Chapter 55: The Gulf of Aqaba
Located in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba is bordered by Israel to the north and the Republic of Suez, which split from Egypt to the west, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ļ½ļ½ļ½Uļ½Eć ļ½ļ½ļ½ļ½
Historically, the Gulf of Aqaba was an alternative route for the Mediterranean and Red Sea canals, which eventually gave way to the Suez Canal due to the prohibitive construction costs of the route through desert and high mountains. But the Suez Canal has been unable to meet the needs of world trade for decades, and it has become common for large cargo ships to queue up at the Suez Canal on the border between Europe and Asia, which has made trading countries anxious and even set their sights on the Arctic shipping lanes, which are just beginning to melt.
After Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in 2015, in order to increase the revenue of the national treasury, the Suez Canal dredging project was launched.
During the Great Recession, world trade shrank sharply, and the Suez Canal, which supports Egypt's fiscal revenue, became a chicken rib, unable to make ends meet, not to mention the cost of dredging, and even the cost of daily maintenance and management.
By the time of the Great Division, the province of Suez, which borders the Gulf of Suez, proposed independence from Egypt and was successfully established without any resistance.
The newly established Republic of Suez has been running for a few years, and the development of the Lake Victoria area has made the Suez Canal busy again, and when East Africa has become the world's manufacturing center, the Suez Canal has become an intestinal blockage, and hundreds of thousands of tons of freighters queued up for a month through the canal locks It is considered lucky, and the newly built megaton freighters cannot pass through the Suez Canal at all, so they can only detour to the Cape of Good Hope to Europe, and the route will increase by 20,000 kilometers.
In this context, Israel plans to build a high-speed freight railway from the northern port of Ashdod to the southern port of Eilat in order to connect the Mediterranean Sea with the Gulf of Aqaba for transshipment.
From the beginning of Israel's announcement of the Aqaba freight railway project, Suez was fiercely opposed, the two sides quarreled, and the League of Nations began to negotiate under the mediation of the League of Nations, Suez proposed that Israel jointly widen the Suez Canal, and Israel insisted on building a steel canal.
Later in the negotiations, Suez threatened that if Israel built the Aqaba Railway, Suez would block the Strait of Tiran on the border between the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea, so that cargo ships from the Gulf of Aqaba would not be able to enter the Red Sea.
The two sides quarreled fiercely, and Karl mediated twice to no avail. Israel simply withdrew from the negotiations and established the Aqaba Railway Investment Company, which officially started construction in the desert and high mountains.
Originally, after the Great Split, most of the newly formed countries had no defense, and Suez was one of them. The rapid development of the economy has given birth to new industries, and in response to the needs of these defenseless countries, the defense outsourcing industry has gradually improved, and the business of the well-known Blackwater Security Company has been one after another.
In particular, after Puerto Rico and Hawaii seceded from the United States, these countries were unable to maintain the military bases left by the United States, and the countless planes and ships and other advanced weapons in the bases were acquired by Blackwater at extremely low prices, and Blackwater became a formidable military force, and they were even able to use their military resources to influence the situation in the region.
Seeing that the Soviet-Israeli dispute was becoming more and more irreconcilable, Blackwater's marketing department approached the Republic of Suez, and they offered to use the Suez Canal tolls for the next ten years as a guarantee for Blackwater to settle Israel and destroy the Aqaba Railway, which had just begun.
SUEZ originally had no military strength, and it could not suppress Israel at the negotiating table, and it had just been established and did not have enough financial support to build an army.
After receiving information about the cooperation between Suez and Blackwater, Israel mobilized heavy troops to assemble on the border of the Sinai Peninsula and defend the construction line of the Gulf of Aqaba Railway.
In order to prevent a surprise attack by the Blackwater Company, the Southern Command concentrated 30,000 national defense troops, 1,000 tanks, 600 self-propelled guns and 400 combat aircraft to respond to the battle, in addition to arranging six anti-aircraft missile brigades.
Israel used to be a small prickly shrimp in the Middle East, and with the support of the United States, it has won all five Middle East wars with 8 million people and 200 million Arabs, and has impressed the world.
