A few days ago, the Iraqi army dispatched SA-6 missiles to prepare to shoot down the Kirov airboat, but before the SA-6 missile vehicle entered the range, it was discovered by the reconnaissance personnel on the Kirov airboat, and the crew called for artillery support. The Red Guard Independent Artillery Regiment, which accompanied the operation of the 310th Mechanized Infantry Division, fired a bottom-row extended-range shell with a PLZ-88 (originally PLZ-05) 52 times diameter 155mm gun, destroying half of the missile and radar vehicles of the missile company and paralyzing their attack capability.

The Iraqi army thought of a lot of methods, but they did not achieve it, including the method - sending fighters to shoot it down, but shortly after their fighters took off, they were blocked by the J-9 and F-14 of the Chinese Air Force, and they only ended up being shot down; They wanted to drag the anti-aircraft guns closer and shoot, and their fate was not much different from that of the previous SA-6; The Iraqi army also wanted to send special forces to sneak in and carry needle-type portable anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down the Kirov airboat, but these special forces, who were good at camouflage in the desert, were attacked by big dogs who didn't know where they came from on the way, and all the troops were wiped out.

Then the Iraqis learned that they had nothing to do with the huge airship in the sky.

In fact, there are only two airships in service in the PLA army, one is the reconnaissance type of the army "Huoyun class", and the Qingyun class is its fourth boat; The other is the "Cumulonimbus class" that serves the Air Force, the volume of this airship is much larger than the fire cloud level, and the same load capacity is much larger.

The Cumulonimbus class is actually divided into two subtypes, one is the cargo version, with a maximum speed of 65 knots, although the speed is much worse than that of large transport aircraft such as the An-225, but the load is larger, its carrying capacity is up to 450 deadweight tons, and the stay time is longer, it can fly for dozens of hours, in some places where there are little time requirements, no airports or poor conditions, large cargo airships can provide PLA with strong transport capacity.

The other is that the Air Force is still reluctant to take out an important strategic weapon, a gas station-type airship. With a load of up to 450 tons, such an airship can easily carry two or three hundred tons of fuel into the sky, stay in relatively safe airspace for more than 30 to 60 hours, and provide the fuel needed for forty or fifty sorties. At present, the largest tanker in the world provides less than 100 tons of fuel, and the Cumulonimbus class aerial refueling station is far stronger than these tankers.

Originally, the Gulf War Air Force sent a large number of fighters, especially many F-14s stationed in Gwadar, and the bombers also needed to refuel near the Arabian Sea, so some people hoped that two or three Cumulonimbus air refueling stations could be deployed in Gwadar, but in the end this tendency was rejected, and the secret of the Cumulonimbus class still had to be preserved.

However, despite this, the appearance of the Burning Cloud-class reconnaissance airship has really surprised some military powers, including the United States, Britain, France, and other countries, and it seems that the development of large airships will be regarded as an important goal for a certain period of time.

Under the extremely strong battlefield control, the fire cloud reconnaissance airship has strengthened the army's reaction ability and intelligence acquisition ability, although it is not an offensive weapon itself, but it has increased the army's combat efficiency.

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Suddenly there was an alarm from the forward reconnaissance post, Li Chen hurriedly checked their dedicated data link terminal, and then shouted: "The reconnaissance airboat has sent a message, the Iraqi army on the other side of the border seems to have a relatively large-scale movement, it seems that it is about to launch an offensive, and the direction should be our side." ”

The platoon commander of the reconnaissance platoon raised his eyebrows and said: "These Iraqi beards, are they crazy, they are more than 20,000 horses mixed with our 310th Division in front of them, and they are obviously a hard bone, they should not choose us to gnaw on them." ”

Li Chen's eyes rolled a few times, and he guessed: "Our spies on this side of the border to attack Iraq are very attentive, I am afraid that the Iraqi side has limited information on us, and if you want to talk about hard bones, in fact, everywhere is hard bones, the defense line between Haf'Abatin and King Khalid Military City is composed of American troops and Western troops, and it is also tens of thousands of mechanized infantry, and the depth is even greater over there, it is difficult for the Iraqis to ensure their logistics in such a large depth under our air superiority, So I don't think I will choose that direction to continue to go deeper. And on our side, I'm afraid it's not what they really want! ”

The platoon commander smiled, patted Li Chen's shoulder, and said, "Your kid is really resourceful, not bad, then tell me, where is the real goal of the Iraqis?" ”

Li Chen pointed to the east and said with a smile: "Haifuji." ”

"How so?"

