

It is for this reason that Slan was the first independent country in the Southern Subcontinent.

Although after the end of the Second Global War, Silan took advantage of the first national independence movement to get rid of the colonial rule of the Bran Kingdom and became an independent country, but as early as a few decades ago, that is, after the Imperial Navy seized the hegemony of Fanyanyang, Slan was no longer under the colonial rule of the Bran Kingdom, nominally under the trusteeship of the Imperial Navy, and gained a high degree of autonomy in the non-military occupation area.

However, after the end of the First Global War, the autonomy of the Slavic Princely States was trampled upon.

It was not until the end of the Second World War, when the Imperial Navy returned to the Fanyan Ocean, that Slan regained his autonomy and formed an autonomous government based on it. As for the post-war independence movement, it was more just a change of name in line with the trend of the times.

It is precisely in this way that Slan can be regarded as the most special country in the Southern Subcontinent.

Even after independence, Silan still insisted on forming an alliance with the Empire, and the first inter-state treaty signed was to lease more than a dozen military bases that had been used by the Imperial army to the Empire, and the lease was for 49 years, and the lease would automatically be renewed for 49 years after the lease expired.

In addition, Slan is the only country in the Southern subcontinent among the founding signatories of the Eastern Bloc.

For decades, Silan's basic national defense strategy has relied on the Liangxia Empire, or the Liangxia Empire to provide the most basic security for Silan.

It is precisely because of this that Silan has always been a thorn in the side of Van Luoguo.

If you want to say it, it is more jealous than Pakistan Tie.

The reason is also very simple, using the base of Silan, the Imperial Navy can easily blockade the Van Luo Kingdom, and the Imperial Air Force can carry out strategic bombing of the entire territory of the Van Luo Kingdom. In contrast, the strategic defense line of the Van Luo Kingdom has been expanded several times, and the southern region, which was originally relatively safe, has also become a front line.

After the First National Independence Movement, and especially after the end of the Second Southern Subcontinental War, the Van Luo Kingdom took aim at the Slans. After all, after Pakistan joined the Eastern Bloc, Van Luo had no room to move in the northern battlefield, and could only find a breakthrough in other directions.

That is, due to the intervention of the Van Luo Kingdom, the domestic situation in Silan deteriorated sharply, and eventually turned into a civil war.

It's just that the main reason is still on the side of the empire.

At that time, the empire was in a period of strategic adjustment, from strategic expansion to strategic contraction, so after the outbreak of civil strife in Silan, the empire not only did not intervene at the first time, but even did not give the necessary support, but also refused to provide necessary military assistance on the grounds of "non-foreign aggression".

It was the intensification of the Slanc Civil War and the possibility of a complete loss of control that led the Imperial Navy to spend a huge amount of money to build the Diego base.

At that time, it was Zhou Yongtao who was in charge of the overall situation in the navy, and it was Zhou Yongtao's decision to make Diego Island the general base of the imperial navy in Fanyanyang.

Clearly, this is by no means an isolated incident.

The inaction of the imperial authorities could even be described as a policy of appeasement, and the domestic situation in Silan deteriorated rapidly, and the rebels who had the support of the Van Luo State once seized the initiative, and the government forces could only barely parry. By the end of the year 143, the rebels had advanced to the outskirts of the capital and surrounded several imperial military bases. At that time, it seemed that in a few months, the rebels would be able to achieve a complete victory in the civil war.

In fact, a few months later, the rebels stormed the capital and captured the presidential palace.

However, the empire has a new first assistant before that.

That's right, it's Zhou Yongtao.

As mentioned earlier, Zhou Yongtao's first combat order after taking office was to authorize the navy to send troops to quell the civil war in Slan, escort the democratically elected president of Slan, who had been exiled to the empire, back to the capital city of Cologne, and help restore democracy and the rule of law in the founding state of the Eastern Bloc.

Looking back, it is not difficult to find that Zhou Yongtao's decision to send troops to Silan is definitely not a simple matter.

Of course, under the escort of the Imperial Army, the democratically elected president of Sri Lanka successfully returned to the capital and re-established a government that symbolized democracy and the rule of law.

In the years that followed, the Slan Defense Army, with the support of the Imperial Army, regained control of the northern region.