As an enterprise, Blackwater has mostly contracted security contracts before, and it is the first time that this kind of state-to-country war contract has been fought against Israel, and Blackwater is also doing its best to win this battle in order to open up a larger market.
On Yom Kippur 17 years ago, the earth had just been suspended for five years, and the Sixth Middle East War had broken out.
Israel is on duty 24 hours a day and night along the air defense missile brigade equipped with arrow-type and Iron Dome air defense missiles along the construction line, even on Yom Kippur, the soldiers still stick to their posts, and on the construction line in the distance, China Railway Construction adopts the method of sectional construction, and a huge track-laying robot slowly moves on the roadbed in order to complete this dangerous project as quickly as possible.
The port of Eilat, a small port city of just 20,000 people, is now an outpost on the border with Suez, and countless steel rails brought in by China Railway Construction are stacked on the docks. With regard to the Aqaba Railway's exit to the sea, Israel has deployed nearly 10,000 heavy troops here, and the officers on duty in the reconnaissance battalion did not dare to blink their eyes in the barracks, staring at the data transmitted by reconnaissance satellites and ground radars.
At four o'clock in the morning, the officer on duty stood up, "It's time to send drones to patrol the Gulf of Aqaba!" ā
The flight controller on the side pulled the joystick in front of the computer, and a Athletic God reconnaissance plane slid to the charging rack at the end of the runway, the flight controller pressed a charging button, and the charging program on the screen began to work, from the diagram it seems that the Athletic God reconnaissance aircraft uses a flywheel battery, and the speed of a disc-shaped object instantly reached 280,000 revolutions per minute.
It only took a few seconds to charge, and the propeller of the Athletic God Reconnaissance Plane spun around and flew into the sky in the light of dawn. Following the set route, the reconnaissance aircraft circled over the Timna copper mine and crossed Mount Eilat on the Israeli-Soviet border.
The Sinai Peninsula on the other side of the national border quietly did not see a single change in the dawn, and the reconnaissance plane crossed the border line and lowered its altitude, slowed down slightly and flew southwest against the lofty mountains, and soon arrived at the port of Taba in South Sinai Province.
The reconnaissance plane began to turn and fly towards the southern high seas, and when it passed the coastline, the reconnaissance plane was about to reach the desert on the ground, and the tail bilge gently bounced out, and dozens of desert beetles fell, and the sky was not completely bright, and the desert beetles crawled a few steps and scattered in all directions, burrowing into the beach.
"If the other party were to raid on land, they would never have imagined that our beetle scouts were ambushing at their feet!" The flight controller finished dropping the beetle and said to the officer, and as he spoke, as soon as he pulled the joystick, the reconnaissance plane began to accelerate from above the sea and patrol in Aqaba along a zigzag line.
"Staring at your screen, Mossad intelligence says that the stealth destroyer USS Intrepid in Blackwater departed from its Puerto Rico base two weeks ago, and in terms of cruising speed, it is almost in the waters of the Red Sea." There were still two hours to go, and the commanding officer didn't want to make any mistakes.
"Sir, you see, there is no situation at all, do you want to return home?" Cruising on the Gulf of Aqaba for more than an hour, the flight controller's eyes were staring, and there was only an endless inky black wave on the screen.
"Wait, why are these seabirds flying in one direction?" The commanding officer saw that something was wrong, leaned over and asked.
"Sir, nothing?" The flight controller's left thumb rotates the optical lens that is lowered by the nose of the Athletic God.
"Sir, the radar signal is normal!" The radar unit has increased the radar phase conversion frequency.
"Absolutely not normal, you see these seabirds are all going northeast, descending height, give me a descending height, passing through the seabird flock." The commanding officer had a faint ominous premonition in his heart, "Give me two more Athletic Gods to take off, and prepare to change shifts for continuous and uninterrupted reconnaissance." Hearing the command officer's order, two substitute flight controllers sat down in front of the command platform.
The seabirds on the screen became clearer and clearer, and several seabirds flew over in horror with the camera, and the flight controller kept turning the handle to search the sea surface.
"Sir, look, the ripples on the water!" The flight controller shouted, and everyone gathered around, and the waves on the sea surface behind the seabird flock were obviously different from the surrounding waters, as if they had been combed in the water with a comb, and they couldn't be distinguished if they weren't close to the surface of the sea.