"Haifji's geopolitical importance is self-evident, as it is located on the Primordial Highway, which allows it to continue to threaten the rest of the Gulf to the southeast. It is because of this that the Saudi side wants to protect it by itself, but it does not trust us and the US military, which are stronger than the multinational force. However, although Khafji has a lot of troops of Saudi Arabia and Arab coalition forces, but the actual combat power is not high, the Iraqi army has fought for so many years, compared to these Arab coalition forces are much braver, if they can break through their defenses and occupy Khafji, it will be very helpful for the morale of the Iraqi army and subsequent strategic progress. In our direction, we are probably facing a feint attack by the Iraqi army, who want to tie our attention, especially the strength of the air, to us, and then launch an attack on Khafji by surprise and obtain the results. Li Chen talked eloquently, and he was right.

The platoon commander admired him very much, and said: "You kid has been in the army for a few years, and you haven't read military theory or anything in vain, Ha Luha, your service period is almost up, it's a pity that you are a non-commissioned officer with this brain, I recommend you to your superiors, and you can be promoted directly." "Although the country's officer training is now more perfect, and the national defense academies will provide a large number of outstanding young officers to the troops, the army still has a certain quota for soldiers to be promoted.

Li Chen nodded gratefully, he was actually in the second period of service, before he was in the construction corps, the border war in eight or six years changed him, he hated his cowardice deeply, he chose to join the real field army, and also transformed into a more qualified soldier. During his tenure in the 310th Division, he seized the time to enrich himself, made use of various resources and conveniences within the 310th Division, became self-taught, mastered a large number of advanced military theories, and sublimated his own military thinking.

Qi Yiming brought a lot of better learning materials to the troops, and ordinary soldiers had the opportunity to come into contact with these things, so as long as they were willing to work hard and be motivated, there would naturally be a way out.

The scouts at the forward reconnaissance posts had already packed their bags, and they took everything they could with them, and those who couldn't take them away and were afraid of leaking their secrets would be destroyed directly, and they didn't have many confidential things.

The platoon commander pressed the button on his helmet, turned on the communication device, and reported to the battalion headquarters: "Flash 3-1 is ready to withdraw, repeat, Flash 3-1 is ready to withdraw." ”

"Flash 3-1, the established evacuation route is safe, please join the headquarters within the specified time, we will soon have a large-scale land battle with the enemy, you don't want to be alone between the two armies." The liaison officer half-jokingly said that since the Blue Army Division had learned American imperialism everywhere, the word order and logic of speaking Chinese now were a bit like they were speaking English.

"Got it, we're not going to let the Iraqis catch up!"

Li Chen carried a large marching bag on his back and said to the platoon commander: "It seems that the scale of the mobilization of the Iraqi army is not small, in this kind of open terrain, it is estimated that it is a hard confrontation between the armored forces of the two sides." ”

The platoon commander snorted and said with disdain: "The Iraqi army on the other side is equipped with some T-72s, and there are Type 69 tanks that we produced in the past, while we have MBT-2000s. ”

Another soldier chimed in: "And we have more air power, and the Air Force's AR-2 will make the Iraqis suffer greatly." ”

After the reconnaissance airboat sent out the information about the movement of the Iraqi army, the camp of the 310th Division immediately became busy, and the soldiers began to gather and climb into their main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The 310th Division's earliest tank was the Type 86 light Grizzly tank, but later considering that this tank of more than 30 tons was too weak in the face of a heavy main battle tank of 50 or 60 tons, the tank crew of the 310th Division was replaced with an MBT-2000 main battle tank more similar to the NATO standard the year before last.

The main difference between the MBT-2000 and the MBT-2000 tank is the weapon, in order to match the NATO standard, the MBT-2000 uses a 120mm caliber gun, which can fire the M829A1 armor-piercing shells used by the M1A1 to ensure that it can be used in general logistics when coordinating with NATO forces. In operations like this one, the 310th Division actually took ammunition directly from the U.S. military, including their light weapons CF2000 with 5. 56mm Nato shells, mortars, rocket launchers and other weapons are also taken from the US military. Of course, this is not for money.

At first, some people felt that many American weapons were not as good as the PLA's own weapons, such as the MBT-2000's main gun, which was a distance from the Type 99 125mm main gun. However, Qi Yiming believes that since the Blue Army is a full set, different weapons will give soldiers different experiences and awareness, so the Blue Army Corps uniformly uses NATO-standard weapons.

However, this is not a big trouble for logistics, and many military enterprises want to make weapons of two standards, which will inevitably increase some production costs, but these NATO-standard weapons also have the potential to be exported to NATO countries.