In fact, the first paved runway was laid before dark.

Undoubtedly, battlefield engineering capabilities have always been the proudest specialty of the Imperial Army, and this fine tradition has been maintained for hundreds of years.

In addition, the construction of field airfields near forward positions is actually the most basic engineering operation capability.

Don't forget that in the decades following World War II, the Imperial Army's main focus was on the continental theater facing the Western Continent group.

Then, we have to face a very difficult problem.

On a continental battlefield with a width and depth of thousands of kilometers, it is simply impossible to build an air base for operational needs, nor can it maintain enough airfields. The huge maintenance costs in peacetime were enough to discourage the Imperial Army, not to mention being condemned by both chambers of parliament.

Not to mention that at the end of the war, even after 40 years of rapid development, the hinterland of the World Island was one of the least densely populated places in the world. In addition, the big cities are almost always located in a narrow strip of land where the western continent meets, and the rest of the city is even more sparsely populated.

It is precisely for this reason that the Imperial Military has invested a lot of resources to strengthen the construction capacity of field engineering.

The most striking change from the period of the Second World War is the use of engineering equipment, which has greatly improved the efficiency of construction.

In the case of the construction of field airfields, not much has changed in essence.

The main material is still high-strength alloy plates manufactured according to standard dimensions, and the paving method is the same, that is, the plates are laid on the leveled ground in a specific way, and then special connectors are used to make the plates firmly bonded together.

Thanks to better materials and stronger connections, the requirements for ground flatness can be appropriately reduced, which reduces the difficulty of engineering work in disguise.

Of course, with a variety of engineering equipment, the work that used to take days, or even more than ten days, can now be completed in just one day. If it is fast, a runway with a length of 1,500 meters that can land a fully loaded tactical transport aircraft can be laid in 12 hours.

In fact, this is also the most basic tactical requirement.

Don't forget, the take-off and landing standards of the "Y-15A" are on par with the tactical transport aircraft, theoretically, as long as the runway that can allow the tactical transport aircraft to take off and land, the "Y-15A" can take off and land, at most because the carrying capacity of the runway is not enough, and the landing weight needs to be limited.

Obviously, this is not a big deal.

According to the design indicators, when the runway length is 1,500 meters, the maximum allowable landing weight of the "Y-15A" can reach 220 tons, that is, in addition to the 30 tons of fuel required for the no-load return flight of 3,000 kilometers, it can carry up to 65 tons of cargo.

This carrying capacity can be said to be very strong, and it is also enough to send the heaviest main battle equipment to the front line.

Even the ZT-99B, after hanging a full set of reactive armor, has a total combat weight of only 64 tons, which is exactly within the capacity of the "Y-15A".

As for take-off, that's even less of a problem.

With a take-off weight of less than 250 tons, the glide distance of the Y-15A is only 1450 meters. If the take-off weight is controlled within 220 tons, it can be shortened to 1100 meters. Simply put, the Y-15A is capable of taking off on any runway where it can land.

Even without a runway, the Y-15A can take off unloaded on a leveled field.

If anything, this is the key reason why the Y-15A is favored by the imperial army.

To put it bluntly, with the Y-15A, the Imperial Army will be able to get rid of the restrictions of ground transportation and send combat units to any location.

In fact, this is also one of the key items of the third military reform.

In terms of its impact on military strategy, the Y-15A surpasses all other combat aircraft, and its importance is even higher than that of the H-12A.

It is precisely in this way that the "Y-15A" became the first "fourth-generation" military aircraft officially mass-produced and put into service.

According to the plan of the Imperial Air Force, even if a global war does not break out, within 15 years, 2,000 "Y-15A" will be purchased to replace all the "Y-11", two-thirds of the "Y-10", and nearly half of the "Y-9", and form a high and low match with the newly designed tactical transport aircraft. After the completion of the fleet update, the Imperial Air Force will receive a strategic airlift force with the Y-15A as the absolute backbone.

There is no doubt that even for other superpowers, this is an extremely terrifying and irresistible offensive capability.

2,000 Y-15A planes mean that within 24 hours, all the main battle equipment of a fully armored division can be delivered to any location on the planet. The point is that no country's defense forces in the world can withstand the attack of an armored division of the Imperial Army on the first day of the war, and the same is true of the Empire and the Republic of Nuland. This meant that the Liangxia Empire had the trump card to break the strategic balance, to wage war when it was most advantageous for them, and to crush their main opponents by surprise.