By the year 149, that is, last year, after months of onslaught, the rebels occupying the northern town of Port Jaff surrendered. Although a small number of scattered rebels have fled into the mountains and continue to resist, large-scale combat operations have ended, IDF has taken control of all towns and cities in the country, and the Slan Government is actively promoting national reconciliation and eliminating the source of internal unrest.

There is no doubt that the ability of the Slanc Defense Forces to win the civil war is inseparable from the support of the Empire.

If nothing else, the reorganization of the former government army into the national defense force is an extremely huge project.

The point is that the Silan "government army" is essentially a paramilitary force, more like an armed police, and its main function is to maintain social order in the country. Since there was no possibility of fighting an external enemy, it was not equipped with many heavy weapons, not even automatic weapons such as machine guns.

At the outbreak of the civil war, the main weapon of the Slan government army was the Reich-aided BQ99 rifle.

This is a bolt-action rifle that was finalized in 99 of the New Calendar, the year of the outbreak of World War II, and used a rotating bolt-action rifle with a bolt pull. Although the total production exceeded 50,000 and it was widely equipped with combat units in various regions, the gun did not become the main equipment of the Imperial army even during the Great War. After the advent of the BQ01 semi-automatic rifle, the gun quickly disappeared from front-line combat units. In the aftermath of the war, BQ99 was given extensive aid to friendly countries, as with other large quantities of surplus military supplies.

Among them, of course, is Slan.

More than 30 years after the end of the war, all BQ99s from other countries have been thrown into the trash or become private collections of gun enthusiasts, and only the Slan government army still uses this old rifle and uses it as standard equipment worldwide.

The enemies of the government army, the rebels who have received the secret support of the Van Luo Kingdom, use AK and series assault rifles, and their firepower far exceeds that of the government army.

It was in this way that in the early days of the civil war, the government forces were beaten by the rebels and could not fight back.

The reconstituted Wehrmacht is the real military force.

If nothing else, the Reich gave away Type 2 automatic rifles to the Slan Defense Forces, 40,000 of which were new ones that had just appeared.

Mostly heavy equipment, of course.

By the end of the civil war, the Empire had provided the Slan Defense Forces with weapons and equipment consisting of 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 12 tracked armored personnel carriers and 1 wheeled armored vehicle, more than 12 artillery pieces and rocket launchers, and thousands of small-caliber mortars.

Because it is mainly free aid, most of them are second-hand goods, and many of them are decommissioned equipment that has already expired.

As for firearms, there are even more of them.

In addition, hundreds of fighter jets and dozens of speedboats were provided in the form of assistance to help the Slan Defense Forces form an air force and navy.

Crucially, the Reich was involved in the formation of the Slan Defense Forces.

In fact, even in later combat operations, the military advisers sent by the empire played a crucial and completely irreplaceable role.

To put it more bluntly, it is the military instructors of the empire who are directing the Silan Wehrmacht in battle.

It was through the tempering of the civil war that Silan had a modern army in the true sense of the word.

In Zhou Yongtao's words, this is a make-up class.

After all, before that, Slan's national defense construction was simply a mess, not only lacked the necessary defense capabilities, but also failed to fulfill its obligations as a member of the Eastern Bloc.

Of course, along with the Sri civil war, the empire strengthened its military presence in the Slans.

Although the Imperial Navy has built Diego into the largest and most well-equipped integrated sea and air base in the Fanyan Ocean, Diego is actually a small coral island, and even if all the nearby islands are used, there is no way to deploy too many combat troops here.

In addition, the Diego base is far from the southern subcontinent and is not an ideal base for advancement.

From the perspective of fighting a global war, Silan is the ideal frontier position, which is irreplaceable.

Not to mention anything else, if it lands at the southern end of the southern subcontinent, the landing ships can be deployed in place within dozens of hours from Silan, and the logistics support efficiency is several times higher than that of the Diego base, and after the delivery distance is shortened, the requirements for delivery tools will also be greatly reduced, for example, small landing craft can be used, and hovercraft and other rapid delivery tools can be directly deployed in the military port of Silan.

In another way, using a projection force of comparable size, that is, landing ships, can project more combat troops from Silan.

Obviously, this means that there are better odds of winning!

It is precisely for this reason that after returning to Silan, the Empire has been strengthening its military deployment.

In fact, this is the key reason why the civil war lasted until the end of the 149th year of the new calendar.

