Long Yun is now cautiously optimistic about the southern theater of operations, that is, the Middle East, including Turkey.

Looking at the situation on the first day of the counteroffensive, he believes that with the strong support of the VVS "anti-radiation operation," the Warsaw Pact ground forces are fully capable of crushing NATO's defense forces in Turkey, Iraq, and other places, and advancing the front to the hinterland of the Middle East in one fell swoop.

However, as the saying goes, "there are pros and cons to everything", if things really develop as he thinks, and the rolling iron flow of the Red Empire enters the Middle East with a thunderous momentum, then there will be a question next, and this question is also one that Long Yun has thought about many times, but he has not answered with full certainty -- after basically ending the combat operations in the Southern Theater and sweeping NATO forces out of Asia Minor and even the entire Middle East region, how will the next battle be fought?

Long Yun himself did not think about this question very clearly, but he always believed that the battle in the Caucasus was unlikely to rise to a completely strategic level.

In other words, his present view is that the outcome of the Caucasus-Middle East campaign will certainly deal a heavy blow to the loser of this contest, but it will not be enough to decide the outcome of the war between the two major military blocs; The process of this East-West war, which has affected the whole world, is far from ending.

Flying a fighter plane over a straight route of thousands of kilometers, Long Yun now has a lot of time to think; The conclusion he now envisages is also supported by some arguments.

The Middle East, which has emerged on the international stage as the world's most important oil producing region in recent decades, is naturally seen by many as the energy core of the Western world's prosperity, or even further, who can control the region. It can influence the economic trend and even social operation of the Western world; This assertion. Of course, it cannot be said that it is incorrect. The OPEC Organization_of_Petroleum_Exporting_Countries(Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) production cuts during the Middle East war hit the economies of Europe and the United States hard, which seems to be a very strong evidence.

On the other hand, however, if we are deeply aware of the cruelty of the act of war, we must admit that the so-called "prosperity" is simply a dispensable thing in the face of the pressure of war: any country that cares about victory will not choose between "prosperity" and "victory". Maybe there will be a completely different new discovery.

The Middle East is indeed of great significance to Western countries.

However, not because it can provide oil, but because it can reliably provide cheap oil.

Without the Middle East, the United States and European countries will definitely have a harder time, and there will be a lot of problems in the functioning of society; However, it would be a bit unrealistic to conclude that the NATO bloc would fall into a state of dysfunction and surrender to the defeat.

After all, from a geopolitical point of view, the Middle East is not the center of the US global strategy, even if it is really occupied by the Warsaw Pact. nor will it have a fundamental impact on its national strategy; Connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to South America, Western Europe and Australia, the chain of the Western world can still be kept running. Although it will certainly become more inefficient, the blow of "losing the Middle East" is far from fatal for the United States, which has entered a wartime system.

It was precisely because of this that Long Yun had some hunches that after the dust of the war in the Middle East was basically settled, the Soviet High Command would definitely not continue to be meaninglessly entangled with NATO in the Middle East.

As for the oil resources on this land, it is not very attractive to the Warsaw Pact group with abundant production capacity, and the core area of the Middle East far from Western countries cannot play the role of a strategic offensive springboard; Therefore, it was natural for him to guess that the Red Giant's hammer would not always fall in the Middle East, but would soon be raised high and wielded again in the air.

However, with such a heavy hammer, he did not dare to speculate on where it would strike next.

……

The journey along the way, because it was far away from the possible war zone, went very smoothly.

Piloting the white No. 20 Su-27P42 to the west, the 1,500-kilometer route took Long Yun more than two hours, which is a little slower than a civil airliner, but considering that the fighter can go directly from the place of departure to the destination, saving the time of two round-trips to and from the airport, then the overall efficiency is still better.

After settling down in the field base near Bugas, Long Yun's first agenda was to communicate with the staff of the MiG Design Bureau, who had just arrived; He learned from the head of the base that the project demonstrator had arrived at the Bugas Air Base earlier in the day and was now being assembled in a temporary hangar. Hearing that it was "arrived" instead of "flying in", Long Yun thought it was strange at first, it is said that there is also a front-line fighter regiment equipped with MiG-29 stationed in Bugas, isn't it more convenient for that MiG-29N to fly directly from the base?

Oh, thinking of this, Long Yun suddenly understood something.