Of course, the real threat posed by 2000 Y-15A is even more serious.

The key is that what needs to be transported by the "Y-15A" is mainly large-quality main battle equipment, and other equipment and materials can be transported by tactical transport planes or even temporarily requisitioned civilian airliners, so the actual air transport capacity is certainly much higher than the theoretical calculation.

In addition, it takes several days for any country to complete military mobilization, and no country can get its entire army ready for battle in a day. If the duration of the assault airlift reaches one week, even if it is five days, it means that more assault troops and more combat materials can be transported, and the air assault operation that was originally just a campaign level can be upgraded to a strategic level.

There is no doubt that this is a huge threat that no one can ignore.

If it has to be said, having acquired enough "Y-15A", the empire seized the strategic initiative and gained absolute superiority in waging war.

It is precisely in this way that the Republic of Nuland will spend huge sums of money to develop the C-17A, which is comparable to the "Y-17A".

Even the Manman Empire tried its best to mobilize the internal resources of the Western Continent Group and took the lead in developing a strategic transport aircraft with a carrying capacity of 60 tons.

It can be seen that if the war had broken out a few years later, the "Y-15A" would have been able to change the face of the war.

Even now, 60 Y-15A aircraft can make or break the tide of the war.

Shortly after nightfall, the Y-15A arrived from the Empire's mainland Northwest Air Base to deliver the first batch of main battle equipment to the Marine Corps.

Among them, there are 22 brand-new ZT-99Bs.

These tanks were originally planned to be sent by train to the Northwest Theater to replenish the 7th Panzer Division. As a result, after Ding Zhennan made a few phone calls, he was sent to the air base and put into the belly of the "Y-15A". As for the main battle tanks replenished to the 7th Panzer Division, that's another matter.

It was accompanied by 28 infantry fighting vehicles and 14 self-propelled howitzers, as well as approximately 300 tons of ammunition.

For the officers and men of the Marine Corps, who have been fighting hard all day, these heavy equipment must be invaluable.

Shortly after the 60 Y-15A flew away, the officers and men of the Marine Corps used a round of high-intensity artillery fire to warn the Vatican troops 30 kilometers away.

In Liu Zunshan's words, as long as the commander of the Van army was not stupid, after being bombarded, he could think that the imperial army that captured Deogle had been strengthened, and he would not rashly launch a counterattack, so that he could calmly complete the construction of the field airfield.

At least on the night of the 10th, the Vatican army behaved very "sanely".

Of course, there is nothing surprising about this.

Due to the lack of equipment for night warfare, and even less the armor needed to launch a surprise attack, the Vatican army rarely made sorties at night, let alone launched attacks at night.

In contrast, the Imperial Army, on the other hand, preferred to operate at night.

If anything, this is also a lesson learned by the Imperial Army during the Polish-Iraqi War.

Due to technical limitations and unfamiliarity with the environment, the Imperial Army rarely took advantage of night battles during the Bo-Iran War.

Since then, the Imperial military has invested a lot of resources to improve its night combat capabilities.

Although it has not yet reached the level of one manpower, the main battle platforms such as main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are all equipped with low-light night vision devices or infrared imagers, and thus obtain very strong night combat capabilities, which also has a wonderful performance in the Bosshawan War.

Throughout the Poshawan War, the main combat operations of the Imperial Army, especially offensive operations, were carried out almost exclusively at night.

Objectively speaking, the Imperial Army's ability to fight at night has far surpassed that of all other countries.

On the battlefield on the mainland, that is, limited by the ability to fight at night, the Western Continent Group suffered repeated setbacks in offensive operations. In many cases, positions that had been painstakingly captured during the day were taken by the opponent at night, and had to reorganize forces to retake positions the next day. It was precisely because of this that the rapid assault turned into a tug-of-war back and forth, and in many places where a breakthrough could have been obtained, the Western Continent army suffered a crushing defeat.

It was in this way that in the early morning of the 11th, the Marine Corps sent 2 companies of troops to launch a tactical counterattack.

Strictly speaking, it was more like a large-scale armed reconnaissance operation.

Only 12 tanks and 14 infantry fighting vehicles, totalling less than 200 officers and men, were involved in the counterattack, and they were mainly aimed at the Vatican army south of Deogle.