The empire intervened on a large scale, and the Slan civil war was completely able to end within a year, and the delay of 5 years was related to the military deployment of the empire.

In the past five years, the empire has used the military assistance provided to Silan to send a large number of main battle equipment that is difficult to transfer on a large scale in peacetime, including at least 2DG main battle tanks, and scattered in several military bases.

Of course, this is not to say that the leaders of the empire have the ability to predict the future and make accurate judgments about the time and manner of the outbreak of the third global war six years in advance.

Under the circumstances, what really needed to be guarded against was actually the Third Southern Subcontinent War.

The key is that because there is no certainty of defeating Pakistan, the Van Luo authorities are likely to target Silan, taking advantage of the unstable foothold of the empire, sending troops to attack and occupy Silan, at least to control the minority areas in the north. It is precisely because of this that before the decision to send troops to Silan, the imperial authorities were ready to fight with the Van Luo Kingdom. Maybe it was because the empire was prepared that the Van Luo authorities gave up the idea of sending troops to Silan.

It was not until the end of the Slanc Civil War that the imperial authorities set out to prepare for a global war.

It was in this context that after Zhou Yongtao personally intervened, the Imperial Army handed over the main battle equipment stored in Silan to the Marine Corps.

Of course, the Marines also made concessions, such as handing over the defense of Kara and Kuah to the Army.

Crucially, before the outbreak of the Poshawan War, the Empire had been transporting war supplies to the Slan under the pretext of helping them rebuild after the war.

By the year 149 of the new calendar, the international situation was already full of storms.

A global war is imminent, not to mention Zhou Yongtao, even if he is replaced by a civilian chief assistant, he will not dare to be careless, and will definitely start to strengthen combat readiness.

As for the value of Silan in the imperial strategic system, it is naturally needless to say.

If anything, the time for pre-war preparation was still too short.

By the time of the outbreak of the war, the total amount of military supplies stored in Silan was less than 200,000 tons, mainly ammunition for the army's armored forces.

In addition, less than 100,000 tons of fuel are stored!

This bit of fuel is not enough for the "H-9D" to fly 2 sorties.

Although the oil refinery on the outskirts of the capital has been commissioned, production capacity has not yet been ramped up, and a stable supply of crude oil will not be available until the situation in Posha Bay stabilizes. With the current situation, it would be nice to be able to reach design capacity by the end of the year.

In fact, it was precisely because of this restriction that Ding Zhennan never deployed strategic aviation to Silan.

Prior to this, the strategic bombing of Van Luo relied on the empire itself, and hundreds of bombers were all deployed at local airfields.

As a result, the bombing efficiency has not been very high.

It was for this reason that the kingdom began to make strategic shifts after entering the war, such as moving arsenals and heavy industry to the south.

The reason is also simple, it is further away from the empire itself.

If tactical-level short-range air-to-surface missiles were used, as well as guided bombs that were dropped at a closer distance, bombers deployed on the empire's mainland could basically only pose a threat to the northern part of the country. To bomb the southern part of Van Roe, you either have to use cruise missiles or have bombers fly over the Bay of Benga.

It is a pity that cruise missiles are "in short supply" and have always been in a state of "out of stock".

Well, only let the bombers fly over the Bay of Benga. Even if it was possible to arrange heavy fighters for escort, the combat efficiency of the bombers could not be guaranteed.

In large-scale wars, the combat radius is the number one factor limiting the combat effectiveness of bombers.

The key is that the maintenance of the bomber is directly linked to the flight time, and the flight time of each mission is determined by the combat radius.

The larger the combat radius, the lower the frequency of sorties.

It was for this reason that the Imperial Air Force preferred to use expensive cruise missiles to increase the strike range of bombers rather than extend the combat radius.

Of course, in the early days of the war, it was mainly aimed at military objectives in the northern part of the kingdom.

To put it bluntly, the real strategic bombing has not yet begun.

Crucially, after the battle in the Guia Ocean is over, the Imperial Navy will turn its focus to the Fanyan Ocean, such as committing more transport fleets.

In fact, before Ding Zhennan flew back to Kara Harbor, a fleet of dozens of freighters, accompanied by more than a dozen escort warships, set off from the southern port of the empire and embarked on a voyage to Fanyan Ocean, and half of the transports in the fleet were destined for the city of Coron in Slan.

These ships will send hundreds of thousands of tons of ammunition and fuel to Slan in late October!