"What's going on with the Mossad, don't you know that Blackwater bought submarines!" The commanding officer was furious, he ran to the control center, pressed enter, and the video of the Athletic God was transmitted to the Southern Military District Command.
"Dudu" There was an alarm sound, and the command system of the Southern Military Region Command woke everyone up, "There is an enemy situation!" Level 1 alert! "On the long national border, more than 30,000 army troops were alerted by the command center, and the officers and men hurriedly got up from the barracks and rushed to their duty posts.
"****, the direction of attack is really at sea!" Major General Jacob, commander of the Southern Military Region, scolded while getting dressed, this is exactly what he was worried about, although Israel's military strength in the Middle East is second to none, but the navy is its weakness, and now a security company has infiltrated the door, and it has not even found out, which is simply a shame to lose the extreme.
Major General Jacob entered the command room and just twisted the buttons, "Is it confirmed?" What type of submarine is it? He asked anxiously.
The chief of staff did not speak, and the video of the commander of the Eilat reconnaissance battalion appeared on the screen, "Report to the general, it is not possible to confirm it at the moment!" ā
"What are the recommendations for the operational chain of command?" Major General Jacob asked, now that the opinions of artificial intelligence have been written into the training regulations, Jacob does not like machines to replace his work, but he has to follow the training regulations.
"It proposes to start anti-submarine procedures!" The chief of staff on the side reported.
"What are you doing then? The data link is immediately transmitted to the Navy, and the anti-submarine program is initiated! "Having received orders from Rear Admiral Jacob, the Chief of Staff sent the orders that had long been written by the chain of command to the Navy.
On the Red Sea, Israel's only Rahavi corvette was preparing to return to the Gulf of Suez, and it had just finished its Red Sea patrol and was heading towards Tel Aviv Military Port to replenish supplies.
"Lower the altitude again and get close to the dividing line of suspicious waves!" The commander of the reconnaissance battalion always felt that something was wrong, and he ordered the flight controller to constantly reduce the altitude of the athletic god, and the waves hit the camera, and the screen was blurry.
Suddenly, there was a burst of snowflakes on the screen, "Sir, the athletic god is missing!" The flight controller slapped the joystick hard, and there was still snow on the screen.
The commander was not alarmed, he turned behind the substitute flight controller, "How's the situation?" How far is it from the first missing waters? ā
"Report sir, there are still a hundred kilometers left, and it is expected that there will be six minutes to reach the preset location!" The flight controller gripped the accelerator button on the joystick, and the waves on the screen swept backwards, and the two sides of the Gulf of Aqaba in the distance were much slower, and the sun had risen over the sea, shining on the white light of the waves, which seemed to be a tense situation.
In the theater command behind, Rear Admiral Jacob frowned, the anti-submarine helicopter has not yet reported, and the satellite signal has not reported that there is a submarine trace, "Let the Fercom AWACS take off!" Jacob is increasingly worried that if he loses to Blackwater Security, his reputation will be in vain.
"Sir, there is a situation, look! The enemy has launched a missile! The Athletic God flight controller of the reconnaissance battalion stared at the screen and suddenly shouted.
The commander rushed over, but there was nothing on the screen, it was still an endless wave, "What's going on?" He shouted. Sir's, really, we both saw it, just now there was a flash on the sea, and the speed was extremely fast, and a large number of missiles were launched! One of the flight controllers was speechless in shock, and another was sober, and he hurriedly stood up to report.
When the commander was puzzled, the radar soldier shouted, "128!" 128 pieces, Mach 30, are ballistic missiles, strategic nuclear submarines are in! It's over, we're done! ā
"Nonsense! Where is there a nuclear submarine capable of firing a salvo of 128 missiles! The commander was angry, but the readings on the radar screen immediately left him speechless.
The Southern Military District Command and the radars of the missile and air defense brigades on the border saw this frightened picture, 128 strategic ballistic missiles were fired at the air defense positions, and the small Blackwater Security had such a large force.
"Activate the interception! Initiate Interception! Major General Jacob shouted in despair.