Judging by the daytime battles, the main force of the Vatican army was south of Deogle.

According to the deployment, the primary purpose of the counterattack operation is to grasp the enemy's deployment and provide tactical support for the next air strike.

The main thing is that the Vatican army is too scattered, and aerial reconnaissance has never found the main force of the Vatican army.

In addition, that is, to try to lure out the main forces of the Vatican army.

If you can, you can annihilate them directly, so as not to organize a defensive operation after dawn.

To this end, the Air Force also mobilized a squadron of "Attack-9B", ready to provide support to the assault force and take out the enemy's armored forces.

The assault was carried out decisively and quickly.

However, the results were very different.

To the south of Deogle, there was no main force of the Van army at all, or rather the main force of the Van army had already been routed in the daytime battle.

According to the captured prisoners of war, the commander of the Vatican army, Major General Kassinger, commander of the 141st Infantry Division, left the front command with a platoon of guards shortly after dark, saying that he was going to the defense district command in Udaipur to request reinforcements.

The reason is also very simple, in the daytime battle, the 141st Infantry Division suffered more than half of the casualties!

In fact, the division had less than 6,000 officers and men in total.

It can be seen from the number that the 141st Infantry Division is a second-rate unit, not even a second-rate unit. The main mission of the unit was to guard the railway line through Deogle, to ensure the unimpeded passage of the railway from Udaipur to Amegel, and did not take up combat missions.

In addition, the division was redeployed only at the end of October, having previously been deployed on the northern outskirts of Udaipur.

Because they had to be stationed in the field, many of the senior officers stayed in Udaipur and only went to their units every once in a while to inspect the situation.

Undoubtedly, this is a great feature of the Vatican army.

As for the combat effectiveness of the division, it is simply impossible to talk about it.

The bravery shown in the daytime battle was in fact the result of ignorance, that is, all the senior officers, including Cassinger, believed that the attack on Deogle was a lightly armed force, and the feint mission was certainly not very strong.

Crucially, the information provided by Deogle's militia proves this judgment.

As a result, the 141st Infantry Division launched a counterattack in accordance with the standards for dealing with lightly armed feints, and it is not surprising that it suffered a crushing defeat.

In addition, the combat units involved in the counterattack were actually engaged in the battle in batches, and there was basically no communication with each other.

As for Major General Kassinger, who commanded the operation, he left his command post shortly after the start of the battle and did not delegate command.

As a result of this, all the combat units participating in the war acted in accordance with the drawn up battle plan and did not make any adjustments to the actual situation at all.

To put it bluntly, it is to rush up to death one after another!

To make matters worse, the air support provided by the Imperial Air Force was not only violent, but also very timely. As a result, many of the commanders of the Vatican combat units were too late to order a retreat, let alone regroup, when they went to the battlefield and found that the situation was not quite right.

If anything, it's a miracle that the 141st Infantry Division didn't collapse before noon.

It is precisely because of this that the counterattack launched by the Marine Corps in the early hours of the morning is only a formality.

In fact, by this time, there was no suspense in the battle situation.

Before dawn on the 11th, the second 1,500-meter runway was put into use, and the first ran to 2,500 meters, which has the ability to allow the "Y-10A" to take off and land.

However, for the time being, there is no need to use the Y-10A.

The biggest advantage of extending the runway is actually that the tactical transport aircraft can immediately lift off in the direction of landing after unloading the cargo, shortening the ground operation cycle to one-third of the original. Excluding the number of transport aircraft, it is equivalent to a threefold increase in the unloading capacity of a single runway.

Obviously, the number of tactical transport aircraft is enough.

At the airfield and air base on the Kara Harbor side alone, there are 300 Y-9s available, and there are hundreds more on the Kuah Harbor side.

By the early morning of the 11th, the air operation was at its highest efficiency.

On average, 30 Y-9s arrive every hour, with an average cargo capacity of 25 tons and up to 750 tons per hour.

Theoretically, it is capable of transporting 18,000 tons a day.

It's just that it certainly can't be reached.

It's not that there won't be enough transport planes, or that the efficiency of transport will be reduced, but that the field airfields have limited transshipment capacity and can't handle so much combat materiel.

Of course, by daylight on the 11th, the first task was no longer to be airlifted, but to attack and occupy Deogle.