The MiG-29N, the demonstrator of the "low detectability" project of the Mikoyan/Grevich Design Bureau, not only claims to have radar stealth capabilities, but also has exceptionally short legs for reasons that are not yet clear; So first of all, Long Yun felt that this fighter was probably the same as the MiG-29, and did not have air refueling capabilities, and it was not economical to develop a complete air refueling system for a single verification aircraft.

Secondly, considering the range of this thing of more than 1,000 kilometers, even if it has a drop fuel tank, it will have to be transferred from Moscow at least once, maybe it is precisely because of these reasons that the design bureau did not fly the fighter directly over?

However, with these speculations, he really met the engineers sent by the MiG Design Bureau, and Long Yun learned that these speculations were not accurate.

Outside the tin dome hangar at the Bugas base, along the airport path to the side door of the hangar, Mikhail Krakow, the head of the Mi-Pattern project, explained to the Major General of the Aviation Corps next to him, accompanied by Mikhail Krakow.

As a project demonstrator of the "low detectability" design, the radar stealth capability of the MiG-29N fighter is quite good, and it is almost impossible to detect by general fighter radars and ground warning radars; However, if you fly with a corner reflector, it is more dangerous to be close to the theater of operations, and it is also easy to expose the storage of the project, so the design bureau contacted the railway department and first used two IL-76 transport planes to transport the disassembled MiGs to Bregast, and then to the front line step by step by Guò railway, so as to avoid any mistakes in the transportation process.

“…… That's right; So,"

Seeing that it was not early, Long Yun walked quickly to the hangar as he spoke, of course he was very curious now, so he asked Krakow who was accompanying him first, "I really want to know, how did you come up with the idea of improving the MiG-29 and making it a low detectable model?" And what is the situation with that range indicator, and why is it a little smaller than the original. ”

"Oh! Comrade General, in fact, the project demonstrator of the 'low detectable model' has not yet undergone full range tests, and this is only a theoretical calculation.

As for the specific reason, I would like to wait until you see the verification machine and then explain it to you in detail. ”

Krakow's words made Long Yun understand how the MiG-29N's range number jù was obtained, but at the same time it increased his curiosity; Fortunately, the others had already arrived in Bugas, and the hangar was in front of them, so they followed the engineer in his work uniform into the side door, through the short aisle, and came to the brightly lit tin hangar. Unlike the usual forward bases, Bugas originally had a military airfield in Bulgaria, and the iron-domed hangar used to park large aircraft was very tall and the space inside was extremely spacious.

Walking into the hangar, the first time he saw the two fighters parked on the concrete floor, Long Yun's first reaction was "MiG-29", after all, he was very familiar with the appearance of this medium-sized twin-engine fighter, and he had also piloted the Red Thirteen in the skies of Western Europe.

However, when his eyes adjusted to the light in the room, with the help of a touch of sunlight projected by the high air window and the mercury lamp in the hangar, he immediately noticed that the two light gray fighters in front of him were a little different, and there were some differences between the appearance and the MiG-29 that he was used to.

Sure enough, the two MiG-29N fighters in front of me have undergone a meticulous radar stealth design.

As a former military cadet who crossed over from the real world, Long Yun asked himself if he knew a little about the radar stealth technology of fighter jets, and he knew whether a fighter could achieve low detectability against electromagnetic waves, but it could not be seen casually with the naked eye, otherwise, stealth fighters would be too easy to design and manufacture, as long as they copied a shell according to the existing model.

But even so, based on the common principle of electromagnetic signal scattering, some basic radar stealth design principles can be found by direct observation, which can be used to roughly judge whether the fighter has a minimum radar stealth design: if at first glance, it feels that a certain fighter pays great attention to these details, then the probability that it belongs to the radar stealth fighter is relatively high, which is not wrong at all.

Following Krakow's footsteps, Long Yun looked around and approached the two MiG-29N fighters in the hangar, looking from the direction of the nose, the overall lines of the light gray fuselage are still smooth, but the most eye-catching thing is the slightly shiny integrated cockpit canopy at the top of the fuselage curve and the cockpit position.

1. One-piece cockpit canopy?

It seems that it is really, can this kind of high-end goods also be had! (To be continued......)

PS: On the last day of August, please all your brothers!